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Park Bench Leisure. Despite vast success and fortune, Jenkins still clings to simple ways. He owns a rococo mansion overlooking Acapulco Bay but spends most of his time in the seclusion of his relatively modest and middle-class home in Puebla. In his shabby office in Puebla, Jenkins types out his own letters on a 20-year-old portable typewriter perched on a much-scuffed wooden desk. He wears well-seasoned dark suits and broad, sometimes soiled neckties. For relaxation he likes to lounge on Puebla's park benches or play a few rubbers of bridge.
None of Jenkins' vast holdings brought him more notoriety among movie-mad Mexicans than his string of cinemas. Starting with one movie house in Puebla in 1939, Jenkins ran his competitors out of business. But some 20 years ago the government clamped a mass-pleasing ceiling of 4 pesos on admission prices in the Federal District. As inflation and devaluation later whittled the peso's value from 20¢ to 8¢, knowing businessmen think that he sold out the cinema equipment two years ago to his former partners. He kept most of the theater buildings, and now the government will have to pay him rent, since its $26 million was only enough to buy the seats, the projection equipment and the long-term leases.