Make All America Sparkle City! Put Litter In Its Place!

In the early 1970s, environmentalism was becoming a popular cause, particularly with young people, as pollution and an increasing amount of trash from a throwaway consumer society was creating problems. Corporate America was blamed for much of the situation so in the interest of their own public relations and image, they too jumped on the environmental bandwagon.

In the spring of 1971, around Earth Day, two public service announcements (PSAs) produced by the Keep America Beautiful organization and the Advertising Council (now Ad Council) hit the TV airwaves. One was the well-remembered "crying Indian" spot featuring a supposed Native American named Iron Eyes Cody (who claimed to be a Cherokee but was later revealed to be a Sicilian-American actor born Espera Oscar de Corti in 1904, died 1999) who walks around modern-day America seeing all the filth and pollution, finally driven to tears when someone in a passing car throws a bag of trash at his feet. "People start pollution. People can stop it," intones actor William Conrad in the voiceover.

The other, mostly seen during network children's programming on Saturday mornings was an animated spot featuring a character called Captain Cleanup, who looked like a combination of Dick Tracy and Superman, and his young sidekick, Kid Coolit. 

Captain Cleanup and Kid Coolit are seen flying over Sparkle City, the cleanest metropolis in America, when they spot Louie the Litterer and his Sewer Rat Gang about to make a mess of things. The superheroes confront them, Captain Cleanup rolls up his sleeve but never lays a hand on them (apparently to avoid depicting violence). Instead the villains beat themselves up and fall into garbage cans. "That's where you belong. In the waste can!" Captain Cleanup proclaims.

He then breaks the fourth wall and says, "Kids, you too can be a pollution fighter. Never throw trash into the street. Remember--you have to set an example for your parents." Then he says, "Make all America Sparkle City! Put litter in its place!" The spot ends with "Keep America Beautiful" on screen along with the Advertising Council "rotary-a" logo used at the time. 

The cartoon characters also appeared in print ads that ran in newspapers nationwide in the summer of 1971. "Don't throw empty cans, bottles or even apple cores out of car windows. Don't toss used tissues on the street, or cigarette butts in the gutter. Put litter in its place," the ad admonished.

Keep America Beautiful and the Ad Council wanted to make it a real children's crusade. The organizations teamed with shoe retailer Thom McAn and its 1,000 or so stores across the country to distribute Captain Cleanup membership kits to youngsters who were interested in starting their own Captain Cleanup anti-littering clubs in their communities. The kits included a membership card and "a series of instructions on what Captain Cleanup recommends to help keep America beautiful," according to an article in the Desert Sun of Palm Springs, CA from September 23, 1971. The article went on to report that over two million kits had been requested and received by kids nationwide, and that they had also been distributed to civic youth groups. 

The campaign received heaps of praise from seemingly everyone all the way up to President Richard Nixon but some serious environmentalists took issue with the whole Keep America Beautiful organization. The organization was founded in 1953 by American Can Company and Owens-Illinois Glass Company, both manufacturers of non-returnable beverage containers, at a time when states such as Vermont were looking at banning such containers. Soon big breweries and soft drink makers became part of the organization but didn't publicize it, so the corporate interests weren't widely known by the general public. 

The serious environmental activists accused Keep America Beautiful of being a shill for corporate polluters, shifting the blame for pollution and environmental hazards from manufacturers to the general public, making them believe they're the ones making the mess and they're the ones responsible for cleaning it up. Peter Harnik of Environmental Action, Inc. commented to United Press International in an article published in newspapers around the US on May 5, 1971, "Keep America Beautiful is sort of a front for keeping America quiet."

The Captain Cleanup campaign was just a small part of Keep America Beautiful and there was little criticism about it specifically, while the "crying Indian" campaign received much more criticism (as well as praise), but that's a whole other story.

While the Captain Cleanup spot continued to run off and on through the 1970s (NBC continued to play a ten-second edit of it well into the 1980s on Saturday mornings), organized Captain Cleanup clubs soon faded away. A search of newspapers finds few if any mentions beyond 1974.

 

Rondo Thirst

In the summer of 1979, I started seeing commercials for a new soft drink called Rondo that strongly appealed to my adolescent male self. In the commercial, we'd see guys engaging in extreme sports or other vigorous activity as a macho-sounding voiceover said, "This man is working up a Rondo Thirst. And when he gets done, he's doesn't want a soda that he has to sip. He's gonna want a Rondo!"

Next we'd see one of the dudes swigging one down from an aluminum can, with sweat dripping off his face and droplets of soda-pop coming off the side of his mouth, while the voiceover continued, "Rondo is lightly carbonated so you can slam it down fast! Rondo has a clean citrus taste that's never sticky!" Finally, the dude in the commercial would crush the aluminum can he just slammed down in his fist and the voiceover said, "Rondo! The thirst crusher!" The label even looked like a beer can with the word "premium" and the slogan "blended from fine essences."

The commercial inspired lots of young guys like myself to drink Rondo, and even challenge our friends to Rondo-slamming contests, where we'd see who could slam one down the fastest, with the winner being determined by who would crush the emptied can first in his bare hand, just like in the commercial. (Try impressing the girls with THAT. "Hey babe, I'm a champion Rondo slammer!") In my area, Rondo was also available in 16 oz. returnable glass bottles, which would be a lot more difficult (not to mention dangerous) to crush in your bare hand. 

Rondo, marketed by Cadbury-Schweppes, originated in Australia as a soft drink called Solo, with a nearly identical label and commercials (with an Aussie-accented macho voiceover). The name was changed to Rondo in the U.S. because at the time, there was a brand of dog food called Solo. A Cadbury-Schweppes spokesman said in a July 1979 article for the Washington Post-LA Times wire service, "The word Rondo really has no meaning. It's just a computer name...but it sounds familiar and macho, doesn't it?" 

The product was test marketed in 1977 and 1978, rolled out nationally in 1979 and was "aimed at the 14-to-25-year-old active male segment because they are the single biggest consumers of soft drinks. And these heavy users are seeking a thirst-quenching, lower carbonated drink with less sugar," according to an industry spokesman in the Post-Times article. In 1980, sugar-free Rondo was introduced with a softer ad campaign.

