Fox Theatre Taft

theater was reopen on 19 May.

Well, I just did a google search on the Taft Fox Theatre and this was the first link listed. There doesn’t seem to be a lot listed about this theatre so let me see if I can help fill in some of the blanks. My family and I bought and restored the theatre in the 1995 and I was the General Manager of the theatre for over four years. The theatre started out as the Hippodrome, as listed above, in the early 20’s. After the fire the theatre reopened as the Fox in either 50 or 51 (used to have this knowledge on the tip of my tongue when I was running the place but it’s been several years now and the details are a little fuzzy). When we bought it in 1995, it was run down and had been closed for several years. We took about 9 months restoring it. We took out tons of asbestos, repaired seats, painted everything (I personally painted the entire marquee by hand), repaired neon, and did a lot of cleaning. The main auditorium originally would seat close to 1300 people I believe. We took out several rows of seats and added a much larger stage up front so we could have live performances. We also eventually took out several rows in back, added platforms, and put in leather recliners (talk about watching a movie in style). When we got done the seating capacity had been cut down to a mere 750. We reopened it in May, 1996. We originally showed only second-run movies, but eventually moved into some first-run stuff during the busy periods. After about a year and a half, we bought the empty lot next to the lobby and added two more smaller screens with about 300 seats between the two of them. We began running quite a bit more first-run movies then. After a few more years I left, but my family continued to operate it until September, 2003. There just wasn’t enough business to keep it open. The multiplexes of Bakersfield were just too close. The theatre was sold during the summer of 2004. I believe the current owners are planning to reopen it soon. It’s a beautiful theatre that I absolutely love. It was my life for a couple of years and they are years I look back on very fondly. I will do my best to get a picture posted so all can see what it looks like.

This theatre originally opened in either the Teens or early Twenties as the Hippodrome. It had a vaudeville stage with fly tower, which is where the “The Place to Go!” signage is. After World War II, there was a fire, and in remodeling it was decided to rotate the interior of the theatre 180 degrees, which explains why the fly tower is over the lobby now. If you look at the row of storefronts, you will see that the most elaborate part of the upper facade is down at the other end (there was a State Farm office there last time I was by there). This is where the original entrance was.
The marquee and the interior are a fine example of the Skouras style. The marquee is identical to that of the Fox Venice and others. As far as I know the Fox remained a single screen, firstrun theatre up until its recent closure.