Alvin Mills was 13 years old when he first heard the L.A. Philharmonic perform in downtown Los Angeles. Maestro Pierre Monteux was conducting. ‘I couldn’t believe that one person making motions could produce all this sound,’ Mills says. ‘I saw this little man’Monteux was 5’ 4” ‘ hardly moving. He had a small beat and, all of a sudden, big sounds were coming out.’ Mills, who’s also a short, compact man with a warm openness, knew then that he wanted to conduct. Years later, when he was in his mid-20s, he had the opportunity to study under Monteux at the Ecole Monteux in Hancock, Maine. ‘One hour with Monteux was like a lifetime,’ says Mills, who took four trains and a bus to get there from California. Mills made his debut as a conductor with the Brentwood-Westwood Symphony Orchestra, which he founded in 1953 with the late Robert Turner. He had been a pupil of Turner’s at UCLA, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in music. The community orchestra began with about 15 or 20 members who performed in a tiny dance studio on San Vicente near 26th St. ‘We rented chairs and had to buy light bulbs because the studio only operated during the day,’ Mills says. Over the years, the orchestra moved around to various venues, including University High School, before settling at Paul Revere Middle School Auditorium. They have been offering their free Sunday afternoon concerts there for over 35 years. Each season, the ensemble presents four free concerts, depending on budget. The Brentwood-Westwood Symphony is supported by fundraising, with donations from various organizations and some help from the city or county. Mills, 84, is fascinated by the diverse group of musicians, ranging in age from 17 to 75. ‘I look around and I see a psychiatrist and he’s sitting next to someone who’s only 24,’ he says. A Midwesterner, Mills began studying the violin with Julian Brodetsky at age eight, when he moved with his family from Chicago to Southern California. ‘I loved the violin right away,’ he says. ‘I became the classical [musician] of the family.’ His mother, Lillian Heuring, was a jazz pianist who played for the silent movies, and his father, Harry Mills, was a jazz drummer. Even Mills’s stepfather became a musician later in life, taking up the viola when he was in his 80s. Mills also studied under Peter Meremblum at USC , and in his early 20s, he was a performing member of the Kansas City Philharmonic and the Hollywood Bowl Symphony, playing under the direction of Bruno Walter, Leopold Stokowski, Efrem Kurtz, Eugene Ormandy and others. ‘Stokowski was tough but I learned a lot from him,’ says Mills, who earned his master’s degree in music from Mount St. Mary’s College in 1961. His sensitivity as a conductor comes from both his early experiences as a musician and from Monteux’s instruction. ‘Musicians in an orchestra are very fragile people and their feelings are what make them play,’ Mills says. ‘I try to follow Monteux’s advice about respecting a musician’s feelings.’ For example, Monteux taught him ‘when you stop an orchestra, be sure to tell them why.’ So Mills will often tell his musicians to start the piece again or try playing it differently ‘for my sake.’ ‘A good teacher has a great deal of respect for his students and knows what they can and can’t do,’ Mills says. ‘I’ll get them to work in such a way that they’ll do more [than they thought they could].’ The number of performers at each concert depends on the program. About 50 to 60 people will play in this Sunday’s performance, which includes pieces by Dvorak, Schubert and Bach. Mills has arranged the Bach piece for his orchestra. In addition, soloist Dennis Trembly, the first bassist of the Hollywood Bowl Symphony, will perform Nino Rota’s ‘Divertimento Concertante.’ Tiong-Kiat Yeo will be assistant conductor. Other great artists who have played with the Brentwood-Westwood Symphony under the direction of Maestro Mills are: Martin Chalifour, concertmaster of the L.A. Philharmonic; Mark Baranov, assistant concertmaster of the L.A. Philharmonic; Evan Wilson, principal violist of the L.A. Philharmonic; Gary Gray, principal clarinetist of the L.A. Chamber Orchestra; and John Novacek, internationally acclaimed pianist. Mills has particularly enjoyed working with David Shostac, the principal flutist of the L.A. Chamber Orchestra, who was 13 years old when he began to play with the orchestra. ‘He still treats me like a father and I treat him like a son,’ says Mills, who has five of his own children and eight grandchildren. Leonard Slatkin was also a teenager when he started with the Brentwood-Westwood Symphony. Today, he is the conductor of the National Symphony in Washington, D.C. Sheryl Staples, assistant concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, and Timothy Landauer, principal cellist with the Pacific Symphony, also started with Mills’s orchestra. Devoted to encouraging talented youth and building an interest in classical and contemporary music, Mills initiated a music education outreach program in 1994 to bring music to children of the inner