Sutter Cinema

The Sutter Cinema was located at 369 Sutter Street in downtown San Francisco. It was a walk-up, located on the second floor. It opened in 1970; the owner/manager, also cashier, was Arlene Elster. She was the first, if not the only, woman to operate an adult theater.[1] The clientele was middle-class.

The Sutter was unique, because in pointed contrast to the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater, she was not primarily motivated by money.[2] She was a member of the Sexual Freedom League, held a benefit for it at the cinema,[3] and felt that her participation in the pornographic film industry was an opportunity to spread sexual freedom as well as earn a living.[4] She was showing sex films out of a feeling that sex films should be shown: "the times now not only allow but require films like ours."[5] She would only show in the theater films that pleased her,[6] some made with her partner Lowell Pickett. "Sutter Cinema played films that Elster wanted to see, films in which woman possessed sexual desires and 'made it' just like men."[7] Elster intended to show erotic films that showed more than a penis going into a vagina. She felt that "erotic film needed to be made of, by, and for men and women. Female orgasms need to be portrayed on the screen at an equal rate to male orgasms."[8] "In December 1970, the cinema with Leo Productions sponsored a five-day erotic film festival toward this end" ("to elevate pornographic film to a higher level of respectability."[9][10] (To accommodate the crowd, the festival was held at the 800-seat Presidio Theater, but a poster for it says "Sponsored by the Sutter Cinema."[11]) Mary Rexroth's film Intersection (1971) had its premiere at the Sutter, where she also showed Rexroth's film Cozy Cool (1971) and gay porn films.

By 1975 Elster was disenchanted, because of police harassment (she was arrested 14 times,[12] and paid a fine of $1000[13]) and the lack of quality movies to show. From 1975 to 1976 she sublet the cinema, moved with her lesbian partner to Sonoma County, and, like Fred Halsted, operated a wholesale plant nursery.[14] The cinema closed shortly after.

Archival material

Archival material retlated to the Sutter Cinema, including a press kit for Intersection, is held in the Arlene Elster papers at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society in San Francisco.[15]

References

  1. ↑ Rebekah Eppley, "Arlene Elster papers," Online Archive of California, http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1779r46c/entire_text/, retrieved 2/15/2015.
  2. ↑ The Mitchell brothers were motivated by money, according to Joseph Lam Duong, "San Francisco and the Politics of Hard Core," in Sex Scene. Media and the Sexual Revolution, ed. Eric Schaefer, Duke University Preess, 2014, ISBN 978-0-8223-5642-4, pp. 297-319, at p. 297.
  3. ↑ Duong, p. 309.
  4. ↑ Duong, p. 309.
  5. ↑ Duong, p. 306.
  6. ↑ Duong, p. 306.
  7. ↑ Duong, p. 309.
  8. ↑ Duong, p. 308.
  9. ↑ Duong, pp. 308-309.
  10. ↑ "Erotic Film Festival Opens in California", Toledo Blade, December 2, 1970, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19701202&id=3CYxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zAEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7221,723552, retrieved 2/15/2015.
  11. ↑ http://www.amazon.com/First-International-Erotic-Festival-Handbill/dp/B00G5C89JQ, http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/international-erotic-film-festival/handbills/handbill/PTH701201.html, and http://www.abaa.org/book/675335807, all retrieved 2/12/2015.
  12. ↑ Duong, p. 309.
  13. ↑ Rebekah Eppley, "Arlene Elster papers," Online Archive of California, http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1779r46c/entire_text/, retrieved 2/15/2015.
  14. ↑ Duong, p. 310.
  15. ↑ http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1779r46c/entire_text/, retrieved 5/12/2015.

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