Theater Showman and More: Louis Sher (1962)

Louis Sher was a showman. He hired my friend ‘Les Natali’ as a manager and they opened the ‘Presidio Theatre’ in San Francisco CA playing ‘Deep Throat’ and made a ton of money. The neighbors did not like It. That movie theatre is still open with MR Lee owning It. MR Sher produced and ran many adult theatres across the USA. ‘Les’ is still around the San Francisco area owning many bars and night clubs. He did manage ‘Charles Pierce’ for a time and did a big show at ‘Bimbos’ night club in SF in the 1970’s with Charles. You don’t find movie theatre operators around like ‘Louis Sher’ these days. Another good friend of mine was the late ‘Shan Sayles’ He also like ‘Louie’ produced adult films and owned many adult cinemas that ran 16mm loop films then VHS tapes. I have many of Shan’s neon theatre lights from his many theatres. One of my first photo jobs was in the early 1970s’s when Shan’s ‘Paris Theatre’ burnt down in LA and I had to go down and do photos of the damage for him. Very scary as a young kid to climb up the broken exit yellow caution tape stair case outside and shoot down on the burnt collapsed roof to the inside of this huge adult/art type theatre. I still have the LA Times front page photo and article the next day It read ‘Is Paris Burning’