San Diego Reader

When ‘Cathouses Ruled CA, Peepshow Battle, SD Rockers & Porn, and more

Contents:

1 – Pussycat Theaters: When Cathouses Ruled California (100 new pages added Aug. 6!)

2 – Vince Miranda, Deep Throat, and the Mafia

3 - Confessions of a Local Pornographer: Battle of the Peeps – the Inside Story of a Porn Empire

4 - Peep Shows: A Cartoon History - From where it all began, to where it all went bad....

5 – Porn & Music: Locals Whip Out Their Wah-Wahs

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Intro: Following is material culled from my research for the 6-21-07 cover feature “Before It Was the Gaslamp.” Some of the text appeared in that article, much did not – I combed my research files and reconfigured, to present a history of California’s Pussycat Theaters, operated by San Diego civic legend and political pariah Vince Miranda. 100 new pages of content were added to this Pussycat history on August 6, 2008, thanks to getting ahold of a huge file of articles dating back to the early 70s. Many of the old theater photos come courtesy www.cinematreasures.org -- Most of the vintage movie ads from local newspapers come courtesy www.myspace.com/sandiegocinerama

PUSSYCAT THEATERS – WHEN ‘CATHOUSES RULES CALIFORNIA

Vincent Paul Miranda helped shape downtown for much of the '70s and '80s, back when the district still clung to its Wild West, sailors-on-shore-leave legacy. His company Walnut Properties ran a string of movie houses south of Broadway. For a time, he also owned a legitimate stage theater downtown (Off Broadway), as well as several local hotels, including the Hotel San Diego, where he maintained a posh part-time residence.

(Vince Miranda)

In the ‘70s, the bright, flashing marquees of his Cabrillo and Plaza theaters faced Broadway from the south side of Horton Plaza, with the Aztec, Casino, and Bijou operating just as colorfully and tirelessly on Fifth Avenue. Films were grinded out almost nonstop, from 9:30 a.m. through 5:30 a.m. (hence the term "grindhouse"), with action, horror, and soft-core sexploitation movies, usually paired alongside two older films and screened for 99 cents.

This sort of triple-feature billing still packed a lot of movie houses back in the days before cable and satellite TV, VCRs, DVDs, DSL, HDTV, DVR, and whatever the newest BFD is.

Downtown's old grindhouse row now exists only in the memory of cinemaniacs old enough to recall a time when Jaws made you afraid of the water, Friday the 13th made you afraid of hockey masks, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture made you afraid of sequels.

("Erotica" - plus a Road Runner cartoon?!)

Even the Balboa Theatre on Fourth Avenue was run by Miranda's company during its final operational decade, right up until the city acquired it via eminent domain and confiscated the keys in 1986, leaving the majestic building to rot for the next 20 years.

At that time, Walnut was running several dozen movie houses in California, offering the same sort of lowbrow fare proliferating at drive-ins and urban grindhouse districts.

(Miranda cruising)

Vincent Miranda was the son of a Portuguese fisherman. Growing up in Palo Alto, he was a dancer and singer in school, earning the nickname The Voice of Paly High. He worked as a soda jerk, busboy and waiter until, by his 21st birthday, he’d saved enough money to buy 21 acres of land in his hometown of Los Banos.

After serving as a Coast Guard cook in Hawaii, Miranda purchased a Huntington Park restaurant. In 1961, hoping to boost business, he bought an adjacent movie theater. His first screening - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The World of Suzie Wong – only brought in $70. On a Saturday night, no less.

So Miranda instead screened The Nudist Story. That did the trick – soon, lines were forming even before the box office opened for business, with devotees anxious to see so-called “nudie cuties.”

He began eyeing other moviehouses, after he discovered that it cost no more to advertise multiple theaters than it does to advertise one.

Miranda took on a partner in this endeavor, a man known as George Tate. Physically, Tate appeared almost the opposite of Miranda, of solid girth and with the aggressive posture of a junkyard bulldog, whether standing or seated. He was known for wearing finely made executive suits, hand tailored to fit his monolithic frame.

"Tate used to be a movie extra," recalls former Walnut head projectionist Dan Whitehead, who worked for the company from the early '70s into the '90s. "They supposedly met after getting into a car accident with each other. The story goes that Tate had a theater and Miranda had a restaurant, and they had no money to cover the auto damage, so they just went into business together." Miranda and Tate were both considered the bosses at Walnut, though Tate was seen less by most employees.

Whitehead got to know Tate while training at the Cabrillo. "He had a silver tongue and could probably sell anything to anybody, almost like a snake-oil salesman. He probably could have made millions in religion. My feelings for Mr. Tate soured many years later, when the company was shutting down and Mr. Miranda was dead."

Though not generally known, Miranda and Tate were live-in lovers. For over a decade, they shared a house they purchased together from Mickey Rooney, in Encino, at 17340 Magnolia Boulevard.

The duo shared a love for motion-picture exhibition, seeing an opportunity to gain a foothold in San Diego by buying or leasing downtown theaters in decline, beginning with the Cabrillo (leased) and then the Plaza (purchased), and later the Aztec, the Casino, the Savoy/Bijou, the Balboa, and others, including a legitimate theater hall that had formerly been a live burlesque theater, the Off Broadway.

Around 1972, Miranda began turning up around town -- and in L.A. and NYC -- arm in arm with actress Rose Marie, best known from The Dick Van Dyke Show. They'd met through her publicity girl, who was also working for Miranda when he offered to fly Marie and several others to San Diego to attend a production of Cactus Flower, being staged at Miranda's Off Broadway theater.

(Miranda & Rose Marie)

In her book Hold the Roses, Rose Marie describes their first encounter. "This man met me at the parking lot of the airport and hurried me to the gate," she says. "He was about five foot four, dark hair, kind of wiry, about 45 years old, kind of Italian looking. It turned out he wasn't Italian. Martha Raye was at the gate, Audrey Christy, Harry Guardino, and lots of actors. There were about 30 of us...He was very pleasant, charming, had a good sense of humor, and he was short! But I liked him."

She describes their growing relationship with mild allusions to her frequent date's homosexuality. "He was a great sport and, as I always said, the last of the big spenders," she says. "He was great to talk to, and he loved the idea that we were going out together. He took me home and we said good night. No kiss, no nothing. I relaxed. We became very good friends. No romance, and I was grateful for that. We liked being together, and he loved the idea that everybody knew me and came over for autographs. He was out with a celebrity. Best of all, we went to all of the big affairs, the $1000-ticket dinners, like the annual Thalians Ball affair and the St. Jude Hospital affair that Danny Thomas always did."

"We were getting to be known as a couple. Little did everybody know that we were like brother and sister, but we had fun. Once in a while, a kiss on the cheek, but that's all...and again, I was grateful. I didn't have to worry about a thing."

Miranda's sterling civic and social rep seemed unassailable -- for a while, anyway -- even after it became common knowledge that he was buying an increasingly large stake in the Pussycat Theatre chain of adult movie houses.

The chain was founded by longtime film exhibitor Dan Sonney and sexploitation filmmaker Dave Friedman. The duo bought an abandoned 40-year-old, 400-seat theater at 444 South Hill Street, on Fifth and Hill in L.A..

