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GUIDE TO YELLOW SPR INGS  |  2020 – 2021 75 called the police, the mayor and even a Greene County judge. None could enforce the demand, according to the now 58-year-old discrimination law, and the theater was, after 12 years, desegregated. New name, new direction Over the next decade, the theater changed hands a few times: after 16 years at the helm, Denison sold the Little Theatre to its then-manager, former Antioch student Phil Mahan. He, in turn, sold it in 1948 to Cincinnatian Vernon Berg, a former publicity representative for Warner Bros. and Eagle-Lion films. In 1955, the theater was again sold to Louis K. Sher and Ed Shulman of Colum- bus, who already operated several other theaters. With new ownership came a new name: Yellow Springs’ movie house was now known as the Little Art Theatre. The name change reflected the owners’ intention to shift the theater’s focus to art films. Sher and Shulman would go on to form the Art Theatre Guild, a theater chain based in Scottsdale, Ariz., which specialized in foreign and experimental cinema. “It’s the beginning of the ‘coffeehouse culture,’” Fife said. “Antioch students were really starting to patronize the theater.” Through the ’60s, the Little Art would introduce audiences to directors like Akira Kurosawa, John Cas- savetes, Sidney Lumet and Federico Fellini. The theater also continued to screen reruns of mainstream movies from previous decades. The same era saw the theater develop some distinguishing touches. Outside the ticket booth, movies were advertised with posters hand-painted by local artists. Weekly screen - ing schedules included film descriptions written not by studio executives, but by theater employees — per- haps occasionally informed by their own preferences. For example: the musical comedy “Funny Face,” star- ring Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn, was described as “frilly romance,” while Fellini’s surrealist comedy- drama “8½” was called “a bold venture into a strange no-man’s land of dreams and memories loaded with Freudian implications.” Into the 1970s, The Little Art favored films with “coun - terculture and anti-estab - lishment themes,” according to Fife. “We’re seeing anti-war films, early feminist films, political films and more for - eign films,” she said. The theater was begin- ning to feel a pinch — art movies just weren’t making money like they used to. Nevertheless, the film roster continued to favor pictures that eschewed mainstream sensibilities. At the same time, the the - ater gained one of its biggest longtime assets: in 1971, 15-year-old Jenny Cow- perthwaite was hired, begin- ning what would become a decades-long relationship with the theater. PHOTO: AXEL BAHNSEN, ANTIOCHIANA, ANTIOCH COLLEGE Around 150 patrons of the theater evacuated after a fire started in the projection room in September of 1950. The stage show “Hay Fever” ran over the weekend following the fire, and movies resumed the following Monday. This photo, by famed local photographer Axel Bahnsen, now hangs in the theater’s restrooms. PHOTO: ANTIOCHIANA, ANTIOCH COLLEGE Patti Dallas pulled up to the Little Art’s box office on a bike in the 1960s. The show, Agatha Christie’s “Murder She Said,” was advertised on a poster hand-painted by a local artist, as all the theater’s posters were at the time. Little Theatre.” Denison promised to work with the committee, which would eventually change its name to the much-shortened “Antioch Motion Pictures Activities Council.” Little Theatre desegregated Despite community concern, the Little Theatre — which by the early 1940s was leaning hard into WWII-era propaganda films — did good business in Yellow Springs, and villagers found them- selves welcomed night after night. There was a glaring exception to this welcome, however: the very first ad run by the Little Theatre in the News included a jarring line at its end: “We reserve the right to reject anyone’s admission to these shows.” This declaration was most likely directed at Yellow Springs’ Black residents — when the Little Theatre opened in 1930, Black patrons were not admitted at all. Though discrimina- tion in businesses had been prohibited by law since 1884 in Ohio, the law was rarely enforced, and many of Yellow Springs’ businesses were effectively segregated. In 1935, the theater began admitting Black patrons — but only to a roped-off section at the back of the theater. Most Black villagers didn’t patron- ize the theater at all, instead visiting Black-owned theaters in Springfield and Dayton. The Little Theatre remained segregated until the night of Feb. 24, 1942, when the rope finally came down. That night, a group of Black students from Wilber- force University, aided by Antioch College students and faculty, entered the theater, with some refusing to sit behind the roped-off section. Denison demanded that they move behind the rope, and when they refused,