Joyce Brothers was also hosted at the Little Theatre. Amid a general decline in the Times Square neighborhood, the Little Theatre became vacant by mid-1972. The venue stood vacant for six months in 1973, reopening in September as a venue for gay pornographic films. Moore, who claimed he did not know that his tenants were pornographic film exhibitors, quickly halted the film screenings after other theatrical owners protested. In May 1974, Westinghouse Broadcasting acquired the Little Theatre from Moore's company, after Moore defaulted on a mortgage that had been placed on the theater building. Broadway revival 1974 to 1989 The Little Theatre returned to legitimate productions a second time in 1974, when Ray Aranha's My Sister, My Sister opened there. Because of the Little's small size, the Actors' Equity Association gave the theater a special designation, which exempted the theater from some of Actors' Equity's strict rules regarding profits. This was followed in 1975 by the short-lived musical Man on the Moon and the play Lamppost Reunion, as well as in 1976 by a six-month run of The Runner Stumbles. The next hit at the theater was Albert Innaurato's play Gemini, which transferred from off Broadway in 1977 and ran for 1,819 performances over the next four years. Westinghouse subsequently sold the theater, but sources dissent on when the sale occurred. According to Ken Bloom and The New York Times, Martin Markinson and Donald Tick bought the theater from Westinghouse in 1979 for $800,000. However, media sources from March 1980 said that the theater had been sold to Ashton Springer for $800,000. Springer's group, known as the Little Theater Group, planned to spend $400,000 to renovate the theater. The firm Adcadesign subsequently renovated the theater in 1981. In the early 1980s, the Little saw three short runs: Ned and Jack in 1981, as well as The Curse of an Aching Heart and Solomon's Child in 1982. The theater's next hit came in June 1982 when Harvey Fierstein's play Torch Song Trilogy opened; it ran for three years. The Little Theatre was renamed in July 1983 for actress Helen Hayes, who was then 82 years old. Hayes had outlived her previous namesake theater on 46th Street, which had been demolished to make way for the New York Marriott Marquis hotel. Ed Koch, then the mayor of New York City, said that Hayes wanted her name on "a small theater" when asked