(Photo, William Gabel) Formerly known as Bard's Hill Street Theatre (1920s) and then the Town Theatre (1930s), Friedman and Sonney remodeled it and opened the doors as the Pussycat Theatre in March 1967.

For "Adults Only," they screened nudie and sexploitation movies, as well as early X-rated features like Mona The Virgin Nymph.

Young George Tate had run the theater in a previous all-age incarnation.

Friedman at first screened his own sexploitation movies, later making films in both R and X rated versions. He told one interviewer that sexploitation films in 1970 cost from $25,000 to $75,000 to make, while a run in the California Pussycat chain would earn around $100,000. Thus a film would already be far in the profit mode, before its first out of state booking. (Something Weird Video Blue Book) However, the advent of more and more fully explicit hardcore movies went against Friedman's stated business motto of "Sell the sizzle, not the steak," on which he'd based his entire sexploitation empire.

Vince Miranda bought a 50 percent share of the Pussycat in 1968, immediately remodeling and redecorating each theater, which then included around a half dozen California houses.

"He fixed them up so nice," marvels Friedman, "that almost nobody was ashamed to be seen walking into a Pussycat. Which was a big change from the old 'raincoat' crowd...I can't say [Miranda] and I ever got along well, but he was definitely a showman who knew how to bring in the rubes."

(Miranda “bringing in the rubes” ---- by riding an elephant!)

Though operated under the Walnut umbrella, Miranda took great personal interest in the Pussycats. He outfitted each theater with crimson carpeting, velveteen fixtures, decorated walls (usually including selections from his own huge collection of painted nudes), beveled glass foyer partitions, and crystal chandeliers with golden fittings.

Unlike many - if not most - porn theaters to follow, Miranda instructed all his managers that “Theater marquees should never be offensive looking, because you have people going by on their way to church and we don’t want to upset them."

If an X-movie's poster wasn't particularly attractive in the marquee showcase, he'd commission and produce his own colorful, relatively "classy" display posters, shipped to managers chainwide to use as their public face in communities increasingly -- surprisingly -- receptive to hosting an X-rated theater or drive-in.

He even took to custom-creating in-house stock items, like cups and popcorn tubs decorated with the Pussycat Bikini Girl (with "It's Cool Inside" logo inside the container) , Pussycat t-shirts, and little marketing knick-knacks like Pussycat matchbooks, fountain pens, and playing cards.

According to Rose Marie, "He took pride in running the Pussycat Theatres. Although they were porno theaters, he ran them like a business. They were cute little theaters that were kept in shape. Sometimes when we were out, he would stop at one theater or another and make sure everything was being run right. I met everyone at the office, including his cousin Jimmie [Johnson, an eventual Walnut co-owner]."

Miranda later purchased a majority stake in the Pussycat chain, in a partnership with Johnson and Tate. At its peak in the '70s, Pussycat operated 47 California houses, most of them classical theaters that had faded.

(Huntington Park photo William Gabel)

The third Pussycat to open was in Huntington Park, at 7208 Pacific Boulevard. Once known as the Lyric Theater, it was a general release house in the ‘50s, evolving into an “art” theater to show adult (non-explicit) sexploitation features, beginning around 1956. It then began showing what are known as “nudie cuties,” featuring frolicking nudists whose antics were considered “educational,” at least by those who wanted to see and screen them…

“The flesh flashed on the Lyric's screens was accompanied by whispered rumors of raunchy stag films slipped in from Mexico and shown at midnight,” according to an L.A. Times article about the theater (9-21-75). "Stories of a bookie joint in the same block heightened the area's unsavory reputation.”

Dave Friedman could hardly worsen the Lyric’s reputation when he converted it to a Pussycat in 1968. Shortly thereafter, when Vince Miranda bought into the chain, he sunk a fair amount of money into restoring the building to much of it’s former glory, as well as adding a long mirrored wall and having custom murals painted on the other three walls of the foyer.

By 1970, there were nine Pussycats in the chain, including the Lyric. All were frequently advertised together, including the far-away San Diego Pussycats, with the promotional promise of “A New Pussycat Joy-Joy Girl on Every Show (Except Sunset Theatre).”

Walnut's growing profile, however, also made them visible targets. Though Deep Throat played Hollywood's Pussycat for around ten years and made Miranda millions, it sparked dozens of legal battles and mired him in numerous public-relations snafus, police actions, criminal trials, and civil lawsuits.

Statewide, he faced obscenity charges over 60 times, in around two dozen municipalities. He was only convicted once, in San Bernardino circa 1977, of a reduced "public nuisance" charge relating to the film Sex Freaks.

In 1972, California officials were using the "Red Light Abatement Act" as a toilet brush to clean out porn shops and theaters from the municipal landscape. In raids conducted all over the state, film prints were confiscated and arrestees included everyone from owners to managers, clerks, and even sometimes projectionists and janitors.

(SantaMonica)

On November 17, 1972, Deep Throat opened at the Pussycat Theater at 7734 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. This was a brave endeavor at the time, given that theater owners all over the country being arrested for showing this particular film, the first widely-released hardcore to play actual factual neighborhood movie theaters.

On December 18, Deputy Sheriff Ralph Kenealy wrote the theater a citation for screening Throat, naming Vincent Miranda and theater manager Stephen Hagen. Soon, this Pussycat was the first in the chain to be raided and relieved of its Deep Throat prints, which were under contention as being obscene (and possibly illegal).

The first warrant was issued following a viewing of the film by an Orange County Municipal Court judge. The same judge also issued the other three warrants, the third one after a viewing of the version of the film then showing. The other two warrants were issued on affidavits of police officers who had witnessed exhibition of the film. Each of the warrant affidavits other than the first one indicated that the film to be seized was in some respects different from the first print seized.

On September 17, 1973, the trial jury boarded a red fire truck and traveled to the Hollywood Pussycat, to view the film for themselves. Trial Judge Leonard Wolf gave a press conference in the theater lobby

In response to later claims of bad faith which Miranda/Walnut made against them, the four police officer appellants asserted that in October 1973, successive seizures of Deep Throat had been made under warrant in Riverside County, Cal. The theater involved in those seizures sought federal relief, which was denied, the seizures being upheld despite challenge under Heller v. New York, 413 U.S. 483 (1973).

(Miranda with Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace)

It was after this decision that Buena Park authorities sought warrants for the seizure of Deep Throat prints screening in that city as well.

The Buena Park Pussycat at 6177 Beach Boulevard was raided by police, initiating a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, to be argued (and decided) in 1975. Hicks v. Miranda (422 US 332) named Miranda as owner of the land the theater was on, with Pussycat and Walnut as DBAs, while Hicks was the Orange County District Attorney.

As stated in the Supreme Court summary, "On November 23 and 24, 1973, pursuant to four separate warrants issued seriatim, the police seized four copies of the film Deep Throat, each of which had been shown at the Pussycat Theatre in Buena Park, Orange County, CA. On November 26, an eight-count criminal misdemeanor charge was filed in the Orange County Municipal Court against two employees of the theater, each film seized being the subject matter of two counts in the complaint."

