Comments from Joe Vogel

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Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Fox Theatre on Feb 8, 2006 at 3:35 am

The Fox was Greenville’s last surviving downtown theatre. It closed in 1978.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Carolina Theater on Feb 8, 2006 at 3:11 am

A story published today (Feb 8, 2006- I believe it will be available for seven days) at the web site GreenvilleOnline describes the Carolina Theater. The article gives the opening as June, 1925; says that the theatre was fitted out for stage productions as well as movies; gives the seating capacity as 1,400; reveals that the theatre’s Wurlitzer organ cost $20,000 dollars; and names the designers as local architects Beacham and LeGrand. It confirms that the theatre was located on Main Street, but the exact address is not given. It was closed sometime in the 1960’s.

Several other Greenville theatres are mentioned in the article, but with little detail. Names, and a few opening and closing dates are given.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Metropolitan Theatre on Feb 2, 2006 at 12:19 pm

Here is a brief essay about the Metropolitan, on the occasion of its closing, from the Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. There are three small photographs of the theatre.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Moore Theatre on Feb 2, 2006 at 2:08 am

The second link posted by Lost Memory on May 25 2005 no longer works.

Here is the new Moore Theatre Home Page.

Here is the Moore Theatre History Page.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Arcadia Theatre on Jan 25, 2006 at 1:42 pm

Welcome to Cinema Treasures, Howard. You might find some of your grandfather’s other theatres listed here (though if their names have changed over the years, they’ll probably be listed under their later names.) Any information you can provide about any of them would be welcome, as would information about any theatres not yet listed here.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Colorado Theater on Jan 25, 2006 at 1:23 pm

The Colorado was a rather plain theatre, especially when compared to its competitor a few blocks away, the Egyptian-styled Uptown. The Quonset hut style became popular for a while in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. I know of two other quonset hut theatres from that period within a few miles of Pasadena: the Garmar, in Montebello, and the Star in La Puente. I recall seeing quonset hut theatres in other parts of Los Angeles, but can’t remember their names offhand.

I’ve also seen quite a few such theatres in other places listed at Cinema Treasures. Not even counting theatres on military bases, many of which were in quonset huts, large or small, I think it’s likely that upward of a hundred quonset hut theatres were built in the U.S. during those years. It was about the cheapest form of construction available at the time.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Broadway Theatre on Jan 24, 2006 at 2:15 am

So, the theatre must have opened in very late 1924 or early 1925 as the New Broadway Theater, and then dropped the “New” from its name before March of 1926 (assuming that the Times' reporters got the names right.) The building’s owners were lucky to get such a reliable tenant as the Broadway. That endless parade of arriving and departing retail tenants prior to the theatre’s 60-some year occupancy must have been annoying.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Broadway Theatre on Jan 22, 2006 at 4:47 pm

I notice that Rivest’s latest list only shows “? 1930-1988” for this theatre. I wonder what his source for the original 1919 date was? Both Tally’s New Broadway at 554 S. and the Tally’s Broadway at 833 S. are documented in the L.A. library photo collection, but this theatre isn’t, and it isn’t mentioned in the library’s California Index, either.

Apparently, Tally gave up the original New Broadway when he opened the Broadway next to Hamburger’s (later the May Company), and that’s when it became the Garnett. As the Broadway remained open until 1929, when it was demolished to make way for an expansion to the May Company, it would have made sense for Tally to revive the New Broadway name for this theatre at 428 S. Broadway. Even at that, the question remains of exactly when this theatre opened, though.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Globe Theatre on Jan 22, 2006 at 4:04 pm

Maybe the letters were stolen. Investigators should look for a guy named Bo.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Westlake Theatre on Jan 21, 2006 at 6:06 pm

vokoban: The theatre in the 1914 ad might have been the one later called the Alvarado, and in its last years the Park. It opened in 1911, but the Cinema Treasures page for it doesn’t list Westlake as an earlier name for it, so there might have been yet another theatre on Alvarado near 7th.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Monterey Theatre on Jan 20, 2006 at 5:26 pm

hdtv: I’ve never seen Jail Bait myself, but William Gabel says that the scene you mention was shot in the Monterey Theatre in Monterey Park. I’ve been keeping an eye on the cable channels in hope that the movie will show up on one of them and I can see for myself. If any of the shots show the back of the house (the screen end of the room was rather nondescript), I’d probably recognize it, as I went to that Monterey many times. It was one of that handful of older theatres that had a section of stadium seating at the back of the auditorium. I never attended the Whittier Boulevard Monterey, but if, as listed above, its style was Spanish Renaissance, then it was probably more ornate than the Monterey in Monterey Park.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Muse Theatre on Jan 20, 2006 at 3:08 am