cities and Westside public schools. His orchestra performs about six of these outreach concerts per year, usually for students in grades 4, 5 and 6. ‘I prefer elementary school-age children because they’re more receptive and open,’ says Mills, who also teaches students a bit about conducting during his visits. As a conductor, Mills, who only makes about $600 a concert, looks upon the orchestra as his needy child. ‘I won’t retire as the conductor of the Brentwood-Westwood Symphony,’ he jokes. Mills spent most of his life as an instrumental teacher, working at various schools in Glendale. He currently teaches an instrumental ensemble class at the Westside Community Adult School. His position as conductor and music director with the Brentwood-Westwood Symphony was jeopardized once, in 1992, when the board considered replacing him with ‘an ambitious conductor who wanted to come in,’ according to Mills. Letters of support poured in and he kept his job. That same year, Mills married Grusha Paterson, a singer and dancer who concertized throughout Los Angeles with her Continental Gypsies group. Originally from Russia, she grew up dancing in New York under Nadia Chilkovsky and Martha Graham, and was at one point partnered with Michael Kidd, who later won fame as a Broadway choreographer and producer. After marrying Mills, Grusha began working as executive secretary and general manager of the orchestra, in charge of preparation and publicity for concerts. She says she likes to sit in on and tape the main, Saturday rehearsal before each show. ‘I tell Alvin what mistakes I hear,’ she says. ‘He’s a miracle maker’he tells them and fixes it all for the concert.’ Working with people for 52 years may be one reason why Mills hears words and laughing in the music he conducts. For example, he wrote the words ‘for peace of mind’ to the famous musical phrase in Beethoven’s Fifth, ‘Dit-dit-dit-daaaah.’ He also has an affinity for Spanish music, having studied in Madrid, Spain, at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Musica in 1970. The orchestra rehearses every Tuesday from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. ‘I teach it like a class,’ says Mills, who is a member of ASCAP and the National Association of Composers, USA. ‘What I try to do is encourage and inspire them.’ Sunday’s concert, March 13, takes place from 3 to 5:30 p.m. at Paul Revere Middle School, 1450 Allenford. Admission is free Contact: 829-3149.

Compiled by LAURA WITSENHAUSEN Associate Editor Students at St. Matthew’s Parish School have been busy collecting money to contribute to the tsunami relief efforts. Students have been encouraged to do jobs at home and bring in and share the money they have earned. Funds have also been raised at school through the sale of special reminder wristbands, a bake sale and a talent show. Preschool II students made pins and note cards for sale. The note cards were created with two methods. In one process students dipped their colored chalk drawings into water, then lifted them out to discover a unique piece of art. The other process involved painting with frozen watercolor ice cubes. ‘We saw the devastating effect water had in Asia,’ said teacher Amy Weiss. ‘Our use of water has created something beautiful.’ The preschoolers raised over $200. o o o The 6th, 7th and 8th grade students of Corpus Christi School presented a $10,000 check to Barbara Curtis, principal of St. Raphael’s Catholic School in South Los Angeles on February 28 to benefit the school’s scholarship fund. In appreciation, St. Raphael School’s gospel choir, led by vice principal Peter Scott, performed a soul gospel concert for the entire Corpus Christi student body. The Corpus Christi students raised the money from a giant flea market on January 22 as part of the school’s outreach program. These funds will provide one-year scholarships for four students at St. Raphael’s, Corpus Christi’s sister school. The unsold items from the flea market were donated to the Boys and Girls Club of Venice. The Corpus Christi Outreach Committee would like to thank Ralphs and Gelson’s for their donations of bags and butcher paper, and Mr. & Mrs. Robert W. Joyce for sponsoring the hot dog stand. o o o MIRANDA HALLEY has been named to the Lewis & Clark College dean’s list for the fall semester of 2004. The dean’s list honors academic achievement each semester. Miranda is a freshman at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. o o o BRIAN BUCE, a senior at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, was named a National Merit Scholarship finalist. As such, he is being considered for one of 8,200 National Merit Scholarship awards, worth $33.9 million, which will be offered in the spring. He is the son of Robert and Barbara Buce. o o o Two Palisadians were named to the dean’s list of Emory College, the undergraduate college of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. They are SHANNON GARRISON, daughter of Phillip Gregory Garrison and Kathleen Maria Garrison, and JEREMEY KLEIN, son of Dr. Irv Klein and Sue Obadiah Klein.

