The Mann National Theater in Westwood Village is closing this week. It opened March 27, 1970 and one of the first movies it offered — and the first I saw there — was the Mike Nichols movie of Catch 22. A bunch of my friends went to a matinee and I would describe our reaction to the movie as mixed, leaning towards the negative. But there was one scene we liked a lot. It was the one early in the film with Paula Prentiss removing her clothing. We all agreed that was filmmaking at its finest, and that we had to stay for enough of the next showing to see it again.
So we stayed…and after our favorite scene was over, we all got up to leave. So did about eighty other males in the theater, all of whom had remained in their seats after the previous showing for the same reason. If Mike Nichols had had the presence of mind to make that scene last ninety minutes, I think we'd all still be there.
I feel a certain sense of personal loss hearing that the National is closing. I spent a lot of my life back then in Westwood Village and watched them build the place. Westwood was a great "date" community back then with plenty of restaurants, movie theaters and stores to browse. Often, we'd dine at the Hamburger Hamlet and then walk over to the National. After the movie, it was one block to Wil Wright's Ice Cream Parlor or two to a shop called Golden Star that served great made-on-the-premises sorbets and ices. Those were, as we nostalgists call them, the days.
It's probably not surprising though that the National's closing. At 1,100 seats, it was just too big and probably too unprofitable to occupy so large a plot of prime, expensive real estate. The last time I was in it was for the world premiere of Sin City two years ago. It didn't dawn on me then that its management was considering closing the theater but now that it's been announced, I'm thinking, "Oh, yeah…it did seem a bit shabby." It was probably a matter of either shutting down or spending a few million to refurbish and maybe carve the National into a bunch of smaller theaters.
It's not old enough to mourn as one of those great old movie palaces that are works of art, themselves. Truth to tell, the National always struck me as an ugly, uncomfortable house in which to see a movie. But I did have many a great evening that included a visit there…and I'm sorry to see a reminder of those evenings going away.