By about 1981, the marketers decided those Rondo commercials were a little too macho, that they were actively turning off female consumers (who do most of the grocery buying). New commercials featured people relaxing in various outdoor settings while an adult contemporary-style jingle sang, "Sippin' a Rondo is laid-back and easy." (I can tell you, those commercials actively turned ME off. I didn't want something to sip, I wanted something to slam down fast! Whiskey is for sippin'.) 

Sales plummeted further, and the macho dude commercials made a brief comeback, but by 1984, Rondo was no longer available, at least in my area. 

The Husker Du Subliminal Scandal

In the Holiday Season of 1973, commercials were appearing on local TV stations across the US for a packaged family game called Husker Du (not related to the 1980s band by that name). According to advertising, "In Denmark and around the world, Husker Du means 'Do you remember?'" The game, which involved memorizing symbols on a playing board, was promoted as "a memory exerciser that's fun for children and adults alike" and "a great family game that increases your alertness." Nothing nefarious about that. However, it was discovered soon after the commercials hit the airwaves in late November that a single frame spliced in at four strategic points in the 60 second spot shot on 16 mm film flashed the message "Get It" for a fraction of a second, raising concerns about "subliminal advertising."

Recreation of the "subliminal message."

The idea behind so-called subliminal messaging was that viewers would be influenced by the message without actually noticing it. But viewers did notice and complained to the television stations airing the spot and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). According to an article published in the New York Times on December 27, 1973 (and in other newspapers), "The commercial was carried by hundreds of stations across the country, most of which edited out the 'subliminal' frames after being alerted by the television code authority of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) that the advertisement violated its rules. The product's distributor, Premium Corporation of America, also alerted stations after receiving a number of complaints."

Sam McLeod, general manager of the marketing division of Premium Corporation of America claimed he hadn't noticed the "get it" frames when reviewing the commercial for approval, saying, "Unless you know it's there, you don't catch it," and that the subliminal messages were "an honest mistake, the result of deadline pressures to get the commercial into circulation in time for the Christmas season," according to the Times. He also blamed what he called "an exuberant young man" at the Minneapolis-based commercial production firm Lowe & Associates, saying, "The fellow thought he had invented something no one ever thought of before." 

When he got wind of it, McLeod said he sent telegrams to all the stations running the spot telling them to edit out the frames or simply paint them black. "We made every effort to clean it up, and I'd guess we were 99 percent successful," he told the Times, adding that the commercial was not "pitched at the little ones" and that it aired primarily during "adult" programs in daytime and late night. He said he was sure the problem had been cleared up within the first week.

However, according to the article, several stations continued to air the spot unedited, prompting a Washington-based consumer advocate named Robert B. Choate to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the FCC. Choate claimed to have seen the "get it" version airing as late as December 19 at 11:32 a.m. on WPIX-TV in New York and that it was still airing on stations in Chicago, Detroit and Tucson. It was pointed out that the New York and Tuscon stations were not members of the NAB Code Authority.

The commercial was scheduled to end its run just before Christmas 1973, and after that, Husker Du continued to be sold, and advertised, without any major controversies. Several Husker Du commercials from the 1970s can be found on YouTube, but not the "get it" version (although a subtly awkward edit can be detected near the end of one of them). The above illustration is strictly a recreation. 

Unsolved Mystery--Flashy Trash

When I was about ten years old, I discovered an antique and collectibles store a couple blocks from where my maternal grandmother lived, called Flashy Trash, located at 3336 Hennepin Avenue in South Minneapolis. It was up the block from Von's Superette, where I frequently walked when at Grandma's (and yes, nobody raised an eyebrow over a young kid going to the store by himself in those days). The owner was a 30-ish guy named Harold Norquist, who went by the name John. He had lots of neat vintage advertising stuff in his store and he was super nice to me. 

Collectibles I got from John's Flashy Trash store in Minneapolis.

His prices were very reasonable. He sold me a Planters Peanuts retail display box dated 1937--considered a rarity now--for $1.50 on July 27, 1977 (I still have his handwritten receipt inside the box.) He also sold me for just a buck or two a 1920s H and H soap package, an old pump sprayer with the brand name Spa (probably from the 1940s), and some Standard Oil and Union 76 road maps from the late '30s. One thing he had that I really wanted to get but it was a bit too pricey for me was a 1940s 7-Up diecut cardboard display sign. I loved 7-Up memorabilia, but he had a whole TEN DOLLARS on that one (it would probably go for at least $150 now). 

I made several visits over the next year or so when I was staying at Grandma's, and he knew my name and was always welcoming. I think he thought I was pretty cool to be such a young kid who was genuinely interested in vintage advertising.

Another anecdote: one time in the summer of '78 I came into his store eating Pop Rocks, a candy that was popular at the time that fizzed and popped in your mouth when you ate it. He was curious about it, so I gave him some, and he liked it so much he gave me some change to run over to Von's to get him a packet (plus a little extra for me to get another packet as well).

Then in the early hours of September 4, 1978 he was found stabbed to death by someone he picked up after a party at the Northern Sun bar, who attempted to rob him of a jar full of change he had in his apartment, according to accounts in the Minneapolis Tribune. The case, apparently, was never solved. He was openly gay (something I wasn't really aware of, or cared about, when I knew him) and with the adversarial relationship the gay community had with police in those days, there was very little cooperation from those who might have known something. In looking him up in the Star Tribune archives, I was surprised to find a picture of him included in an article from Nov. 26, 1978.

The Story of Hamm's Waldech Beer

Hamm’s beer collectibles are some of the most popular pieces of breweriana, but there’s one aspect of Hamm’s that doesn’t get much attention, a largely forgotten brand called Waldech. The brand always kind of interested me, with the black and gold labels on green bottles and the gothic images of castles in the advertising, not to mention it sounded like it would have been a good beer.

