Fox Rosemary Theatre
2946 Ocean Front Walk,
Santa Monica,
CA
90405
2946 Ocean Front Walk,
Santa Monica,
CA
90405
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The Los Angeles Public Library gives the date of this photo of the Rosemary Theatre’s proscenium during demolition as 1970.
The link I put in my comment of Sept. 18, 2005, is dead. A photo and description of the 1924 fire can now be seen near the bottom of this web page.
This post-fire photo from 1912 shows the intent to rebuild the Rosemary, which they did of course:
http://jpg1.lapl.org/00077/00077815.jpg
I have only just noticed that the L.A. Library’s photo of the Dome Theatre (featured in reduced size at the top of Cinema Treasures' Fox Dome Theatre page shows the marquee of the Rosemary Theatre, but above the marquee is the name Dome Orpheum, using the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit’s standard script lettering. The Fox Rosemary must have had Orpheum Vaudeville in its early days. In any case, Dome Orpheum Theatre might have been an aka for the place around the mid-late 1920s. Can anybody dig up a period newspaper ad or something to confirm this?
To Terry Wade – just seeing your post now – the Magic Carpet ride was housed in the old Dome Theater, not the Rosemary. My grandparents lived right across the street from what became the entrance to POP (Neptune’s Kingdom) at the Hotel St. Regis. Flight To Mars was my favorite ride as well, and, in fact, an artist’s rendition of it adorns the cover of my second novel, Kritzerland (you can see the cover at amazon.com).
This theatre is clearly seen in the 1950 film “Quicksand” starring Mickey Rooney (perhaps his finest performance ever) and Peter Lorre -
www.amazon.com/Quicksand-Barbara-Bates/dp/6304680813
Rosemary Theater is #5 on this 1922 map -
View link
Vintage color picture postcard -
http://www.westland.net/venice/history2.htm
Was this the theatre that had the Magic Carpet ride when it was Pacific Ocean Park in the 60’s ? I seems to me that a old movie theatre had this ride in it. The Flight To Mars ride was my favorite. What a great park this was. I even think it was owned by the Fox West Coast people National General Corp just like in San Francisco they got money hungry in the 60’s and tore down the SF Fox Theatre and built a apt building on the spot. Good thing they didn’t own the land under the Graumans Chinese that they ran as a Fox West Coast Theatre the NGC folks lost money on not being able to sell this house and add it to the destruction they did to the other fine theatres they owned. I still have a popcorn box from the Fox West Coast Theatres a NGC Co The Place To GO! A place to go no more.
Here is an undated photo:
http://tinyurl.com/3abz9j
That’s kind of funny the caption “Exterior view of a Warner Brothers theater in Hollywood, 1931”. When you go into details for the picture it shows the Warner Western Theatre @ Wilshire and Western Ave., later known as the Warner’s Wiltern Theatre.
You can see the theater and the entire pier in this photo:
http://tinyurl.com/287tj5
This photo is from the USC archive:
http://tinyurl.com/22l95v
I work just a little bit north of where this was, and it’s amazing how NOTHING is there. If I didn’t know that the POP and the theatres and the Municipal Auditorium had been there, there is nothing there now that would indicate they had ever been.
The Rosemary Theatre seen in the 1918 movie mentioned in the comment above was not the same building as the Fox Rosemary Theatre. The original Rosemary Theater was located at 6 Ocean Park Pier. It escaped destruction in a fire that swept the pier in 1915, but by 1921 a new Rosemary Theatre had been built, at 2946 Ocean Front Promenade. This newer theatre was itself lost in the fire which completely destroyed the pier in 1924, as well as the adjacent Dome Theatre. The event is described at this web page. The Fox Rosemary Theatre was built following that fire.
Incidentally, the second Rosemary Theatre was located across the Promenade from the site of an earlier theatre called the Wonderland, which was listed in a 1915 directory of Ocean Park as being at 2939 Ocean Front Promenade. I’ve found no later listings of the Wonderland Theatre, so it may have been gone before the second Rosemary was built. There was also another Rosemary Theatre located a mile or so south, on Ocean Front Walk in Venice. I have found listings for that theatre from 1927 to 1933. It was gone by 1936.
The Fox Rosemary Theatre was used during the 60’s, for demos of the D-150 process. They were equipped with Norelco DP-70s to run 70MM tests.