[5][6] Over decades, the events at the O'Farrell Theatre have been as much about the brothers' stubborn persistence in applying legal resources to avoid prosecution by San Francisco's vice squad and district attorney, as they were about their unique innovations for the erotic entertainment industry.

[11] With the conversion of an old Pontiac automobile dealership on O'Farrell and Polk streets, they built a makeshift soundstage for filming and seating for a movie theater to provide them with that opportunity.

[13] But just three weeks after the theater opened, plain-clothed police officers walked in and arrested 25 year-old James Mitchell – still a film student at San Francisco State University – for production and exhibition of obscene material.

[14] Not easily deterred, the brothers vowed during a press conference to fight back, and hired a young but fierce lawyer named Michael John Kennedy to defend them against the obscenity charges.

[15] Kennedy had already started to build a national reputation as a resourceful political activist, and would later represent Timothy Leary, Bernardine Dohrn, Cesar Chavez, and Huey Newton.

[17] A little more than a year later when the first case made its way to court, the trial became a local media circus as a flamboyant and wisecracking Kennedy irritated the district attorney while he challenged the legal definition of obscenity.

[23] Behind the Green Door enjoyed a national marketing coup when it was revealed that its wholesome-looking 19 year-old star, Marilyn Chambers, was the same model who appeared holding a baby on Ivory Snow detergent boxes.

[28] In the early 1970s, the theater would stop its adult features at midnight on a couple nights a week, and then re-open as The People's Nickelodeon, along with a five-cent admission charge and free popcorn.

[29][30] The midnight shows were a montage of old films, and live vaudeville-style entertainment provided by the Nickelettes, a chorus line of counter-culture women who would do spunky song-and-dance routines.

[31][32] The audience of young hippies and a few oldsters would see movies such as Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, Yellow Submarine or other counter-culture favorites, while occasionally engaging in drinking, marijuana, and general carousing.

[33][34] Realizing that they needed a new business model for the O'Farrell Theatre, the Mitchell brothers sent manager Vincent Stanich around the country to explore "customer-contact" shows in bars and strip clubs.

[44] The Mitchells hired new dancers as fast as they could to keep up with demand, and with the lap dance they pioneered a strip club innovation which gained them international notoriety and generated more money than their current film business.

[45] Though the O'Farrell Theatre had successfully fought prosecution in the 1970s concerning obscenity in its films, during the 1980s it would face a new kind of threat from the courts about whether customer-contact could be legal during live shows, and if strippers had the right to give lap dances.

As a city supervisor Feinstein had been a strident anti-porn voice, and then as mayor she made it clear to her district attorney that he should be aggressive on obscenity and porn cases.

[47] In July 1980, less than a year after Feinstein had been elected mayor, fifteen police officers raided the O'Farrell Theatre and arrested fourteen patrons, six performers, and seven employees for charges related to prostitution.

[54] A final attempt was made to prosecute the O'Farrell under the Feinstein administration in February 1985, when the Cine-Stage was raided by a dozen police officers during a headlining appearance by adult film star Marilyn Chambers.

[62] As of 2006, Jeff Armstrong, its longtime business manager, continued running the O'Farrell; legal representation is provided by former San Francisco Supervisor and two-term District Attorney Terence Hallinan.

Two of them, Ellen Vickery and Jennifer Bryce, filed a class-action lawsuit against DGI (the plaintiffs would ultimately number more than 500), arguing that the O'Farrell's reclassification of the dancers as independent contractors was unlawful, and that they were owed back wages as well as a refund of the stage fees.

[69][70][71] Similar suits challenging independent contractor status have since been filed against numerous other strip clubs, and labor commissions as well as courts have mostly ruled in favor of dancers and awarded past wages and stage fee reimbursements.

[63] The theatre is located in the northwest part of the Tenderloin District, at the corner of Polk and O'Farrell street, a few doors down from the Great American Music Hall.

Notable visitors, while the murals were in progress, included: Melvin Belli, Marilyn Chambers, Paul Kantner, Toshiro Mifune, Huey P. Newton, Hunter S. Thompson, and Edy Williams.