A lot of San Diegans can recall the closing of the Ken Cinema but fewer may remember the demise of another iconic film venue. The Unicorn Cinema ran eclectic film programs from 1964 to 1982.
Flickering images and memories
Sometimes it is not just the movies we see but where we see them that makes an impact on us. I distinctly remember my parents bringing me to The Unicorn Cinema, and when I posted on Facebook that I was doing a story on the venue, people shared a flood of memories.
"Going to the Unicorn was always a treat," recalled John Rippo, publisher of the Espresso Cafe Newspaper. "We would wander into this little bookstore, nicely lit, books everywhere on tables and in shelves. Then go to the back of the store to buy your ticket and usually a mug of tea and a bag of popcorn. And from there you'd be permitted to enter this long, cinder block, dark movie theater. It was quite small, and once settled in, all eyes would be on the small screen at the end of the hall, and the flickers would come on."
The Unicorn Cinema and the adjoining Mithras Bookstore opened in 1964 and provided a unique environment that felt very much of its time.
"Southern California was a big kind of a hotbed of alternative ideas," said Sandra Darling, who ran the two businesses with her husband Harold. "We had oriental lugs on the floor and on the walls. So it had a very warm, eccentric quality about it. And the fact that the bookstore was there made the whole thing kind of more inviting. Some people came early and stayed late from the film."
As a teenager, Rippo was one of those people.
"You'd be in for something that was unique, something that you didn't find anywhere else in San Diego at the time," Rippo added. "The Unicorn functioned almost like a kind of underground thing. You had to be among the cool kids to even know about it. And it was kind of a gift that you bestowed on your friends."
Tigers, Unicorns and Puppy Dog Tales
That gift is being celebrated by the La Jolla Historical Society in a new exhibit called Tigers, Unicorns and Puppy Dog Tales. The exhibit pays tribute to not only the Unicorn and Mithras but also Green Tiger Press, all three were run by Harold and Sandra Darling.
The exhibit is being curated by Carol Olten who was the film critic at the San Diego Union when the Unicorn closed in 1982.
"I wrote closing remarks," Olten remembered. "And I always like to say I really cried in print because it was a very sad time for anybody who really loved film and movies."
"I was the last employee of Mithras Books and Unicorn cinema," Christopher Canole explained. "So I turned the key on the final night, which was kind of a sad situation. We had a few people gathered around right after the midnight show, and it was a wonderful couple of years experience. That's where I was really first exposed to the Samurai cinema."
Cinephile heaven
The Unicorn was the place where a lot of people saw their first Akira Kurosawa film or had their first exposure to François Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman or Buster Keaton.
Olten sat in one of a pair of theater sets rescued from the Unicorn and on display as part of the exhibit.
"It was a place that you saw French New Wave. You saw German New Wave. You saw stuff from the National Film Board of Canada," Olten said. "I learned a lot about the history of film at the Unicorn Cinema."
Sandra gave credit for that to Harold who "did a magnificent job of programming. He got things from everywhere, I don't know where. Harold had a lot of fun choosing things and putting them together and thinking about how they went together."
Benjamin Darling has fond memories of the cinema run by his father Harold and stepmother Sandra.
"The Unicorn was my babysitter because if my parents were busy. They would stick me in 'Yojimbo' or 'Shoot the Piano Player,'" Benjamin recalled. "I think there was some consideration of whether it was child appropriate, but not a lot."
Crazy creativity
Sandra designed the cinema’s brochures that now cover the exhibit walls.
"The Unicorn cinema had these totally amazing brochures/programs," Olten said. "They became quite collectors items."
One wall has a collection of these programs that were all circles, which was neither a conventional format for flyers or an easy thing to make.
"That's a crazy thing to do," Benjamin said. "They just did any old crazy thing that came to their mind. That's one of the things I really loved about seeing that show, is the sense of creative freedom."
Even the bookstore floor was an act of creativity.
"They didn't have any money, so they threw a bunch of old paper ephemera on the floor and lacquered it," Darling said. "And so it was this insane collage on the floor which was done out of desperation but it actually kind of turned into a real thing."
I remember sitting on that floor and exploring the collage of words and images as I waited for my dad in the bookstore. Fragments of that collage have been framed and hung on the wall at the exhibit where they look like pieces of art.
The cinema and the bookstore were located at the corner of Pearl Street and La Jolla Boulevard.
"They were sort of a counterculture scene, a place where you could gather with people that lived in the area and that you knew, and that were going to the university, and you'd talk about ideas and interesting things like Rilke and demonstrations and love-ins and the whole bit," Olten said.
Remembering the Unicorn
Musician Jim Call remembered arriving in San Diego as a 19-year-old sailor fresh from Vietnam.
"The Unicorn Theater is where I learned to love foreign film," Call said. "Some of the movies got out after the busses ran. So there were only two things that I wanted to do after the busses ran, and that was the midnight movies at the Academy (Theater) and the Unicorn Theater. And so I bought a motorcycle expressly to come to the Unicorn."
The Unicorn rewarded its loyal patrons by offering membership cards and offering every tenth movie free. Jackie Estrada took advantage of that.
"The thing I remember that just pops in my head when you say Unicorn Cinema was seeing Busby Berkeley movies and coming out of the theater and just doing kicks as we were walking to our car and dancing like we were in a Busby Berkeley movie," Estrada said.
Canole pointed out, "The most famous thing was the marathon. If you paid $20, that was a ticket for the whole marathon. You could go anytime you wanted. If you stayed in the theater the entire time, you got your $20 back, and I would have to write them a check on the Mithras checking account because nobody would spend that $20. They would always just brag. I've got my $20 refund check from watching the cinemas."
Estrada specifically remembered one marathon when "in the middle of the night, 'Lawrence of Arabia' came on, and I just kept nodding off and nodding off and opened my eyes seeing sand and more sand."
There could also be unexpected celebrities at the cinema.
"We did have Ken Kesey arrive one day, and at one point we had Timothy Leary was there for a while," Sandra said. "There were so many. It was really a wonderful theater."
But running a small cinema was a challenge. By 1982, it faced competition not just from other cinemas but from UC San Diego.
"UCSD started offering free film and they even preempted us in some cases," Sandra recalled. "We were hoping to have a more cooperative relation with them. And they made it sort of adversarial, which was unfortunate, but it's just a problem with running a very small business. As they say the nut, what you have to spend on the building and the films and all this stuff is pretty high. The theater always broke even at best. I mean, the theater never made much money, so at that point it just seemed like things were better to call it quits."
Benjamin added, "I do remember my godmother saying to me that when they closed, everybody came in and said, 'We love you so much. We can't believe you're closing.' And she would say, well, where were you for the last couple of years?"
That was the same lament voiced by the manager of the Ken Cinema when it closed just as the pandemic hit. But Olten hopes that maybe the exhibit will inspire someone to try and create a new space combining movies, books and inviting atmosphere. But for many, there will never be a replacement for the Unicorn Cinema and Mithras Bookstore.
On Saturday the La Jolla Historical Society is hosting a film event called Vamping with Vampires on its outdoor lawn. Olten will be hosting a night of clips from vampire movies that compliment the exhibit and tap into the Halloween spirit.