The Muse, at 417 S. Main, was a few doors north of the Rosslyn Hotel’s original building. The Rosslyn Theatre, at 431 S. Main was probably either in the old hotel building itself, or right next to it. I’ve never seen any trace of either theatre in period pictures of Main Street, and they were both fairly small, so I suspect that both were in converted retail space and probably didn’t have proper marquees. Both were still open into the early 1950’s, so there were plenty of chances for them to show up in photographs. I still hope to stumble across a picture that includes one or both of them someday.

My mind boggles at the thought that the Rosslyn Hotel has been converted to lofts.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Muse Theatre on Jan 19, 2006 at 6:20 pm

I think the RTD building extended north from about mid-block, and there was a multi-level garage between it and the Rosslyn Hotel’s north building. The Rosslyn Hotel, in the late 19th century, was in a four story building just south of mid-block. Then they took over another hotel in a taller building immediately south of that, and then built their first tower building on the northwest corner of 5th and Main in 1914-1915. I think the building on the southwest corner of 5th and Main was built in 1921 or 1922. The Rosslyn Theatre was most likely located in converted retail space in the earliest Rosslyn Hotel building, now the garage site. The Muse was north of that, where the RTD building was later built.

I remember visiting the RTD headquarters a couple of times in the mid-1980’s, to speak to the customer relations representatives about problems with particular bus routes. It was indeed like going into a bunker. There were armed guards in the lobby, and visitors had to sign in, and they had to wear an authorization tag while they were in the building. The atmosphere was oppressive. I doubt that many customers ever bothered to come in to report problems, not only because of the seedy location on decayed and half-vacant Main Street, but because of the almost paranoid atmosphere inside the building. I suspect that this building was one of the factors that caused the RTD’s management to get so completely out of touch with the bus system’s users.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Rialto Theatre on Jan 18, 2006 at 2:12 pm

R.W.: According to his memoirs on the web page linked above, Charles Hermann began working in 1911, so it seems unlikely that he’d still be living. Perhaps his granddaughter, Penny Allen Nelson, is still maintaining that web site (the most recent date mentioned on her own web page is 2004.) If her e-mail address posted at the bottom of that page is still working, you could try contacting her to ask if she has any further information about her grandfather’s career in Akron’s theatres.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Rialto Theatre on Jan 13, 2006 at 3:24 am

I’ve found a page about the Rialto at the web site of a firm that sells architectural antiques. They mined the building for its relics before it was demolished. Their text claims that the building was built in 1898, and merely renovated, rather than rebuilt from the ground up (though they claim that the renovation took place in the 1920’s, which seems unlikely, as the decorative details on the exterior are surely 1930’s era streamline moderne style.) They show a small but decent photo of the theatre in its last days, and the exterior design does look as though it had been attached to an older structure.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Theatre Visalia on Jan 13, 2006 at 1:31 am

The similar names of Visalia’s theatres has caused a lot of confusion. It should be noted that the photo to which ken mc linked in his comment of Oct 28, above, does not depict the Theatre Visalia, but rather the 1930 Fox Visalia Theatre to which Magic Lantern linked in his comment of Jan 12.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about El Rey Theatre on Jan 12, 2006 at 7:26 pm

Dennis, I do recall that the El Rey was the first theatre in Alhambra to get a CinemaScope screen. The very first CinemaScope movie ever released was “The Robe” which was released on September 16th, 1953, but I don’t think the El Rey’s screen was installed early enough to have shown that movie on its initial release. It actually took a couple of years for CinemaScope screens to make their way into a majority of theatres, partly because it took a while for the studios to demonstrate that there would be enough movies in the format to induce theatre owners to make the substantial investment to install new screens and projection equipment.

In the meantime, many movies (including The Robe itself) were released in both CinemaScope and in standard 35mm versions. For a couple of years, theatres which had installed the new system would often find themselves short of new CinemaScope product, and, to fill the gap, would show either non-CinemaScope movies, or earlier CinemaScope releases which the studios kept available especially for that purpose.

Finding out when specific theatres installed CinemaScope would require a bit of research- probably looking through their ads in local newspapers, as a theatre which had installed it would always advertise the fact. For the first couple of years, most theatres with newly-installed CinemaScope systems would inaugurate them by showing “The Robe” for one week. My fuzzy memory of when the El Rey got CinemaScope is complicated by the fact that I think the first wide-screen movie I saw at that particular theatre was the 1960 version of “Cimarron” (being a Fox-West Coast house, the El Rey had highest ticket prices in Alhambra, so we didn’t go there often.)

