By Elizabeth Stieber
Times Staff Writer
Ed Weiss, the general manager of Movies Unlimited, recently received an e-mail from one of his mail-order customers.
The customer had ordered a particular Lawrence Welk Show episode for his father from Movies Unlimited and was e-mailing a letter of gratitude.
“It got here so quickly,” the letter writer said of the Welk tape. “I scored major points in the Father’s Day game.”
Having established its roots in Northeast Philadelphia well over two decades ago, Movies Unlimited has evolved into a film fan’s dream — and a solid mail-order operation — where just about any title, no matter how obscure, can be unearthed.
“We’re offering what you normally couldn’t find,” Weiss said. “You see things here that you wouldn’t find anywhere else.”
The vast selection, from epic movie hits to episodes of classic TV shows, gives Movies Unlimited an inventory quite different from any independent or chain video-rental store, Weiss said.
“We’re more varied than any other place on the planet,” he insisted.
This has been a big year for the business. Movies Unlimited is celebrating the 25th anniversary of where it all began — at 6736 Castor Ave. in Oxford Circle, in a store that blossomed like so many others in the late ’70s that sought to cash in on the new movie-rental craze.
However, as competition intensified and chain operations proved too big to conquer, the gold rush fizzled for many neighborhood shops. But the Movies Unlimited store on Castor Avenue still rolls along, even touting itself as the country’s oldest continually operating video store.
The store, says Movies Unlimited founder Jerry Frebowitz, has “withstood it all,” from the “gimmicks” of competing outlets to at one time having 17 video-rental stores within walking distance of the Oxford Circle location.
The store houses more than 20,000 videos. These days, with its specialty in mail-order sales — the anniversary edition of the Movies Unlimited Video Catalog is 800 pages — the operation has a separate warehouse to accommodate 400,000 videos.
Frebowitz, who also has a store in Broomall, relies on knowledgeable and longtime staffers like Weiss, who has been with Movies Unlimited since the beginning.
The 64-year-old Frebowitz still recalls spending Sundays going to the movies near his home while growing up in the Logan section of the city. His tastes in films vary greatly — his favorites include the holiday classic It’s a Wonderful Life and the Mel Brooks comedies Blazing Saddles and The Producers — and did much to establish the course of his livelihood.
Before starting Movies Unlimited, Frebowitz collected Super 8 films part time while operating a store that sold jewelry and gifts in the city’s Tioga section. As an avid collector, he saw potential in selling Super 8 movies.
In 1975, after his wife attempted — and eventually abandoned — a plan to establish her own mail-order business selling Super 8’s, Frebowitz decided to give it a try.
He started the business on Castor Avenue in Oxford Circle, he said, because property was affordable in the Northeast and there were few businesses along that stretch of the avenue.
At the time, Frebowitz recalled, there wasn’t much selection available, and the films weren’t cheap. The reels, which he purchased from film companies like MCA, Columbia and Disney, cost up to $300. But he still was able to sell them to other collectors.
Then, in 1977, Frebowitz read a Bloomingdale’s ad in the New York Times that offered movies in the Beta videocassette format for around $40. Since he’d never heard of Beta, Frebowitz soon was on a train to New York City.
“I wanted to know how they could get a whole movie on that little thing,” he said.
When his customers started to ask about Beta movies, Frebowitz decided to expand his stock to include them. He began selling the videos in the fall of 1977, buying them from a local distributor, the Magnetic Video Corp., a precursor to Twentieth-Century Fox Video.
With little competition from other businesses, his store flourished. Though it cost a customer up to $100 to own a copy of a movie issued by a film company, Frebowitz realized that he could profit as well by renting them to the public.
Just a few years later, VHS arrived on the scene and soon became the video format of choice. A VHS tape could be played in a variety of brand-name videocassette players, unlike Beta, which could be viewed only in players specifically formatted for it.
As a businessman, Frebowitz found it rather expensive to stock movies in Beta and VHS formats. The flagging demand for Beta films led to their demise in 1988, he explained.
Throughout the years, Frebowitz has expanded his Castor Avenue store, set up his mail-order warehouse at 3015 Darnell Road in Normandy, and watched movie-rental stores come and go.
In fact, some fledgling entrepreneurs — impressed by the staying power of Movies Unlimited as competition grew stronger — sought his advice on opening a new store, Frebowitz recalled.
“There were so many lines of people in here, everybody wanted to be in the business,” he said.
The ongoing evolution of film formats, of course, has introduced the era of DVD. When it emerged about five years ago, Frebowitz said, DVD wasn’t very popular. One reason, he suggested, was the packaging.
“They were sold in CD jewel cases. You couldn’t tell the difference between a DVD and a CD,” he said.
But DVD has gained much momentum, and now VHS is the endangered species. But that’s the way it works. Frebowitz figures he’ll just adapt to any format change that comes along.
“If they ever put movies on a shoestring,” he said, “that’s what I’ll sell.”
Over the past 25 years, Frebowitz has watched customers’ tastes and buying habits change rather dramatically.
When he started selling and renting videos, people weren’t willing to select a movie they’d never heard of, he said.
“Today, people are much more liberal,” Frebowitz said. “They’re apt to give a movie a chance.”
It helps, he explained, that the video boxes have much more information on the back, including a synopsis of the movie and an overview of the actors’ better films.
“I’m glad it turned out the way it did,” he said of the progression of the video business. “Nobody would have rented a foreign film in the old days.” ••
Reporter Elizabeth Stieber can be reached at 215-354-3036 or estieber@phillynews.com