More about THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW

The American premiere of The Rocky Horror Picture Show was at the Westwood Theater in Los Angeles, in late September of 1975. Even though it played in a few test market cities, the film was considered a failure, so it did not get a wide release and was shelved.

Then, on April Fools’ Day, 1976, Tim Deegan, a young advertising executive at 20th Century Fox, persuaded Bill Quigley of the Walter Reade Organization to replace the midnight show at the Waverly Theater with THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. The Waverly had already been a mecca for midnight movies and had had two very successful runs, of El Topo and Night of The Living Dead.

The manager of the Waverly, Denise Borden, was fascinated with the film and she began her own personal hype campaign. She would play the record album of the RHPS sound track before the showing of the film to warm up the audience, and a party atmosphere was generated as a result. The audiences naturally began to respond, by booing the villain and cheering the heroes. This spawned a whole group of regulars who became the pioneers of audience participation including Bill O’Brien, the first person to dress as Dr. Frank-N-Furter; Lori Davis, who wrote the Ten Commandments of ROCKY HORROR; and Louis Farese, a kindergarten teacher from Staten Island, who felt compelled to speak to the screen. He is credited as the first person to yell lines at the movie. Then, in late September, a few people came dressed as characters from the movie.

Bill O’Brien and a few of the regulars began to lip-sync the record that is played before the movie in front of the audience, which developed into a mini-floor show before the movie. This was the birth of the :shadow cast.”