Hardy's Theatre

Thanks again Tom. I’ll use the alernate address in the Future. I’ll be planning a day trip up to Fresno soon to get a feel of downtown and hopefully talk to other people envolved with its proposed re-development!! If I was end up with the theatre I hope you guys might re-consider installing an organ, I’d give it a wonderful home! I feel the organ could be part of that fresh approach, everything old is new!! I still need to work on a good concept for the venue but the addition of a “voice' would be most welcome…D

If you want to contact me directly try This is my secondary and generally unused address. It forwards to my main address which I won’t post here. I will make some calls and see what comes up regarding the Liberty.

At least in 1982, if you knew where to look, some of the original 1917 design was still in the theatre. The organ screen are really neat—all you can see is the “negative” from where the chambers used to be, but they had a distince half wagon-wheel design to the top of the screen. The organ must have really gotten out as there was nothing in its way.

We looked into the idea of possibly putting an organ back into the Liberty. But, with the lack of fly loft anymore, the stage use is not so great. The idea was that if the stage were useable for live programs the place would be a bit more versatile. The Wilson is now a church and not likely to be a “road house” again. Warnors is, and always has been, THE movie palace in town. So anything at the Liberty has to be new, fresh, and something to stand on its own. None of us wanted to put that much time into such a project.

There are photos of the original Liberty Robert Morton in a couple of versions of the “As ‘Pop’ Saw It” by “Pop” Laval. It was a very unusual and early Robert-Morton organ. I would not be surprised if it was not among the first half dozen organs the company built.

AS I recall, the organ screens are completly intact but are covered over with “modernization” plaster. Just a tiny portion of the original screens are visible—presumably to act as a ventilation duct. The chamber space was still on each side of the theatre.

Now you have to understand, this is how the theatre was in the early 1980s. Who knows what the endless parade of churches have done to the interior.

The windlines from the blower location in the basement were still intact in the early ‘80s. I had always heard that the upper portion of the blacony was not used because it was too steep. I can believe it. The original picture sheet, actually a framed in area of white plaster was still there on the rear of the backstage wall. When the upper part of the fly loft was torn out, somehow this “picture sheet” was allowed to remain.

I will be in Fresno next week and shall see what I can find out.

Also bear in mind, most of the building has a great deal of brick. In California, that 5-letter word can spell death to a building even though Fresno is relatively free of heavy seismic activity.

The Liberty/Hardy’s/Mexico Theatre is, I think, still used as a Mexican Apostolic church. I have no idea as to the actual owner of the theatre.

The downtown revitalization is coming along quite well. As a former resident who now gets back to town several times a year, I can see the changes for the good. The biggest stumbling blosk in downtown Fresno is the Fulton Mall.

The city needs to wake up to the fact the Fulton Mall needs to be reopened as a slow speed, one-way street much like Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz. Once the City takes the initiative to clean up the central part of the former Fulton Street, flush out the winos, get rid of the petty 1 hour parking fees and meter maides, the downtown will really come back to life. As it stands right now, there is nothing to bring anyone to the Fulton Mall. Couple that with the snotty parking rules and you can see why the north Fresno shopping malls and free parking thrive.

In 1963, Hardy’s Theater was part of the Hardy Theater chain, headquartered in San Francisco. Gerald Hardy was the president. The chain had houses in Fresno, Oakland, San Francisco and Pismo Beach. Hardy Theaters also operated the Sequoia in Fresno at that time.

It is too late. That poor theatre “got it” back in the late 1950s when the stagehouse was chopped off and the interior covered over with blase' 1950s plaster. The best one could hope for is for the wonderfully preserved facade to remain as part of a new building.

The Liberty Theatre originally contained a 3 manual 18 rank Robert Morton pipe organ. Since the Robert Morton Company began building piep organs in 1917, this organ must have been one of their earliest instruments.

Photos of the unusual console are published in the various Claude “Pop” Laval books on historic Fresno. The console sat on a lift in the orchestra pit. The console had two full stoprails and large, shorter, partial rails on the right and left bottom under the main stoprails. This is very unusual to find in three manual 17 rank instruments. The bottom manual of the console also contained two rows of stop combination pistons. I know of only one other theatre organ where there were two rows of pistons on such a manual—the 1929 6 manual Barton that was once in the Chicago Stadium.

Photos in the various “Pop” Laval books show the Liberty console in both the “up” position and down at the bottom of the orchestra pit. The theatre was massively remodeled in the late 1940s at which time the fly loft was cut off the top of the stage house.

Unlike later Robert Morton organs (and theatre organs in general), the stopkeys on the Liberty organ were all ivory colored and not in the later usual ivory, red, amber, brown, and black colors found on later Mortons such as Warnors Theatre in Fresno.

The organ had a huge traps and effects dept. used to accompany the silent films. The late Richard S. Villemin of Porterville removed the Liberty organ just before the theatre was massively remodeled in the late 1940s. There were pipe chambers at either side of the stage at stage level. The original organs screens have largely been covered over with later plaster. However, from behind, the original screens can still be clearly seen. The various sound effects mentioned earlier, were scattered about back stage, unenclosed. According to Richard Villemin, there were such unique effects as typewriter, tower chimes, owl hoots, thunder and so on.

Richard told me he stored the remains of the organ (the console was long-gone by the time he removed the rest of the organ) were stored in a barn in Strathmore, CA. I never did learn if this material was still stored there or not. Mr. Villemin passed away in October 1987, so it is now impossible to know what became of the remains of the Fresno Liberty Robert Morton pipe organ.

Under the stage, the major windlines to the organ from the organ blower space were still intact in the early 1980s. The painted-on, black paint-framed silent picture sheet was still in-place on the rear wall of the stage. The Liberty has what has to be one of the steepest balconies ever in the Fresno area. It was understood that the uppermost part of the balcony was not used onve movies came in full-time as the picture sheet could not be seen from the upper balcony. The projection room was on the main floor.

In childhood, I loved this theatre. Close to where my parents worked at Gottschalks on the Fulton Mall, I attended this theatre often. “Some Like It Hot,” “Love Me or Leave Me,” “Kismet,” “West Side Story,” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”,“Ben-Hur,” “King of Kings,” are a few of the hundreds of motion pictures that I saw at the Hardys, 1953-1969.

Pop singer Michelle Branch used exterior shots of this wonderful theatre for her “Goodbye to you” video in 2002!