By Jae-Ha Kim
Hollywood Reporter
March 12, 2007
For almost everyone in the entertainment business, awards season culminated with the Oscar ceremony late last month. But for J. Wayne Anderson and Mary Ann Anderson, 2007’s ShoWesters of the Year, the festivities are only just beginning. “ShoWest is the industry’s biggest show,” R/C Theatres chairman J. Wayne Anderson says. “In our sector, it’s the most prestigious award to receive. It’s our Oscars.”
Adds Mary Ann Anderson, J. Wayne’s wife and vp and executive director of the National Association of Theatre Owners: “I feel as if ShoWest and I have grown up together in this business. So, when I hear someone mention ShoWest, I get warm, fuzzy feelings. To me, it’s a celebration of family and friends getting together.”
Although the pair is all business at the office — they’re being honored for their careerlong dedication to the exhibition industry — they say that they take care not to allow work life to create problems at home.
“We have to do that,” J. Wayne Anderson says. “It would be too easy to talk nonstop about what went on at the office, but both Mary Ann and I have come to realize that while work is wonderful and we both are grateful for our careers, having a personal life is important.”
Mary Ann Anderson’s day starts particularly early, due to her five-hour round-trip commute to work from their home in Westminster, MD., to her office in Washington, D.C. Her alarm goes off at 3:50 a.m. in the morning, and that’s when J. Wayne Anderson gets out of bed and starts the coffee percolating.
“We lead this beautiful, bucolic life in western Maryland, but the commute can be challenging,” Mary Ann Anderson says. “Wayne does everything to make my morning as easy as possible.”
Both have stories about how the confusion about NATO and that other NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) have benefited them. “We get confused with that other NATO all the time,” Mary Ann Anderson says, laughing. “But if I’m ever in a situation where I need a senator to return my call right away, I leave a message asking him to call Mary Ann from NATO. They always call immediately. I’m not sure they’d do that if I said I was from the National Association of Theatre Owners.”
J. Wayne Anderson — who was instrumental in organizing demonstrations of digital cinema for both ShoWest and NATO — recalls running into former Secretary of State Colin Powell at the airport while he was wearing a NATO jacket. “I saw him looking at me, and then he said, ‘I’m not familiar with you,'” he says. “I said, ‘Oh, general, this is the other NATO,’ and I explained to him what the organization was about. He smiled and said, ‘Well, heck, that would be better for me to belong to.'”
While J. Wayne Anderson plans to retire next year, he says 2007 will always be special. “It’s been quite a year,” he says. “Mary Ann and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary on Valentine’s Day, I turned 60 a few days later and now, we’re being honored as the ShoWesters of the Year. We’re thrilled at how things are going.”