Waldech was a super-premium, all-malt and naturally-carbonated beer, much different from the flagship Hamm’s brand, although the name “Hamm’s” was prominent on the label. Introduced in 1963, it came out at a time when bland, yellow, fizzy beers dominated US beer sales. The name was said to be taken from the ancestral home of then-Hamm's president William C. Figge in North Germany. Early advertising claimed it was “The new third taste in beer,” not like a domestic and not like an import, but with its own unique character. It was slow brewed in fairly small batches, so the availability was limited compared to something more mass-produced such as Hamm’s.

It was especially popular among a certain crowd in California, where Hamm’s operated two breweries at the time. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Charlie McCabe said of Waldech, “The best American beer I have tasted since before World War II.”  Bob Balzer of the Los Angeles Times said it had “long-lasting flavor. Our choice among many for its real beer taste, fine head and substantial body.” The Auburn (CA) Journal commented, “”A few glasses of Waldech will make you forget about taking tranquilizers.”

This full-bodied beer had lots of critical acclaim but was never a big seller, and was discontinued in 1975 (along with Hamm's Preferred Stock and a few other brands from the former Heublein ownership) when Olympia Brewing Company took over Hamm's. Perhaps it was ahead of its time.

Hamm’s Waldech was promoted in national magazines in the 1960s with full-color, full-page advertisements. Examples here are from 1964 and 1969. As the brand competed with Anheuser-Busch’s Michelob, they switched to a bottle that was more similar to Michelob, complete with a wrap-around gold label.

Hamm's Waldech napkins.

"Waldech on draught" neon sign.

Waldech was never sold in cans, however several prototype Waldech cans were made for the Theo. Hamm Brewing Company and were pictured in color on the cover of North Star Chapter Breweriana Club’s 1982 book, “Beer Cans of Minnesota.”

 

Marijuana In Your Supermarket

In October 2018, Canada stunned the world by legalizing recreational marijuana. The move was controversial to say the least, but in some quarters, people wonder what took so long. Meanwhile, the controversy continues to rage in the United States and is far from being ironed out. The day when one will be able to buy commercially produced marijuana packaged and sold in everyday retail stores like tobacco is still presumably a long way away, but almost five decades ago, a stodgy grocery industry trade magazine contemplated that very possibility – and the marketing opportunities that would come with pot legalization.

The January 1970 issue of Supermarketing (page 86), in a piece attached to an article about tobacco sales, suggested that legalization “no longer seems so remote as it once was.” It pointed out that the Nixon Administration had moved to differentiate the penalties between dealing and mere possession, as well as the penalties between marijuana offences and those of “harder” drugs. 

The “underground” press, Supermarketing reported, was claiming that “major tobacco companies already have acreages laid out and marketing plans on tap against the time when ‘grass’ becomes legal. But at least one marketing executive snorted, ‘That’s the biggest damn lie I ever heard.’”

Still, a tobacco magnate who chose to remain anonymous admitted, “Let’s face it – marijuana is already an American phenomenon spearheaded by youth and the middle classes. It’s growing day by day. I think that once we get away from the emotionalism that surrounds the subject now, the Government will in time realize it’s missing a good tax bet.” 

An ad agency creative exec (think Mad Men), who also chose to remain anonymous, speculated, “In the absence of any conclusive scientific evidence one way or the other as to whether ‘pot’ is harmful, I think it’ll eventually become legal. Prohibition demonstrated that you’re not going to make something disappear by making it illegal – and that’s part of the problem. Drugs today are what alcohol was in the 1920s, namely sin. And what legislator wants to go on record as being in favor of sin? But if everyone does it, it becomes less sinful.”

The ad exec went on to speculate, “Even with legalization, there’s every probability of an advertising ban – which would make ‘grass’ the first ‘new’ product with mass-market potential to emerge unaccompanied by advertising. Which will be very interesting to watch.”

The 1970 Supermarketing article concluded, “All of this may be so much conjectural blue haze. The opposition to marijuana remains strong among legislators, educators and parents. Its delights and dangers are still largely uncharted and it may indeed, in some cases, lead to an urge for stronger and more harmful drugs. Nevertheless, it may one day be sold across supermarket counters.”

If one were to travel back in time to 1970, and tell the people from then about "the future," would they really believe that the United States some fifty years later is still battling over the issue of marijuana legalization?

When Cincinnati pulled the plug on Alice Cooper

When shock rocker Alice Cooper was introduced to television audiences on a late night rock concert show, his outrageous stage presence proved to be way too cool for TV.

It happened on on November 24, 1972 on the first of a series of ABC late night specials called "In Concert." Alice Cooper was billed as "special guest" in a program that would also include concert performances by Curtis Mayfield, Seals & Crofts and Bo Diddley. Cooper's performance, taped a few weeks earlier at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, kicked off the television special. It was far beyond standard TV musical fare, more shocking to the average viewer of the time than the mop-topped Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show or even the destructive, explosive performance of the Who on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

The show opened with the roar of highly amplified electric guitars and slamming drums in an arena full of charged-up college students, and a heavily intoxicated Alice Cooper, wearing ghoulish black makeup around his eyes, glitter pants and a cotton shirt that gets torn to shreds by fans grabbing at him as he is escorted to the stage by security officers. He stumbles up on stage, and while swigging from a bottle of Budweiser, grabs a microphone and completely forgets the first verse of his hit song, "I'm Eighteen," singing, "MYYYYYY, my, my, my, my, yeah..." in place of the lyrics. He later sings the chorus and improvises other lyrics for the song.

When that highly-charged performance was over, the show broke for commercials, then came back with Alice performing a "West Side Story"-inspired number called "Gutter Cat Vs. the Jets." In this performance, he essentially molests a metal garbage can and pulls out a switch-blade knife on camera.

