The Ritz Connection

Open Letter
Title:	The Ritz Connection
From:	"V*rn*n S*ndf*rs"
Addressed To:	Australian Star Trek fans
Date(s):	it was printed in March 1977, but may have been written earlier
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Topic:
External Links:
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The Ritz Connection is an open letter by "V*rn*n S*ndf*rs."

Vernon was also the projectionist at a little cinema in North Melbourne, The Ritz. His boss was Bob Johnson.

It was printed in Data 6.1 in March 1977.

NOTE: there are a lot of typos in the letter; while it is unknown if they were the original author's or the typist's, they are very likely the latter's, as even Bob Johnson's name was misspelled, and it uses "Roddenberries" which is was common in other issues of Data.

It is also unknown if the redacted names "V*rn*n S*ndf*rs" and "D**n* M*rch*nt" are the original author's decision, or the typist of this letter.

"Data" and Some Clarification and Distancing

In issue 7.1 of "Data" in mid-June 1977, there was this statement:

Policy Statement: The inclusion of news from the Ritz Cinema and its management is not to be taken as a condoning of its activities, but merely as a news service (of Trekkie activities) for ASTREX members. ASTREX is in no way associated with the Ritz Cinema (or for that matter, with Galaxy Bookshop or Space Age Bookshop, etc). The Committee.

Some Topics Discussed

• Bob Johnson's Star Trek Marathons
• Diane Marchant
• fandom and profit
• Bob Johnson and Vernon Sanders and their empire
• a jab at fannish, small scale "fund-raising tupper-ware style parties"
• Christine Chapel is used as a metaphor for impossibility: "Not even in the liberated future can Nurse Chapel helm the bridge"
• a reference to "self-seeking schemes to manipulate the Roddenberries" and subject them to bizarre indignities...
• spend freely and "cheerfully" and with "good faith" at the Ritz!

The Letter

... I offer the following response to, and digression from, your questing item on Marathon management.

Having endured Doomsday Machine and Who Mourns For Apollo on b&w television, I said goodbye to Star Trek forever, until the BBC's Best of Star Trek re-runs straightened me out and a 16mm print of Mirror Mirror (banned from BBC and other TV) sent me Where No Man Has Gone Before. 16mm film can be brought if we want it desperately, and I did. When I met the Ritz cinema, it too was acquiring episodes surplus to TV distribution requirements and under the guidance of Melbourne's ill-fated Fantasy Film Society.

The future of the Marathon idea depended on the success or failure of an individual screening of Patterns of Force, and happily, attendance were:

Patterns of Force October 1976 - 60

Marathon 1 November 1976 - 250

Marathon 2 January 1977 - 400

this latter figure being the capacity of a truly independent cinema where audiences usually average 25 or so.

The Ritz and Star Trek congratulated each other. This full house happened during a S.T. television run where fans could watch it in colour at no cost. Perhaps they knew that only inocuous [sic] episodes can screen at 7.30 p.m. and that there were others more appropriate to midnight. The Ritz and D**n* M*rch*nt felt that S.T. was too big to be contained within the cinema and began planning for the Hilton and a convention starring Gene Roddenberry, a personal friend oi D**n* to whom he had turned over the personal appearance issue. Plans for this had long languished for lack of funds and organising ability.

The Ritz had no money but it did have S.T. prints which could generate it quickly and stem the liklihood [sic] of a convention within Gene's lifetime. We designed a letterhead and wrote to America on it. And S.T. marathon visited Sydney. We ran out of episodes. We cut the episode content of the marathons back from six to five and discovered, and bought, a print of Return to Tomorrow in Africa. When print owners knew what we wanted, the prices began to climb. So did our admission prices, for our S.T. viewing club must pay its way and also provide for the future.

For the rest of this year, your admission money is best invested in more episodes which will appreciate, and to this end the Ritz is the time of writing, boarding a plane to Star Trek Land to secure Tribbles, Cats Paw and enough other episodes to put us in a position independent of, if not superior to television. Star Trek-wise as we say in the unsubsidised side of show-biz. Bob can match the movie maffia [sic] at their own game and will screen what others will not or dare not. More, he has the gambler's vision which has already done much already done much for S.T. in this country. We ought each support him and discipline ourselves against helping to spread nonsense about "print quality."

For with the passing of time, S.T. has already started to die, as rare film does. Surplus "release" prints are either gone to private collectors elsewhere, or cost hundreds of dollars each. At least 75% of our episodes are these vanishing originals. Alas, Naked Time has not withstood the battering that dozens of your projectors gave it.

But it still won a round of applause at the Sydney Uni last Easter, and I never charge rental on it anyway. Please do not ask for a lend of it now, as I will be in South Africa searching, like H.G. Well's [sic] Door-in-the-War character for the elusive but alluring Mirror Mirror.

So do part with your ticket money cheerfully and in good faith. Don't kling-on to your dollars. You'd pay as much to see "Rocky" in town and that's not even S.T. No other organisation gives you even the opportunity to moan about S.T. prices and prints.

And there is every possibility we know what we're doing. If we can do it unnobbled by the jealousies which traditionally retard specialist clubs then we, and you and S.T. (which is greater than both of us) will triumph equally.

Wishing won't make it so. Federal funding and industry co-operation style parties are out of the question. Fund-raising tupper-ware style parties are an indulgence. Self-seeking schemes to manipulate the Roddenberries and subject them to bizare [sic] indignaties [sic] are doomed. Not even in the liberated future can Nurse Chapel helm the bridge.

Bob Johnston is not a Trekkie. Instead, he is the captain of his own true-life enterprise, which he can pilot our way. And if Bob makes a bob eventually, it will be the most fitting reward for his capital speculation and business adventures. -- V*rn*n S*ndf*rs