The OC Superior Court held a hearing, viewed one of the many prints it had confiscated from Walnut, took evidence, and declared the movie to be obscene. Then, in June 1974, a three-judge court issued its judgment and opinion declaring the California obscenity statute to be unconstitutional.

Pussycat attorneys tried to invalidate the local prosecution by invoking federal law, and the case was scheduled to be presented to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1975, for a final decision on the matter. At first, the Justices sided with Walnut.

However, Deputy District Attorney Oretta Sears argued before the Supreme Court that federal law shouldn’t intercede in a state's business in such matters until AFTER a conviction is secured. She won her point, but a jury later acquitted Pussycat owners of the pornography charges anyway. Three of the four Deep Throat prints were later returned, and Miranda and his employees eventually beat the criminal charges.

Hicks v. Miranda inspired Oretta Sears to specialize in pornography cases throughout her subsequent career as a lawyer. She was later elected a Superior Court judge.

Miranda spent so much time in court, the desk in his office on Western Avenue in L.A. had a nameplate reading "Defendant Vincent Miranda." He told the L.A. times about being at a social function, and running into Sybil Brand, for whom Los Angeles County's Sybil Brand Institute for Women is named. Miranda told her "You know, Sybil, I've been in every jail in Southern California but yours."

On December 20, 1973, Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace put her hands in cement outside the Pussycat Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood (formerly a neighborhood moviehouse called the Monica), for a porn version of the cement shrines on the sidewalk near Grauman's Theater.

Photos from the event appeared in hundreds of mainstream publications, all over the world. Around the same time, Lovelace introduced Elton John at the Hollywood Bowl, with members of the Beatles in the audience! Suddenly, nearly everybody had heard of Pussycat Theaters, mainly by virtue of Deep Throat's meteoric rise in public awareness.

(A brief aside - I have on tape an episode of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, with a Throat "gag" I still can't believe got onto the air across America. Dan says "Hey, Dick, did you know a Supreme Court Judge is viewing a copy of Deep Throat, to decide whether or not it qualifies as obscenity?" Dick replies "Yow, here cum da judge!")

(Another aside: It's a fact that the Sears chain briefly carried - in its catalog! - a T-shirt reading "I choked Linda Lovelace," at least until someone spoiled the fun by telling them what it really meant)

The Hollywood Pussycat at 6656 Hollywood Boulevard, at the Boulevard and Cherokee, opened in 1939. Known as the News View Tele-View Newsreel Theatre (screening newsreels), and then later as the Ritz, Walnut transformed it into a Pussycat in 1974.

Deep Throat played at the Hollywood Boulevard Pussycat for nearly ten years, earning (according to Variety) $11,000 weekly during peak seasons, until the theater's throat was finally cut on December 12, 1981.

During some of this glory-dayz period, the Hollywood 'Cat leased out its basement for what became a legendary rock club, the Masque (opened August 1977, with a gig by with the Skulls and the Controllers).

(GezaX at Masque, photo by Michael Yampolsky)

Frequently raided by police, the 10,000 square foot venue hosted early gigs by Black Flag, the Ramones, Wall of Voodoo, the Go-Gos, the Weirdos, Screamers, the Alley Cats, Germs, X, the Dickies, the Avengers, the Dead Kennedys, Suburban Lawns, and Flyboys.

(GoGos at the Masque)

The Masque’s entrance was in the alley south of Hollywood Boulevard, between Cherokee and Las Palmas Avenues.

"They [club operators] broke the old-fashioned elevator by trying to take a cow down in it," recalls Walnut projectionist Dan Whitehead. "Later, there was a murder in the place. They left the police chalk outline of the body on the floor and painted it Day-Glo orange, to make it permanent."

(Masque: Picture taken by Douglas Cavanaugh: L-R: Kristian Hoffman; John Denney [lead singer of the Weirdos], Darby Crash [lead singer of the Germs]; Tomata DuPlenty [lead singer of the Screamers]).

The story of the Masque was recounted in a 2007 book, Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley (Gingko Press/R77 Publishing), written by former club manager Brendan Mullen and photographer Roger Gastman. (NOTE: The Masque photos in this article appear in the book, along with countless other depictions of an underground cultural phenomenon even more long-gone than X-rated movie theaters)

(Sunset Pussycat and Western, in LA, the SECOND Pussycat Theatre to open - Walnut's main office was around the corner, on Sunset)

Erotica writer and filmmaker Earl Kemp was living in San Diego in the '70s, working with Miranda on various projects, including a 1971 X-rated film financed by Miranda called "Adultery For Fun and Profit."

"Miranda and I found ourselves thrown together from time to time socially and business wise," he says in an essay posted at efanzines.com. "Vince was gay, but you would never know it, he was such a specialist with hetero films. He was also one of the greatest hosts I've ever known, right up there with Hugh Hefner. His parties, lavishly produced-sumptuous buffets, ice sculptures, margarita fountains, musicians, dancing, endless open bars --and opulently arrayed, were legendary, complete with plane loads of recognizable Hollywood types flown in to San Diego just for whatever occasion pleased him at the moment. As easy as that, Adultery for Fun and Profit was born."

In 1974, Buena Park Pussycat neighbor Donna Bagley filed a lawsuit against Miranda and Walnut, demanding closure of the theater. Her suit claimed she was "significantly offended, outraged, and has suffered shame, embarrassment, and emotional distress as a result of the public scandal caused by the continuous and daily presence, advertisement, and public exhibition of patent hard-core pornography." She also said the theater attracted "immoral persons," including "criminal elements, undesirables, deviates, and dropouts."

According to a mid-'90s study about L.A.'s Pussycat on Santa Monica Boulevard, commissioned by the group Concerned Women for America, between 1977 and 1994 "the Los Angeles Police Department made 2000 arrests for lewd conduct on the premises. The conservative estimate is that every arrest required four hours of police work for two officers at a minimum of $55 per hour for each officer. This does not include the substantial costs attendant on review by a supervisor, prosecution, court proceedings, and probation."

Nor did the estimate include the cost of multiple repairs to Raymond Burr’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which was situated just outside the Pussycat Theater. Burr’s monument marker was frequently defaced with sexual graffiti and lewd vandalism, much of it alluding to or mocking the actor’s supposed sexual preferences.

(Miranda at the opening of the San Francisco Pussycat)

The Los Angeles Times began refusing Pussycat ads in 1975, notwithstanding that Miranda had spent around a million dollars advertising Pussycats in their paper the previous year.

The lack of advertising outlets didn't do much to slow down Walnut's expansion plans. Figuring that theater marquees could serve as his community come-hithers, Miranda began plotting Pussycat locales like a franchise operation. Multiple theaters were planted in and around SF and LA, staking out various neighborhoods chosen for strategic value factors such as who was running the nearest competition (the Mitchell Brothers in San Francisco, who made many of the films screening in their theaters, were among Walnut's main CA rivals).

North Hollywood's Guild Theater was one such conversion. Located at 5161 Lankershim Boulevard, the moviehouse opened in 1938 and had been known as the Valley Theater. By 1977, rivals had turned the nearby Lankershim Theater into a porno house. Walnut bought the Guild, situated down the street where Lankershim meets Magnolia, and went to work on the aging house in hopes of outshining (and underpricing) the competition, who were asking $8 per ticket (compared to $4 at most 'Cats).

