William Dougherty, of Narragansett, showcasing an old style reel projection camera at his Olde Mistick Village Art Cinemas in Mystic, Conn., says his audience should become big enough to support off-beat films. Dougherty doesn’t show commercials during screenings.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / Bob Breidenbach

NARRAGANSETT — William Dougherty’s father once gave him a bit of advice. Don’t go into the family business, he said. Running independent cinemas in a world of theater chains is risky.

Dougherty listened, but only briefly.

In 1980 he enrolled at Roger Williams University, but his heart wasn’t in it. He dreamed of owning a theater.

How could he not?

At 16, he had been an usher at the old Groton Cinema 1 & 2, a tiny two-screen theater where he ripped tickets, cleaned the seats and mopped up in the rest rooms.

His earliest memories were of the movies. When he was 3, his father took him to the Palace theater in Danbury, a regal building with heavy drapes and a plaster screen. At 10, he was working on display ads for films like Billy Jack, the 1971 counterculture film about a Native American Vietnam vet who fights greed and corruption.

Midway through his second year at Roger Williams, Dougherty dropped out and went to work at his father’s movie theater on Granite Street in Westerly.

In the next two decades, he ran cinemas in East Greenwich and Narragansett. He was the last owner of Connecticut’s Montville Drive-In, before it closed forever. In the mid 1990s, he started handling liability claims – a woman in the Bronx said she’d been bitten by a rat – for the National Amusements cinema chain in Dedham, Mass.

He loved the work – he handled claims for 1,100 screens in the United States – but it wasn’t what he dreamed about.

So one day last spring he called the owner of his father’s old cinema in Mystic, Conn.

His father had sold the cinema in 1986 to Interstate Theaters, and the building had changed hands several times after that.

The new owner was a real estate investment firm that owned Olde Mistick Village and other shopping centers.

“It was a cold call,” remembers Dougherty. “I found out the name of the owner and I said, ‘I’d like to buy your theater.’ I heard a gulp at the other end.”

The cinema isn’t for sale, the owner said. But why don’t you make an offer?

Dougherty did and the two parties began to talk. The seller had one stipulation: If Dougherty leased the building; he had to keep Donna Vine on as the cinema’s longtime manager.

Dougherty smiled.

Vine had worked for his father, and had even been the younger Dougherty’s boss.

After a few meetings Dougherty signed a 20-year lease and renamed the three-screen theater the Olde Mistick Village Art Cinemas.

His father, who lives in New Haven, complimented Dougherty on the move, but added, “You’re going to do it alone.” The next day, says Dougherty, his father called with advice.

On most days, the 44-year-old owner drives from Narragansett to Mystic to map out his long-range plan for the cinema. His father’s old employee, Vine, manages the day-to-day operations.

“She’s been here 30 years,” says Dougherty. “When you walk in here you’re walking into her living room. If there’s something out of place, she fixes it.”

At the Narragansett Pier Cinema, Dougherty struggled to create a community cinema, he says. But in Mystic, things are different, he says. He’s mixing commercial films with art-house titles like this week’s The Last King of Scotland.

The film opened nationwide earlier, but closed because of poor ticket sales. On Monday, however, the film’s star, Forest Whitaker, won a Golden Globe award for his portrayal of Idi Amin, Uganda’s brutal dictator in the 1970s.

Over the last half year, Dougherty has screened a number of art-house favorites, including A Scanner Darkly, Death of a President, Little Miss Sunshine, Half Nelson and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Last month, he hosted the North American premier of Drum, a drama about a South African journalist during apartheid starring Taye Diggs. On opening night, the writer, Jason Filardi, a Mystic native, introduced the film and answered questions afterward.

The non-Hollywood films don’t always fill seats, Dougherty admits. He was one of 90 U.S. theater owners who booked the drama about Robert Kennedy’s assassination.

“Nobody came,” he says, adding, “You have to sell art, and you take your hits. Art can be tough.”

Still, many of his viewers – especially those 40 and older – don’t want to see Borat or Batman Returns, he says. Eventually, he says, his audience will become big enough to support the off-beat films.

As a lure, Dougherty only charges seniors $3.50 on Wednesdays. They get a deal at a nearby restaurant, too, part of a joint promotion, he says. On other days, adults pay $8 for a ticket.

Dougherty has made other changes as well.

He jettisoned a bank of gumball machines in front, installed a coffee bar, and ordered premium popcorn butter for patrons. He recently got a deal on supplies so he can serve popcorn in old-fashioned tubs instead of bags.

He refuses to show commercials during screenings, even though companies will pay him to do so. “People aren’t coming to my theater to buy Ford Motor cars or Mountain Dew,” he says.

In many ways, the lanky, head-shaved Dougherty is a throwback to another era, when big theaters with v-shaped marquees jutted from downtown streets.

He admires theater owners like the late Joseph Jarvis, who ran the Jane Pickens Theater in Newport for 26 years. Jarvis would sell tickets at the front booth, and later ask patrons if they liked the movie. He sweated the small stuff.

“It didn’t matter if 200 people or 2 people showed up. He ran it the same way,” Dougherty says.

That attitude is missing from many cineplex owners today, he says. “They leave the lights on during the first few minutes of the movie. The image is out of focus. The lights don’t come on at the end.”

The industry has become too big, says Dougherty, who showed The Wizard of Oz and The Polar Express for free during the winter holidays.

“The moviegoing experience starts when you park the car,” he says. It includes a box of candy and only ends when the credits roll. “I’m passionate about that. The Mystic theater is the best theater in the region. It’s not the prettiest and it’s not the most advanced, but it’s the best.”

How long will Dougherty – in his best suit and tie – greet patrons as they leave the theater?

For at least 10 years, he says.

Maybe then his son, Billy, will take over.

“One day I told him, the first 10 years are mine. The second 10 are yours.”

pdavis@projo.com