PRERECORDED VISIONARY CREATOR OF VIDEOS FOR RENT LIVING SIMPLE LIFE 25 YEARS AFTER CONCEPT CHANGED U.S.

Byline: Greg Hernandez Staff Writer

NORTHRIDGE - George Atkinson owns a VCR but a quick survey of his modest bungalow on Etiwanda Street offers no clues to the pioneering place that this frail man - now 67 and suffering from severe emphysema - has in the annals of entertainment industry history.

It was 25 years ago this month that Atkinson opened the nation's very first video-rental store in West Los Angeles, creating the template for such companies as the ubiquitous Blockbuster Video chain and laying a crucial part of the foundation for what is now an $8 billion-a-year industry.

``My 15 minutes of fame was coming up with the idea of renting videos,'' he said this week. ``My little mom-and-pop stores were the little acorns from which oaks like Blockbuster grew. But when you're going along, you don't realize you are making history.''

Bo Andersen, president of the Video Software Dealers Association, credits Atkinson as being among the ``visionary entrepreneurs who immediately stepped forward to provide consumers with the option to rent or to purchase movies on video.''

Today, Atkinson's ties to the thriving video industry are limited to renting the occasional movie and reading such weekly industry trade publications as Video Business and Video Store.

The one small reminder of his glory days is a dog-eared paperback copy of the 1988 book ``Fast Forward: Hollywood, The Japanese and the VCR Wars'' by James Lardner. Atkinson's role is detailed in the book considered one of the most-thorough accounts of the evolution of the home-video industry.

``It's in the book,'' Atkinson will say if he is struggling to remember a specific detail.

When the VCR first went on sale in 1975, the major film studios thought they would remain a luxury item and assumed that customers would want to buy their films to own. It was Atkinson who was the first person to see the possibilities for a video-rental market.

In December 1977, he was a low-profile entrepreneur running Home Video Systems, which supplied super-eight movies for parties out of a 600-square-foot store on Wilshire Boulevard. When he found out that one of his suppliers had purchased home-video copies of dozens of movies that 20th Century Fox was offering through an ad in TV Guide, Atkinson said, he ``got a crazy idea.''

Atkinson spent more than $3,000 to buy a VHS and Betamax copy of each of the 50 movies available - including ``Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,'' ``M*A*S*H,'' ``Patton,'' ``The French Connection'' and ``The Sound of Music.'' He changed the name of his business to Video Station and the first video-rental store was born.

``I put them on my shelves and put out an ad in the sports section of the newspaper and the phone started ringing like a Christmas tree (with people) asking, 'What do you have?'''

Atkinson charged $50 for annual membership and $100 for a lifetime membership, which enabled customers to rent the movies for $10 a day. At the time, very few people owned VCRs since they cost more than $1,000.

As a result, the first video-store customers were mainly well-heeled types and celebrities who could easily afford to pay the movie-rental price of $10 a day. In the first few months, Bob Newhart, Johnny Mathis and Steve Martin were among the customers.

``For a while there, we were the only show in town, the first store on the planet,'' he said. ``My gut told me that look, today we might have Mr. Rolls-Royce but tomorrow we will have Mr. Chevrolet. I thought the VCR was eventually going to be under $200 and it happened and it has happened with DVD, the same story.''

Movie titles were hard to come by in those days and sometimes the stock would run low. Atkinson laughs as he remembers spacing out the movies on the shelves to try to give the illusion of more inventory and ``doing everything to cheat and fill up air.''

Atkinson's and the other pioneering mom-and-pop video stores were the ones that waged battle with the studios in the early years. First, over the right to rent videos at all and later over various rental formulas proposed by the studios. Store owners wanted to simply purchase the tapes outright at the beginning and there were various legal challenges and business battles that ensued.

``Of course the studios after that said, 'Oh, this is not fair' and they tried to stop it,'' Atkinson said. ``What the studios didn't understand is that when they put out a product and I own it, I can dispense with it however I wish. I could give it to my neighbor or burn it.''

Atkinson remembers that when ``Saturday Night Fever'' came to home video, Paramount would not sell the title directly to retailers but had a deal to sell it to consumers through the now defunct Fotomat film-processing chain. His solution? He sent employees scurrying to every Fotomat in the area and had them purchase multiple copies of the film, then rented them to his customers.

``It was a revolution,'' he said. ``The fights with the studios went every which way. There was fear at that time like with any new technology, 'Oh, it's going to kill us' instead of, 'Wait a minute, let's embrace this.' They were saying, 'This is the death knell of Hollywood.'''

Atkinson eventually bought the property next door and expanded the store to 3,000 square feet before going on to open five other stores. His Video Station chain went public in 1983 and Atkinson was president of the 600-store Video Station network before he sold his stake a few years later.

Twice divorced and the father of three adult daughters, Atkinson lives simply today. But he recalls the days of some wealth when he and his then-wife had his and hers Mercedes, limousines and a swanky home in Santa Monica.

``You can spend it as fast as you can make it, that's what I learned,'' he said. ``We had a helluva ride while it lasted. I went the whole cliche conspicuous-consumption route.''

Atkinson was born in Shanghai to an English father and a Russian mother and his family spent more than two years in a Japanese prison camp. The family later came to the United States and he went on to graduate from UCLA with a degree in English literature.

He first tried his hand at an acting career, which never amounted to more than bit parts in shows like ``Burke's Law'' and ``Mannix'' and extra work, then spent some time renting out Super Eight film projectors, screens and movies to such places as Holiday Inn, Howard Johnson and Shakey's Pizza and other clients who would show movies as a form of free entertainment.

Atkinson was inducted into the Video Hall of Fame in 1991 and has received other industry accolades, including Video Retailer of the Year and Video Man of the Year.

``Video rentals has created a cultural situation all over the world and I'm credited with being the author,'' he said, shaking his head in disbelief. ``Video rentals have become a way of life. It's like going to the shoe store or the dry cleaners. It's part and parcel of Americana. Twenty-five years ago, no such thing existed. We take it for granted.''

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

(color) George Atkinson, who 25 years ago came up with the concept for renting videos, is still considered a visionary in the field.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer

Box:

MOVIES FOR RENT

SOURCE: Video Software Dealers Association