ScottS: Finding the exact address of the pictured theatre would be very useful. I think it’s likely that there was indeed a Liberty Theatre at 136 S. Main Street, maybe operated by the same people who operated the Liberty Theatre in the photo above. But the photo is certainly the theatre on the east side of Main just a bit north of 3rd, unless the two buildings were identical twins.
There’s a possibility that this building was the location of Tally’s Electric Theatre, opened in 1902. The information currently at the top of the Tally’s Electric Theatre page is in the wrong place. The address given for the theatre there is actually that of Tally’s Phonograph Parlors on Spring Street (where he began showing movies in a small back room in 1896), while the theatre described in the opening section is the one Talley opened on Main Street in 1902, which was probably the first building ever erected specifically as a movie theatre anywhere.
According to MagicLantern’s comment on that page, the address of Tally’s Electric Theatre was 262 S. Main Street. It had to be close to the south end of the block. Before it was rerouted, 3rd Street jogged at Main Street. The block on the west side of Main Street from 2nd to 3rd was the standard length of a downtown block, 600 feet, but the block on the east side of the street was longer. Tally’s Electric must have been in that area. The northeast corner of 3rd and Main was occupied by the Grey Hotel. In that photo, there are low buildings just north of the hotel, but the side wall of a two story building can be seen at far left. I think that’s probably the south wall of the theatre. This photo is a bit too blurry to be sure, but it seems to me that the street number on the awning of the confectionery shop at center is 276, and the street number on the northernmost shop in the hotel building looks like 270. If that’s right, and the two story building at left is the theatre, then 262 would be a likely address for it. By 1910, when the postcard picture at the top of this page was made, the low building to the south would have been replaced by the two story building pictured.
I’m not sure when Third Street was finally connected directly across Main Street (probably no later than the 1930s), but at that time the Grey Hotel and its near neighbors were demolished to make way for the angled section of Third Street. It seems probable that the theatre, being directly east of the western section of Third Street, was knocked down too. The Chinese and Novelty Theatres mentioned in MagicLantern’s comment above were probably at 136 S. Main, and thus not in building pictured.
ScottS: PE first used the Butterfly paint scheme in 1939, according to both ERHA and the Seashore Trolly Museum’s web pages. I still suspect the most likely date to be between 1942-1945, when gasoline was rationed and traffic was thin. It could be as late as the early 1950s, when Metropolitan Coach Lines took over PE’s passenger services, but that seems less likely. The theatre marquee also gives a clue. “ATURE” is likely Victor Mature, and “ABLE” likely Betty Grable. They were teamed in the late 1941 release I Wake Up Screaming. They also appeared together in the 1942 movie Song of the Islands. They teamed again for Footlight Serenade, released later that same year. But they whey were also teamed in Wabash Avenue, released in 1950, so it isn’t conclusive evidence.
ken mc: The Main was in the Canadian Building, next door to the building with the marquee. I think the theatre must be the Regent, before its remodeling. See your own photo from January 2007 above for comparison.
The Hidalgo is the theatre posted on Cinema Treasures under its later name, the Estella. It was next to the Plaza church on North Main Street.
Somebody was asking for information about the Hidalgo just a couple of weeks ago. The question is on the Grand Theatre page. I left a reply with what little I knew, but there’s been no response yet. You could post the link to the Hidalgo there, in case the person comes back.
I’m glad to help, but do notice that I got those dates wrong. Most of the palace was actually built between 1353 and 1391. The Moors had already been driven out of Spain by 1533.
An interesting question. Ultimately, all Alhambra Theatres are named after the original Alhambra, a Moorish palace near Granada, Spain (lots of theatres are named Granada, too.) Most of the palace was built between 1533 and 1553. Here is a web page about it.
The name Alhambra means Red Castle in Arabic. The original Alhambra was the subject of a popular book by American author Washington Irving in the mid 19th century. Irving portrayed the palace and its gardens in a very romantic way, and that romanticism probably had a lot to do with making the name popular with theatre builders. Irving’s book is now in the public domain and can be read on-line.