"The Guild was constantly having automation problems," recalls Walnut projectionist Dan Whitehed. "The system they had was an early Chrisite AM-type system, actually built by Kelmar. After I got done addressing all of its problems, I may have known more about it than anyone in the business, including Christie and Kelmar (just a joke). The manager was a guy named Bill Carol, who later became assistant to the purchasing agent, Ron Naslund. I liked him; like me, he had a jaded, slightly twisted sense of humor. His girlfrined's name was Gay. His father was a bit of a homophobe, and didn't even like to say her name."

Around San Diego, Walnut came to operate four 'Cat-houses, in all four corners of the county: downtown, in National City, in El Cajon, and in Escondido. In addition, regular theaters in the chain were occassionally converted into temporary 'Cats, including downtown's Aztec Theater, The Bijou (renamed Cinema XXX), and Miranda's former legit stage theater the Off Broadway.

Downtown's Pussycat on Fourth Avenue -- open from noon-5:30 a.m. daily -- was notorious for sidewalk posters featuring graphic (not quite explicit) images from triple-X features with titles like Talk Dirty to Me, Taboo, The Budding of Brie, and A Scent of Heather.

(4th Avenue Pussycat 1979)

Yeah, the marquee was a work of glowing art, in keeping with Miranda's mandate to "Keep it classy," but pedestrians found the sidewalks of '70s San Diego to be a walking tour of sexual excess and sinful indulgence.

The Pussycat's exterior decor was mildly seedy, if era-apropos: faded and cracked faux-bricks, twin poster marquees ringed with flashers and lined in crimson veltereen, lit by flashing red and purple lights, with its ticket booth taking up the outside corner of the entranceway, stationed right there on the precipice of colorful, crazy lower 4th.

(5-29-77)

Projectionist Dan Whitehead recalls opening Deep Throat at the downtown 'Cat, where the film would screen almost continuously over the next five years. "I worked for three days straight, because the day projectionist, Michael Knight, was a college student and afraid of getting busted; he later became management. Those were 18-hour shifts, back to back. After the third day, I literally couldn't go on any longer and went home and crashed."

"That was the night the vice squad came in and confiscated the print."

Walnut's head of public relations, Don Haley, was staying in town and prepared. "He brought a second print over from the St. James Hotel -- the cops could only take one print until a court decided if it was obscene -- and then he proceeded to call all the radio and TV stations in town. When I got to work the next night, people were lined up way down the street and around the block, and it stayed that way for a long time. It was so busy that we were answering the phone in the projection booth, because the concession stand and box office were literally too swamped to do it." Walnut battled the city over this and other Pussycat matters for years.

“I think Mr. Miranda had the exclusive rights to Deep Throat in California,” says Whitehead, whose office was in Gaslamp’s Balboa Theater for years. “It doesn't seem like anyone other than Pussycat ever ran that movie in California. I think Mr. Miranda had the rights, just like the Mitchell brothers had the rights to Behind the Green Door. We ran a double feature of Deep Throat and Devil in Miss Jones for several years at the Cabaret [formerly Miranda’s Off Broadway]. Those prints sure would get worn out.”

In San Diego, one early Pussycat regional manager was Yugoslav immigrant Gojko "Greg" Vasic, who'd later borrow money from his parents to launch his successful F Street Bookstore chain. "Vasic was the longest lasting of Walnut's district managers," reveals Whitehead. "He still worked for Walnut after he opened his first F Street store across the street from the Cabaret/Off Broadway. Mr. Tate was very fond of him. He was certainly a strange character. His family name was actually spelled Vasich, and they used to have an egg ranch in Ramona. His uncle delivered their produce to many of the downtown eateries."

Like Miranda, Vasic's vision involved the mainstreaming of porn. He eventually expanded into running nearly a dozen F Street Bookstores, including shops in El Cajon, Miramar, Chula Vista, Escondido, North Park, and Leucadia (all but the last including peep show booths).

The chain became so popular that, for a time in the late '70s, a costume-clad F Street penguin mascot showed up at area events to pass out flyers and peep-show-booth tokens.

National City's Paris Pussycat, at 930 National City Boulevard, was originally known as the Bush Theatre and then the National Theatre. The venue opened in February 1928, with a live production of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. It was renamed the Aboline Theater around 1950, until becoming the Paris Theater in 1961.

It was converted to an X-rated Pussycat house in 1967.

"I personally ran the Paris Pussycat booth many times," says Whitehead. "The projection booth was originally the balcony. In the late '70s, that was the very first booth where Walnut tried a homemade automation system. Each feature was on one big reel. Projector number one had the main feature, and projector number two had the second feature. The lamp-houses were Peerless Magnarc carbon arc lamps, which had been converted to xenon. The upper reel -- the supply reel -- had a motor to rewind the feature, and the take-up reel had a separate motor to drive it, because the reel would become too heavy for the soundhead take-up drive to manage. I installed a completely new automation system, sound system, projector heads, sound heads, lamphouses, and rectifiers."

The Escondido Pussycat at 309 East Grand Avenue was in a building that formerly housed the Ritz Theatre, which opened in 1937. A fire in 1950 closed the Ritz, but it was rebuilt with a large Cinemascope screen and reopened three years later.

In 1973, the manager of the Escondido Pussycat was arrested over a showing of Deep Throat. Though Walnut successfully fought the obscenity and pandering charges, theater neighbors and city officials put enough public pressure on the locale to force its closure in 1976.

New owners reopened it as the all-age Bijou, and then again as the Big Screen Theater, offering family fare. As the Bijou Picture Palace, it became a Spanish-language theater and social center. It was briefly known as the Ritz again in February 1998, though it only managed to stay open for nine days this time before closing again. Periodic attempts are occasionally made to revive this house.

The El Cajon Pussycat at 330 West Main Street began screening porn in 1973, generating an endless array of controversy, especially once the city began “revitalization” efforts in the neighborhood around where the old art deco-style theater sat. Eventually, weekly protests were held in front of the pink-and-mauve theater by the Santee Bible Missionary Fellowship (more on that later….), and the city council made no secret of its wish to close the theater down and/or force it to return to screening family films.

Walnut's stake in the Pussycat chain only included the California operations. Most estimates indicate several hundred other Pussycats did business elsewhere, until video lowered the boom on all walk-in theaters, especially the X-houses.

According to Miranda's godson, Tim David, "V.M. and Tate never owned or had anything to do with Pussycat outside of the state. I remember asking V.M. about it one time. He really couldn't have cared less what they did outside of the state. Jimmie Johnson and I spoke about it last year. He told me people really wanted V.M. to trademark the name. He just never did. Weird, huh?"

If you look at who was running the famed NYC Pussycat, a possible clue emerges regarding why Miranda was unwilling to make a federal case of the matter. According to the Meese Commission report, mob boss Michael “Mickey” Zaffarano - onetime bodyguard for Mafia chieftain Joe Bonanno – paid $1.35 million for the Pussycat property at 49th Street and Broadway in 1977. He ran the Pussycat from an office across the street, connected to the theater via a secret underground tunnel.

