Royal Theatre
1529 Polk Street,
San Francisco,
CA
94109
1529 Polk Street,
San Francisco,
CA
94109
11 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 38 of 38 comments
I remember going to the Royal with my grandmother in the 1950s. We would stop in at See’s next door and get some candy and then go into the theatre to watch a double feature. We drove by there yesterday and I had a little pang to see that there didn’t seem to be any vestiges of it that were recognizable.
I moved into Polk Gulch in 1981 and I use to go to the Royal Theatre. We had a friend who worked there in the mid 1980’s who would open the balcony for us and a few other friends so we could watch the movie from up there. It was a special treat!! The last thing I remember about the Royal before it was torn down was a guy who had an easel and paints. He was painting a picture of the sign and facade. I regret the fact I did not get his name. Polk Gulch has lost all four of it’s single screen theatres. The Alhambra is now a Gorilla Gym, the Royal was torn down, and the Regency’s One and Two have been turned back into Ballrooms. ARG
The Royal Theatre was re-modelled in an Art Deco style both externally and internally in 1935/36 by architect Timothy Pflueger.
I would go to the Royal on regular basis in the 70’s when Polk Street was a rival to the Castro.
Some of the titles of the movies I saw there: “Diamonds Are Forever” and “Live and Let Die”
The manager during the 70’s/80’s was a real s**t and didn’t know anything about customer service. I remember him telling me that the saying of “The Customer Is Always Right” was a lie.
Needless to say with an attitude like that it is no wonder the place closed.
Used to enjoy waiting in line @ The Royal for the opening of Bette Midler’s movies in the ‘80s. The lines would stretch around the block to the car dealership. It became a tradition to see her movies there on opening day to a full house.
I lived in San Francisco in the 1970’s and attended all the single screen first run theatres in the area. I loved the marquee but the auditorium wasn’t in great shape. It always looked like very little maintenance was done on the auditorium and they had painted the lobby a purple.It was a nice size theatre but I never sat in the balcony. The last film I saw at the Royal was “Death on the Nile”. The Alhambra down the street on the other hand was and is a beautiful theatre that is now a fitness gym. The building of the AMC Megaplex on Van Ness caused the closing of the Regency 1,Regency 2,Royal and Alhambra theatres. The City of San Francisco was one of the last cities in the US to have multi screen theatres, due to land values,cost,zoning,and lack of parking.brucec
As a recent transplant to San Francisco in 1997, I was delighted to find the Royal a few blocks away from my new apartment on Pine Street. I saw one movie there, “Face/Off” with John Travolta. Of course, I was much more interested in the theater than the film. But my access to the theater was short-lived as it closed very soon after that. Within a year, the homeless were camping out in its terrazzo entryway. In fact, I was convinced to leave the neighborhood when I passed a heroin addict sitting in front of the former ticket booth with a needle hanging out of his arm. I was terribly upset when I saw it had been torn down. What a senseless loss!
The Royal opened on September 6, 1916. It was built at a cost of
$200,000 by Oppenheimer, Karski and Levi.
The opening program was Ella Hall in Little Eve Edgarton.
It was updated and remodeled in the mid 1930’s, eliminating every trace of its original appearance, and, since no pictures of its first look seem to have survived, it will forever be regarded as the lost art deco treasure which it never really was.
It’s narrow stage was incapable of properly accommodating wide screen
CinemaScope projection, and so there was no other solution than to bring the screen out in front of the proscenium, thus providing audiences with a most satisfactory wide screen presentation, but also hiding from prying eyes whatever previous architecture lurked behind. In its heydey, a sellout audience was not unusual for such films as The Great Escape or Deliverance, and Blum’s Soda Fountain across the street (on the SW corner of Polk and California) was a great place to have an ice cream treat before or after the movie.
It’s last day of operation was February 22, 1998.
Saw “Ed Wood” there when it played about 1994. Wonderful facade and lobby; HORRIBLE auditorium (especially the “proscenium”—-this was obviously a bastardization of an earlier, presumably grander one). Still, a terrible, terrible loss.
I was an employee of the Royal on the day she closed. She was run by Blumenfeld Theatres and ran first run movies . The last films shown were Blues Brothers 2 which was attended by James Brown, and for the last three days she was open we showed Boogie Nights.
The Royal Theatre once stood at 1529 Polk Street and it seated 1515 people.
it makes me sick that this beautiful theater
has been torn down for rich people to live in.
every time i walked by it, it filled me with joy.
i had dreams of fixing it up and making it a
running theater again. very sad.
Saw “Re-Animator” when it premiered here in 1986. Great theater with balcony. It would be great if this was revived as a theater instead of sitting empty.