Cinema: Sideburns & Sympathy

While television is emptying movie houses across the nation (TIME, Feb. 10), business is booming for Kansas City’s Elmer C. Rhoden Jr., 35, president of Commonwealth Theaters, a Midwestern chain of 102 theaters. Rhoden’s box-office secret: “teenage pictures,” denned by him as “rock ‘n’ roll, drag races, horror stories, that sort, of thing.”

That sort of thing so well satisfies Rhoden’s young customers (70% under 24) in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota that he can afford to shrug off television. “TV is for the older folks.” says he. “A teen-ager who has a date doesn’t want to stay at home.” Rhoden waves off major Hollywood productions (“Gary Grant won’t sell teen-agers”), even throws out westerns unless they have a young cast. Result: his 1957 gross increased 18% over 1956; this year’s is still growing.

When Rhoden ran short of teen-age films a year ago, he thought up likely titles (e.g., Dragstrip Riot) and passed them on to producers, but the supply stayed short of Rhoden’s demands. “Now I make the picture myself,” he says. “I have two trucks, cameras and sound equipment. If I need a barroom scene I just rent a barroom.”

For $171,000 Rhoden last year made The Delinquents and The Cool and the Crazy, sold the first to United Artists and the second to American International. Two more films scheduled for this year: Daddy-O and Sideburns and Sympathy.