During a February 1980 FBI raid, Zaffarano reportedly tried to elude agents using the secret tunnel, only to collapse from a massive coronary and die. Mickey's brother Johnny Zaffarano owned or ran several porn shops and massage parlors in San Diego through much of the '70s.

Miranda did apply for and receive a trademark for the Pussycat logo itself, with its festive masked playmate seen on marquee signs leaping through a lighted oval, ringed on marquees by flashing, chasing light bulbs. This has proven a major factor in Pussycat-related litigation that continues to this day, but more on that in a bit.

In 1975, Walnut bought a theater at 705 East Balboa Avenue in Newport Beach, the Balboa. Built in 1928 and originally called the Ritz Theatre, it was renamed the Balboa in 1939.

Miranda ran the cinema as a Pussycat Theater for 18 months, in 1974 and 1975, during which time Harbor Municipal Court Judge Robert Todd ruled that adult films being screened at the Balboa were not obscene, based on community standards. Walnut maintained ownership of the Newport Beach theater right up through the day the doors were shuttered, having let Landmark Theaters operate the locale in its stead since 1979.

Later operators cultivated the locale as a midnight “cult” venue, mainly by virtue of Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings. Walnut closed the Balboa to movies in 1992 and sold off the property. It later became a performing arts theater.

Through much of the '70s and '80s, Vince Miranda was living part-time in his own luxurious suite at the Hotel San Diego, which Walnut had purchased. His friend Don Wortman, who had known Miranda in the Coast Guard, also had his own Hotel hideaway. Wortman produced stage shows for Miranda at the legit Off Broadway theater, including that venue's final show before it closed in 1975, Take Off.

According to San Diego Union theater critic Welton Jones, that show "featured Georgina Spelvin, who had starred -- if you want to call it that -- in The Devil in Miss Jones. To give you some idea: she was backed by a chorus line of boys in jockstraps. Leather jockstraps. It was dreadful. It brought out the worst in everyone."

The venue ended up sublet to a group headed by Wortman. The playhouse was renamed the Pussycat Cabaret and began showing X-rated features. In 1979, Wortman and attorney Jim Schneider talked Miranda into reopening the theater under its original 1914 name, the Lyceum, with a musical extravaganza called "The Lyceum Follies." It soon went back to X-films.

In a Forbes Magazine article (9-18-78), California Pussycat Theater co-founder David Friedman of the Adult Film Association surmised that "Our basic audience is still people over the age of 35, and though we are beginning to attract some young marrieds and younger couples in their middle-to-late 20s, the audience is still composed of people who are probably more sexually repressed than people are today."

When your humble narrator JAS arrived in San Diego in 1979, my first full-time job was working for Vince Miranda at his downtown theaters – mainly the Casino and Aztec, but also the Balboa, Cabrillo, Plaza, and, yes, down the block on 4th at the Pussycat Theater.

I didn’t like working at the Pussycat as much as I thought I would. The novelty of fifteen-foot tall genitalia wore thin after the first few hours and the non-stop moaning and groaning (usually listless overdubs recorded by bored, fully-clothed “thespians”) quickly grated on the nerves to the point where I could barely recall what actual, factual sex sounded like.

Plus, I hated handling money peeled from the sticky palms of sweaty looking men who smelled like a gangbang where nobody remembered to bring towels.

People literally hid their faces when they walked up to the Pussycat, and the first thing the manager said to me on my first night of training was “If you see someone you recognize, pretend they’re a complete stranger no matter how well you know them.” This was good advice - later that night, when I saw the guy who worked at a sandwich shop down the street, I resisted the urge to say “Hey Scotty,” even as I vowed to myself never to eat a sandwich there again.

For awhile, the Pussycat had a swinger couple, in their early 30s maybe, good looking, who’d come in at least once or twice a week to watch a movie and then, well, put on a little show of their own. All the clerks liked this couple ----- we found a lot of excuses to whip out our big black flashlight and do an auditorium walk-through.

Some things the other clerks told me about their own encounters with The Swinger Couple seemed even then to be the stuff of urban myth, but I did see the two of them in action, in the seats, and can attest that they were into public sex in a big way. They never talked to me, but I often saw them talking to other patrons, before or after (and at least once during) their private showtime, and usually the couple would leave with a patron or two exiting right behind, if not with, them.

This was not an aspect of social interaction I’d ever encountered before.

In the years since, I’ve spent an obsessive amount of time wondering what possible “pickup lines” were appropriate & effective in that particular situation:

“Excuse me, but it’d be a shame for that erection to go to waste.”

“The two of us are doing an in-depth survey on threesomes for the Kinsey Institute, can you help us out?”

“You know, my wife can do that with her hands tied behind her back.”

“Did you ever want to be in your own porno movie?”

Or perhaps, simply, “F*ck my wife…please.”

I only spent a few weeks at the Pussycat but, when I went back to the Aztec and Casino, the two 5th Avenue theaters were switching off showing X-rated features as well, serving a three-pack of porno at the Aztec one week and at the Casino the next.

Though Walnut’s theaters may have looked somewhat shabby to patrons, it would be incorrect to assume the company ran things in cruise control and neglected to upgrade in areas that mattered most. “All the old Simplex projection equipment was torn out of the different houses in the late seventies and early eighties,” says Whitehead, “as we switched over to Century. We were automating at the same time, installing systems that changed reels mechanically, on a timer.”

(Downtown 1977)

The Pussycat and the X-rated Cabaret (formerly Miranda’s Off Broadway Theatre) were the first theaters Walnut automated. “One projectionist ran both houses. It was actually semi-automation as it was a two-reel automatic changeover system instead of using a platter system. I was the guy who later installed the automation systems in all the other downtown houses. If I had it to do over again, I'd have urged them to go platter instead of reels.”

The Fontana Pussycat at 16779 Arrow Boulevard in Fontana was also automated. The 800 seater opened in 1948 and had been known as the Arrow, before being bought by Walnut around 1970. Miranda originally intended to run the locale as an all-age house, having been told he'd be unable to secure permits to show adult movies there. However, a surprise decision in his favor in 1971 resulted in the locale's rechristening as a Pussycat. After the automation upgrade in 1978, it ran for another year or so as a Pussycat, before Walnut sold it to an operator offering far more than the market value.

It was later called the Del Mar Theater, and it screened Spanish films in the late '80s, before closing around 1990. It was leased to a church for a number of years, but according to cinematreasures.org it's being revamped as a film festival showcase. These 2003 photos of the Fontana Pussycat were shot by cinematreasures contrib Ken Roe.

(1973)

In March 1978, Walnut won a lawsuit enabling it to place Pussycat advertising in Southern California Rapid Transit District buses, for the film Sex World. Superior Court Judge George Dell cited a state Supreme Court ruling that transportation companies owned by public agencies must accept advertising from anyone, unless it’s libelous or obscene. Attorneys for Pussycat Theaters and Essex Distributing, Inc. had been denied the ad space.

At the time, according to an article in Forbes Magazine called “The X-Rated Economy” (9-18-78), adult film theaters were selling around two million admissions a week, at an average of $3.50 per ticket, at around 780 adult film theaters in the U.S. Together, they grossed about $365 million in 1978.