The reason I think that the El Rey might not have gotten CinemaScope until 1955 is that I believe that the one time we went there before the new screen was installed was to see a re-release of “Gone with the Wind”, and according to the GwtW release dates page at IMDB, that re-release had to have been the one in December of 1954.

I do remember being in the El Rey and seeing the screen surrounded by the framework which was going to be used in the demolition of the proscenium to make room for the new screen. If that happened before the December, 1954 screening of GwtW that we saw there, then I must have gone to the El Rey once before then, but I have no memory of having done so.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about El Rey Theatre on Jan 11, 2006 at 2:10 pm

Dennis, I think that the fact that the organ was still in use at the theatre you attended in the 1940’s is interesting. By the time I began attending the theatres in the area, the Rialto in South Pasadena was the only one that still had a working organ, and I never got to hear that one. My first visit to the Rialto wasn’t until a couple of years after a fire on the stage had destroyed the organ console, in the early 1970’s.

It’s possible that the Granada still had an operating organ until it was remodeled and renamed the Coronet, but I’m not sure what year that happened- it was most likely in the mid-late 1940’s, as the remodeling took place before I ever saw the place.

I only went to the El Rey once before it was given a CinemaScope screen, and I don’t remember seeing an organ console at that time. If the organ was still there when CinemaScope was installed (1955, I think), it certainly would have been removed to make way for the wider screen.

There was a three story building on the northeast corner of Garfield and Main. The ground floor of that building was for a long time the location of the Thrifty Drug Store. The building on the northwest corner, with the Owl Rexall store in it, was when I first saw it in the late 1940’s only one story tall. After Owl moved out, it was the location of Lucky Auto Supply for a long time. Both of these buildings have since been demolished. The top two floors of the one on the northeast corner were removed after being damaged by the 1971 earthquake. The remainder was demolished, along with the old Kress building next door to it, just a couple of years ago to make way for an new Edwards multiplex theatre (which is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.)

I don’t recall a stamp shop on Garfield. By the mid 1950’s, the only stamp shop I knew of was on the south side of Main just west of Second, in the same block as Pedrini’s music store. I don’t remember the name of it. Then next nearest stamp store that I knew of was Royal Stamp Supply on Raymond Avenue in Pasadena.

I don’t have a clear memory of the decor in the Bun ‘n’ Burger. We only went there a couple of times, and that was probably after 1955. My dad grew up mostly in Manhattan Beach, and that’s where his favorite hamburger joint was. When he wanted a hamburger, we’d usually hop in the car and drive the twenty or so miles to the beach (on surface streets all the way) to get one. We always lived in South San Gabriel, either near Garvey and San Gabriel Boulevard, or in the hills near Potrero Heights. My frequent jaunts to Alhambra were facilitated by the fact that we always lived within a couple of blocks of one of the local bus lines operated by Foster Transportation. Alhambra was our downtown, and from the earliest times I remember, we went there at least once a week.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about El Rey Theatre on Jan 11, 2006 at 1:12 am

Dennis, you saw the theatres in Alhambra before I did. The first time I went to a movie on Main Street was probably about 1953. I lived in the area until 1986, and attended all the theatres you mention except the Ritz.

The Ritz was not in Alhambra, but on Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena, a block north of Mission Street. The Ritz was the first theatre in the area to be closed and demolished. I’m not sure exactly when, but it must have been before 1961 or 1962.

The Rialto was also in South Pasadena, three blocks south of the Ritz, on the other side of the street, at the Corner of Oxley. The Rialto is still there, still open, and still operating as a single screen theatre. It is the only intact survivor among the old theatres in the western San Gabriel Valley.

The El Rey Was the theatre across Main Street from the old main building of Alhambra High School. It was operated by Fox-West Coast in the 1950’s, while the other two theatres on Main Street were both operated by Edwards Theatre Circuit.

The Alhambra Theatre (which is listed at Cinema Treasures under its final name, Alhambra Twin Cinemas) was at the southeast corner of Atlantic Boulevard and Main Street. If you attended it in the early 1940’s, you must have been there at the time The Annex (built in adjacent retail space in 1941) was operating. I don’t remember seeing The Annex in use until it was re-opened as the Gold Cinema sometime about 1970.

