12D
Wednesday, August 22.1979
University Daily Kansan
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Opera House has varied, sordid history
By MARK SPENCER
Staff Reporter
For 84 years, the building that now houses the Lawrenz Office House has stood at 642 Massachusetts St. It has provided a stage for graduations and graduation graduates to vaultieve and rock, in tilt.
During the last decade, it has had both a national reputation as a fine music establishment and as a cheap dive.
Now the name "Laurence Opera House" is synonymous with live music in Lawrence. From four to six nights a week, the Opera provides music and beer to its natrons.
The present owners and operators of the building, Opera House Investments, Inc., are working to establish the national program of owner dreams of df, and once attained.
In October 1972, Skip Moon bought the building and began Opera House Investments. Curtis Reinhardt, the present manager, began working for Moon, and the campaign to make the Opera House a profitable business, been anew.
BUSINESS AT the Opera House, however, was not always as good as it seems to be. The building has seen some hard times in its lone and sometimes sordid existence.
The original building on Massachusetts Street was built early in Lawrence's history
and burned to the ground. It was rebuilt in 1911 and it again burned to the ground. The owner, J.D. Bowersock, perturbed by the fire in his building, vowed to build a fire-roof building.
Bowersock, as one woman who witnessed the era described him, "Owened the town." He owned the mill and grain elevator, the iron works, among other things.
"Notwithstanding all this and more," a 1913 Lawrence publication wrote, "Mr. Bowersock was not unmindful of public and social affairs."
A true understatement. He was, at various times, mayor, state representative, state senator and congressman. He was the most charismatic man, a man who could build what he wanted to.
BOWERSOCK.HAD THE building built out of steel reinforced concrete and named it after himself.
The Bowersock Opera House became the place to be on a big night in Lawrence. Movies, traveling road shows and greats such as Al Jolson performed here.
As movies became the prime source of entertainment, the building became a theatre for the next 20 to 30 years; first a theater at 1956, then the Jayhawk, changing hands in that period.
After a brief stint in the early sixties as a
warehouse for Hallmark cards, the building was bought in November 1964 by Mike Murfin and John Brown and renamed the Red Dot Inn.
Murfin and Brown gave the building a new look. They designed a sloped roof on the outside. The sloped floor that had been used for theatre seating was changed to a flat floor and a new stage was built.
IT WAS THE BEGINNING of a good time for an old building. Murfin and Brown built a national reputation for the Red Dog and White Dog, two dogs Keea I and Kea Tina Turner, Dool Clark and the Hot Nuts, The Fabulous Flippers, Wilson Pickett, The Rlue Things and Fleetwood
"I've entertainment probably had a greater impact on college students then," said Murfin, who was 20 years old and a KU student. "We were the only game in town."
"You don't see the enthusiast we consistently had, you don't see the crowds we consistently had. People don't talk about shows 15 days before the show."
THE RED DOG had the crowds. More than 2,000 people would regularly turn out to see the Red Dog, which times the Red Dog would run T.G.F.L. The band's scheme involved a national act, would
play at 2 or 3 the afternoon. No admission would turn out to drink beers or 800 people would turn out to drink beer and music. The owners would run the audience out, close the place and open up again for an
Rumors of record crowds abound. A man who works for a sound company in a Kansas City instilled that 6,000 people attended the event. The red Dog. The present fire capacity is 850.
"IT WAS COMPLETELY LEYED. People were lined up on the outside waiting for me to get inside." The stickies in my mind, no way we could've put one more person in the place."
"No way. You couldn't put that many people in the place," Murfin said. "Believe it or not, the biggest crowd we had was a training session for the Fabulous Flippers.
Murfin said he thought Red Dog audiences were different from audiences today.
"The audiences during the Red Dog days were proud of themselves," he said. "They dictated their entertainment instead of the club manager, that it would be and that they'd down their time."
"There isn't the dedication and enthusiasmism now that there once was."
The bands have also changed, according to Murfin.
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"Our feeling at the time was that having bands was good, but it was kind of limited," Gould said.
"It had kind of become a dive," said Goidu, who is now an architect in town. "We had to try to overcome it, that's why we changed the name."
Gould and Aldis had big plans. They booked bands as well as activities such as dinner thetrees.
Although Gould and Aldis said they tried to clean the place up and "get rid of the beer smell," the business never came together.
"Live entertainment is a major risk. You don't know how the entertainment will be received until it happens," Gould said. "It's interesting of amount of time and financial backuge you have."
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"IT'S NOT THE kind of thing that's for a small-time investment, and that's kind of what we were coming from."
MORE NATIONALLY known bands played smaller halls, which was ideal for the Red Dog. Kansas town hadn't developed as a concert city, so the club was a logical place for these bands to play. Marlin also said there was a greater problem with the band than there is today because groups became less responsible in the late 70s.