A picture in a Ziploc bag is worth more than 1,000 words. This is where Jill Pizitz-Hochstein keeps an old color snapshot of her grandparents protected and close at hand. It tells the story of Senior Smiles, the non-profit organization she and her husband, Erik Hochstein, launched to better the lives of the elderly. Sydney Cooper Senior Smiles is named after Jill’s grandfather, a pharmacist who died in 1987 before he could realize his dream of creating an affordable care facility for seniors. While Jill inherited her grandfather’s philanthropic nature, it’s her grandmother, Sylvia Cooper, now in her 90s, who gave Jill’s mission to aid seniors clear direction. ‘She would sit and cry all day,’ Jill recalls about her grandmother’s condition five years ago. Jill and her husband live in the Palisades; her grandmother resides many miles away in a nursing home in Stockton. ‘The staff’s solution was to give her more medication and put her back to bed.’ Jill, whose warmth and enthusiasm is peppered with steely determination, easily pinpointed the problem. Her grandmother, suffering from heart failure and dementia and confined to a wheelchair, was lonely. While Jill visited the person she describes as ‘her best friend’ every month, it clearly wasn’t enough. The devoted granddaughter sprang into action, reaching out to high schools near her grandmother’s facility hoping to find volunteer programs associated with the elderly. And when she came up empty, she pushed forward to create her own, training kids at a local Catholic high school how to befriend the elderly in nursing homes with the added incentive of enhancing their college application forms. ‘It’s a pretty simple formula,’ says Jill, whose teen volunteers began regular visits with her grandmother and others. ‘It’s about putting normalcy back into a sterile environment.’ The presence of loving volunteers, whose kindnesses included holding Sylvia’s hand and brushing her hair, worked magic in slowly transforming her emotional and physical well-being. ‘The staff lowered her anti-depressants, she doesn’t cry anymore and she’s healthier than ever,’ says Jill, who quickly realized how her grandmother’s case could be the model for improving the quality of life for seniors throughout California. After a slow beginning’Jill and Erik started out four years ago with five volunteers at one facility in Santa Monica’Senior Smiles now boasts over 500 volunteers who serve seniors in 27 facilities from San Diego to Tarzana as well as in private homes. The eventual goal is to expand Senior Smiles throughout the country. This noble aspiration is coupled with the Hochsteins’ busy ongoing work as private geriatric consultants. They help clients deal with family members afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease and other debilitating conditions by matching them with appropriate caregivers and facilities. When Jill and her husband decided to join forces to create Senior Smiles and Cooper Senior Care Consulting (Erik runs the business and financial aspects of the organizations), both had good jobs in other fields. Jill was a director in an acute psychiatric hospital; Erik was a successful software engineer. ‘We were incredibly miserable working for other people,’ Jill explains. Both have degrees from USC and Pepperdine, and educated themselves as authorities on the special needs and care of seniors. About 90 percent of Senior Smiles volunteers are female, and many hail from countries such as Korea, where caring for elders is inherent in the culture. They arrive at the organization through Web searches for volunteer opportunities and by word-of-mouth. After training, they are matched with a senior and commit to visiting that person one hour each week. ‘We’re not Habitat for Humanity, where you can drive away once the project is over,’ Jill says to new recruits during a recent training session held at the Palisades-Malibu YMCA. ‘It should never feel like charity. It is about forming a lasting relationship.’ Stories abound about meaningful bonds between volunteers and seniors in the short history of Senior Smiles. Legendary among them is the ‘awakening’ of Eugenia. When Senior Smiles volunteers started work at an assisted living facility in downtown L.A., the nursing staff told them not to bother with Eugenia, a 99-year-old woman with advanced Alzheimer’s and partial blindness, whom they considered a ‘lost cause.’ This directive sparked in Jill and her crew the desire to do just the opposite. Volunteers, mostly USC students, began visiting Eugenia regularly, reading and speaking to her. Her head was bowed, her eyes closed, her arms crossed, and she seemed oblivious to her new companionship. A couple weeks passed before a volunteer decided to bring in a CD player. It was the USC fight song that finally roused Eugenia, who began tapping her feet and bobbing her head to the music. She even lifted her head and smiled. Later, she begin speaking for the first time in five years. When a volunteer told a colleague that Eugenia had said ‘Hi,’ Eugenia chimed in and said ‘Yup.’ ‘When you give, you get much more back than what you’ve given.’ While this is a common sentiment among volunteers, these are the words of Claire Berger, a 96-year-old resident of Pacific Gardens in Santa Monica, who regales a steady stream of Senior Smiles volunteers with her wisdom and joie de vivre. With the help of one of her volunteers, Berger is close to finishing a novel. ‘I dictate and he types,’ she explains. Palisadian Lisa D’Andrea-Nunez and her sons Noah, 9, and Diego, 3, are among Berger’s ‘extended’ family who have visited regularly for the past two years. ‘We think of her as another grandmother,’ says D’Andrea-Nunez, who learned about Senior Smiles via a handout sent home from Village School. ‘It has broadened my life and filled in the empty spaces that were there,’ says Berger, who is welcomed into the Nunez family home for holidays and other occasions. Financing of the organization comes through private donations, grants and an occasional fundraiser. Offshoots include Baby Senior Smiles, which sends mothers and infants into senior facilities to meet with residents, and PAWWS (Pets Also Work With Seniors), which enlists dogs, cats and even rabbits as the program’s newest ambassadors of comfort. Not only has Senior Smiles affected the lives of countless seniors, it also has changed the career direction of many volunteers. All 10 of the original high school students Jill trained in Stockton to aid her grandmother have gone on to study premed, nursing or psychology. ‘We’re grooming a younger generation to be more respectful of the elderly,’ Jill says. ‘Seniors need the same love and attention that we all do.’ To find out more about Senior Smiles, call 459-0490 or go online to www.seniorsmiles.org.

‘We made it snow at the Bel Air Bay Club,’ Debra Parr says in an excited voice injected with all the warmth of a mother recalling memories of her kids growing up. She’s sitting on the tiny turquoise couch in her 20- by 12-ft. office on Entrada, describing another special celebration that she planned with her event design firm, Amazing Grace. The photo album on her lap is filled with colorful images from birthday parties, weddings, bar/bat mitzvahs, fundraisers and other events Parr has designed. One Chinese-American wedding last October featured an orange-and-white color theme with elements of the bride’s Chinese heritage woven into the decorations and ceremony, including cherry trees brought in for the occasion. However, because they were ‘a hip, metropolitan couple,’ according to Parr, everything had a contemporary, city feel. For example, modernized white lanterns hung from the trees in Maguire Gardens in Downtown Los Angeles, where the wedding was held, and each table at the reception (at Cafe Pinot) was named after a quality such as luck or grace. Even the waiters wore orange ties. ‘I’m really good with space planning and decor,’ says Parr, who earned her bachelor’s degree in art history and architecture from UCLA. She started her own interior design business, Debra Parr and Associates, straight out of college in 1987 and worked from her home in Brentwood. ‘I just hung up my shingle,’ Parr says, recollecting some of her first jobs’covering a couch and designing a nursery. ‘A couple of people gave me a chance.’ Her background in interior design, coupled with her savvy sense of style and love for planning meaningful events, eventually led her to pursue event design. ‘Having grown up outside of Montreal, some of my aesthetic sensibility comes from that European style,’ says Parr, who began modeling in Quebec at the age of 14. She moved to the United States to model in 1979 but ultimately decided to go to college instead. However, Parr says that ‘being part of the fashion world and knowing how to pull things together’ has definitely helped with both her interior and event design businesses. She also had the opportunity to travel with her husband, Rob Parr, a fitness trainer, in the