Queer Places:
Hollywood Forever
Hollywood, Los Angeles County, California, USA
Eugene Berchin (February 21, 1923—April 15, 2002) was a lawyer-entrepreneur. In mid-1960 Alex Cooperman, a foreign film distributor who was previously employed for distributors in the eastern states, acquired the Apollo theater that Shan Vincent Sayles had formerly managed for the Fox West Coast chain. Under Cooperman the theater became the Apollo Arts and was transitioned to an arthouse policy, similar to Sayles strategy for the Lido and the Vista-Continental. By the end of 1960, Cooperman and Sayles joined forces with Eugene Berchin to acquire the Carmel theater on Santa Monica Boulevard. The three reopened the theater as an arthouse and incorporated their venture as the Paris Theater. Continental Theatres continued to expand as an arthouse circuit and by 1964 the company added Samuel Decker as a partner to handle real estate services and acquisitions. As the theater holdings expanded under differing direct ownership, Continental began to operate as a management company for its shareholders’ numerous corporations including: Crescent Theatres, Paris Theater, Sawyer Theatres, Sayles Brothers Theatres, and Signature Theatres. As Sayles described in a 1965 interview with the journal Film Quarterly, “Some of the theaters that are handled by this company are theaters that I do not own. We simply handle the administrative end of it.”
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