1979 marked both the peak of the Pussycat reign and the beginning of the chain’s quick descent and ultimate disintegration. That year, Vince Miranda told the L.A. Times that he couldn’t estimate his personal wealth, but that it was in excess of $12 million. "I figure if you know exactly how much you are worth, you can't be worth too much," he said.

Downtown San Diego was becoming increasingly seedy --- Walnut’s grindhouse theaters responded by shortening their hours to open at noon and close at midnight. "They were finding needles in the alley behind the Casino," recalls Whitehead.

The 1979 film Hardcore shows downtown at its Sodom and Gomorrah peak, with George C. Scott stumbling through wall-to-wall porno shops in search of information about his missing porn-star daughter. He makes his way down Fourth and Fifth Avenues, dodging hunchbacked junkies and drooling perverts at every step. Peter Boyle (see pic above) shows Scott an 8mm hardcore featuring Scott's daughter, and off Scott goes to California in search of her…pics below from Hardcore show Miranda’s Savoy Theater/Cinema X, across the street from his Casino Theater on 5th Avenue, AND the 4th Avenue Pussycat.

“One time when my brother David was running the Casino projection booth,” says Whitehead, “they were closing and couldn't get this old guy in the balcony to wake up, and it turned out he’d had a heart attack or something and died. Another time, they found a dead guy out behind the rear exit doors. He'd crawled into a fenced in area and had probably died in his sleep several days before, so he was pretty ripe, which is how the manager found him, from the smell.”

X-houses were cropping up everywhere south of Broadway, all hoping to capture some of the Deep Throat audience. Adults-only programming soon spread to nearby and outlying areas of San Diego. Even the stately Capri, North Park, and Academy theaters showed porn for awhile. Heck, the huge mainstream Mann Theater chain occasionally screened porn as well, in some of its most high-profile local theaters - check out this ad from August 1973, courtesy myspace.com/sandiegocinerama....

In downtown San Diego, the Pussycat had numerous competing theaters, from the peep show booths of the F Street to tiny hole-in-the-wall screening rooms like the Foxy and the Lux, and up to full-fledged moviehouses who operated almost identically to the Pussycats, albeit usually minus the velvet trim, ornate fixtures, and longterm business plans that Miranda favored.

“Bob Smith was a guy who used to own the Little Hollywood, which was on G Street between 4th and 5th under the New Kelsey Hotel,” recalls Dan Whitehead. “Smith and Wesley Andrews were arch enemies and I never really did know why. Smith also owned the Bijou – formerly called the Savoy - and I think he called it the XXX. Smith owned a lot of places at one time or another. He owned a huge gay club down on PCH called the Ball Express. He'd open a business, milk it for everything he could get out of it, and then move on to something else.”

For awhile in the late '70s, the military was banned by the U.S. government from entering downtown porn theaters. Military MPs would regularly walk through theaters looking for soldiers and sailors violating the ban, which was later expanded to cover the entire county.

By December 1979, around 30 adult bookstores and movie houses operated within a 16-square-block area downtown, not to mention a strip club on Broadway near the YMCA with a giant, impossible-to- ignore sign reading “Hypno-Sexism.”

The city targeted those adult merchants with eminent domain proceedings intended to condemn the properties, so they could be refitted to suit the resurgent Gaslamp Quarter, whose acreage would be added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

However, the city's "Redevelopment Agency" didn't stop there. It also named around 75 non-adult businesses and individuals in an eminent domain lawsuit filed December 31, 1979. The hit list included Walnut's Commodore Hotel, as well as the Buccaneer Lounge, the Equitable Trust Company, Fourth Street Arcade, the Horton Hotel Grand, Joe's Barber Shop, the Right Spot bar, Security First National Bank, Terminal Auto Parks, the Western Union Telegraph Company, and even San Diego's Department of Internal Revenue.

According to court documents, Miranda filed his own lawsuit a few weeks later, for "unlawful detainer," over being locked out of his Cabaret Theater -- formerly his Off Broadway legit stage theater -- then screening porn (447901, Vincent Miranda, et al. v. James Schneider). Though he never regained control of the Cabaret, he was eventually awarded a $100,000 judgment, which the city had to pay due to "intentional property distress, lost income, and lost public goodwill." The theater was briefly renamed the Lyceum again -- and then Cinema X for a time -- until the building was demolished in 1985 to make way for the Horton Plaza parking garage.

(5th Avenue circa 1979)

As more theaters closed and others reduced their hours, layoffs were becoming a chain-wide epidemic. “I remember a meeting one time when Tate was shutting things down and deciding who to get rid of,” says Whitehead. “There was a woman at the Ventura Theatre who'd been there fifteen years or more. He said 'Oh, get rid of her, just get her out of there,' as if she were just a piece of broken furniture. That was Tate through and through.”

Around this time, Deep Throat became available on video, selling more than 300,000 copies by 1981. Retailing at $100 each, its success sows the eventual seeds of the home video revolution, which would inevitably cause the gradual shutdown of X-rated theaters that had been pooping up all over the country throughout the previous decade.

(Art: Daerick Gross)

Throat star Harry Reems didn’t see any of those profits, though. In fact, he was hounded and charged by authorities over obscenity issues that forced his retirement from porn films for around eight years.

When his convictions were finally overturned, he returned to X-films in 1982 with the movie Society Affairs.

At the end of September, he attended the film's premier at the Santa Monica Pussycat, putting his own hand and footprints in the sidewalk cement to commemorate the occasion.

Later - on February 7, 1985 -- Reems' successor as the king of porn, John Holmes, would leave his own cement impressions at the Pussycat.

In 1981, time was up for the Fourth Avenue Pussycat. "On the day we removed all the equipment," remembers Whitehead, "I was instructed to give a guy from the city the keys when we were finished. So I called and he was there in just a few minutes, as if he'd been waiting right beside the phone or something. I had removed all the identification from all of the keys, just to make his job difficult. When he put out his hand for the keys, I deliberately let them fall to the floor, turned my back on him, and walked out the door without a word. Yes, that was small and petty, but it felt good to do it."

Walnut appointed two new partners in late 1981, when Miranda's cousin Jimmie Bert Johnson and Walnut associate Jerome Knell were jointly named company president. Johnson was formerly head of the advertising department and company vice president (his mother Ada Johnson managed the Torrance Pussycat). Knell had been a part-owner of the Pussycat on Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach. Miranda and Tate still ran the day-to-day operations.

Jimmie Johnson – who also served as President of the Adult Film Association of America - quickly became a very visible and vocal cheerleader for the west coast Pussycat chain.

In May 1983, Johnson went to Washington DC to attend the Sixth World Congress of Sexology, a sex biz convention whose speakers included sex researchers Shere Hite and Dr. William Masters and Virginia Johnson. While in Washington, he made sure to get a photo of himself standing on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, home to his greatest enemies.

Johnson told reporters at the convention that the L.A. Pussycat had been screening Deep Throat to 600 people at a time, 13 times a day, for 82 weeks. ''It got people to go to erotic movies who had never been before,'' Johnson said. ''Ever since then, production has gotten better, the sets are more beautiful, the acting has improved. The movies have plots now. We keep our movie houses clean, we pop our own popcorn, and all this keeps people coming back.''