It was all too much for Lawrence H. Rogers II, owner of the ABC affiliate in Cincinnati at the time, WKRC-TV Channel 12. He was so mortified by what he saw he ordered the engineer on duty at his station to yank the show off the air immediately. But Channel 12's decision to protect and shield its viewers from Alice Cooper's violent theatrics sparked an immediate backlash from Cincinnati rock fans watching the show. They responded within minutes, inundating the station with phoned-in bomb threats. Meanwhile, carloads of youths showed up, picketing the station. Some 4,000 letters of protest, many profane, poured in over the next few days, the biggest mail load that station officials could remember.

WKRC station manager Ro Grignon told TV Guide magazine that he wasn't opposed to rock concerts. "In fact, we think they're going to be a smashing success. We simply found Alice Cooper a little tense."

Meanwhile, the ABC affiliate in Kingsport, Tennessee complained to the network about the performance, but ran it in its entirety nonetheless. WPVI-TV in Philadelphia ran the show on tape delay at 1:30 a.m. Channel 12 in Cincinnati later televised an edited version of the show, sans Alice, to give viewers a chance to enjoy the other, less offensive acts on the bill. The next "In Concert" special was sent to affiliate managers via closed-circuit for approval before broadcast.

The Destruction of the Hopkins Theater

In 1985, a landmark streamline-style movie theater in Hopkins, MN (a suburb west of Minneapolis) came crashing down on the corner of Fifth and Excelsior Avenues after forty-four years of operation, to make way for an automobile dealership--a dealership that itself wouldn't last much more than a decade. The demise and demolition of the old Hopkins Theater happened in almost a blink of an eye, and came as a shock to many.

Just days before it came down, I was able to walk through the theater one last time and pick up a few souvenirs including old tickets, movie press packets, a theater catalog from the 1970s, an actual piece of film in the projectionist booth, lots of other paper items, even the sign on the door announcing the theater was closed. In 2008, I had the opprotunity to meet former owner Harold Engler, who showed me some of his own pictures and souvenirs of the old theater, and gave me insight on its history, and why he ultimately closed it down.

The Hopkins Theater in 1941

The Hopkins Theater, built by brothers Abraham and Louis Engler, opened with great fanfare on the evening of Saturday, August 20, 1941. The mayor of Hopkins and the city councilmen were there along with some special guests, while the Hopkins municipal band played in the lobby. People came from all over to see the new, modern theater. When it opened, the theater seated 1,200 and had amenities that included staggered seating, so that no one would be seated directly in front of someone else, love seats at the end of every other row, a spacious balcony, a state-of-the-art sound system, an acoustic board celing, air conditioning in the summer (when almost no homes and few businesses had it), smoking loges, and a smart, ultra-modern design. The theater building was topped with a 40 foot tall, eight-sided metal tower displaying over 5,000 feet of neon, with the word HOPKINS spelled out vertically on four alternating sides. The full 40-ft display lit up at night in multiple colors and could be seen from blocks away. It served as an unofficial gateway to the city, letting you know exactly where you were.

Newspaper ad for the grand opening
of the Hopkins Theater on August 20, 1941.

The movie shown on that first night was, appropriately, "Sis Hopkins," a comedy starring Judy Canova, Bob Crosby and Jerry Colonna.

In the early years of the Hopkins Theater there was no television, so "going to the movies" once or twice a week was a way of life for much of the population, no matter what town they lived in. Harold Engler recalls that in the early days, theater patrons were treated to a full two-hour evening program. It would begin at seven p.m. with coming attractions, a newsreel (the closest thing anyone had to television news then) and cartoons such as Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker. At 7:30 the movie would start, and in those days the feature would change every Wednesday and Sunday, to keep people coming back to the theater. During the Second World War, which the United States entered just months after the Hopkins Theater opened, a big booth in the lobby sold war bonds, and posters throughout the theater encouraged patrons to buy more bonds.

As a boy, Harold Engler grew up in the theater. By junior high he was doing many of the jobs there, including working behind the candy counter and selling tickets. At age 17, before he graduated from high school, his father Abraham fell seriously ill and the decision was made to make Harold part owner of the theater. The teenager took over his dad’s duties, which included buying the movies, bookkeeping and advertising. “All those [newspaper] ads were handmade,” he says. “We didn’t have fax machines or copy machines then. I thought carbon paper was the greatest thing on earth.”

In 1948, the first television station went on the air in the Twin Cities and that changed the habits of moviegoers. “It hurt the theater business a lot for a while,” Harold says. “There was nothing we could do but wait it out. Thousands of theaters froze throughout the country. Then Cinemascope came in, in 1953, and that was the resurgence of the industry. Big, big screen and stereophonic sound. We had surround sound all the way around. We were one of the first theaters to put it in. Any innovation that came along, we had it right away. Then people started to come back to the movies.

“Prior to that, movies were really bad. When TV hit, they just weren’t making good movies. So the timing was really disastrous. People could stay home and could watch all this junk for free instead of coming to the theater to see it for fifty cents. So it woke up the moviemakers, and they started to make bigger and better movies. After that, theater attendance just soared.”    

Harold Engler takes pride in the innovations that his father, and later himself, came up with at the Hopkins. From the beginning, the theater had features such as black lighting hidden in the isle seats that reflected off the carpeting in the auditorium, so people could find their way down the isles without the lighting distracting the patrons watching the movies. There was a crying room for parents to take their crying babies. Decades before restaurants had smoking sections the Hopkins Theater had its own smoking loges in the back four rows, where patrons paid an extra nickel for the privilege of smoking while watching the movie. (The nickel fee was later dropped.)  In addition to the nightly features, the theater was famous for its weekend kiddie matinees. There would be traffic jams leading into the city of Hopkins every Saturday as parents from all over dropped off and picked up large groups of children at the theater.

“I liked doing innovative things,” Harold says. “I would look at what our competitors were doing and I’d try to figure out what we could do different. We were the first theater to run all day long outside of downtown Minneapolis. The Uptown [a similar-style neighborhood theater in Minneapolis] used to, but we were the first suburban theater to run all day for bargain matinees ‘til 6 o’clock. We put in Tuesday movie specials. It cost a buck to get in. I loved to do stuff like that, just trying to get people interested in coming to our theater.”

