Bill Raney, the founder and longtime owner of the beloved Nickelodeon Theater, died last week at 90, leaving behind a legacy that is deep in the cultural DNA of Santa Cruz. For more than three decades, he brought independent, foreign and classic films that helped form Santa Cruz culture.
When Raney and his first wife, JoAnne Walker Raney, opened the Nickelodeon in 1968, Santa Cruz was being shaped by the Summer of Love. The “Nick” culturally helped inform that ethos, as the town turned from a quiet beach community into something more expansive and revolutionary. The Nickelodeon arrived at a time when most theaters were showing the same Hollywood fare, as the Nick screened Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut and Kurosawa. It offered stories that felt urgent, intimate and often radical; the full-blown Rocky Horror Picture Show experience went on for years. For generations of UCSC students and locals the Nickelodeon was a gathering place for exploring the world beyond the mainstream.
Born in Grand Forks, ND, Raney’s life, like the films he loved, contained beauty and tragedy. Shortly after opening the theater, JoAnne died of an aneurysm. The couple had recently adopted a son, Zerky, who also died the following year. Bill’s son Zachary Raney says those losses shaped him deeply.
“There was a lot of loss. Zerky passed in ‘70, and then it was just me and him. He was so consistent and so caring and loving all the way through. I really don’t know how he was able to stay so strong through all of that.”
Bill remarried and continued building Santa Cruz film culture, expanded programming and eventually opened additional venues. Zach said, “My dad held his arms open for everyone, both in our home and at his second home, the Nick. The doors were open for the whole community. My dad embraced everyone.”
Not a loud man, nor one to chase celebrity, Raney’s contribution was steady, patient and rooted in the belief that if you give people access to art, they will grow, says his son, Zach. Even after he sold the theater in 1997, the ethos he created continued to ripple outward, influencing local festivals, the Del Mar Theatre’s revival, and the ongoing hunger for film as a community experience.
The Nickelodeon closed during the pandemic, a loss that still feels raw to longtime residents. Could the Nick come back? Zach Raney says, “I’m not going to say the Nick is going to open again, but there is some chatter. There are some structural things that have to happen in the building, but there is a dream to get it open.”
Bill Raney is survived by Nancy Raney, Zachary Raney, Julie Atkinson-Harrington, and Kevin Atkinson. In later years, Bill traveled widely and wrote about his experiences in Letters to Zerky, but seen from Santa Cruz, his greatest journey may have been the one he invited the rest of us on. In a moment when the world feels fractured and smaller, his gift feels larger than ever. Bill Raney helped Santa Cruz see a bigger world and helped us all open our arms wider.
