UCLA has changed the URLs of the photos in the Times collection,and no longer displays the very large versions they once did. The remaining version of the 1977 photo cited in ken mc’s post of May 18 is now available here.
The Fox Cabrillo was at 115 W. Seventh, not Sixth. The Victoria was a different theatre. It’s mentioned, in passing, on a card in the California Index referencing a 1920 article.
Additionally, in the California Index I’ve come across mentions of theatres in San Pedro bearing the following names: Alhambra, Barton, Electric, Empire, Lyric, Star. and Union. No addresses or other details are given for any of them.
I see that there are four theatres named “Music Hall” listed in that 1945 ad. I wonder if they were all run by Walter Reade Theatres? I know that the Beverly Hills Music Hall was a Reade operation for a while, and they also ran the Music Hall Theatre in San Francisco, though that was in the 1960s.
That last photo is late 1928 or early 1929, I’d say, given the fact that the building is covered in signs announcing its imminent destruction to make way for the expanding May Co. Department Store.
It also give the address of Tally’s New Broadway as 254 S. Broadway, but given the evidence of historic photos confirming that it was at 554 S. Broadway, I’d guess that the newspaper listing probably has a typo.
Lots of other interesting stuff in that ad, though, including the address of the first Metropolitan Theatre at 257 E. Fifth, and of the second Los Angeles Theatre, at 340 S. Spring.
It would be nice if it differentiated between movie theatres and stage theatres, though. It’s going to be hard to tell which ones ought to be added and which ones don’t qualify.
The Redding Theatre is mentioned several times on this page of the Cascade Theatre website. According to that page the Redding Theatre was built in 1910, and the wording gives the impression that by the 1930s it was being operated by T.&D., Jr. Enterprises. (Note that the page is not entirely reliable, though, as it names the owners of T.&D. as Turner and Duncan, not the correct Turner and Dahnken.)
There’s another photo of the Redding Theatre accessible from this page at the Redding Record-Searchlight’s website.
Ken, that was no typo. That was a spur-of-the-moment portmanteau coinage, but a Google search on the phrase indicates that I was not the first to ever use it. The results show two earlier examples.
Here’s a slightly wider version of the photo at the top of this page. The Paradise was built in 1950, a few years before the various wide-screen processes of the era were developed, so its exceptional width was not intended to accommodate them (unless architect Ted Rogvoy was presciently anticipating their development.) The building was a splendid example of Midcentury Modern design, and maybe the best theatre in that style in the Los Angeles area.
The Kim Sing Theatre has been converted to a living space/furniture showroom by a designer who now owns it. It was featured in one episode of the HGTV show What’s With That House? I remember seeing the Kim Sing before it was called the Kim Sing, back when Chinatown had not yet expanded as far west as Figueroa Street. It was running Mexican movies at the time, and I believe it was using the name Alpine Theatre (it was on Figueroa at the corner of Alpine Street.)
As the first Godzilla movie came out in 1954, and I recall the La Brea still being a Fox house at that time (it was across the street from my doctor’s office), I suspect that the Japanese language version of the movie would have first been shown at the Linda Lea, either in 1954 or 1955. It would probably have been run with English subtitles, as most of the movies shown there were. After Toho acquired the La Brea (in the late 1950s, I think), that theatre ran many of the company’s “arty” films, leaving the more popular stuff for the Linda Lea or to a Japanese language theatre (can’t remember the name) that opened up in the West Adams area. I think there might have been a Japanese movie theatre in Gardena in those days, too.
The plans for the Strand Theatre were announced in Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of March 18, 1921. The location given was the corner of Moneta (now Broadway) and Vernon. The owner was named as Ed Colter, the architect as William C. Penell. The building was described as a two story brick theatre, store and market. It was listed as the Strand Theatre, at 4409 S. Moneta Avenue, in the 1923 City Directory.
The theatre’s peripatetic front door suggests that Penell may have studied architecture at Hogwarts Academy, but this is only speculation.
