It appears that, before it moved to the location down the street at 2517 W. Washington, the Arlington Theatre was located in this building. Items in Southwest Builder and Contractor in 1920 give 2488 W. Washington as the address of the Arlington Theatre, as does the Los Angeles Times in 1925 (when it was called the United Arlington Theatre, according to a comment of June 3, 2007, by ken mc on Cinema Treasures' Arlington Theatre page.) The date when the Arlington operation moved to the new location is not yet known.
The building at 2517 West Washington Boulevard was erected in 1923, according to a property profile report by the Los Angeles Department of City Planning. The 6000+ sq. ft. building on a 10,000 sq. ft. lot at this location had to have been the second home of the Arlington Theatre. The L.A. library’s California Index contains a card citing an article in the January 30, 1920 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor which announced alterations to the Arlington Theatre at 2488 West Washington Boulevard. It had to have been that location at which the Robert-Morgan organ mentioned in Lost Memory’s comment above was installed in 1921.
The February 22 issue of the same publication that year announced that the Arlington Theatre had been sold. A City Planning Department property profile of 2488 Washington reveals that the building on the site today was built in 1988, so the first home of the Arlington is gone.
Now here’s the interesting wrinkle in all this: 2488 W.Washington is the address given at CT for the Maynard Theatre (aka Gem, according to William.) If, as ken mc’s comment of June 3, 2007 says, the United Arlington Theatre was still being advertised in The Times as being at 2488 W. Washington in 1925, and this building at 2517 W. Washington was built in 1923 (per the planning department’s property profile), then either this building was converted to a theatre at some date after its construction, or it opened as a theatre with a different name which we have yet to identify.
Also, Cinema Treasures' Maynard Theatre entry needs to be updated to show United Arlington Theatre as an aka.
The Cosmo Theatre was built in 1925. Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of January 30 that year announced the plans, describing it as a one-story brick picture theatre and store building, to cost $16,000. It was financed by a Mr. S.P. Offut.
Daily Variety of July 18, 1941, announced that Grover Smith planned to close the Cosmo Theatre and build a new theatre nearby. Whether the Cosmo was closed at that time or not, according to Southwest Builder & Contractor’s issue of July 11, Mr. Smith had already been named as the lessee of the new Vogue Theatre, which was soon to be built across Brand Boulevard from the Cosmo.
In the 1940s, the California was being operated by Fox-West Coast Theatres. Southwest Builder & Contractor of November 7, 1941, contained an item saying that architect S. Charles Lee had prepared plans for remodeling the California Theatre in Glendale. Alterations to the foyer, lobby, ticket booth and front were to cost $12,000.
The Oviatt Library 1936 photo to which ken mc linked on October 27, 2005, is no longer at that URL. For now, it is here.
The Kansas City Shubert Theater was designed by architect Benjamin Marshall of the Chicago firm Marshall & Fox. His partner Charles Fox acted as construction supervisor and project manager.
There’s quite a bit of information about the original Nixon Theatre on this web page and two linked pages, all apparently part of some sort of local oral histories collection.
From what I’ve read at that site, the original Nixon Theater was always a stage house, right up until its closing in 1950. However, on this page at rootsweb, the caption of a photo scanned from the September 28, 1924 issue of The Pittsburgh Press reveals that Cecil B. DeMille’s production of The Ten Commandments was playing at the Nixon Theater. I’d say that qualifies the original Nixon for its own page at Cinema Treasures.
This venerable house opened as the Banning Theatre on May 23, 1928, and only later became part of the Fox-West Coast circuit. The opening of the Banning Theatre was featured in an article in Exhibitor’s Herald & Moving Picture World issue of June 9, 1928. Equipped with a stage and fly tower, the house could host Vaudeville and other live theatrical events in addition to showing movies. According to local Banning history buff Kenneth Holzclaw, it once hosted a live broadcast of Bob Hope’s radio show.
This undated photo from the L.A. Library depicts Pacific Avenue northward from Zoe toward Gage. That appears to be the Park Theatre at center. This house dated back to the 1920s at least. An article in the L.A. Times of March 17, 1929, says that the lease on the Park Theatre had changed hands. Judging from the style of the building in the photograph, it looks as though it might even have dated from the 1910s.