I wonder what became of the black metalwork around the facade that was uncovered in the early stages of the demolition, as seen in the photo linked by FPCInc on February 20th? When they didn’t save the Japanese style facade from the post-WWII remodeling, I expected they might at least preserve what was apparently the original 1924 decoration from the Civic Theatre.
When William refers to “an early form of stadium seating” he means that the Loyola was one of many theatres which had a stadium seating section at the back of the auditorium, behind a section of normal theatre seating. The earliest theatre with such an arrangement that I’ve ever been in was the Rialto on Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles (closed), which was built in 1917.
The stadium section seating in these old theatres was configured exactly the way it is in a modern stadium-style theatre- or, for that matter, in the balcony of any older theatre. In fact, one of the neighborhood theatres I attended when I was a kid, the Monterey (demolished) in Monterey Park, had a stadium section, but everybody called it “the balcony”.
There have been quite a few such theatres, and I’ve now and then seen photos of some of them, but offhand the only URL I can find is for this picture from the USC digital archives which shows the view of the auditorium from the top of the stadium section of the aptly-named Fox Stadium Theatre (now a synagogue) in Los Angeles.
wdl: A Principal Theater at 223 N. Main St. is listed on Cinema Treasures, but so far nobody has added any information about it. That location would have been on the west side of Main north of Temple. Everything on that block was demolished for Civic Center expansion ages ago.
If the Hidalgo was next door to the Plaza Church, then it must be the theater listed on Cinema Treasures as the Estella. That building has also been demolished. There are a few comments on the page, but most of them are about the theater’s location, not about the theater itself.
I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, but there’s typically very little information available on the Internet (almost the only source I have available now) about these smaller theaters.
silverlining: You’re at the wrong address for that party. The theatre you recall must be the Century Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, originally called the Hunley Theatre. On that page you’ll find comments from many other former patrons of that theatre. This page is for another Century Theatre, located on Broadway at 60th Street in South Los Angeles.
ken mc: 842 S. Main was (according to a 1914 newspaper article quoted by vokoban in a December 22, 2005 comment on the Optic Theatre page) the location of Miller’s Theatre, about midway between the California Theatre and 9th Street. (Miller’s still hasn’t been added to Cinema Treasures.) It seems possible that the operators of the Roosevelt at 212 N. Main lost their lease and moved their operation to the old Miller’s location. It would have been easy for the N. Main building to revert to its earlier name of the Electric Theatre, as the marquee only had the generic word “Theatre” (or is that “Theater”… the photo I linked to last October is a bit blurry) on it.
Ken mc: The Wonderland is listed at Cinema Treasures under its later name, the Jade Theatre which, according to the comments, lasted into the 1970s at least. I have no memory of it at all, though I passed along that block hundreds of times over earlier years.
The Directory of Colorado State Register Properties entry about the Bluebird Theatre says that it was “…the first Denver theater designed specifically for the exhibition of movies.” They give the opening year as 1914.
Glenn Bianchi, owner of this multiplex, is the son of Joseph Bianchi who opened the Paramount Drive-In in 1947. Here is a recent Press-Telegram article about the Bianchis and their theatres.
This theatre was opened as the Roadium Drive-In in 1947. The area was then called Clearwater. The owner was local businessman Joseph Bianchi, whose son is Glen Bianchi, owner of the Bianchi Theatres. The Paramount Drive-In has, since 1955, hosted the Paramount Swap Meet, now the largest daily swap meet in California. Though the Drive-In has long since closed, the swap meet is still operated by the Bianchi family.
The L.A. Times of February 10, 1971 lists the Capri Theatre at 444 S. Glendora Avenue. It was a single screen house being operated by Loew’s Theatres. The L.A. Times of August 24, 1986 lists the Capri as a triplex being operated by SoCal Cinemas.
Ken mc: The Laughlin had a wider entrance. See this correctly labeled picture: http://jpg2.lapl.org/theater1/00014862.jpg
I think the picture you linked to definitely depicts the Palace, which had a very narrow entrance. An even better reason for believing that the LAPL has erroneously named this photo as being of the Laughlin is the fact that the name “Palace” can be made out (just barely), inscribed on the floor just in front of that pair of duded up fellows posing for the camera.
