Charles Hairston

Born in 1949

East Harlem, NY

Interviewed on Feb 1, 2025

by Jackie Rossi

Note: Charlie worked in the entertainment business – starting as an NBC Page at 30 Rockefeller Center in 1971 and ultimately becoming NBC’s earliest rep/film buyer at the Cannes Film Festival in 1976. In 1978, Charlie joined SHOWTIME as their VP of Programming and Promotion.

JR: What is the first movie you remember seeing?

CH: Ben-Hur stands out in my mind. It was around 1956 or so. Because of the stunning visuals, the very large screen and the expansive action sequences. And I would have been, I guess, seven or eight years old. What stands out to this day in my mind is the amazingly shot cinematic masterpiece that Ben-Hur was. Judah Ben-Hur, played by Charlton Heston, was brought up in a Judaic family. He gets separated from his family and ultimately accepted by the Romans. He was in conflict with his former friend who had become part of the Roman military occupation of the area. The conflict grew and culminated in this scene where they raced each other on horses pulling chariots in a circular path around The Coliseum. It was a death-defying race and one was trying to kill the other. It was just unbelievable and the visual was over the top. I’d ask myself, “how did they do that?”. It looked so real – that type of visual remains with me forever.

JR: Can you give me a rundown of the day you watched Ben-Hur? What pulled you to the theater?

CH: The day played out with my mother. It was an exciting moment being taken to that first movie – it took something of the Ben-Hur kind of magnitude. Fortunately, the movie theater was less than five blocks away from our home. It was a treat to go to the movie theater. Growing up we played on the gravel streets of Throggs Neck in the Bronx. We would play sewer to sewer games like touch football, stickball, tag. Sports took up most of our spare time, but on occasion a movie that was promoted properly, that had some kind of notoriety, we would go see. It felt like a mini vacation because it took us to another world than our specific environment. We would read history books in school and get lectured in catechism class, so it was probably no coincidence that the early movies I found attractive would be the Ben-Hur’s, the Exodus’, and the like. The elements of advertising back then would be the daily newspapers, interview shows (one of the stars would appear on late night shows), but most importantly, the theater itself would have a full glass enclosed poster. Posters were extremely important – highly valued and treasured – and now they’re collectibles. That’s how I found out about Ben-Hur.

JR: Can you share what you remember about the movie theater you saw Ben-Hur in?

CH: The theater’s name officially was the Interboro Theater. It seated about 1,300 people – so it’s a fairly nice size theater. I think they had planned for other things for the theater in its construction – it had a shallow stage – but it was mainly a movie theater and had a very large screen. One room, a center section of, oh gosh, 25 or 30 across. And then the aisle section would be about 15 across, and deep. But the funny thing about the Interboro is its nickname. Because in the late 20s and the early 30s, people who went to the theater would come back scratching and itching because they had lice or fleas or something like that. And thereby it earned its nickname, “The Itch”. And that lingered right through the 50s and 60s. Today I think it serves as a board of education building or office building.

JR: Did the venue provide any food and drink? Would you leave immediately after the movie, or linger afterwards? Can you paint me a picture?

CH: As you entered the theater, there was somebody at the door who would sell you a ticket. There were no real ushers there… There was a handyman crew, one person upstairs who would do technical stuff, and about two stories above the last row, was a single Projectionist, overseeing the large 35mm reels of film. The back rows would usually be reserved for people on a date. Meaning, whether you be young or middle- aged, if you wanted to kiss and be romantic with each other, you would take the last row with just the wall behind you. Everyone else would be in front, and you didn’t want to get too close to the screen because it was rather large, and that would diminish the appreciation of the film. The ideal would be at least 10-15 rows back, where it was very impactful.

The concessions were very modest – there was popcorn, some basic chocolates, and stuff like that. But the interesting thing was at the end of the movie, flattened popcorn boxes would be frisbeed to the screen! The rambunctious kids would throw them and get kicked out immediately after. After the credits, the popcorn boxes would sail high, and then the audience would applaud, as if the boxes were performers.

JR: Did you ever frisbee your popcorn box?

CH: No, no, no… I would maybe do that at home when we watched the program called Million Dollar Movie. It was a regular series of all the great movies from Gone With the Wind to Moby Dick. I would sit in our living room, my father would be sitting in his chair, the TV was a 25-inch RCA TV, encased in a nicely finished, wooden piece of furniture. So we were weaned on great cinema at home. But I would never throw popcorn boxes at the theater. You had to respect the film, but it was funny to watch. We pretty much left the theater as soon as the movie was out; except those in the last row, they might want to stay a little longer.

JR: How did your relationship with the movie theater evolve?

CH: I took Driver’s Ed and I got my license when I was 17 and that opened up a whole other world of seeing movies in drive-ins, especially as a date night. There was a Whitestone drive-in theater in the Bronx – I think it belonged to Sumner Redstone, whose daughter now runs Paramount. At the time, I had a 1958 Ford that my father bought for me for $200, three speeds on the column. I had some very successful dates – my mother told me to always show respect, my father told me, you know, it’s nice to be nice. And my mother was very sweet about me going to the drive-in – she would give me a blanket if it was cold out and say, “here, so you don’t have to be cold.” I can’t remember the movies that I saw… my attention was focused elsewhere!

Apart from that, the Million Dollar Movie series was the thing that got me wanting to be in the entertainment business. And it would be so prophetic, or perhaps a blessing, that in 1977 I would wind up in the giant MGM Ziegfeld Theater one day with two movie greats, Martin Scorsese and Erwin Winkler. I worked my way through NBC, entering as a page and then eventually becoming their buyer of movies. We would buy the movies in large packages from the studios, and I screened the movies for acquisition. One of those movies was a Scorsese film – New York, New York with Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli. And here I am, this nobody from the Bronx, sitting in a 3000-seat theater screening the extra footage that MGM wanted to sell us of New York, New York with Marty and Mr. Winkler. They turned to me and asked “what do you think?” I said I had to talk to my boss Paul Klein. I told Paul that [the extra footage] didn’t enhance the film, and I can’t recommend it. We aired the film to a 17 or 18-share of audience (which was very low because at the time there was ABC, NBC, and CBS and you wanted to get as close to 30-share). So, it proved me right – it didn’t make sense for us to acquire that.

Later on in my career at NBC, as the Director of Film Acquisitions, I would attend my first (of several) Cannes Film Festival. In the evening, I would attend the in-competition, formal screenings, at the stunning Palais des Festival de Cannes. Formally dressed in a tuxedo, strolling down the famous Red Carpet, celebrities in front and in back, there would be about 200 eager paparazzi on each side. I’d be walking tall, feeling pretty good, thinking: “Wow, this is a long way from ‘The Itch’!”. Then, a reality check from the sidelines: “Don’t waste your film. He’s a nobody.” If it were back in the Bronx, I would have made an appropriate hand gesture. Instead, I smiled and walked tall – there was work to do.