Atlanta was not always a movie town. In fact, the city’s relationship to movies has often been fraught and divisive. Cinema has the power to show us both who we are and who we could be — and the tension between these two has historically shaken the traditionalists. George Lefont, Atlanta’s most legendary movie theatre proprietor who recently passed away at age 85, understood this conflict between old and new and leaned into it to push the cultural boundaries of Atlanta.
Through his work as owner of the Lefont chain of theaters, he did more than show great films — Lefont changed the way Atlantans looked at movies. He made us love going to the movies and helped make Atlanta the movie town it is today.
Lefont was an outsider — neither Southerner nor movie business insider — which meant he was not burdened by traditions. A native of San Francisco and a graduate of Berkeley with a degree in business, Lefont moved to Atlanta in 1964 to take a job as a management consultant. In 1976, during a trip to Manhattan, he went to see the Humphrey Bogart film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and decided owning movie theaters was the business for him. Soon after, he renovated a theater at the Peachtree Battle shopping center and opened it as The Silver Screen, Atlanta’s first repertory movie theater focused on classic films.
In the late 1960s through the 1970s, Atlanta had become a hotbed for anti-obscenity efforts and censorship, led by a series of overzealous Fulton County Solicitors. In 1969, before Lefont was a theater owner, the solicitor’s office infamously raided a screening of Andy Warhol’s film Lonesome Cowboys in a bid to target and arrest known homosexuals; this event became known as The Stonewall of the South. In the following years, the Fulton County Solicitor’s office, led by Hinson McAuliffe, sought to rid the supposedly progressive Atlanta of anything considered obscene: porn stores, x-rated movie theaters and even drugstores that dared to sell Playboy or Penthouse.
Perhaps it was his outsider status that propelled Lefont to show films that caused people in Atlanta to raise their eyebrows. In 1982, he fought to bring the erotic historic drama Caligula to Atlanta. The film, produced by founder of Penthouse Bob Guccione, intended to accurately portray the decadence of the Roman Empire with high production values and big-name actors. Caligula premiered in Rome, and many people thought it would never be screened in the United States. However, Lefont was obsessed with bringing it to Atlanta.
Robert Sherer, a professor of fine art at Kennesaw State University, was hired by Lefont in the late 1970s, and describes working at The Silver Screen while attending Atlanta College of Art as some of the best years of his life. Sherer narrowly missed being arrested by Fulton County deputies when they raided a screening of Caligula.
“I was outside changing the marquee sign when the raid happened. It took about an hour to change the names of the movies, and, when I went back inside, I saw that the theater had been shut down,” he said. “With how the law was written, the manager of the theater, the person that sold the tickets and the projectionist could all be arrested and charged with obscenity.”
According to Sherer, Lefont went to court against McAullife’s obscenity charges. Whereas most business owners raided by the Solicitor’s office lost their livelihood, Lefont stood his ground. He brought into the courtroom several expert witnesses, including high-level academics, who testified that Caligula was historically accurate in its portrayal of ancient Rome’s decadence. Lefont won the case, and Caligula went back to his theaters. Lefont ended up going another round against McAullife in court with The Story of O — victorious then as well.
Sherer cites these moments as turning points for Atlanta culture. “This was one of the first signs that the right-wing censorship movement wouldn’t always win. Afterward, George called Caligula one of the safest films to show in the United States. Nobody would have the nerve to bust it.”
Despite the sensational nature of these court cases, Lefont’s true legacy is in opening cinema to more audiences. Sherer said he would put on festivals of Spanish films, movies from India and other culturally significant films that were hard to access in the pre-VHS days. “These festivals would sell out because the corresponding communities in Atlanta were finally seeing their culture on the screen,” said Sherer.
George Lefont’s passion for films was contagious, and he influenced an entire generation of young Atlanta media lovers. Millie De Chirico, a film programmer, writer and podcast host, mentioned Lefont theaters as having a profound impact on her love of cinema.
“Growing up in and around Atlanta, the Lefont theaters were of huge importance to me. They were the places you could reliably go to see anything indie, foreign, arthouse or cult. I loved that they always felt very curatorial, like someone had actually programmed the movies there and put thought into it,” she said.
“They reminded me of somewhere like Film Forum in New York — a cozy place where you could see classic films alongside a new documentary that wasn’t playing at the multiplex. Centers of culture in the city, which I both needed and appreciated. He definitely gave young people like me who were trying to access the non-mainstream, multiplex stuff a shelter, and I’ll always be very grateful for that.”
It’s not just the kind of films, but the places for them that remain even today that reflect Lefont’s legacy and lasting impact. Even though metro Atlanta has a smaller number of arthouse, historic or locally-owned cinemas compared to other cities, that number would be even smaller if not for Lefont. He took chances on places when no others would. This includes three theaters that are still in business and locally owned: Plaza Theatre and Tara in Atlanta, along with what is now The Springs Cinema & Taphouse in Sandy Springs.
“Either he took a chance and opened new places when perhaps others would’ve been uncertain if a cinema there would work,” said Christopher Escobar, current owner of the Plaza and Tara Theatres, “or he took chances on places that existed but were struggling and on the verge of closing forever. He turned them around, beating the odds and keeping them open, making way eventually for new owners to reinvigorate them with new life.”
At its height, the Lefont chain consisted of nine theaters in metro Atlanta. This was a unique time because it offered different communities within the city their own movie house, as opposed to having to drive long ways on the interstate to a corporate megaplex.
De Chirico agreed. “I think the best part about the Lefont theaters in their heyday was that they were scattered around all the different Atlanta neighborhoods, so there was always one you could access,” she said. “The Screening Room in Lindbergh, Lefont Toco Hills, Garden Hills in Buckhead – – I really miss that about Atlanta, especially now as traffic is a huge consideration about where you go. Having a nice repertory theater down the street from where you live is such a beautiful thing!”
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Matthew Terrell is an assistant professor of media and entertainment in the School of Communications at Kennesaw State University.