The Fox Wilshire is no longer being operated by the Nederlander organization. This means they are severing their connection to the venue two years earlier than was arranged in the three year lease-back agreement they made with the owners last year, noted in this article in the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Somehow I missed the announcement of the transfer of ownership of the building from Nederlander to the Temple of the Arts synagogue at the time it happened last year.
I also don’t know what this latest development means for the future of the building or the type of events that will be presented there, but with Nederlander out of the picture it seems unlikely that there will be any more Broadway shows among those events. They will probably be going to the Pantages and the Henry Fonda Music Box in Hollywood, both of which Nederlander still operates.
Wikipedia’s article on the Fox Theatre Circuit is pretty thin. I’ve thought about expanding it myself, but haven’t had the time. In fact, all the Internet sources on this subject are pretty thin. There’s a decent thumbnail biography of William Fox on the website of the St. Louis Fox Theatre, here. He started with a Brooklyn nickelodeon in 1904, and through expansions and mergers with other companies built the chain into one of the world’s largest before losing control of it in the early 1930s.
Fox took over the West Coast Theatre Circuit, which became its largest division, in the 1920s. West Coast was itself the result of a series of expansions and mergers. You can find a few bits of information about it on the Internet by doing Google searches on the names “Turner and Dahnken”, and “Turner, Dahnken and Langley”, which were predecessor companies. They also operated some theatres under the name T&D, but T&D Junior was a later company they started, not part of Fox.
Most of Fox-West Coast ended up in the hands of National General Theatres in the 1960s, and then much of it became part of Mann Theatres (including Fox’s flagship and most famous theatre, Grauman’s Chinese.) Today, of course, most of the Fox empire is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, parent company of the various Fox Television operations.
I think kenmc’s broken link was to this picture, which definitely shows the Warner Hollywood, not the Warner Downtown as the picture’s info page claims. LAPL seems to get about 1%-2% of their captions wrong, which I guess is pretty good for a collection of 60,000 pictures, but you do have to watch out for their errors.
The Adams was one of four theatres with Egyptian style interiors (none had Egyptian exteriors) designed for the Bard Theatre Circuit by architect Lewis Smith in the 1920s. The Vista Theatre in East Hollywood was the smallest, and the only one of the four still largely intact.
The Garfield Theatre in Alhambra was about the same size as the Adams, having a large auditorium with no balcony. A successful suburban theatre operated for many years by the Edwards circuit, and remodeled more than once, it’s Egyptian decor was gone by the late 1950’s. The Garfield’s auditorium was demolished only a few years ago, but the commercial and apartment block in front of it remains standing.
The largest of the four was Bard’s Pasadena, still in operation but virtually unrecognizable as the Academy Theatre, a six-screen art house opened in the mid ‘80s. The Academy had retained its Egyptian style until the mid 1950s when it underwent an extensive remodeling inside and out which gave it an Art Moderne look. It continued to operate as a single-screen theatre until about 1984, by which time it was getting pretty run down.
The Bard circuit had a fifth Egyptian style theatre, Bard’s Glendale, later operated by Fox-West Coast as the Glen Theatre, but that one was designed by Pasadena architect Kenneth A. Gordon rather than Smith. The Glen closed in the 1950s and was converted into a bowling alley. The building still stands, but none of the original interior decoration remains.
If the plans of the Washington Stage Guild come to fruition, the site of the Gayety/Shubert will once again house a legitimate theatre; a 250 seat house scheduled to open in the spring of 2008.
Ironstone Vineyards, owners of the Robert Morgan pipe organ formerly in the Alhambra Theatre, built the Alhambra Music Room at their winery to house it.
ScottS: Finding the exact address of the pictured theatre would be very useful. I think it’s likely that there was indeed a Liberty Theatre at 136 S. Main Street, maybe operated by the same people who operated the Liberty Theatre in the photo above. But the photo is certainly the theatre on the east side of Main just a bit north of 3rd, unless the two buildings were identical twins.
