'Gimme Shelter' Ends in Assault Of Local Theater Ticket Taker

Five unidentified youths early Sunday morning assaulted three Harvard Square Theater employees who attempted to stop them from stealing a sign in the theater's lobby, five minutes after the end of a midnight showing of the Rolling Stone's film, "Gimme Shelter."

James B. Hill of Somerville, a ticket taker at the theater, has filed charges of assault and battery with the Cambridge Police as a result of the incident.

In a Cambridge Police night report Hill stated that he observed five white males between 17 and twenty years of age stealing a sign from the front of the theater. When he attempted to stop them they began to assault him, and his fellow workers who came to his assistance, the report added.

When the Whip Comes Down

One eyewitness speculated that the film "Gimme Shelter" had incited the youths. "Gimme Shelter" is a documentary of the Stones 1969 tour, which ended tragically at Altamount near San Francisco. During that concert, a man was fatally stabbed by Hell's Angels policing the stage area.

"Every time the Hell's Angels did something those guys would yell," the eyewitness said.

"When the black was stabbed by the Hell's Angel at the end of the movie, they screamed 'Kill the nigger,' the eyewitness added.

After Hill accosted the youths, one of the youths turned to him and said, "You fucking want to fight?"

Hill replied no and asked the assailant to leave. The youth threw a flashlight at Hill, hitting him in the face. The youth continued his assault picking up a standing ashtray and hurling it in the direction of the theater employee's head.

The other youths joined the assault, knocking one theater employee to the ground, and kicking him in the face.

The eyewitness, who observed the incident through the window of the doors separating the lobby from the rest of the theater, said that one of the youths was about to drop a heavy metal door stop on the head of the prostrate theater employee, if he had not been distracted by someone exiting the theater.

During the entire incident none of the theater employees retaliated.

When the assailents had left the theater, one of the employees involved in the incident reportedly staggered through the lobby dizzy from a blow to the head saying, "Someone call the police."

Before They Make Me Run

The Cambridge Police arrived approximately five minutes after the beginning of the incident, but the assailants had escaped.

"After seeing Mick Jagger's reaction to the stabbing of a black man by a Hell's Angel, and feeling my own reaction to the assault, it made you wonder about the cult impact and force of the film," Sarah McPhee '82, another eyewitness to the incident said.