late 1980s, while he trained Madonna on two world tours. ‘I got to be a sponge,’ Parr says about her experience attending and observing grand-scale parties held for the pop star in various countries. She started Amazing Grace in 2000 at Colorado and 26th St., and initially was working mainly for her interior design clients who were hiring her to do parties. After doing some pro bono work for charities, her business grew by word of mouth. When Parr was hired to design a party for Hillary Clinton in a Beverly Hills home, she decided on a Zen/Asian tea instead of the typical British tea. She has also produced events for Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Yet Parr’s passion also seems to come from helping her clients celebrate their special events while forming one-on-one relationships with the people she works with. ‘I feel privileged that families let me into their lives for a time and I want everything to go perfectly,’ she says. ‘You remember these moments in your life, not always at a party but during the day, when you get goose bumps’I’m looking for that feeling whenever possible.’ Parr is especially experienced in the realm of Sweet Sixteens and bar/bat mitzvahs because she has children around these ages’12-year-old twins Hunter and Chandler, and a 16-year-old son, Jordan. In fact, they were the reason she found her current space at Entrada, which used to be a surf shop that her children frequented. Amazing Grace has been there for about a year and a half, and Parr likes the convenience of being so close to her Santa Monica Canyon home. In the tiny office, Parr has a basket of materials and samples for each client she’s working with, and photos of her clients hang on a bulletin board. Most hire her one year in advance, though she says she has pulled events together in six weeks. ‘I try to have only one event on any given weekend,’ says Parr, who works with a two-person staff including assistants Nancy and Claudia, as well as a crew of art students who help with the installation of the event. ‘We love being a boutique business and really want to be available to the client.’ Parr does not charge for the initial ‘meet and greet.’ After the consultation, clients can hire her for a flat fee (which she says about 85 percent opt to do) or by the hour if, for example, they are already far along in the planning process and just need some hourly consulting. ‘The flat fee has nothing to do with the budget,’ Parr explains, adding that she is good at giving her clients an accurate reflection of what they can have within their budget. The definitive issues, she says, are what time frame they have to plan the event, the scope of the event and the budget. Amazing Grace helps with everything from locations and scheduling to recommendations for a photographer, DJ or a cake. Parr is involved in every step, from drawing floor plans for the venue to designing the hostess gift. One of her funky, innovative ideas for a party favor is a customized viewfinder. She’s also done candy bars wrapped in the colors of the party. Once, she rented the Big Blue Bus as transportation for a party and put customized posters on the side. At a Harry Potter-themed bar mitzvah held at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, Amazing Grace set up a ‘potion/lotion station’ where children made bath salts and essential oils. At a 50th wedding anniversary party, each table was decorated with items that referenced a part of the couple’s history together. Parr has also created and produced parties with themes such as 1940/’50s, toga (‘Animal House meets Caesar’s Palace’), ‘enchanted forest’ and, of course, the Academy Awards. In Pacific Palisades, she has designed bat mitzvah parties at Kehillat Israel and decorated people’s homes for Halloween. About 90 percent of her clientele is from the Westside, with the majority from the Palisades, though she has also produced events in Long Beach, New York and Montreal. Parr continues to practice interior design, which makes up about 25 to 30 percent of her business, since she says it ‘keeps me fresh and inspired.’ Parr, who describes her own style as ‘aristocratic bohemian,’ says she came up with the name ‘Amazing Grace’ when she was in a store on the Third Street Promenade listening to the gospel song. ‘I thought, ‘This is how I want to live my life,” she says. ‘It’s what we really aspire to in our business.’ Amazing Grace is located at 140 Entrada. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Contact: 453-8494.