There’s a possibility that this building was the location of Tally’s Electric Theatre, opened in 1902. The information currently at the top of the Tally’s Electric Theatre page is in the wrong place. The address given for the theatre there is actually that of Tally’s Phonograph Parlors on Spring Street (where he began showing movies in a small back room in 1896), while the theatre described in the opening section is the one Talley opened on Main Street in 1902, which was probably the first building ever erected specifically as a movie theatre anywhere.
According to MagicLantern’s comment on that page, the address of Tally’s Electric Theatre was 262 S. Main Street. It had to be close to the south end of the block. Before it was rerouted, 3rd Street jogged at Main Street. The block on the west side of Main Street from 2nd to 3rd was the standard length of a downtown block, 600 feet, but the block on the east side of the street was longer. Tally’s Electric must have been in that area. The northeast corner of 3rd and Main was occupied by the Grey Hotel. In that photo, there are low buildings just north of the hotel, but the side wall of a two story building can be seen at far left. I think that’s probably the south wall of the theatre. This photo is a bit too blurry to be sure, but it seems to me that the street number on the awning of the confectionery shop at center is 276, and the street number on the northernmost shop in the hotel building looks like 270. If that’s right, and the two story building at left is the theatre, then 262 would be a likely address for it. By 1910, when the postcard picture at the top of this page was made, the low building to the south would have been replaced by the two story building pictured.
I’m not sure when Third Street was finally connected directly across Main Street (probably no later than the 1930s), but at that time the Grey Hotel and its near neighbors were demolished to make way for the angled section of Third Street. It seems probable that the theatre, being directly east of the western section of Third Street, was knocked down too. The Chinese and Novelty Theatres mentioned in MagicLantern’s comment above were probably at 136 S. Main, and thus not in building pictured.
ScottS: PE first used the Butterfly paint scheme in 1939, according to both ERHA and the Seashore Trolly Museum’s web pages. I still suspect the most likely date to be between 1942-1945, when gasoline was rationed and traffic was thin. It could be as late as the early 1950s, when Metropolitan Coach Lines took over PE’s passenger services, but that seems less likely. The theatre marquee also gives a clue. “ATURE” is likely Victor Mature, and “ABLE” likely Betty Grable. They were teamed in the late 1941 release I Wake Up Screaming. They also appeared together in the 1942 movie Song of the Islands. They teamed again for Footlight Serenade, released later that same year. But they whey were also teamed in Wabash Avenue, released in 1950, so it isn’t conclusive evidence.
ken mc: The Main was in the Canadian Building, next door to the building with the marquee. I think the theatre must be the Regent, before its remodeling. See your own photo from January 2007 above for comparison.
The Hidalgo is the theatre posted on Cinema Treasures under its later name, the Estella. It was next to the Plaza church on North Main Street.
Somebody was asking for information about the Hidalgo just a couple of weeks ago. The question is on the Grand Theatre page. I left a reply with what little I knew, but there’s been no response yet. You could post the link to the Hidalgo there, in case the person comes back.
I’m glad to help, but do notice that I got those dates wrong. Most of the palace was actually built between 1353 and 1391. The Moors had already been driven out of Spain by 1533.
An interesting question. Ultimately, all Alhambra Theatres are named after the original Alhambra, a Moorish palace near Granada, Spain (lots of theatres are named Granada, too.) Most of the palace was built between 1533 and 1553. Here is a web page about it.
The name Alhambra means Red Castle in Arabic. The original Alhambra was the subject of a popular book by American author Washington Irving in the mid 19th century. Irving portrayed the palace and its gardens in a very romantic way, and that romanticism probably had a lot to do with making the name popular with theatre builders. Irving’s book is now in the public domain and can be read on-line.
I wonder what became of the black metalwork around the facade that was uncovered in the early stages of the demolition, as seen in the photo linked by FPCInc on February 20th? When they didn’t save the Japanese style facade from the post-WWII remodeling, I expected they might at least preserve what was apparently the original 1924 decoration from the Civic Theatre.