The Granada, was the original name of the third theatre on Main Street (and it was probably the oldest), but its name was changed to The Coronet some time before the early 1950’s, and then changed again in the early 1960’s to The Capri. This might be the theatre you’re thinking of, but it was not east of Garfield. It was located in the building on the southeast corner of Second and Main, catty-corner from the old Alhambra City Hall. If I remember correctly, the corner retail space in the building was, when I first saw it, the location of a music store, and then there was a stairway up to the second floor where there was a dance studio, then a small lunch room next to that, and then a tiny jewelery store next to the theatre entrance. I don’t remember what was in the tiny shop on the other side of the theatre entrance. This was the first Main Street theatre to be demolished, after it was badly damaged in the Sylmar earthquake of 1971.

As far back as I can remember, there were no theatres on Main Street east of Garfield. My earliest memories of Main Street go back to about 1948 or 1949, but they only involve the shopping district, not the theatres. I remember, very vaguely, when the Owl Drug Store was on the northwest corner of Garfield and Main. I remember, very clearly, when J.C. Penney moved from its small store where Downer’s was later located to its big new building east of Chapel Avenue. I even recall going in the old J.J. Newberry store, and then seeing it demolished and replaced by W.T. Grant’s new building. But at that time, there were no theatres east of Garfield. It was nothing but shops and a few lunch rooms and, a bit later, a couple of banks.

I do remember the Bun and Burger. In fact, it is one of the places that is listed at L.A. Time Machines, a web site devoted to surviving bars and restaurants (and a few other businesses) which are largely unchanged from decades ago.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about El Portal Theatre on Jan 9, 2006 at 2:36 am

Here is a photo of Lankershim Boulevard in 1926, with the El Portal nearing completion. (From the USC Archives.)

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Paramount Theatre on Jan 8, 2006 at 6:35 pm

For some reason, my E-mail address doesn’t display on my user info page here (I thought it did.) I don’t know how secure Cinema Treasures message board pages are from address-collecting bots, so I don’t want to post it here. You can use the E-mail address I have posted on this page at LiveJournal.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Roxie Theatre on Jan 8, 2006 at 2:30 pm

The stories of Mr. Metzger and the anonymous suicide sound like they could have been scenes out of noir movies of the era. But at least nobody ever came crashing through the roof of the Roxie.

The Roxie was one of the Broadway theatres I never got around to attending. It was already a grind house when I began going downtown, and I preferred going to the first or second run theatres farther south, or on Hill Street. All the theatres north of 6th street except the Million Dollar were a bit sad and run down by the 1960’s.

Of course, since the building is still there, there’s always a possibility that it will be renovated and re-opened some day, so I might still get a chance to add it to my list of theatres I’ve attended.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Paramount Theatre on Jan 8, 2006 at 1:56 pm

andypcl: The Paramount Theatre Building in Los Angeles was just an ordinary office building wrapped around two sides of the theatre. I don’t know if the Paramount Theatre Circuit had any offices of its own in the building or not. The company’s headquarters was in the New York City Paramount Building.

There were other office buildings connected to other Paramount Theatres in other cities, too— Oakland and Palm Beach (though the last only had two floors, so wouldn’t have had a room 514), that I know of for sure, and there were probably many others. Unless your object specifically names the Paramount Theatre Building in Los Angeles, Mr. Benjamin’s office might have been in some other city.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Garrick Theatre on Jan 8, 2006 at 1:29 pm

There were at least three other Garrick Theatres in California alone early in the 20th century— San Diego, San Francisco and Stockton each had one, that I know of. Philadelphia and St. Louis also had them, and probably many other cities did as well. It became a popular name for theatres long before movies were invented. Ultimately, all of them were named for David Garrick.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Garrick Theatre on Jan 7, 2006 at 7:49 pm

The photo at the top of this page shows the Garrick after the 1921 remodeling by G.E. Bergstrom. The original facade, by architects Train & Williams, can be seen in this photo of the Hyman Theater from the L.A. Library photo collection. The facade, largely unchanged from its days as the Hyman, can be seen in this later photo of Broadway (from the USC archives), showing the Garrick Theatre at the lower right.

I have re-checked my source for the date of construction of the Hyman/Garrick Theatre, and see that the 1913 date actually referred to another Hyman Theatre, in San Diego. As the plans for the Hyman in Los Angeles were announced in September of 1910, this theatre probably opened in early 1911.

Incidentally, Train & Williams was the firm which designed the operators pavilion and power house which long stood at the top of the Angel’s Flight funicular. As far as I know, the only other theatre designed by Train & Williams was The Strand in Pasadena.