Other promotions he had included a Wednesday two-for-one night sponsored by Dayton’s department stores where with a special Dayton’s card a moviegoer could bring a friend and get two admissions for the price of one. For senior citizens there was a Golden Age Club where seniors could get in for a reduced price with their Golden Age cards. This promotion brought a letter of commendation from Mayor Charles Stenvig of Minneapolis. But probably the most popular promotion was the Birthday Club. “We used to give prizes to all the kids that came in for birthday parties. And then we gave the Birthday Girl or Birthday Boy a bigger prize or nicer prize. We seated them all in one area together so they’d always be together,” Harold recalls.

By the 1960s, the movie theater business had changed greatly since the forties when the Hopkins first opened, and Harold Engler and his partners, who included a brother and two cousins, stayed on top of the trends and innovation. Retail space was built around the theater building and the Englers brought in new businesses that they either owned outright or leased to others, including a liquor store, a convenience store, a florist, an appliance shop and a small café.

The features no longer changed every Wednesday and Sunday. The era of the blockbuster had begun and a particularly successful movie could be on the marquee for weeks. The average run for a really good movie at the Hopkins in the early sixties was three weeks or less, but in 1965, the James Bond feature “Goldfinger” broke the records. On its Friday premiere it drew the biggest house in the theater’s history and the next night the crowds were even bigger, according to an article in the Hopkins Sun, a local newspaper. “Goldfinger” ran for almost two months, which was almost unprecedented then. After that, however, bigger movies had longer runs. There were also fewer movies being made than there were in the forties, which meant the features were more expensive for the theater operators to buy, so they had to run longer to recoup the costs.

As the trend toward box office blockbusters with longer theater runs continued, the Hopkins was one of the first theaters in the country to become a multiplex; several screens under one roof. Just about all theaters are like that now but in the late sixties when the idea first came to Harold Engler, the concept was radical.

“I heard about a theater in Kansas City that had four screens. There happened to be a theater convention down there and I went down to see it [the four-screen theater] but I couldn’t get anybody to come with me. They thought it was just nuts. It wasn’t accepted. So I took a cab and went to this theater [owned by the company that later became the AMC Theaters chain] and took a look at it. I was enthralled. They had automated equipment in the projectionist booth, one candy counter, one box office and four screens. I thought, this is it! I came back, and I talked my partners into converting the upstairs balcony of the theater.”

In 1971, the Hopkins Theater became the Hopkins 1-2. The balcony was converted into a second smaller theater by suspending a screen and floor over the main theater with steel girders. Some thought there had to be some funny business going on with that second theater in the balcony. “Everyone seems to think we’re going to start running dirty films upstairs. We aren’t,” Harold Engler explained to Minneapolis Tribune columnist Will Jones as the new theater was getting ready to open. “But I think it would be a good idea to have a film with adult appeal playing in one theater and, say, a Disney in the other one.”

Downstairs, where the smoking loges were, a new automated projection booth was built, making the Hopkins the first theater in the area to be fully automated. Instead of having a projectionist in the booth threading a reel into a projector and having to manually switch to a second and third reel every twenty minutes or so, all the reels could be spliced together onto one huge reel on a projector positioned horizontally on the floor of the booth and it would run automatically. At the push of a button, the lights would go down, the movie would start and run by itself until the end when the lights would automatically go back up and the film would rewind automatically. No projectionist needed except to watch over things.

“The union was not very happy with us,” Harold says. “We eliminated the projectionist. What we actually did was take our projectionist and made him the theater manager and operator, and paid him more money. He was still union, but we only paid one person instead of having multiple projectionists. We became multiple choice. You didn’t see just a Betty Grable movie, you could see a Betty Grable movie and an Edward G. Robinson movie.” (Not that the Hopkins was exactly showing those kinds of movies in 1971.) “You could see a murder mystery and a musical. It was unheard of to have more than one screen. And then everybody started doing it.”

In 1973 a third theater was built in some of the former retail space that was connected to the building. The numbers 1-2-3 were painted in bold black and white squares on the sides of the big neon tower, alternating with the word HOPKINS.

In 1981 yet a fourth theater was put in, in the old liquor store that was located in another part of the building. It was a tiny one with just 150 seats that would be good for showing independent and niche films. But there was resistance from the City of Hopkins.

Harold recalls, “The architect came back and said, yeah, we can put a theater in there, and I said ‘well go to the city and get a building permit. I’d like to have it open by Labor Day.’ He came back and said the city won’t give you a building permit. They said you don’t have enough parking spaces. They had a ratio of so many seats to parking spots. It was so stupid.”

The son of one of Harold’s business partners volunteered to go down and talk to the city administrators. He offered to remove some 300 seats from the main auditorium in exchange for allowing the fourth theater but the city still objected on the grounds that there would be parking problems. So Harold went to some of the neighboring businesses, many of which weren’t open on weekends or evenings when the theater traffic would be heaviest, and got them to agree to allow use of their lots for overflow parking. Finally the city relented and allowed the fourth theater to be built, with the stipulation that seats be removed from the main auditorium.

“About two, three months later we were ready to open the theater, the seats were out, we had them taken out, and I called the seat man and said I want them back in by Friday,” Harold says. “‘They’ll be there,’ I was assured.  So we had them reinstalled. I came to the office the next day [and] my partner’s son called me and said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said ‘We’re putting the seats back.’ He says, ‘You can’t do that! I promised the city that I’d take them out.’ And I said, ‘But I didn’t promise the city I’d take them out. So if they call you, you have them call me.’ They never said a word.”

Over the years, Harold and his partners purchased or built dozens of neighborhood theaters in the Twin Cities area and Engler Theaters became a well-known and successful chain in the region. The crown jewel was the Hopkins, so naturally when an automobile dealer named Rudy Luther asked Harold if he’d be interested in selling his prime location on Fifth and Excelsior Avenue to him, the answer was a definite no. Absolutely not. Harold tells the story.

