The Rebirth of Imagination Theater

On March 31, 2017, Jim French Productions closed its doors marking the end of an era. All production ceased on new episodes of “The Adventures of Harry Nile,” “The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” “Movies For Your Mind” and new CD/Download collections created for sale. This included all live tapings in front of studio audiences at Kirkland Performance Center. Jim French was now 88, in failing health and missing Pat, his wife of 66 years, who had died the previous month. However, the plan to close the business had been solidified back in January partly because of the reasons just mentioned and partly for financial concerns. Taking care of two elderly people who wanted to stay in their home was going to cost a great deal, therefore a choice had to be made. The French’s had been financing the daily operations of JFP out of their own pocket for several years and two such heavy drains on their finances couldn’t be maintained. Any idea of others taking over Imagination Theater to keep it going without a break was not in the cards. The time between the decision to close and the actual closure date was just too short to put an effective plan into place.

Jim French died on December 20, 2017, but in the intervening months between the company closing and his passing he allowed Larry Albert, the voice of Harry Nile, who had worked with him on a daily basis for almost twenty years, to take all the recording equipment, copies of all the shows, records and office equipment to his home. He and John Patrick Lowrie, the voice of Sherlock Holmes, still hoped to restart the company, with Jim’s blessing, and these materials would be essential to that effort. Larry and John immediately started discussing how the company could be resurrected. Could enough money be made to pay for production? Larry was very doubtful. If a new corporation was to be formed, should it be for-profit or non-profit? They had no idea. If they couldn’t make enough money as a business should they start writing grant proposals to generate funding? How did one write grant proposals? Where did you find them? Did John or Larry know enough about any of this to make such a venture successful? Driving them further was the urgent knowledge that with each passing month they were losing contact with their audience and the incredible support that audience had given.

These discussions continued for a little over a year, a year in which Larry and John really didn’t know if there would ever be another adventure for Harry Nile, Sherlock Holmes or any of the other sleuths that had made their name on Imagination Theater. But they knew they had the equipment and, much more importantly, the incredible talent pool to create new shows. They just needed a business plan.

Then, sometime in early 2018, Larry and John were invited by their friend and live sound effects vituoso, Curtis Takahashi, to a meeting with another Seattle audio company for the purpose of exploring the possibility of merging the two companies under an umbrella non-profit corporation. While it was ultimately decided that the two groups’ ways of doing business were far too divergent to make a merger possible, John made an important discovery at the meeting. He deduced, with almost Sherlockian clarity, that what he had thought of as a simple aversion to mathematics on Larry’s part was in fact a phobia to arithmentic so profound that it could only be descibed as all-encompassing and unyielding. This came about as John determined to finally and definitively ascertain how much it cost to produce a single episode of Imagination Theater. Armed with this determination, and the knowledge that Larry had worked in the office every day for almost twenty years, he put the question point blank: “How much does an episode cost to produce?” To which Larry responded, “Well, it’s pretty expensive.” “Yes, but how much?” John persisted, not to be denied. “Well, it’s not cheap,” Larry countered, refusing to be drawn into what he knew was a terrifying swamp of arithmetical thought. At this point John realised what he was up against. Eschewing any further queries that required any kind of computation, he started asking things like, “How much do we pay the writers? How much do we pay the actors? How much do we pay the engineer?” and started adding them all up. Thus relieving Larry of the horror of venturing into a field of human activity (addition) that he knew to be dangerous if not lethal, he then asked a final question. This was the question that would change the trajectory of Imagination Theater forever and transform it from a lost friend into a very vibrant and living entity once more. He asked, “And how much does Kirkland Performance Center pay us?” Watching the light dawn on Larry’s face as he compared the two numbers and realized they were roughly equivalent was a thing of wonder to behold. Kirkland Performance Center, in fact, paid enough to cover the costs of producing the two shows taped at each performance.

This produced a torrent of new questions. They hadn’t been on the air for over a year. They were a broadcast company. Would any of their affiliated radio stations want to start broadcasting their shows again? Would Kirkland Performance Center be interested in restarting their live taping performances four times a year? Larry got on the phone and started getting answers.

The enthusiasm of the affirmatives he received was gratifying and heartening. Everyone wanted Imagination Theater back on the air. This led to the challenges of forming a new corporation, Aural Vision, LLC, a new contract with the actors’ union, SAG/AFTRA, for John and Larry were determined to carry on not only the spirit of Jim French’s work but its high quality as well, and ultimately to raising capital to start the new company.

This last was accomplished with the tireless and dedicated help of their friend, associate and acclaimed writer in her own right, Sable Jak, creator of so many beloved Imagination Theater scripts as well as many other scripts produced elsewhere. A crowd sourcing campaign was set up to begin in April of 2019. John and Larry had no idea how the public would respond. At that point they were producing eight episodes a year at Kirkland, but this was far too few to keep them on the air fifty-two weeks a year. They needed a big boost to get up and running again. They hoped to raise their production level to twelve shows a year, maybe fifteen. It all depended on the response to the crowd funding campaign.

And then the numbers started coming in. Larry and John hoped to raise $12,000 over three months but put the goal at $17,000. By the end of the first week they’d raised over $4,000. And by the time the dust settled in July, over $22,000 had been donated by wonderful, loyal and loving fans all over the country and all over the world.

John and Larry realised that, in order for their business plan to stand a chance, they had to pare down expenses to the bare minimum. Niether John nor Larry would receive any salary from the company for the foreseeable future. They would only be paid for acting or directing in each episode and Larry would receive a fixed fee for post-producing each show. All day to day tasks of running the business would be done gratis. That way a very stringent per-show budget could be maintained. Even their head writer, M. J. Elliott, agreed to a fifty per cent cut in pay.

Finally, none of this would have been possible without the love and support of Jim French’s heirs, who warmly agreed to give Larry the rights to the complete library and all the characters Jim had created over the years, free and clear. Their loving devotion to their parents’ memory has made the dream of Imagination Theater continuing into the future a reality.

Imagination Theater is back!

With special thanks to Kirkland Performance Center and all our friends:

Kirkland Performance Center – http://www.kpcenter.org

KIXI 880AM – https://kixi.com

WTBF 970AM – https://www.wtbfradio.com

Radio Spirits – http://www.radiospirits.com

2 thoughts on “The Rebirth of Imagination Theater

  1. bountybob says:

    Welcome back! I can’t tell you how happy I am that you have kept these series running. I appreciate your dedication to the art and wish you many years of continued success!

    I hope you have a great Christmas!

Comments are closed.