Around this time, a man named Jonathan T. Cota entered the picture at Walnut. In short order, he seemed to wield as much authority as Miranda and Tate.

According to Miranda's godson Tim David, "Cota just appeared one day around 1982 or 1983, never to leave the scene. He was a shoe salesman at Florsheim shoes in Beverly Hills. He was sleeping with Tate, and he was a third or fourth cousin to V.M. He must have been very talented at what he did...I remember his first big 'gift' from Tate was a house in the Hollywood Hills."

According to David, "As V.M. became more sick, Cota slowly moved into the house that V.M. and Tate had on Magnolia in Encino. I spent summers there in my teens, and it had always been a beautiful, antique-filled home. Walnut Acres they called it, an old walnut farm with neighbors like the Jacksons and Tim Conway."

Dan Whitehead says, "I never liked Cota from the first day I saw him slither into the office. Once he became Tate's squeeze, Mr. Miranda didn't like that. One time, Cota came to the office with Tate for an after-business-hours drinking party. After Tate left with Cota, Mr. Miranda said, 'I wish he wouldn't bring Cota around here, he's such a f-g.' I almost fell off my chair."

The Anaheim Pussycat Garden at 305 East Lincoln Avenue opened in 1916 as the New Grand Theatre. It became the Garden Theatre in 1959, with programming in the ‘60s that was heavy on sexploitation and nudie “art” films. In 1978, Walnut converted it into the Pussycat Garden, operating for just over four years before shutting down. It was torn down in 1983.

(1947 cdlib.org)

The Anaheim Pussycat at 132 West Lincoln Avenue was acquired by the City in 1983, via its condemnation powers, to instead zone the area for apartments or condominiums. When the city snatched the 10,637 square feet of property, it offered Walnut $500,000. Walnut wanted $1.2 million.

Walnut and theater operator Amil Shab filed a lawsuit against the city Redevelopment Agency, over their loss of business after the City demolished the property. In July 1985, Walnut and Shab received a $200,000 payment, intended as a settlement but, ultimately, failing to appease the Boss ‘Cat.

Walnut continued to press suit against Anaheim’s City Redevelopment Agency -- comprising City Council members – until a jury trial was scheduled in September 1986. Shortly before the trial started, the City offered Walnut $800,000 to settle the case, Walnut agreed, and thus ended any and all Pussycat presence in Anaheim.

In Uptown Whittier, California, Walnut ran a Pussycat on 7038 South Greenleaf Avenue, between Wardman and Philadelphia Streets. Formerly known as the Wardman Theater when it opened in 1932 (named after original owner Aubrey Wardman), it seated around 1,000 people, including the second story lounge (which had an Egyptian theme and included a snack bar). After being run by Pacific Theaters in the ‘early ‘70s, the moviehouse was purchased by Walnut in early 1977 and began showing X-rated films.

The Whittier Pussycat quickly found itself facing increasing civic pressure to close or switch to non-X fare.

In February, 1984, the City tried to introduce a zoning ordinance prohibiting an adult theater from operating within 1,000 feet of a church – the Pussycat was closer than that to FOUR churches. However, District Judge Manuel Real nullified the ordinance as “lacking sufficient justification.” The Judge made the same ruling again in 1985, after another attempt by the City to zone the Whittier Pussycat out of existence.

Representing the City, Katherine Stone argued for the ban, on the grounds that “children walking past [the theater] would be exposed to [adult movie] ads."

Judge Real countered "Who said they had to pass it? They can go around the block."

Walnut attorney Stanley Fleishman had already filed a lawsuit to overturn the ordinance. The suit also sought an undetermined amount of damages for the city's "bad faith actions" against the Pussycat's operator. Fleishman - a renowned civil liberties lawyer - was one of the first attorneys ever to argue an obscenity case before the U.S. Supreme Court in the late 1950s.

"When others point and say they don't like something, and cry 'let's change it,' I'm offended," he said. "It's a dangerous practice in a free country to try and tell another man what he can and cannot read, watch or talk about."

Whittier City Manager Tom Mauk estimated that the City had spent more than $100,000 in court costs and attorneys fees to battle the Pussycat Theater. This cost to the City would eventually rise to well over $500,000, before the matter was finally settled, a l-o-n-g time down the line…….

Jimmie Johnson told the L.A. Times (10-27-85) that Walnut had so-far spent around $80,000 fighting to keep the 900-seat theater open seven days a week, from noon to midnight. "It boggles my mind,” he said, “that in this day and age, we are still having to fight for the freedom to operate our business…If I didn't fight, I wouldn't be in business tomorrow. At the first sign of backing down, I might be vulnerable in every city where I operate theaters."

Not that Johnson was waving the First Amendment flag in a (self)righteous snit, ala Larry Flint, or even San Diego’s Greg Vasic. "Believe me,” said Johnson, “if I wasn't making money, I'd sell in a minute. It's not my biggest-grossing theater, but it's not the worst either…We average about 1,200 customers a week.”

Whittier tried to revive the 1,000 feet ordinance yet again in January 1987, only to have Judge Real strike it down a third time, despite higher courts having overruled him twice on the matter. Real ruled that the City failed – once again - to prove that the Pussycat "poses any special threat to the city's legitimate interests." Amidst proceedings all but identical to the last go-‘round, it was clear that nobody on either side was willing to budge.

A few weeks later, vandals broke into the Whittier Pussycat, slashing the screen in half and setting fires that caused around $80,000 in damage. The blaze was discovered in a second-floor projection room when a fire alarm sounded at around 3 a.m., according to the L.A. Times (4-9-87). Investigators found several “incendiary devices” in the room, and two $30,000 projectors were destroyed. Most of the damage was confined to the second floor, and the theater reopened less than 48 hours later.

"It appears that the fire was set by someone who didn't like the business," according to Whittier police Detective William Reiner. "Nothing was stolen…they just wanted to deliver a message."

Prints of two films were also destroyed. You’ll think I’m joking, but the titles were – according to the L.A. Times (5-3-87) - Crazy With the Heat and Wendy the Electric Lady.

In February 1985, the marquee at West Hollywood’s Pussycat Theater caught on fire. This was also suspected as arson, perhaps at the hands of a disgruntled Pussycat neighbor, but the blaze was later determined by Fire Captain Tim O'Neill to have been caused by faulty wiring. Pieces of the burning sign landed on the sidewalk, as patrons fled the building and flames climbed to the second story of the theater. Firefighters put out the blaze before it went any further, though the theater still suffered around $10,000 worth of damage.

The movie title on the flaming Pussycat marquee – again, no joke......

In May 1985, Miranda -- a lifelong heavy smoker -- was battling lung cancer in an L.A. hospital. "My Aunt Susan spoke to V.M. several times about my future with Walnut," says his godson Tim David. "Something must have been going down at the end, because V.M. called her and said he was planning on getting married! This is very strange, due to the fact he and Tate had been live-in lovers for decades."

Vince Miranda died June 3, 1985, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, of complications related to cancer. He was 52. Survivors included his mother, Belle Mida of Palo Alto, his brother (Tim David’s biological father), and a sister.