“The theater was doing very well. We had no thought of ever selling it. Then I got a phone call one day from Rudy Luther, and he wanted to buy the theater [property] and I said it’s not for sale. It’s been in the family, my father built it and it’s doing very well. But it got us thinking, and we sat down with the family and decided ‘Let’s go to our accountants and see what they think it would be worth.’ So we decided to come up with a figure and we called him back.

“I’ll never forget, he looked at me and he said, ‘Do you think you’re in Hollywood?’ I said, ‘Well, this isn’t just a piece of property. It’s a growing business that’s been in our family for umpteen years, it makes a profit. If you sold one of your car agencies with a big building on it and you were making money on it wouldn’t you ask a lot?’ He accepted our offer and he bought the theater from us and that was the end of it. I never got one phone call from the city, the chamber of commerce, another businessman, nobody saying ‘What can we do to keep you in Hopkins? Can we find you another location?’ I would have built again. Nobody showed any interest whatsoever.

“Then I get this call, this is how the city operated. I got a call from Rudy Luther’s general manager. ‘Would you come to a city planning meeting? They’re giving us a real hard time about giving us a license to run the car lot.’ So I sit in the back, the place is packed, and Luther’s people are making presentations. They showed pictures of this beautiful building and the shrubbery and the trees, the whole thing, and the city is saying ‘Oh, we don’t want another agency up there.’ Finally I raised my hand. A lady looked down and said, ‘I think Mr. Engler is in attendance. That’s him back there.’ So I stood up and I said, ‘Do you know, folks, you ought to be proud and excited to have a merchant like Rudy Luther, successful automobile agency, to want to build this beautiful building on the corner of Fifth and Excelsior Avenue. Because, the theater’s not going to be there anymore. It’s all over with.”

Leaflet from the ill-fated
"Save the Tower" campaign.

The last stand for the Hopkins Theater was on July 16, 1985. “GOODBYE HOPKINS. THE END IS TONIGHT” read the marquee. All 1,320 seats in the four theaters were packed with patrons who came from all over to see the grand cinema for the last time. The features shown that night were “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” “Emerald Forest,” “Fiddler On the Roof” and “Beverly Hills Cop.” When the night was over and the lights were shut off for good, a sign taped to the door informed passersby that the theater was closed and suggested they can see “The Gods Must Be Crazy” at Studio 97, another Engler theater.

Before the bulldozers came there was a frantic effort on the part of some area residents to “save the tower.” The idea behind the Save the Tower campaign was to raise enough money to dismantle the big Hopkins tower before the building was demolished, and then re-erect it somewhere in Hopkins as a local landmark. The group collected over 3,800 signatures on petitions during the 1985 Raspberry Festival (the town's big summer event) to convince the city this was a worthy endeavor and even Rudy Luther made a token contribution to the effort. The group tried to raise $7,000 by Monday, August 19, 1985.

The whole thing was an exercise in futility. Not only were they unable to raise the money, but, “we offered the City of Hopkins the tower for free,” Harold Engler says. “But the city wasn’t interested. They weren’t interested in keeping the theater either, by the way.”

It was around August 30, 1985 that a crowd gathered in the back parking lot of the theater and other strategic viewing locations around the block as a backhoe, starting on the east end where the auditorium was, smashed the building scoop by scoop, turning 44 years of memories into dust. The big tower continued to stand stoically on the other end as the backhoe slowly bulldozed its way toward it.



Souvenirs picked up inside the
Hopkins Theater days before it was demolished.

To prevent the 40-foot tower from falling into the street and on adjacent buildings, long cables were wrapped around it and attached to the bulldozer. The bulldozer pulled forward in the other direction and the mighty tower buckled, doubled over and came crashing down into the rubble.

Harold Engler was not among the crowd that came to watch the demolition. “I left town. I left town," he says. "I was gone for a week. I couldn’t be around. I couldn’t go past that corner for several years. I couldn’t go by until long after the new building was built.” Shortly thereafter, Harold sold off the rest of the theaters he owned and got out of the business.

Rudy Luther’s Hopkins Honda opened for business at the former theater location in early 1986, but it only operated until the mid 1990s. Meanwhile, for more than a decade the city of Hopkins had no movie theater. Then in 1997, in something of a turnabout, the historic Suburban Chevrolet dealership further down the main street was demolished so the city could build a new Hopkins Cinema 6, a six-screen second-run movie theater. Harold Engler had nothing to do with the building or operating of this newer theater.

Read a more in-depth version of the Hopkins Theater story in the Chronicles from the Analog Age book, published by Studio Z-7 Publishing.

Cops vs. reporters, 1970s style

   Dennis Anderson had a long and storied career at WDIO-TV Channel 10 in Duluth, Minnesota and satellite station WIRT Channel 13 in Hibbing that spanned from when the stations first went on the air in the volatile mid-1960s until his retirement in May 2011. Spending most of his years as the lead anchor on the station’s newscasts he was known for his signature sign-off, “Good night everybody, and be kind.” But as a reporter-photographer for the station in 1971, he was caught in a tangle between the TV station and city police, resulting in a confiscated camera, allegations and counter-allegations of harassment and a lawsuit that determined the rights journalists have in the face of police power.

   When WDIO came on the air in January 1966, it was the scrappy newcomer in a small city with two well-established TV stations; CBS affiliate KDAL-TV Channel 3 and NBC affiliate WDSM-TV Channel 6. WDIO was the area’s first full-time ABC affiliate and it was clear from the get-go that the station came to shake things up in the Duluth media establishment.

  The approach to news was hard-hitting, with an emphasis on exposés and investigative reporting. Critics variously called it bombastic, sensationalistic and muckraking, but the approach grabbed the public’s attention, the solid journalism behind it kept that attention, and by March 1971, the upstart television station in Duluth was number one at 10 p.m., with an astounding 56 percent audience share.

   After working for the station early on as a reporter, Dennis Anderson left WDIO in 1968 to accept a job as news director and lead anchor at another ABC affiliate, KTHI-TV Channel 11 in Fargo. But the departure didn’t last and in 1969 he returned to WDIO to anchor a new consumer watchdog segment on the newscasts called Action Line.

