SPOTLIGHT : FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD : Soundproof Cinema Rooms Let Tots Wail All They Want

You know it all too well: that high-pitched, nails-on-the-blackboard wail that always-- always-- appears during a pivotal point in the action or in the most tender of intimate moments.

As the sound rises, all the people in the movie theater clench their teeth a bit tighter, shut their eyes and utter a silent plea: “Get that cranky kid out of here.”

And the poor parent holding the kid hears that plea with a movie-lover’s ears and dutifully whisks the child out--missing two or three epic scenes until Junior calms down.

Nancy Seffron didn’t have to worry about any of that when she recently went to see a matinee showing of “A Walk in the Clouds” with her 3-month-old son, Tommy. Tommy could have pitched the fit of his life and no one in the packed theater would have been the wiser. Because between Tommy and cinema-going disaster was a thick, sound-absorbing wall and two sealed panes of soundproof glass: a “crying room.”

The room is one of two installed in Edwards’ Rancho Niguel 8 Cinema, 25471 Rancho Niguel Road in Laguna Niguel (see Pullout Movie Guide, Page 14). Flush with the wall in the back corner of each of the multiplex’s two large cinemas, the rooms are situated just beyond and slightly above the cinemas’ back row of steeply raked, stadium-style seats. Users’ vision, roughly level with the screen, is unobstructed by viewers seated in the main theater.

The rooms each contain four padded seats and are fitted with stereo speakers and lights that brighten and dim along with the lights in the theater outside the windows.

The rooms probably are unique in Orange County, said Edwards Theatres Circuit chairman and founder Jim Edwards Sr., but they’re by no means a recent innovation.

“We [instituted] the crying room about 60 years ago,” said Edwards. “We’d been in business about four or five years at that time, in the mid-’30s, and we felt that the crying room would be a great idea in order to give families the opportunity to see a picture with a 2-month-old baby or a small child without disturbing the entertainment of other people.

“We did quite a few of them in our theaters then,” Edwards said, citing the defunct Garvey and Ritz theaters and the rebuilt Alhambra, all in the San Gabriel Valley. “They were in a rear corner of the auditorium, they were glassed in, and they had a changing table and a loudspeaker.”

The rooms got a lot of use, said Edwards. During and after World War II, much disposable income, often from young parents, went for movie tickets. And Junior often came along.

“When the war came and all building stopped--everything went into the war effort--there were no new theaters at that time,” he said. “And the only crying rooms around were the ones we’d built. Business got so good in wartime. Everybody was working, and both husbands and wives had jobs. All you had to do in theaters was open the doors and jump out of the way.”

Crying rooms in cinemas fell into disuse not long after the end of the war, said Edwards.

“They became a place for the ushers to go,” he said. “People forgot all about them.”

The multiplex theater became the theater owner’s Holy Grail, said Edwards, and every usable foot of space in every theater was taken up by seats to accommodate paying patrons. Crying rooms were simply not cost-effective.

“I think people didn’t have them because the same space could accommodate about 10 or 12 chairs instead of the four or five in the crying room,” he said. “And you might want to make room for a changing table, and the room has to pretty much be soundproofed, which is costly.”

Too costly, or inconvenient, for live theater and concert halls as well. None of those large performing arts venues in and around Orange County have, or are planning to install, crying rooms.

“Crying rooms weren’t worked into our architectural plans at all,” said Walter Morlock, a spokesman for the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. “I imagine it would take up a lot of space, and we have only one event a night, so it wouldn’t be as economical as it would be in a movie theater.”

At both the Irvine Barclay Theatre and South Coast Repertory Theatre, representatives said that parents are discouraged from bringing young children and infants to performances other than those designed for families.

“Part of the experience of live theater is the live performance,” said Karen Drews, a spokesperson for the Irvine Barclay. “A movie theater is a little different. There, it’s more like watching television. People can be a little more distracted.”

At the Orange County Performing Arts Center, policy diminishes the need for a crying room. Every person in the audience must hold a ticket, and any children attending a performance must be old enough to occupy their own seats, said center spokesman Greg Patterson. Parents are not allowed to hold children in their arms during a performance, he said.

Other theater chains in Orange County have not invested in crying rooms, and representatives of United Artists Theaters and AMC Theaters said none were planned. But all, including Edwards, said the cost of a ticket is routinely refunded to parents if their child cries during a film and they must leave as a result.

Many theaters offer incentives apart from crying rooms to attract children, and parents with children. AMC Theaters’ MainPlace Six in Santa Ana and Fullerton 10 offer summer matinees through Sept. 1, featuring G- and PG-rated films exclusively, with ticket prices of 75 cents for both adults and children, said company spokeswoman Prudence Baird.

Also, the Seal Beach Super Saver Cinema, an independent multiplex, just ended a summer promotion of special showings for children on Tuesday mornings. The featured films were chosen by parents who returned flyers the theater distributed at local day camps and at the theater itself, said theater manager Lynn Galloia.

For Seffron and her son, the screening of “A Walk in the Clouds” was their first experience with a crying room, and Seffron was pleasantly surprised.

“It’s nice to be able to get out and take the baby with you if you have no other choice,” said Seffron, who lives in San Diego but was in Laguna Niguel visiting her friend Tekla Brantley. “It’s nice to be able to separate yourself from the rest of the audience.”

Said Brantley: “You don’t have to worry about people giving you dirty looks when the baby cries. And if the windows are clean, you actually forget you’re sitting in a room.

“I have a lot of friends who are moms, and they’re really happy this is here. You don’t have to leave and miss a part of the movie when the baby cries. And the baby usually cries in the best part.”

Edwards says he believes the latest baby boom is a good excuse to resurrect the crying room. Though the crying rooms at the Rancho Niguel Cinema had been installed by Mann Theatres, from whom Edwards bought the complex in 1991, Edwards said he plans to include eight in his company’s sprawling 21-theater complex near the Irvine Spectrum, which he said will probably open around Thanksgiving. Remodeling existing theaters, however, “is just too difficult,” he said.

“We’ve had good feedback on the two we have,” said Edwards. “We’ve had people who particularly ask for a crying room. And the goodwill offsets the cost, I think. And not just the goodwill of the parents, but of the patrons who aren’t disturbed by crying babies.

“I think the time is right. My wife and I came home recently from Idaho, and I was amazed at the number of young families and young babies and strollers on the plane and at the airport in Spokane and Seattle and here. I didn’t know there were that many young families out there.”