Seven months later the Tivoli had its first bona fide hit: The China Syndrome, a thriller about a meltdown in a nuclear power plant. It hadn't done well when it opened, but just when it reached the second-run houses, the accident at Three Mile Island occurred. The Johnsons finally felt they could make a go of things.

The Tivoli was not in awful shape when Johnson took it over, though many of its vintage features were missing or hidden. The interior was painted an institutional green, none of the original chandeliers worked, and the original proscenium arched stage and orchestra pit, originally used for vaudeville shows, were hidden behind a huge screen installed in the 60s. In the basement, Johnson, Shirley, and Johnson's son Chris, then 13, found 50 years' accumulated stuff, including 1,500 theater seats moldering away. Chris and a group of friends set about clearing out the basement. "My friends quit after a day," Chris says. "But I worked on it for three weeks. I filled seven whole Dumpsters."

Meanwhile, upstairs, Johnson and his wife discovered that the only problem with the chandeliers was that "the bulbs had burned out and no one bothered to replace them," Johnson says. The stage did need work, however. "To make room for a new screen they had lopped off some of the plaster at each end" of the proscenium arch, Johnson says with a horrified look.

Johnson and his family worked on the Tivoli over the next 20 years. There was a grand reopening in 1986, after the screen was moved behind the proscenium arch to allow for live performances, an organ was installed, and the chandeliers got rewired. But Johnson has continued to work on the theater. In 1996, for example, a team of painters using gold leaf re-created its original French Renaissance look.

Johnson had become fascinated with old movie palaces. He and his wife began reading everything they could find on them and joined the Theatre Historical Society, a national organization then located in the basement of a church in Wicker Park, now housed in offices above the York. The Johnsons began going to the society's conventions, held each year in a different city and featuring tours of the local movie palaces. Johnson also began looking around for another theater to run.

Johnson's involvement in the printing business had been waning for a while, and in 1980 he left Johnson Printers. The same year he began leasing the Park Forest Theatre, built in 1950 and originally known as the Holiday, reopening the place-his second-in December 1980. He purchased the Park Forest, located in one of the first shopping malls in the country, in the late 80s and restored its original look.

Johnson and his wife have continued to look for theaters to buy or rent. Obviously their tastes are broad, but he prefers aging beauties from the 20s in central business districts, like the Tivoli. Today these theaters look like real finds, but in the early 80s many small-town downtowns- and their movie theaters - were on the decline. Only a cockeyed optimist would have believed that downtown theaters would see better days.

The story first appeared in the September 14, 2001, Reader's Guide. Reprinted with permission of Jack Helbig. Copyright 2001 Jack Helbig.

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