Ed: Yes, that’s the Paris, formerly Carmel, on Santa Monica Boulevard. Compare the marquee in this 1970s night shot from the UCLA/L.A. Times archives (this is the same photo brett421 linked to on May 16. UCLA has changed the URLs of its photos and his link no longer works.)
According to the June 8, 1923 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor, the Egyptian Theatre was remodeled from an existing building which had been a garage. The conversion was designed by Long Beach architects Hugh R. Davies and Edward S. Baume, associated.
In 1936, S. Charles Lee prepared this concept rendering for a facade remodeling of the theatre, which appears not to have been carried out.
The design probably relied mostly on the brightly colored frescoes on walls and ceiling.
Still, the Casino must have seemed surprisingly old fashioned to audiences within a short time of the theatre’s opening. It was only two years later that the 2700 seat Temple Auditorium opened, with its large balcony cantilevered 27 feet from the back wall. The Casino’s whole auditorium was only 60 by 72 feet.
Lost Memory: I don’t think that the 1924 Casino Theatre on Central Avenue has been added to Cinema Treasures yet. It was the second of two Central Avenue Theatres which were renamed for dancer Bill Robinson, the first having been the former Tivoli Theatre, one block north of the Casino. Apparently, the Bill Robinson name was moved from the former Tivoli at Central and 42nd to the former Casino at Central and 43rd sometime in the 1940s. Both the 1921 Tivoli and the 1924 Casino were designed by architect L.A. Smith.
The place definitely showed films as the Empress, and it was almost certainly only one theatre under different names (unless perhaps there were also small nickelodeons in two of the storefronts at various times- but that would be difficult to confirm at this late date.) I’d say there’s enough information now to justify adding the Hotchkiss, though probably under one of its later names, since as the Casino and the Hotchkiss it appears to have been entirely or primarily a live theatre.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of November 5, 1937, named Clifford Balch as the architect of the La Mar.
Though I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, my dad was born in Manhattan Beach in 1909, and we often visited his friends who still lived there in later years. I never saw a movie at the La Mar, but I passed by it many times in the 1950s-60s. I remember that it seemed pretty plushy for a neighborhood theatre.
D'OH! The long conversation about the Hotchkiss is above, on this very page!
Seeing vokoban’s map, which shows the way the Hotchkiss was configured, it seems possible that when it opened (in 1903, as the Casino Theatre at 334 S. Spring) the entrance could have been at the north end of the building, and then before it became the Hotchkiss it was remodeled (that huge property room along the side of the auditorium looks as though it could have been part of an an addition to the building) and a new and larger lobby opened up at the south end of the building.
No, there is no page for the Casino/Hotchkiss. There was a conversation about it on the page of another theatre but I can’t remember which one.
The Hotchkiss was also the second Los Angeles Theatre, taking the name after the first Los Angeles Theatre became the Orpheum Theatre. I recall a reference somewhere saying that it was also called the Empress Theatre for a while, but I can’t find that now either.
Several mentions of the Torrance Theater appear in the L.A. library’s California Index. The earliest cites Southwest Builder & Contractor of February 20, 1920, with an announcement that architect Allan E. Sedgwick was preparing working drawings for the theatre. The project included two stores and would cost an estimated $40,000. The theatre was to have 800 seats, was designed for both motion pictures and stage productions. The owner was the Torrance Auditorium Company, Inc.
The magazine’s issue of March 12 announced that Huram E. Reeve of Torrance had secured the contract to build the project. The L.A. Times mentioned the project, and named Sedgwick’s firm as Sedgwick & Alpagh, in its issue of May 2, 1920.
Motion Picture Herald of February 27, 1932 mentioned that a J.F. Higgins had purchased the Torrance Theater from “Pacific National” (perhaps Pacific National Bank?)
Then the theatre must have undergone either a major remodeling or closure in 1937, when the Better Theatres section of Motion Picture Herald’s April 3rd issue announced that the Torrance Theater’s furnishings and equipment had been purchased by Harry Milstein and Albert Mellinkoff.