The mighty god of volcanoes has a son named Erichtheus (ir-ek-thee-uhs), but since his name is so hard to pronounce everyone calls him Eric. His dad’s Greek name is Hephaestos (hep-fes-tos), which is also too hard to say, so everyone calls him Vulcan, which is his Roman name and the origin of the word volcano. Eric’s mom is the goddess of the earth. Her name is Gaia and that’s what everyone calls her because it’s so easy to say. In ‘The Boy Who Lived in a Volcano,’ writer Nick French manages to combine Greek and Roman gods with some made-up deities to tell the story of Eric, the super god who wants to use his power for good by saving the world from natural disasters. French, a 1994 graduate of the New York Film Academy, thinks of his spiral notebook stories as visual movie books. ‘To read them is like holding a movie in your hands,’ says French, a Palisades resident who will read from the book on Saturday, March 5 at 3 p. m. on Swarthmore at Village Books. ‘They are colorful and alive with pop.’ French, 35, designs his books like story boards, picking out images in the public domain from the Internet. Often he finds an image that can lead him to a new part of the story. The Volcano book is told in three acts with attention to character development and a big, exciting finish. ‘Kids want a little more edge, action and something much more like a Pixar film,’ says French, who is single. Targeting children from 6 to 12 takes full advantage of the kids’ movie savvy and need to be entertained immediately. French has written three books so far, including the Volcano story. The first book, ‘Jimmy The Wonderdog,’ stars Jimmy, an abandoned puppy who becomes a winner in ability championships, but who faces a number of near-fatal catastrophes that challenge the heart of this champion. His most recent book, ‘A Hamster Named Elvis,’ stars Elvis, who loves to rock out, and his nemesis, the evil 8-year-old who doesn’t treat Elvis well. While French is still looking for a publisher for his stories, he is encouraged by the response to his notebooks, especially from kids. ‘This is really a promotional thing, because I want these books out there.’

‘What are the merits of saving an old-fashioned Art Deco, single-screen movie theater?’ Jim Rosenfield asks this question in the midst of our discussion about the January reopening of the Aero Theatre on Montana in Santa Monica. We are sitting in the office of his real estate company, J.S. Rosenfield & Co., which specializes in renovating unique retail properties and is located just a few blocks south of the theatre. Rosenfield answers his own question: ‘Saving the experience’ was the most important reason for preserving the Aero when he and his Chicago-based partner John Bucksbaum purchased it from Sandy Allen in 1997. ‘It’s about the collective, community experience shared with your neighbors and friends.’ But Rosenfield says he’s also nostalgic. A Los Angeles native, he lived on Euclid, around the corner from the theater, for 15 years and used to walk there to see movies, mostly first-run feature films at the end of their run. He didn’t want to see the Aero suffer the same fate as La Reina Theatre, the historic theater he grew up going to in Sherman Oaks, which became a GAP and then a flea market. ‘I remember driving by and the preserved marquee said ‘T-shirts $9.” The Aero was built around the same time as the La Reina, in the late 1930s, by aviation pioneer Donald Douglas, who designed and produced the first propeller-driven commercial aircraft. He started the original Douglas airplane factory in 1921 on Wilshire between 26th St. and Chelsea, the site of today’s Douglas Park, and advanced to prominence with the DC (Douglas Commercial) line in the 1930s. Douglas-built planes were the first used in round-the-world flights that took off from and landed at Clover Field (Santa Monica Airport). Hence, the name of his theatre was the ‘Aero,’ in reference to aerospace. Designed by architect R.M. Woolpert in the style of French Norman architecture, the theatre opened for business on January 10, 1940, and operated with a small staff, seven nights per week. During the war, Douglas’ factory workers could catch a flick whenever they finished their shifts. Aero programming then consisted of double features (that changed three times weekly), Kiddie Matinees and pre-show opportunity drawings for dishware. The theatre changed hands over the years but when it went up for sale in the late 1990s, Rosenfield worried that it would fall into the wrong hands and not be preserved as a theatre. ‘Making a building a landmark preserves the building and architecture but not necessarily the use,’ says Rosenfield, who joined the Santa Monica Landmarks Commission in the process of reviving the Aero. He’s been in the real estate business for almost 20 years, and also owns the Waterworks building on Montana and the Brentwood Country Mart at 26th and San Vicente. ‘I think a lot about what makes a street great,’ says Rosenfield, who was 27 when he started his real estate career by leasing a 70,000-sq.