Carolyn C.: Yes, the tower of the Fox Wilshire building contained offices, leased to a variety of businesses.
When William refers to “an early form of stadium seating” he means that the Loyola was one of many theatres which had a stadium seating section at the back of the auditorium, behind a section of normal theatre seating. The earliest theatre with such an arrangement that I’ve ever been in was the Rialto on Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles (closed), which was built in 1917.
The stadium section seating in these old theatres was configured exactly the way it is in a modern stadium-style theatre- or, for that matter, in the balcony of any older theatre. In fact, one of the neighborhood theatres I attended when I was a kid, the Monterey (demolished) in Monterey Park, had a stadium section, but everybody called it “the balcony”.
There have been quite a few such theatres, and I’ve now and then seen photos of some of them, but offhand the only URL I can find is for this picture from the USC digital archives which shows the view of the auditorium from the top of the stadium section of the aptly-named Fox Stadium Theatre (now a synagogue) in Los Angeles.
wdl: A Principal Theater at 223 N. Main St. is listed on Cinema Treasures, but so far nobody has added any information about it. That location would have been on the west side of Main north of Temple. Everything on that block was demolished for Civic Center expansion ages ago.
If the Hidalgo was next door to the Plaza Church, then it must be the theater listed on Cinema Treasures as the Estella. That building has also been demolished. There are a few comments on the page, but most of them are about the theater’s location, not about the theater itself.
I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, but there’s typically very little information available on the Internet (almost the only source I have available now) about these smaller theaters.
silverlining: You’re at the wrong address for that party. The theatre you recall must be the Century Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, originally called the Hunley Theatre. On that page you’ll find comments from many other former patrons of that theatre. This page is for another Century Theatre, located on Broadway at 60th Street in South Los Angeles.
ken mc: 842 S. Main was (according to a 1914 newspaper article quoted by vokoban in a December 22, 2005 comment on the Optic Theatre page) the location of Miller’s Theatre, about midway between the California Theatre and 9th Street. (Miller’s still hasn’t been added to Cinema Treasures.) It seems possible that the operators of the Roosevelt at 212 N. Main lost their lease and moved their operation to the old Miller’s location. It would have been easy for the N. Main building to revert to its earlier name of the Electric Theatre, as the marquee only had the generic word “Theatre” (or is that “Theater”… the photo I linked to last October is a bit blurry) on it.
Ken mc: The Wonderland is listed at Cinema Treasures under its later name, the Jade Theatre which, according to the comments, lasted into the 1970s at least. I have no memory of it at all, though I passed along that block hundreds of times over earlier years.
The Directory of Colorado State Register Properties entry about the Bluebird Theatre says that it was “…the first Denver theater designed specifically for the exhibition of movies.” They give the opening year as 1914.
Official website.
The Lakeport Cinema 5 is run by the same independent company which operates the Paradise Cinema 7 in Paradise, California.
Glenn Bianchi, owner of this multiplex, is the son of Joseph Bianchi who opened the Paramount Drive-In in 1947. Here is a recent Press-Telegram article about the Bianchis and their theatres.
This theatre was opened as the Roadium Drive-In in 1947. The area was then called Clearwater. The owner was local businessman Joseph Bianchi, whose son is Glen Bianchi, owner of the Bianchi Theatres. The Paramount Drive-In has, since 1955, hosted the Paramount Swap Meet, now the largest daily swap meet in California. Though the Drive-In has long since closed, the swap meet is still operated by the Bianchi family.
The L.A. Times of February 10, 1971 lists the Capri Theatre at 444 S. Glendora Avenue. It was a single screen house being operated by Loew’s Theatres. The L.A. Times of August 24, 1986 lists the Capri as a triplex being operated by SoCal Cinemas.