Like everything else in the USC digital archives, the URL for the photo of the Laughlin to which I linked in October, 2006 has been moved. It’s currently here. USC dates it as “ca1930” but it’s undoubtedly much earlier- maybe near the time of opening in 1915.
Somehow I overlooked John C’s comment of Dec 3, 2005, with the question about the painter of the murals in the theatre. I can no longer find my original source naming Wendt as the artist, but I found a card referencing an article in the Long Beach Daily Telegram of November 4, 1915, which names Hanson Duvall Puthuff as the artist. The article by Gerdts also naming Puthuff as the artist is almost certainly correct, and the reference to Wendt should be removed from this theatre’s introduction.
LM: is there an address given for the El Sereno Theatre that got the organ in 1924? I’ve always had the impression that this building on Eastern Avenue dates from the 1930s or 1940s. The theatre listed at CT as El Cameo was built nearby on Huntington Drive in 1924. It may have been named the El Sereno on opening.
This 1917 photo shows a glimpse of Tally’s Broadway Theatre, 833 S. Broadway, at far left. The Mission, at 840 S. Broadway, would have been across the street and down a bit. It probably occupied the oblong brick building adjacent to the primitive parking lot at lower left. I’m still unable to find a photo of the fronts of the buildings on the east side of that block of Broadway during the pre-Orpheum period.
This web page mentions in passing (in the caption to a photo of the city’s former Pantages Theater) that the Liberty Theatre in Great Falls was converted to office and retail space in 1978.
Another website has more information about Great Falls' Pantages Theater, which is currently unlisted at Cinema Treasures.
It appears that, before it moved to the location down the street at 2517 W. Washington, the Arlington Theatre was located in this building. Items in Southwest Builder and Contractor in 1920 give 2488 W. Washington as the address of the Arlington Theatre, as does the Los Angeles Times in 1925 (when it was called the United Arlington Theatre, according to a comment of June 3, 2007, by ken mc on Cinema Treasures' Arlington Theatre page.) The date when the Arlington operation moved to the new location is not yet known.
The building at 2517 West Washington Boulevard was erected in 1923, according to a property profile report by the Los Angeles Department of City Planning. The 6000+ sq. ft. building on a 10,000 sq. ft. lot at this location had to have been the second home of the Arlington Theatre. The L.A. library’s California Index contains a card citing an article in the January 30, 1920 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor which announced alterations to the Arlington Theatre at 2488 West Washington Boulevard. It had to have been that location at which the Robert-Morgan organ mentioned in Lost Memory’s comment above was installed in 1921.
The February 22 issue of the same publication that year announced that the Arlington Theatre had been sold. A City Planning Department property profile of 2488 Washington reveals that the building on the site today was built in 1988, so the first home of the Arlington is gone.
Now here’s the interesting wrinkle in all this: 2488 W.Washington is the address given at CT for the Maynard Theatre (aka Gem, according to William.) If, as ken mc’s comment of June 3, 2007 says, the United Arlington Theatre was still being advertised in The Times as being at 2488 W. Washington in 1925, and this building at 2517 W. Washington was built in 1923 (per the planning department’s property profile), then either this building was converted to a theatre at some date after its construction, or it opened as a theatre with a different name which we have yet to identify.
Also, Cinema Treasures' Maynard Theatre entry needs to be updated to show United Arlington Theatre as an aka.
The Cosmo Theatre was built in 1925. Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of January 30 that year announced the plans, describing it as a one-story brick picture theatre and store building, to cost $16,000. It was financed by a Mr. S.P. Offut.
Daily Variety of July 18, 1941, announced that Grover Smith planned to close the Cosmo Theatre and build a new theatre nearby. Whether the Cosmo was closed at that time or not, according to Southwest Builder & Contractor’s issue of July 11, Mr. Smith had already been named as the lessee of the new Vogue Theatre, which was soon to be built across Brand Boulevard from the Cosmo.