   As the lead investigator for Action Line, Anderson looked into, and attempted to resolve complaints written in by viewers. But in 1971, the mild-mannered reporter was caught in the middle of a sometimes intense, sometimes bizarre feud between the TV station and Duluth police.

   It started with a couple of different Action Line segments uncovering alleged misconduct within the ranks of the Duluth Police Department. The first involved a viewer complaint about a used car dealership. The subsequent investigation found a few police officers were repairing and selling used cars to an unlicensed dealership in their spare time, and were allegedly circumventing state law by falsifying title transfers. The City of Duluth had also been investigating the case, but WDIO-TV brought it to the public’s attention and it eventually resulted in the conviction of one officer.

   A second Action Line investigation turned up police documents, provided by a confidential source, that were found to have been tampered with to protect a prominent local citizen who had been arrested for drunken driving.

   Then just after midnight on March 29, 1971, there was a report of a break-in at the Ski Hut sporting goods store in Duluth. Serving as both reporter and cameraman, Dennis Anderson hustled to the location, armed with a portable film camera and a Sylvania Sun Gun lamp.

   Police were on the scene and soon captured two suspects inside the building while Anderson at first kept his distance, staying behind the building. When he got word that the suspects had been captured, he went to the front of the building and began filming through a store window.

   As the arresting officers lead the two suspects out of the building in handcuffs, Anderson stood about eight to ten feet away on a public sidewalk and began filming, using the Sun Gun lamp to provide light. Sgt. Richard Gunnarson, who was holding the door open as officers walked out the suspects, shouted “No pictures!” twice at Anderson, who then turned off the lamp. The police sergeant then demanded the WDIO camera from Anderson, and he handed it over.

   Lt. Alexander Lukovsky, who was also at the scene, talked to Anderson and offered to give back the camera under the condition that Anderson check with the Detective Bureau to determine that the film he had shot did not contain information that could possibly harm the case, and that the suspects were not juveniles (which state law prohibited being identified) before going on the air with it. When Anderson told the police lieutenant that he couldn’t guarantee any of that, the camera was taken down to police headquarters.

   WDIO news director Richard Gottschald was furious. He went to police headquarters and demanded to know why the camera was confiscated. Police claimed that the bright lights being used by Anderson were impeding the officers in their line of duty but Anderson claimed they said nothing to him about the lights and that an officer in fact had asked him to turn the light on to aid the police.

   WDIO reported on the controversy in its newscasts and the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union got involved on the station’s behalf, while a police union president accused the station of conducting a “subtle, continuing campaign to deride, humiliate and persecute us,” in a lengthy article that appeared in the November 13, 1971 national section of TV Guide titled “Hassle In Duluth.” The union called for a sponsor boycott of WDIO newscasts, which proved to be largely unsuccessful.

   The camera was returned to the station within days, unopened and the film inside unprocessed, but that wasn’t the end of the controversy. The station (then not owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc.) filed suit in US District Court (with Dennis Anderson also named as a plaintiff) and the feud between the station and the police only escalated.

   According to the TV Guide article, employees of the station were claiming police were engaged in a “campaign of petty harassment” against them, with radar speed checks set up on the road leading to WDIO’s hilltop studios on 10 Observation Road, and near the home of news director Richard Gottschald. Station employees said they were stopped and ticketed for minor infractions on a regular basis, and the news director, who made an extra effort to watch his speed knowing police were laying in wait, happened to let down his guard one night and sure enough was nailed for going a few miles over the limit.

   Police in turn complained the TV station was harassing them with reporters tailing squad cars in hopes of catching police committing some small infraction. “For a while, the squad cars and TV cars were chasing each other’s tails around Duluth in kind of a Marx Brothers game of tag,” according to the article in TV Guide.

   Finally on February 7, 1972, United States District Court Fifth Division ruled in favor of WDIO and Dennis Anderson, saying that the seizure of the camera “was wrongful, and in violation of plaintiffs' rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, because [it was] not made pursuant to a valid warrant or arrest. Also, despite defendants' argument, it is clear to this court that the seizure and holding of the camera and undeveloped film was an unlawful ‘prior restraint’ whether or not the film was ever reviewed.”

   The Court went on to rule that “Plaintiffs' right to use a light in the taking of photographs at night should not be restricted except, and unless and until so ordered to the contrary by police in their reasonable belief that such is interfering with or endangering them in their work…There was no evidence of such interference by plaintiff Anderson here.”

 

The Grain Belt Guys--Where are they now?

     In the spring of 1975, Grain Belt Breweries, Inc., the Minneapolis-based regional brewer that had dominated beer sales in its upper-Midwest marketing area for decades, was facing some new and difficult challenges.

   Nationally advertised beers such as Budweiser, Schlitz, Pabst and Miller were getting more aggressive in their marketing, especially in parts of the country where there was a dominant regional brand with a loyal customer base. The big bad boys of the industry challenged those local loyalties with saturation advertising and deep discounts on their package and tap beers. 

   As Grain Belt struggled to remain relevant, let alone maintain and expand market share, a young businessman with a wheeler-dealer reputation named Irwin Jacobs was buying large quantities of Grain Belt stock and was making a pitch to other stockholders and the Board of Directors to sell the entire company to him.

   As the Board entertained thoughts of selling out to Jacobs in March 1975, the decision was made, as a means of brightening Grain Belt’s future, to embark on a whole new advertising and promotional campaign to be launched in time for the summer beer drinking season.

   The company hired New York-based advertising agency Batton, Barto, Durstine & Osborne, Inc. (BBD&O) and the campaign they came up with was called “Thirst Things First” featuring a trio of fun-loving beer drinking buddies known as the Grain Belt Guys.

   On May 1, 1975, Grain Belt shareholders voted to sell to Jacobs, a move that would prove to be a fatal mistake. As the 36-year-old businessman with no experience in the brewing industry took over as owner, chairman and CEO, the new Grain Belt Guys campaign was launched with seven television and seven radio commercials of varying lengths scheduled to run from May until December of 1975, billboards, posters and point-of-purchase displays featuring the Guys. It would be the company’s last ad campaign.