The Junior Orpheum Circuit ran combination houses which featured moderately-priced shows consisting of a movie and several acts of vaudeville, presented either continuously or (usually) three times a day. Regular Orpheum Circuit theatres were two-show-a-day, all-vaudeville houses, though of course many of them soon converted to combination houses or ran only movies as vaudeville withered away.
Guys: The Mozart Theatre at 730 S. Grand was the one with all the names (Including, per the photo, Clune’s Grand Avenue Theatre.) It outlasted the Criterion. Also, the state library got both direction and date wrong on its photo. The view is south from 7th and Grand, not north, and the year has to be 1908 or later, when the building was erected.
As for the Fox Criterion, it looks as though (per ken mc’s comment of May 29 this year) that this theatre’s last operating name must have been either Tally’s Theatre or Grand Wilshire Theatre, since the original entry at top of this page says that it was razed in 1941.
Michael Coate:
I find a four-plex theatre named the Coronet listed in the United Artists Theatres section of the movie listings in the L.A. Times Calendar section for August 24, 1986. Its location is given as Westwood Boulevard one block south of Wilshire. It isn’t listed in the Times' movie listings in the issue of February 10, 1971, but that issue does contain a listing for a theatre called the U.A. Westwood, with no street name given. The same place perhaps? I can’t find hide nor hair of either theatre listed at Cinema Treasures. You must be right about it being missing from the site.
There’s a small photo of a U.A. Westwood Theatre on this page at Roadside Peek, but again the exact location is not given. The photo appears to be more recent than either of the moive lisings I’ve cited.
Two articles that are more recent than the one from August of 2006 linked above (though not very recent) about the Park Theatre (January 24, 2007 and January 31, 2007) are a bit more hopeful about the building’s future. A dance studio is not a theatre, of course, but such a use would at least make it possible to largely preserve the theatre’s interior layout and any surviving decoration in its auditorium. I’ve been unable to find any more recent information about Andy Duncan’s proposal. Maybe somebody from the area knows more.
The California Club occupied the building at 5th and Hill from 1904 until 1930. I think construction of the Title Guarantee building began in 1930 and it was completed in 1931.
The library has this .pdf of a brochure on Art Deco Los Angeles published by the L.A. Conservancy. It gives the dates of development for the Title Guaranty building as 1929-1931.
Ken: that picture is much later than 1920. I don’t think that Walker & Eisen’s National Bank of Commerce Building was completed until 1928. It replaced the old Masonic Temple, which was demolished early in 1925. The site was then used as a temporary location for P.E.’s Hill Street Station while the Subway Terminal was being built. After the terminal opened, the Bank of Commerce Building was built.
Yes, the College Theatre was adjacent to the California Club building. The building with the Coca-Cola ad (“Relieves Fatigue”!) was the old Masonic Temple. That’s where the Bank of Commerce Building was built a few years after this picture was taken.
The Auditorium is at the far right of this panorama of downtown taken from a rooftop on Olive Street south of Fourth, and dated 1923 by the L.A. library. It’s remarkable how big this theatre was.
By scrolling to the left end of the panorama you can also see the back and side walls of the Million Dollar Theatre at Third and Broadway. At center right of the panorama is a view of the Pacific Electric’s Hill Street Station, which was discussed in comments above.
Ken, I wonder if the boxy building at left foreground in that 1917 photo, across the street and down a bit from Tally’s, was the Woodley/Victory/Mission which was demolished to make way for the fourth Orpheum?
Those aerial photos clear up my puzzling childhood memory of the Fox Figueroa. I knew there was something unusual about the building’s configuration, and now I see that it was that the auditorium was set at an angle to the street. I have no idea how my memory transformed that angularity into an open corner plaza, though.
UCLA has changed the URLs of the photos in the Times collection,and no longer displays the very large versions they once did. The remaining version of the 1977 photo cited in ken mc’s post of May 18 is now available here.
The URL for the photo I linked to above has apparently changed. See it here.