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the building was sold in 1974 and Aldis repossessed it in January 1975, Moon, the moon, was purchased by the private bar in the cellar of the building. In October, Moon bought the building, began Opera House Investments, Inc., and opened under the name the Lawrence Opera House.
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"Wilson Picket was scheduled to play and the day of the show, his manager called and said, 'You're not supposed to say.' Brown got on a plane, flew to New York and physically dragged him down
THE RED DOG era ended in 1971 when Murfin and Brown decided it was time to move on. It had brought live music to the city, but it wasn't always able to be done. Did it make money?
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"I didn't know whether he would make it until 6:30. He didn't have his band with him, so we had a band standing by and they were here to show the show. Everything was up all right."
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Although Moon continued to own and operate the 7th Spirit in 1958, the rest of the group moved on. Moons left Bugs's Disco. Although the group made some improvements on the building, the group remained a part of it.
In February 1977, the Lawrence Opera House, under the direction of Reinhardt, opened with the ambition of reclaiming the restitution the building once had.
"It was open for 10 years, wasn't it?" Murfin asked.
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During 1971 and 1972 the building had several names and owners. None of them owned it. In large deep debts, businesses around town became wary of the various groups that were involved.
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They changed the n.m.e. cleaned up the building and hired bouncers. The financial situation was a bit more difficult to deal with.
Ruby Maltit, owner of Maltit Hardware,
78 Massachusetts, St. said, "They'd come in and buy paint, paint the whole place and then leave."
For the next seven years, the building and the businesses that occupied it declined.
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"The place was run down and had a bad reputation with students because there had been lots of boke and lots of heavies," said Reinhardt, referring to the period between 1950 and 1960. The population thought it was a dark, dirty honeypot for post-revolutionary burn-outs."
IN 1974, Roger Aldis and Bob Gould bought the building and renamed it the Free State Opera House.
"We had a situation where I think most of the merchants wanted to trust us, but they'd been burned so much in the past that they just couldn't do it," he said. "Would have to go."
TWO IMMEDIATE problems confronted Reinhardt The building's image and its financial situation.
MANY MERCHANTS, after being convinced that the present operation was not associated with previous businesses, wrote to Macy's, saying "the case still had to pay cash to most merchants.
The money the Opera House now makes goes back into the business, Reinhardt said. Although it is not making enough to pay for a large cast in Reinhardt would like, the situation is improving.
Mallott now speaks of Reinhardt as if he were the next door neighbor's son.
The key to building a sounder financial base, Reinhardt said, is building credibility with the public.
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"He gave me real good references, promised to pay every month and he did," she said.
"THE IDEA IS that you make the people buying tickets trust you and its the same thing with establishing a national reputation," he said. "We are making a big difference in our need to blow this thunder over the for both ourselves and the people in this area."
The Opera House has been bringing some national acts to Lawrence which is devo and George Thorogood in an effort to build its name.
Although the tickets for the bigger shows are more expensive than for local shows, the bulk of the club door receipts, as opposed to bar tickets, comes from shows featuring
Over a year, the club receives 20 percent of total ticket receipts in net profit. Local acts account for about 15 percent of it and national acts 5 percent.
THE REST OF the money from tickets goes to covering show expenses, including paying the band and production expenses.
Although the bigger acts account for a smaller percentage of the net profit, they attract attention among bands and promoters.
"New York does look down on you," Reinhardt said. "You get the feeling when you're talking to them, they're thinking, 'How do we do that doing talking on the phone with these guys.'"
IN ADDITION TO overcoming the mid-western buoys image the New York promoters have, of area promoters, the Opera House has to fight the fact that halls in Kansas City are closer to a larger audience. The opera house has a definite strategy to combat the fact.
"It's not that they don't trust us, it's just that they think they are higher than we are. Nine times out of ten, I think I'm doing my job better than they are doing theirs."
"When we are talking to an agent, we tell them that we are in Metropolitan Kansas City, and we really are," he said. "Some of our staff are driving two hours to Madison Square Garden."
But Reinbach's plans go beyond drawing bands that play current popular music. Producing classical music, theatre and dance will be part of Fine Arts School are possibilities, he said.
THE DAYS WHEN 2,000 people could see a show in the building are gone. The fire marshal says that at least five fire marshals walked in on a Dave Mason concert that had packed people into the crowd.
Because of its size, the Opera House is not practical for big national level acts, but Reinhardt and the club is competitive for the emerging bands.
Although programs like this probably would not make money for the Opera House, Reinhard hopes that eventually they will be able to run greater shows on and run a wider audience than when looking at the future of the old building, he doesn't let to limit his imagination.
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