Market Street Cinema
1077 Market Street,
San Francisco,
CA
94103
1077 Market Street,
San Francisco,
CA
94103
9 people
favorited this theater
Showing 51 - 75 of 76 comments
Too bad. It’s a nice shot of the three conjoining theaters.
Here is a night shot from 1986:
http://tinyurl.com/mabs68
In 1982 I went to see William Burroughs do a reading from his latest writings in a hugh Market St theatre. I remember the place as vaguely Art Deco in look, painted a khaki color.
Not sure if this is the place. There was something in a local paper about entrepeneurs leasing the place, trying to turn it from porn back into a legit venue.
It didn’t last; before long the theatre had gone back to porn. Does this jog anyone’s memory?
Leland, if you look at Lost Memory’s post from Jul 10 2007. It shows a view of the rear of the building. It does not look like it has a true stage house for live shows. It’s not tall enough.
There’s a misspelling in the architectural firm name at top. Harry L. Cunningham’s partner was named Matthew V. Politeo, not Polito as it currently says.
Does anyone have any info about if and when it was used as a live theater? Size of stage, dressing rooms etc. It has a stage house so I assume it had a working stage.
Leland
The Market Street Cinema, photographed at night in January 2009:
http://flickr.com/photos/maltphoto/3240756814/
dancers SWEAR the place haunted. they claim to see a siloutte of a women in the back rooms, the one of a main on the man floor and the janitor hates going upstairs to the viewing booths because he swears he gets tapped on the shoulder up there when nobody is up there.
anybody know more about this? a possible fire that killed people in the past or a murder in or in the back part of this place?
I know that by the mid-1980’s, MSC was strickly live shows only, save for some “video arcade” (aka peep show) booths.
Live shows make more money now. Besides it all video projection now, 35mm XXX died years ago.
When we took it for midnight movies they had not been showing porn too long as I recall. Moving Pictures leased (or maybe subleased) the theater from General Cinema. Moving Pictures Inc took it back to their porn program sometime after we left their employment. I was the one who did the bookings, promotions and “clean up” of the theater in THAT endeavor.
After the success of Mad Max and the moveover of Superman 70mm, the porn distributor got greedy and started cooking the book office receipts. We left the endeavor immediately as we did not want to be associated with the sort of thing.
During the first two weeks of the Mad Max run the house sold out on fridays and saturdays – the sublessor of the theater opened the balcony against my wishes as the fire department had issued an order to keep it closed since there was no sprinkler system installed. The theater manager later informed me later that he had been ordered to open the balcony for the opening night on the Superman moveover – the fire department showede up and the balcony was closed.
Prior to it going porn in 1980, Market Street Cinema was showing some films in 70mm as a last ditch effort to “bring back the glory”. They had subrun engagements of The Rose & 1941 there. (Both of which were moveovers from the Northpoint Theater, which had 70mm first-run engagements of these films).
From what I understand, it has gone downhill even as a stripjoint. (I remember seeing the late Lisa Deleeuw as a “headliner” here back in the mid-1980s.) Compared to the O'Farrell & the New Century (the former Larkin theater), the women at Market Street seem like streetwalkers. (I was not too impressed at visiting there several years ago.)
dingoman, the other two films in that MGM’s Fabulous Four reissue set was “Doctor Zhivago” and “Ryan’s Daughter”.
Back in 1980 I worked for a small porn company named Moving Pictures who had the Market Street Cinema (and the Jack London 3 in Oakland) as an outlet for their porno exhibition. I was able to convince the owner to allow myself and another to book midnight films into the Market Street Cinema (concert films like Woodstock, Fillmore, etc) and other films on Friday & Saturday nights. We would go in early Friday evening, change the marquee, put conventional one sheets into the window displays in the outside foyer and change the concession stand from porno products to candy concessions. During this time we would also clean the auditorium floor with bleach water and by midnight it finally caught on. We never competed with the Strand as we were showing other mignight films (they were showing Rocky Horror at the Strand). We did a good business and was finally able to stop the owner from showing porn for several months.
The theater was equipped for 35/70mm project, with 4 track and 6 track mag sound. In 1980 we were the only theater on Market Street that showed the First Run exhibition of Mad Max. The theater SOLD OUT several nights in the first two weeks of Mad Max’s run. Thereafter Warner Borthers allowed us to show the sub run of Superman in 70mm (it did well for a Market Street audience and we had an excellent print). Thereafter we exhibited what was being billed as MGM’s Fabulous Four (2001, Gone With The Wind,– I can’t remember the other two). The porn operator got greedy and fudged on the box office receipts and shortly after we discovered this we quit working for him and the theater went back to porn.
I also remembered a guy named Charley from Fox’s distribution agent in SF who called and asked to borrow the 70mm lenses for Star Wars continued showing at the Fox Warfield when it moved from the Cornonet. The lenses at the Warfield weren’t the right “calibar” so we loaned ours out.
I believe there may have been a couple of live venues there after we left (music and for some reason Grace Jones comes to mind).
I left SF in 1983 for Texas and then visited again in 98 and 2002 – I was saddened to see that porn took the theater as there were some fine acoustics in it.
It was strange, they got many 70mm roadshow films in the 70’s. even played ‘The Bible’ a D-150 movie and played it on a flat screen. It was in 70mm/Stereo but I was looking to seeing it in D-150. Even the Todd-Ao print of Sound of Music played not on a Todd-Ao curved screen but the flat one they used both for cinemascope and 70mm. They charged road show prices with reserved seats but not the full road show style.
The Benefit World Premiere for “Dirty Harry” was held here at the Loew’s Theatre on Tuesday, December 21st. 1971 at 8pm.
I had a hard time finding this place too. I figured it was called a different name, but had no idea what. Nice at least it hasnt been torn down. Why cant this site have some cross referencing of theater names? Anyone have any idea what it looks like inside now?
One wonders what the auditorium looked like prior to the conversion to burlesque (just curious).
I have been looking for a listing for the United Artists theater for some time now. It looks like my search is over.
Here are some photos from the SF Public Library:
1919, as the Imperial
View link
View link
Some other facts:
The infamous Jane Russell film The Outlaw opened here in 1943 (in pre-censorship form).
Other films that had long engagements here include West Side Story and Lawrence of Arabia.
Theater went to porn in 1980, at first showing films, then in the mid-1980s went to live shows only, which continue today.
Can you believe this is the same theatre where “The Sound of Music” played for over a year. When it was the United Artists it was one of the premiere reserved seat roadshow houses in the Bay Area. brucec
This theater did expand its space several years ago. There was a theater next door to the Market Street Cinema, called the Guild(which became a Pussycat theater in 1973) at 1069 Market Street. Did the Guild become part of MSC’s expansion?
In the above photo, it can be noted that some original facade elements remain from its days as the Imperial: The central blocky portion of the facade that is painted red, and the pale blue arch below that, just above the marquee. There was originally a sculpted bust of a Greco-Roman goddess or woman in the center of the arch.
General Cinemas picked up the Loew’s West Coast theatres in the early 70’s. General Cinemas ran this theatre for a short time, before it was dropped. Because it was a unprofitable single screen.
Rumor has it (must be confirmed) it was operated by GENERAL CINEMA after Loew’s… And after GENERAL CINEMA abandoned it, it was turned into a burlesque theatre with a newly built stage constructed directly under the lip of the balcony. Behind the new stage, the auditorium remained intact.