Loyola Theatre

Here’s an aerial view of the newly-built Loyola (perhaps not yet finished) in the brand-new community of Westchester.
http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt9489r90h/

Zoom in on the big shiny white auditorium standing alone in the nearly-empty downtown area, the dark area near the top right.

Most of the houses around there were built in 1945 to provide wartime housing for the workers at the new Hughes Aircraft plant where Centinela and Jefferson merge. The little area across from the Loyola, where CVS is now, is a small miniature golf course being built, although it didn’t last very long. But I like the fact that apparently the first priority for the new community was to have a gorgeous Art Deco movie theater, with groceries, shopping, restaurants, banks and other non-essentials to be added later.

The Loyola Theatre was acquired by a church during that time frame, but I have an article on which church (Moonies ?). But it was sub-leased to use as a movie theatre for a short time before they sold the theatre to become a professional office building which stands today. The Moonies owned the former Warner Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles after Metropolitan dropped the house in the 70’s.

I lived in and around L.A. from ‘77 – '81 or so; as I recall, the Loyola was acquired by the 'Moonies’… I think that was when it was ’re-purposed' as an office building – does anyone remember or know anything about that?

Here is a view of the box office circa 1976:
http://tinyurl.com/2z9mn5

Here is an undated photo:
http://tinyurl.com/2kko52

I broke my collar bone in the mid-50’s and was feeling down. My dad took me out to dinner and to the Loyola to see Raymond Burr in the original “Godzilla.” Will also remember that night because my dad was one of the busy ones who rarely had time to spend with his kids. When he wasn’t working, he was out drinking.

Just before the theater’s pre-closing rock n' roll show, I’d participated in the sci-fi festival. Among the last-screened movies were 35mm prints of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (from the original neg), and Technicolor prints of “Fahrenheit 451” and “Crack in the World”. What a sad day! For the record one of the great projectionists was Ed Platt’s twenty-something year-old son. The festival’s director was Mickey Cottrell, later-becoming a producer and actor, playing the sociology teacher early in the film, “Apt Pupil” (1998). This was a wonderful place, but unlike the unusual Paradise Theater just three blocks south, its architecture was the more standard, laid-out rectangle. It did have a level-up, gently-raised rear, an example of early stadium-style seating, and a spacious open-air feeling because of its wide auditorium and high ceiling. Most memorable are the stainless-aluminum inlay around the curved box office, which I believe still exists, and the late-deco-trimmed interior mentioned by Jim Rankin above.

In 1963, the Loyola ran Hitchcock’s “The Birds” in grand-style. There were several “dead” artificial birds placed along the marquee. Most interesting and clever was the box office where two or three of the birds had been cut in half and pasted to either side of the window, each “head” stuck on the inside with the “tail” on the outside. Tiny “cracks” were painted on the glass. This gave the appearance that the “birds” had crashed right through! Much to Hitch’s chagrin, I’m sure it would have given William Castle a great charge! Anyway, it was a delightful contrast to this lovely, “classy” theater, and another wonderful, permanent memory.

In its history, the theater also first-ran “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “The Pink Panther”, and “The World of Henry Orient”.

I feel nostalgic and melancholy every time I drive past The Loyola. It was a great theatre that played a highly eclectic array of movies. It was on of the many revival houses in the Los Angeles Area. The medical building put in its place looks rather run down. Since the theatre facade is still in place, I have a dream that someday the theatre will be rebuilt. One can dream, right?

Hello to all,
I just took 2 original framed Pictures (H. Bogart and Marlene Dietrich)to my office which I bought back in 1982 when the Loyola closed. There is a stamp on the back of each photo an still in
Handwriting “For Fred Langner, pick up Sat 5/5/82” , I was going back to germany the next day. As far as I remember the Loyola
closed the next weekend and all sold things should stay normally until that day, but they allowed me to take them away early because I had to leave LA…During my 4 month stay in LA I was several times there watching movies in this very fine building.
Today I told a colleague where they are from and we looked in google and found this.. what a surprise !!!

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.

The Film Daily Year Book (1952 edition) gives a seating capacity of 1,248.

1) Thanks for the update, Lost Memory, of what the Loyola Theater looks like now.

All I can say is “OMG, what were they thinking when they ruined the facade of the Loyola?????”

“Hi” to All the King of Queens Fans who visit this site to see the Loyola that Spence has camped out in front of.

2) If you go to Chuck’s View link
you’ll see a photo of the Alabama movie theatre in Houston, Texas. Right now it is a Book Stop Bookstore, so the facade is intact.

There is a petition to save the Alabama Movie Theatre, and the area around it, and the petition is at www.i-petition.com

Michelle

From the LA Library:

http://jpg2.lapl.org/theater2/00015371.jpg