   Portraying the Grain Belt Guys were three California-based actors: Renny Roker (the black guy), Archie Hahn (the white guy) and Mark Giardino (the mustached guy). The three men had appeared separately in other TV commercials and had bit parts in a few TV shows and movies. Roker also had a recurring role in the CBS comedy series Gomer Pyle, USMC a few years earlier and before that worked for singer Nat King Cole, and Hahn made a few appearances as one of Oscar’s poker playing buddies on ABC’s The Odd Couple. The guys were flown in, and the commercials were shot in Minnesota.

   The roving Grain Belt Guys, wearing big red Grain Belt diamond logos on their T-shirts, would rescue other guys from uncomfortable situations in a series of humorous commercials by calling out “Pssst—Hey you! Let’s have a Grain Belt!”  In one of the commercials, for example, the Grain Belt Guys crash a wedding and call a nervous bridegroom away for a beer just as he’s about to tie the knot. In another, the Guys lure a bored young man, who is accompanying his snobbish rich boss and boss’s wife, away from his seat at the opera for a Grain Belt in the middle of an aria.

   Other commercials were filmed at various spots around the Twin Cities area, including the IDS Building (then the only modern skyscraper in Minneapolis), Naegele Outdoor Advertising Company (Grain Belt was one of that company’s biggest clients), a barber shop and at the beach. The Guys were happy non-conformist partiers who confounded the conformist snobs in the commercials, and as it would turn out, in real life as well.

   While the commercials undoubtedly played on youth appeal, at a time when states including Minnesota were lowering their drinking ages to 18, the actors portraying the Grain Belt Guys were all hovering around age 30, so they themselves weren’t all that young, but not all that old either. A perfect fit to attract the targeted 18-34 year old male beer drinker.

   In addition to commercials, the Guys were brought in for personal appearances around Minnesota in the summer of 1975, including the Minneapolis Aquatennial, where they rode the Grain Belt float and waved to enthusiastic spectators in the Torchlight Parade.

   According to an article in the October 1975 Grain Belt Diamond, a company newsletter, “Everywhere the Grain Belt Guys went they were recognized by thousands of fans…The three Grain Belt Guys enjoy their role and popularity in the Upper Midwest. Every place they would go they would hear “Psssst, hey you” from thousands of fans. They’re neat guys and are helping to sell Grain Belt Beer.”

   The Grain Belt Guys were even parodied in a Richard Guindon cartoon panel published in the July 2, 1975 Minneapolis Tribune. In it, the Guys are drunk, sick and in the gutter, while a young boy asks his mother as they pass by, “What’s the matter with the Grain Belt guys, Mom?”

   But not everyone was a fan of the Grain Belt Guys. The United Presbyterian Church filed an official complaint with the Federal Communications Commission as well as Grain Belt owner Irwin Jacobs over the wedding commercial, finding the church setting in which the Guys do their “Pssst—Hey you! Let’s have a Grain Belt” routine sacrilegious. The Presbyterian organization also complained that a Grain Belt radio spot featured religious music, but Grain Belt officials insisted it was “soul music.”

   The opera commercial also drew protest, this time from a culture lady from the Twin Cities Metropolitan Arts Alliance who complained that particular spot seemed to “reinforce the notion that only rich, society people can go and enjoy the arts” and that “there could have been a lot of other ways to make the commercial without putting down not only the opera but the people who attend it,” she was quoted in the Minneapolis Star. Others complained the commercials promoted youth drinking.

   Then, as 1975 came to a close, owner Irwin Jacobs, who hoodwinked a majority of Grain Belt shareholders into selling the company to him just eight months earlier, announced he would be closing down the brewery and selling off its assets. The Grain Belt brands would be sold to the competing G. Heileman Brewing Company of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the Grain Belt Guys died with the Grain Belt brewery.

   The guys portraying the Grain Belt Guys went their own separate ways continuing their acting careers. Renny Roker went on to have the most impressive accomplishments of any of the former Grain Belt Guys. He served as the International Sports Youth Representative for the Coca-Cola Company from 1978 to 1984, he produced BMX Racing on ESPN and America’s Paradise Triathlon for NBC Sports, he founded Teens On the Green, described as a multi-ethnic program that motivates inner city youth to excel in their academics through an appreciation of golf, and he appeared as a semi-regular on NBC’s Hill Street Blues in the 1980s. His last acting credit, according to the Internet Movie Data Base (imdb.com) was a 1999 TV movie, “Kidnapped In Paradise.”

   In August 1975, at the height of the Grain Belt Guys campaign, Archie Hahn was a regular on a four-week summer variety show on CBS fronted by recording group Manhattan Transfer, doing comedy relief as a character called Doughie Duck (he had been renowned for his ability to talk like Donald Duck).  In his later career, he continued to act in numerous TV shows and commercials. He appeared in the theatrical movie “Meatballs Part II” (1984) and got into a relationship with co-star Misty Rowe, a former “Hee Haw Honey.” He was the first American to appear in the original British version of Who’s Line Is It Anyway, and most recently played the agent in “Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” (2009).

   Information on the post-Grain Belt Guys career of Mark Giardino is a little harder to come by. According to imdb.com, his most recent acting credits were an episode of NBC’s Knight Rider in 1985 and the movie “Invaders From Mars” (1986).

   Postscript: the old Grain Belt brewery building in Minneapolis remained standing and boarded up for more than two decades after Irwin Jacobs shut it down. The building was long rumored to be “haunted” and indeed, the spirit of the Grain Belt Guys was discovered in the early 2000s when renovations began to convert the giant building into offices for RSP Architects. A full-size outdoor type billboard featuring the Guys and the slogan “This is our kind of place” remained installed on a wall of the old engine room. Instead of preserving it, however, it was removed and trashed by the construction firm responsible for the building renovations, to the relief no doubt of Presbyterians and opera lovers everywhere.