In the 1940s, the California was being operated by Fox-West Coast Theatres. Southwest Builder & Contractor of November 7, 1941, contained an item saying that architect S. Charles Lee had prepared plans for remodeling the California Theatre in Glendale. Alterations to the foyer, lobby, ticket booth and front were to cost $12,000.
The Oviatt Library 1936 photo to which ken mc linked on October 27, 2005, is no longer at that URL. For now, it is here.
The Kansas City Shubert Theater was designed by architect Benjamin Marshall of the Chicago firm Marshall & Fox. His partner Charles Fox acted as construction supervisor and project manager.
There’s quite a bit of information about the original Nixon Theatre on this web page and two linked pages, all apparently part of some sort of local oral histories collection.
From what I’ve read at that site, the original Nixon Theater was always a stage house, right up until its closing in 1950. However, on this page at rootsweb, the caption of a photo scanned from the September 28, 1924 issue of The Pittsburgh Press reveals that Cecil B. DeMille’s production of The Ten Commandments was playing at the Nixon Theater. I’d say that qualifies the original Nixon for its own page at Cinema Treasures.
This venerable house opened as the Banning Theatre on May 23, 1928, and only later became part of the Fox-West Coast circuit. The opening of the Banning Theatre was featured in an article in Exhibitor’s Herald & Moving Picture World issue of June 9, 1928. Equipped with a stage and fly tower, the house could host Vaudeville and other live theatrical events in addition to showing movies. According to local Banning history buff Kenneth Holzclaw, it once hosted a live broadcast of Bob Hope’s radio show.
The Moore’s history page, to which I posted a direct link on February 2, 2006, has been moved once again. This new link should work for a while.
This undated photo from the L.A. Library depicts Pacific Avenue northward from Zoe toward Gage. That appears to be the Park Theatre at center. This house dated back to the 1920s at least. An article in the L.A. Times of March 17, 1929, says that the lease on the Park Theatre had changed hands. Judging from the style of the building in the photograph, it looks as though it might even have dated from the 1910s.
Ed: Yes, that’s the Paris, formerly Carmel, on Santa Monica Boulevard. Compare the marquee in this 1970s night shot from the UCLA/L.A. Times archives (this is the same photo brett421 linked to on May 16. UCLA has changed the URLs of its photos and his link no longer works.)
According to the June 8, 1923 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor, the Egyptian Theatre was remodeled from an existing building which had been a garage. The conversion was designed by Long Beach architects Hugh R. Davies and Edward S. Baume, associated.
In 1936, S. Charles Lee prepared this concept rendering for a facade remodeling of the theatre, which appears not to have been carried out.
The design probably relied mostly on the brightly colored frescoes on walls and ceiling.
Still, the Casino must have seemed surprisingly old fashioned to audiences within a short time of the theatre’s opening. It was only two years later that the 2700 seat Temple Auditorium opened, with its large balcony cantilevered 27 feet from the back wall. The Casino’s whole auditorium was only 60 by 72 feet.
Even more devastating to the Casino’s prestige must have been the opening in 1903 of the Mason Opera House: This auditorium photo is from the 1950s, but the balcony structure was unchanged from the 1903 design. And here’s an artist’s conception of the view from the Mason’s dress circle on its opening in 1903.
The Casino was decidedly outclassed from the beginning.
Of course we mustn’t forget this undated photo of the audience at the Casino Theatre from the L.A. library collection.
Lost Memory: I don’t think that the 1924 Casino Theatre on Central Avenue has been added to Cinema Treasures yet. It was the second of two Central Avenue Theatres which were renamed for dancer Bill Robinson, the first having been the former Tivoli Theatre, one block north of the Casino. Apparently, the Bill Robinson name was moved from the former Tivoli at Central and 42nd to the former Casino at Central and 43rd sometime in the 1940s. Both the 1921 Tivoli and the 1924 Casino were designed by architect L.A. Smith.
The place definitely showed films as the Empress, and it was almost certainly only one theatre under different names (unless perhaps there were also small nickelodeons in two of the storefronts at various times- but that would be difficult to confirm at this late date.) I’d say there’s enough information now to justify adding the Hotchkiss, though probably under one of its later names, since as the Casino and the Hotchkiss it appears to have been entirely or primarily a live theatre.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of November 5, 1937, named Clifford Balch as the architect of the La Mar.
