While television is emptying movie houses across the nation (TIME, Feb. 10), business is booming for Kansas City's Elmer C. Rhoden Jr., 35, president of Commonwealth Theaters, a Midwestern chain of 102 theaters. Rhoden's box-office secret: "teenage pictures," denned by him as "rock 'n' roll, drag races, horror stories, that sort, of thing."
That sort of thing so well satisfies Rhoden's young customers (70% under 24) in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota that he can afford to shrug off television. "TV is for the older folks." says he. "A teen-ager who...
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