By RAY KELLY
Thirty years ago, part of Orson Welles’ legacy came to a fiery end.
Named after the maverick filmmaker, the Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge housed a movie theater, restaurant, book store and film school until it was destroyed in a Saturday afternoon blaze on May 24, 1986.
The Orson Welles Cinema opened on April 8, 1969 with showings of Luis Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert, Orson Welles’ The Immortal Story and midnight screening of Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Tommy Lee Jones was its first house manager. And from 1971 to 1978, the theater was managed and programmed by Larry Jackson, who worked on the still-unfinished Welles’ film The Other Side of the Wind and was later an executive with Miramax, Orion Pictures and the Samuel Goldwyn Company. Welles’ final documentary, Filming Othello, was partially filmed at the Orson Welles Cinema in January 1977.
When the fire broke out in the lobby, the theater staff safely evacuated 60 patrons from the three-screen complex near Harvard Square.
Manager Bill White told the Associated Press at the time that the oil in the popcorn maker in the lobby apparently caught fire. He said he quickly reached for a fire extinguisher, but ”by the time I got over there, it was out of control.”
When firefighters arrived, heavy smoke had already filled the building and the entire first floor was engulfed. “When we arrived, there was a thick plume of black smoke about eight blocks long,” Cambridge Fire Department Investigator Edward J. Fowler told United Press International.
Mary Seaman of Sommerville was about 15 minutes into watching Dennis Potter’s Dreamchild when the three-alarm fire broke out at 2 p.m. ”I kept thinking what it would be like if it was packed.”
Two nearby businesses, Chi Chi’s Mexican restaurant and Videomax, a video rental outlet, sustained heavy smoke and water damage.
Landlord Ralph Hoagland cancelled the lease in early 1987 after deciding that the damage was too substantial to repair.
Investigators concluded the fire was caused by faulty wiring in a popcorn popper. However, a conservative Catholic group claimed that God had destroyed the theater for daring to show Jean Luc Goddard’s controversial film Hail Mary six months earlier.
Former theater manager Garen Daly, the director-producer of the upcoming The Orson Welles Complex: A Documentary Film, spoke with Wellesnet in 2013 about the former cinema. Among his recollections:
“When the Orson Welles began on April 8, 1969 there were several other theaters in Boston and in Cambridge showing quality films. But the OWC did things differently. It ran retrospectives with unusual themes. It dug into the archives and revived films not normally seen. It curated films and brought directors like Nicholas Ray, Francois Truffaut and others. Yet it was the combination of excellent programming, plus a film school, a restaurant and a book store devoted to film that truly made the difference.
The Orson Welles was not merely a destination for all things film, a rarity at the time, but it became a place of community. You could go to the Welles, learn how to make a film, see a film, find resources for a film, and then go sit and eat while talking nothing but film with people who also had a love of film. The Orson Welles was all about the love of film, the exploration of film and the how it brought people together. It’s influence is still being felt today.”
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