-ft. building in Fresno to Sears in the late 1980s. At the time he says he was financially backed in part by Palisadian Steve Soberoff, whose one-day UCLA class, ‘The Shopping Center Game,’ motivated Rosenfield to enter the shopping center business. Having already earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from UC Berkeley, Rosenfield says he went to Soberoff, who gave him a $100,000 check and a year to prove himself as a successful businessman. The Sears account sealed the deal. Rosenfield, now 42, started buying and investing in properties in Santa Monica because of his connection to the history and love of the area. ‘I used to take the bus from Sherman Oaks to the beach,’ he says. ‘I thought this was heaven.’ After acquiring the theatre in 1997, Rosenfield began looking for an operator. The process took him a long but eventful six years, including trips to the Soho House in England and The Irish Film Institute in Ireland. ‘I decided I would meet with everyone who expressed interest,’ says Rosenfield, who also consulted with Bob Laemmle of the Laemmle Theatres and Robert Redford of Sundance Theatre Chain, in connection with General Cinema. When a lease with Sundance fell through, Rosenfield says he approached the American Cinematheque, a nonprofit organization that had previously restored/rehabilitated Grauman’s 1922 Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, which reopened in December 1998. ‘Jim liked the renovations at the Egyptian a lot,’ says Barbara Smith, director of the American Cinematheque. She thought that expanding their programming to the Aero would increase their audience. ‘A few things had changed in L.A. since we opened at the Egyptian,’ Smith says, referring to the traffic problem that made it difficult for people from the Westside to get to Hollywood to see a movie. ‘The main thing was realizing that we weren’t reaching a huge part of Los Angeles.’ In 2003, Rosenfield’s company signed a 15-year lease with the Cinematheque, which spent about 18 months renovating the Aero to improve its sound and picture. The theatre is now equipped with 70 millimeter projection capabilities as well as a 45-ft. by 25-ft. screen that is three times its original size. Upgrades also included a new high-performance Klipsch sound system with over 10,000 watts, improved acoustics, a new concession counter and more comfortable seats. ‘We really improved the quality of the presentation,’ says Smith, noting that they raised $150,000 on top of the $500,000 grant from computer industry pioneer and film producer Max Palevsky. He was part of the original group that launched the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Rosenfield agrees that the renovations have been impressive. ‘Taking something old and making it work by today’s standards is tricky,’ he says. ‘I don’t think I could’ve found a better operator.’ Programming at the Aero began seven weeks ago and currently runs Wednesday through Sunday. The 70-mm film series, including the films of Marlene Dietrich and Joseph von Sternberg, has already been a big success, according to Smith. ‘No matter how many great DVDs people have, they’re not going to see a film the way it looks in 70 millimeter.’ Most series and individual film programs will play at both the Egyptian and the Aero, on different days, so that patrons have more than one opportunity to see them. The main difference is the theatres, Smith explains, since ‘the Egyptian is a big movie palace and the Aero is the reverse’it’s really a local, community theatre.’ Smith adds that neighborhood residents in Santa Monica tend to rely more on the marquee and want to see what’s playing when they walk or drive by the theatre, which is why the Cinematheque has replaced the antique set of heavy letters with a lightweight set that can be changed easily with a pole. In addition to the marquee, the iconic ticket booth was also preserved, as was the neon clock and the silver Art Deco ladies on each row of seats in the 437-seat theatre. Rosenfield says that even the bathrooms (including one that was added upstairs) ‘carefully replicate the original 1940’s style.’ The three-door entrance to the theatre opens to a new gray and maroon color scheme in the lobby with giant painted letters that spell ‘Aero’ in a streamline design down the east wall. A historian helped with the colors, says Rosenfield, who sees about one movie a week at the Aero. ‘I used to go alone a lot to the theatre and sit in the same place on the right-hand side,’ he says. ‘The other night, I went and sat in the same place and it was filled and everyone was laughing collectively. I work for that. I live for that.’ The historic Aero Theatre is located at 1328 Montana (at 14th St.). Tickets are $9 general admission. For information about American Cinematheque programs now playing at the Aero, go to www.americancinematheque.com or www.aerotheatre.com or contact (323) 466-3456. This weekend features a series of films starring Ronald Colman: on Friday, March 4, a double feature of ‘Lost Horizon’ and ‘Bulldog Drummond,’ 7:30 p.m.; on Saturday, March 5, a family matinee, ‘The Prisoner of Zenda,’ 5 p.m., and a double feature of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and ‘If I Were King,’ 7:30 p.m. On Sunday, March 6, the family matinee is ‘The Forgotten Comedy Genius of Silent Cinema: Harry Langdon,’ 5 p.m. followed by two of Langdon’s best-known films, ‘Tramp Tramp Tramp’ and ‘Long Pants,’ both with live musical accompaniment by Robert Israel.