The Fox Cabrillo was at 115 W. Seventh, not Sixth. The Victoria was a different theatre. It’s mentioned, in passing, on a card in the California Index referencing a 1920 article.
Additionally, in the California Index I’ve come across mentions of theatres in San Pedro bearing the following names: Alhambra, Barton, Electric, Empire, Lyric, Star. and Union. No addresses or other details are given for any of them.
Virginia must be an AKA for the Star Theatre.
I see that there are four theatres named “Music Hall” listed in that 1945 ad. I wonder if they were all run by Walter Reade Theatres? I know that the Beverly Hills Music Hall was a Reade operation for a while, and they also ran the Music Hall Theatre in San Francisco, though that was in the 1960s.
That last photo is late 1928 or early 1929, I’d say, given the fact that the building is covered in signs announcing its imminent destruction to make way for the expanding May Co. Department Store.
It places the Optic at 446&½ S. Broadway.
It also give the address of Tally’s New Broadway as 254 S. Broadway, but given the evidence of historic photos confirming that it was at 554 S. Broadway, I’d guess that the newspaper listing probably has a typo.
Lots of other interesting stuff in that ad, though, including the address of the first Metropolitan Theatre at 257 E. Fifth, and of the second Los Angeles Theatre, at 340 S. Spring.
It would be nice if it differentiated between movie theatres and stage theatres, though. It’s going to be hard to tell which ones ought to be added and which ones don’t qualify.
The Redding Theatre is mentioned several times on this page of the Cascade Theatre website. According to that page the Redding Theatre was built in 1910, and the wording gives the impression that by the 1930s it was being operated by T.&D., Jr. Enterprises. (Note that the page is not entirely reliable, though, as it names the owners of T.&D. as Turner and Duncan, not the correct Turner and Dahnken.)
There’s another photo of the Redding Theatre accessible from this page at the Redding Record-Searchlight’s website.
Here’s another photo, smaller, but without the intrusive utility wires.
Ken, that was no typo. That was a spur-of-the-moment portmanteau coinage, but a Google search on the phrase indicates that I was not the first to ever use it. The results show two earlier examples.
Here’s a slightly wider version of the photo at the top of this page. The Paradise was built in 1950, a few years before the various wide-screen processes of the era were developed, so its exceptional width was not intended to accommodate them (unless architect Ted Rogvoy was presciently anticipating their development.) The building was a splendid example of Midcentury Modern design, and maybe the best theatre in that style in the Los Angeles area.
The Kim Sing Theatre has been converted to a living space/furniture showroom by a designer who now owns it. It was featured in one episode of the HGTV show What’s With That House? I remember seeing the Kim Sing before it was called the Kim Sing, back when Chinatown had not yet expanded as far west as Figueroa Street. It was running Mexican movies at the time, and I believe it was using the name Alpine Theatre (it was on Figueroa at the corner of Alpine Street.)
As the first Godzilla movie came out in 1954, and I recall the La Brea still being a Fox house at that time (it was across the street from my doctor’s office), I suspect that the Japanese language version of the movie would have first been shown at the Linda Lea, either in 1954 or 1955. It would probably have been run with English subtitles, as most of the movies shown there were. After Toho acquired the La Brea (in the late 1950s, I think), that theatre ran many of the company’s “arty” films, leaving the more popular stuff for the Linda Lea or to a Japanese language theatre (can’t remember the name) that opened up in the West Adams area. I think there might have been a Japanese movie theatre in Gardena in those days, too.
The plans for the Strand Theatre were announced in Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of March 18, 1921. The location given was the corner of Moneta (now Broadway) and Vernon. The owner was named as Ed Colter, the architect as William C. Penell. The building was described as a two story brick theatre, store and market. It was listed as the Strand Theatre, at 4409 S. Moneta Avenue, in the 1923 City Directory.
The theatre’s peripatetic front door suggests that Penell may have studied architecture at Hogwarts Academy, but this is only speculation.