Though I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, my dad was born in Manhattan Beach in 1909, and we often visited his friends who still lived there in later years. I never saw a movie at the La Mar, but I passed by it many times in the 1950s-60s. I remember that it seemed pretty plushy for a neighborhood theatre.
D'OH! The long conversation about the Hotchkiss is above, on this very page!
Seeing vokoban’s map, which shows the way the Hotchkiss was configured, it seems possible that when it opened (in 1903, as the Casino Theatre at 334 S. Spring) the entrance could have been at the north end of the building, and then before it became the Hotchkiss it was remodeled (that huge property room along the side of the auditorium looks as though it could have been part of an an addition to the building) and a new and larger lobby opened up at the south end of the building.
No, there is no page for the Casino/Hotchkiss. There was a conversation about it on the page of another theatre but I can’t remember which one.
The Hotchkiss was also the second Los Angeles Theatre, taking the name after the first Los Angeles Theatre became the Orpheum Theatre. I recall a reference somewhere saying that it was also called the Empress Theatre for a while, but I can’t find that now either.
Several mentions of the Torrance Theater appear in the L.A. library’s California Index. The earliest cites Southwest Builder & Contractor of February 20, 1920, with an announcement that architect Allan E. Sedgwick was preparing working drawings for the theatre. The project included two stores and would cost an estimated $40,000. The theatre was to have 800 seats, was designed for both motion pictures and stage productions. The owner was the Torrance Auditorium Company, Inc.
The magazine’s issue of March 12 announced that Huram E. Reeve of Torrance had secured the contract to build the project. The L.A. Times mentioned the project, and named Sedgwick’s firm as Sedgwick & Alpagh, in its issue of May 2, 1920.
Motion Picture Herald of February 27, 1932 mentioned that a J.F. Higgins had purchased the Torrance Theater from “Pacific National” (perhaps Pacific National Bank?)
Then the theatre must have undergone either a major remodeling or closure in 1937, when the Better Theatres section of Motion Picture Herald’s April 3rd issue announced that the Torrance Theater’s furnishings and equipment had been purchased by Harry Milstein and Albert Mellinkoff.
Like everything else in the USC digital archives, the URL for the photo of the Laughlin to which I linked in October, 2006 has been moved. It’s currently here. USC dates it as “ca1930” but it’s undoubtedly much earlier- maybe near the time of opening in 1915.
Somehow I overlooked John C’s comment of Dec 3, 2005, with the question about the painter of the murals in the theatre. I can no longer find my original source naming Wendt as the artist, but I found a card referencing an article in the Long Beach Daily Telegram of November 4, 1915, which names Hanson Duvall Puthuff as the artist. The article by Gerdts also naming Puthuff as the artist is almost certainly correct, and the reference to Wendt should be removed from this theatre’s introduction.
LM: is there an address given for the El Sereno Theatre that got the organ in 1924? I’ve always had the impression that this building on Eastern Avenue dates from the 1930s or 1940s. The theatre listed at CT as El Cameo was built nearby on Huntington Drive in 1924. It may have been named the El Sereno on opening.
This 1917 photo shows a glimpse of Tally’s Broadway Theatre, 833 S. Broadway, at far left. The Mission, at 840 S. Broadway, would have been across the street and down a bit. It probably occupied the oblong brick building adjacent to the primitive parking lot at lower left. I’m still unable to find a photo of the fronts of the buildings on the east side of that block of Broadway during the pre-Orpheum period.
The ornate facade of the Liberty Theatre can be seen in the ninth and tenth photos down on this page of Brent Dickerson’s “A Visit to Old Los Angeles” website.
The page needs updating. The Rialto has two screens.
This web page mentions in passing (in the caption to a photo of the city’s former Pantages Theater) that the Liberty Theatre in Great Falls was converted to office and retail space in 1978.
Another website has more information about Great Falls' Pantages Theater, which is currently unlisted at Cinema Treasures.