Ken mc: The Laughlin had a wider entrance. See this correctly labeled picture:
http://jpg2.lapl.org/theater1/00014862.jpg
I think the picture you linked to definitely depicts the Palace, which had a very narrow entrance. An even better reason for believing that the LAPL has erroneously named this photo as being of the Laughlin is the fact that the name “Palace” can be made out (just barely), inscribed on the floor just in front of that pair of duded up fellows posing for the camera.
I’d say that the LAPL picture is definitely this Palace Theatre, which opened in 1916. Even in later years the Palace had that very narrow entrance.
The Fox Wilshire is no longer being operated by the Nederlander organization. This means they are severing their connection to the venue two years earlier than was arranged in the three year lease-back agreement they made with the owners last year, noted in this article in the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Somehow I missed the announcement of the transfer of ownership of the building from Nederlander to the Temple of the Arts synagogue at the time it happened last year.
I also don’t know what this latest development means for the future of the building or the type of events that will be presented there, but with Nederlander out of the picture it seems unlikely that there will be any more Broadway shows among those events. They will probably be going to the Pantages and the Henry Fonda Music Box in Hollywood, both of which Nederlander still operates.
Wikipedia’s article on the Fox Theatre Circuit is pretty thin. I’ve thought about expanding it myself, but haven’t had the time. In fact, all the Internet sources on this subject are pretty thin. There’s a decent thumbnail biography of William Fox on the website of the St. Louis Fox Theatre, here. He started with a Brooklyn nickelodeon in 1904, and through expansions and mergers with other companies built the chain into one of the world’s largest before losing control of it in the early 1930s.
Fox took over the West Coast Theatre Circuit, which became its largest division, in the 1920s. West Coast was itself the result of a series of expansions and mergers. You can find a few bits of information about it on the Internet by doing Google searches on the names “Turner and Dahnken”, and “Turner, Dahnken and Langley”, which were predecessor companies. They also operated some theatres under the name T&D, but T&D Junior was a later company they started, not part of Fox.
Most of Fox-West Coast ended up in the hands of National General Theatres in the 1960s, and then much of it became part of Mann Theatres (including Fox’s flagship and most famous theatre, Grauman’s Chinese.) Today, of course, most of the Fox empire is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, parent company of the various Fox Television operations.
I think kenmc’s broken link was to this picture, which definitely shows the Warner Hollywood, not the Warner Downtown as the picture’s info page claims. LAPL seems to get about 1%-2% of their captions wrong, which I guess is pretty good for a collection of 60,000 pictures, but you do have to watch out for their errors.
The Adams was one of four theatres with Egyptian style interiors (none had Egyptian exteriors) designed for the Bard Theatre Circuit by architect Lewis Smith in the 1920s. The Vista Theatre in East Hollywood was the smallest, and the only one of the four still largely intact.
The Garfield Theatre in Alhambra was about the same size as the Adams, having a large auditorium with no balcony. A successful suburban theatre operated for many years by the Edwards circuit, and remodeled more than once, it’s Egyptian decor was gone by the late 1950’s. The Garfield’s auditorium was demolished only a few years ago, but the commercial and apartment block in front of it remains standing.
The largest of the four was Bard’s Pasadena, still in operation but virtually unrecognizable as the Academy Theatre, a six-screen art house opened in the mid ‘80s. The Academy had retained its Egyptian style until the mid 1950s when it underwent an extensive remodeling inside and out which gave it an Art Moderne look. It continued to operate as a single-screen theatre until about 1984, by which time it was getting pretty run down.
The Bard circuit had a fifth Egyptian style theatre, Bard’s Glendale, later operated by Fox-West Coast as the Glen Theatre, but that one was designed by Pasadena architect Kenneth A. Gordon rather than Smith. The Glen closed in the 1950s and was converted into a bowling alley. The building still stands, but none of the original interior decoration remains.
If the plans of the Washington Stage Guild come to fruition, the site of the Gayety/Shubert will once again house a legitimate theatre; a 250 seat house scheduled to open in the spring of 2008.
Ironstone Vineyards, owners of the Robert Morgan pipe organ formerly in the Alhambra Theatre, built the Alhambra Music Room at their winery to house it.