The Junior Orpheum Circuit ran combination houses which featured moderately-priced shows consisting of a movie and several acts of vaudeville, presented either continuously or (usually) three times a day. Regular Orpheum Circuit theatres were two-show-a-day, all-vaudeville houses, though of course many of them soon converted to combination houses or ran only movies as vaudeville withered away.
Guys: The Mozart Theatre at 730 S. Grand was the one with all the names (Including, per the photo, Clune’s Grand Avenue Theatre.) It outlasted the Criterion. Also, the state library got both direction and date wrong on its photo. The view is south from 7th and Grand, not north, and the year has to be 1908 or later, when the building was erected.
As for the Fox Criterion, it looks as though (per ken mc’s comment of May 29 this year) that this theatre’s last operating name must have been either Tally’s Theatre or Grand Wilshire Theatre, since the original entry at top of this page says that it was razed in 1941.
Michael Coate:
I find a four-plex theatre named the Coronet listed in the United Artists Theatres section of the movie listings in the L.A. Times Calendar section for August 24, 1986. Its location is given as Westwood Boulevard one block south of Wilshire. It isn’t listed in the Times' movie listings in the issue of February 10, 1971, but that issue does contain a listing for a theatre called the U.A. Westwood, with no street name given. The same place perhaps? I can’t find hide nor hair of either theatre listed at Cinema Treasures. You must be right about it being missing from the site.
There’s a small photo of a U.A. Westwood Theatre on this page at Roadside Peek, but again the exact location is not given. The photo appears to be more recent than either of the moive lisings I’ve cited.
Two articles that are more recent than the one from August of 2006 linked above (though not very recent) about the Park Theatre (January 24, 2007 and January 31, 2007) are a bit more hopeful about the building’s future. A dance studio is not a theatre, of course, but such a use would at least make it possible to largely preserve the theatre’s interior layout and any surviving decoration in its auditorium. I’ve been unable to find any more recent information about Andy Duncan’s proposal. Maybe somebody from the area knows more.
The California Club occupied the building at 5th and Hill from 1904 until 1930. I think construction of the Title Guarantee building began in 1930 and it was completed in 1931.
The library has this .pdf of a brochure on Art Deco Los Angeles published by the L.A. Conservancy. It gives the dates of development for the Title Guaranty building as 1929-1931.
That probably is the Garrick at the end of the block, plus it looks like the Rialto had been completed, or was nearly complete.
Ken: that picture is much later than 1920. I don’t think that Walker & Eisen’s National Bank of Commerce Building was completed until 1928. It replaced the old Masonic Temple, which was demolished early in 1925. The site was then used as a temporary location for P.E.’s Hill Street Station while the Subway Terminal was being built. After the terminal opened, the Bank of Commerce Building was built.
Yes, the College Theatre was adjacent to the California Club building. The building with the Coca-Cola ad (“Relieves Fatigue”!) was the old Masonic Temple. That’s where the Bank of Commerce Building was built a few years after this picture was taken.
The Auditorium is at the far right of this panorama of downtown taken from a rooftop on Olive Street south of Fourth, and dated 1923 by the L.A. library. It’s remarkable how big this theatre was.
By scrolling to the left end of the panorama you can also see the back and side walls of the Million Dollar Theatre at Third and Broadway. At center right of the panorama is a view of the Pacific Electric’s Hill Street Station, which was discussed in comments above.
Ken, I wonder if the boxy building at left foreground in that 1917 photo, across the street and down a bit from Tally’s, was the Woodley/Victory/Mission which was demolished to make way for the fourth Orpheum?
Ken, it was the Pan Pacific Auditorium that closed in 1972. The Pan Pacific Theatre remained open until 1984.
Those aerial photos clear up my puzzling childhood memory of the Fox Figueroa. I knew there was something unusual about the building’s configuration, and now I see that it was that the auditorium was set at an angle to the street. I have no idea how my memory transformed that angularity into an open corner plaza, though.