"He denied the fact that he was dying up to the end," says Miranda’s godson Tim David. "The last time I saw him was at Walnut Acres...he was bald from the chemo treatments but insisted that he was in remission and was going to be fine. He kept it a secret from all of us."

Tim David says Cota quickly moved in with Tate at Walnut Acres in Encino. "The last time I was there, after V.M.'s death, the house had been completely 'Cotafied.' The guy has no taste whatsoever; it looked like something off the set of Miami Vice. Horrible."

Miranda’s cousin and Walnut partner Jimmie Johnson filed injunction requests and lawsuits against Tate and Cota, attempting to regain control of Walnut and Pussycat assets, with very little success. "Grandma Mattias never got anything [from Miranda's estate] either," says David. "It was all funneled back to Tate and Cota."

To be fair, there may not have been a lot of Walnut left, at least once the IRS hit Miranda's estate with a federal tax lien of $6,047,760.00. Walnut properties all over the state were sold, leased, or traded away, with many real-estate holdings being handed over in lawsuit judgments. Several claims against the estate were connected to ongoing litigation dating back years.

Walnut Properties and/or company principals were served with over 100 civil lawsuits filed between 1973 and 2005, the majority related to Pussycat locales. Interestingly, one tax lien mentions as a DBA "George Munton Tate." This confirms "Munton" as one of Tate's AKAs, as long rumored by company principals who claimed Tate was hiding a criminal conviction that could have affected his ability to license x-rated businesses.

In all, around $30 million in Walnut assets were liquidated, lost in judgments, or "gift deeded" to others over the next 15 years. Top candidates for liquidation included the increasingly problematic Pussycat theaters, which had installed video-projection equipment to no avail. Between shrinking attendance, home video, and increasing civic and social intolerance, the Pussycat dynasty was having problems at almost every one of its 30 or so remaining California locales.

Long Beach’s Lakewood Theater on Carson Street (later Lakewood Boulevard) was once the single-screen Fox Theatre. It was outfitted as a Pussycat in 1977 and transformed to a two-screen house, with luxurious red and gold carpeting and fancy mirrored walls. However, it didn’t take long to run into civic backlash – shortly after opening, police raided the theater and confiscated prints of X-rated films deemed to be obscene. This was just the beginning of a long-lived skirmish between Walnut and Long Beach -------

In late 1985, the Lakewood was operating with two separate screens. One showed X-fare, while the other showed general release R-rated movies. This wasn’t an attempt at market saturation, but rather because the City required the theater to do so by law.

Earlier that year, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling that defined an adult theater as one that shows a "preponderance" of X-rated material. Because the Lakewood offered R-rated as well as X-rated fare, city officials couldn’t force the Pussycat screen out of business.

"They ran the number-one screen as an all-age general release and art house, and the number-two screen as a Pussycat," muses Pussycat projectionist Whitehead. "Talk about a nightmare. They kept it that way for a long time."

"A big week for the R-rated films can be $14," Jimmie Johnson told the L.A. Times (10-27-85).

"The test," according to Walnut attorney Stanley Fleishman, "is the preponderance of films exhibited, and not which films the majority of patrons choose to see. The choice people make is for them to make themselves, without government interference…We should now be able to continue without the harassment we've been seeing over the last decade. It makes no sense for a city official to try and control what adults see."

Countered Mayor Ernie Kell, whose district included Lakewood Village, "Nothing would please me more than to be able to legally close that theater…It's like a cancer out there." A neighborhood group called Citizens Against Pornographic Movies at the Lakewood Theater continued to picket the locale, as it had been doing for years, almost since the Pussycat oval was first hung out front.

In San Diego's rapidly evolving Gaslamp Quarter, the Fourth Avenue Pussycat had been forced by the City to close. However, Walnut managed to keep the Pussycat brand alive downtown, by converting other theaters into temporary ‘Cat houses, including the Aztec at 5th and G and in the old Off Broadway building.

The sidewalk in front to the El Cajon Pussycat became a regularly scheduled battleground. Each and every Friday night, members of Santee’s Bible Missionary Fellowship showed up with protest signs, rain or shine, Hell or high water. Usually led by Pastor David Rudd or Rev. Dorman Owens, with placards and Bibles in hand, anywhere from 10 to 30 protestors would march back and forth in front of the theater, carrying signs that read “Porn Kills,” “Depraved Minds Love Smut,” and rather ominous declarations that “The Wage of Sin is Death."

The 400-member church also protested at abortion clinics, gay bathhouses, and held rallies opposing homosexual rights.

"[Kids] come right up here on their bicycles," Rudd told a Union-Tribune reporter (9-9-85), pointing to the suggestive posters of future attractions that he called "sickening perversion."

Rev. Dorman Owens of the Santee church told the L.A. Times (5-22-86) “Law is subject to righteousness…A good law never protects that which would destroy society. The First Amendment was never intended to protect crime or pornography that ruins minds…All these sleazy perverts and unrighteous people have stretched the Constitution to protect their particular sins, and it was never intended to that."

The F Street Bookstore just down the street on East Main Street was another frequent target of both the Santee Church and the City of El Cajon. According to Mayor John Reber, the city spent $25,000 in its unsuccessful legal battle to shut down or move the F Street Bookstore. "We're through spending the taxpayers' money to fight the U.S. Supreme Court," he told the San Diego Union-Tribune (4-25-86).

Tate must have still seen a future for Pussycat Theaters, however. After recovering from a stroke (neither his first nor last), he registered for sole ownership of Pussycat Theatres, Inc., in February 1986, listing the corporation's primary service as "photofinishing laboratories" and its secondary service being "motion picture production."

By 1987, Walnut was down to operating only 33 Pussycat Theaters. According to the Adult Film and Video Association in L.A., adult movie theatres had dwindled from about 750 in 1983 to around 250, a drop of 67 per cent. An article in the San Francisco Globe (6-12-87) reported that Pussycat box office proceeds had dropped 20 per cent since 1982, when VCRs became common consumer items.

Adding insult to video injury, many former movie theaters actually converted to to X-rated video shops.

In December 1987, foes of the Lakewood Theater Pussycat in Long Beach finally managed to get preliminary court injunction shutting down the X-rated screenings. "We consider it an embarrassment to have this type of business that is making innuendoes and double meanings [with film titles on the marquee]," moviehouse neighbor Mary Soth, chairman of Citizens Against Pornographic Movies at the Lakewood Theater, told the L.A. Times (12-24-87). "We have been anxious to let the public know what we were trying to do is not censor their choice, but [to] locate this [adult theater] outside a residential area."

Three weeks later, however, the state Supreme Court intervened on the side of Walnut, ruling that the Pussycat was free to show porn again.

To be safe, Walnut began asking patrons at the Lakewood and a few other litigious Pussycat locales to sign a (fairly humorous) “waiver” before entering the theater, absolving Walnut of any and all legal responsibility for whatever might ensue…

The uber-contentious Pussycat in Whittier WAS finally closed down, though NOT by the City, nor even by Walnut – it took Mother Nature’s fury to finally neuter this ‘Cat.

After a devastating earthquake hit the area on October 1st, 1987, the exterior wall of an adjacent building partially crumbled onto the Pussycat, and soon City offic