Rolling Hills Theatre

Clancy’s was the best. I can still taste those burgers. My first date was there with Debbie Meyers (mom drove us). I’m pretty sure, in order from the corner, was a gas station (Chevron?), Clancy’s, United Artist theater, a go-cart track with a Super Slide, a miniature golf course, batting cages and an Orange Julius. After that, I’m pretty sure, was an open field and a couple of car lots. After that, before you hit the small residential area before Hawthorne, was fields with crops. Oh, and a motel/restaurant named “Half Way House” around there. Throw in a Christmas tree lot and the occasional rodeo and it was a happening place!

Remember the Super Slide next to the Miniature Golf place? The UA Theater was located about 200 yards west of the PCH/Crenshaw intersection. There was a Drive-in fast food place called “Clancy’s” at the corner. Anyone remember that?. It was later torn down and a BBQ restaurant was built, which later became “Miguel’s Burritos”. It’s now a Jack in the Box. I remember seeing “Rocky” and the “Towering Inferno” at the UA. It was a really nice theater. The Circuit City used to be a store called “Leonards” then it was “National Lumber”. The National Lumber cartoon characters were “Shorty” and “Cheap Chicken”. Sambo’s was located at the corner of Anza and PCH, about 3 miles west of the UA Theater. I was at the RH Theater the day of the murders. It always haunted me that the killer stole money that I once held in my hands. It was a Holiday weekend. Lincoln’s Birthday. Very Sad. Also Very Sad……I REALLY MISS The Parasol. Anyone remember the Marina Theaters in Redondo Beach? Thanks for letting me go down memory lane.

Mooveez: I remember the Sambo’s. Do you remember a miniature golf place? And I think, right next door was a restaurant that we went to a lot…. it had crazy murals on the walls.

I remember the United Artists, the Rolling Hills Theater and the Palos Verdes Fox up at the Peninsula Center. This would be 1967-1971. My parents would drop us teens off in the evenings. We would often leave the show and go to the Slot Car Arcade or the Parasol. I remember Jeans West behind the Rolling Hills. We were troublemakers at the theater back then, smoking in the bathrooms and often getting thrown out. Sorry about that now! I remember the Bird Farm…. does anyone remember a BBQ place somewhere by the Bird Farm? It had wild drawings inside. Mud

FYI “SkaterDater” fans: “SkaterDater” won the Palme D'Or for Best Short Film at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Film the same year. The young director, Noel Black, went on to a long career in television.

I like to share these pics with as many people as possible, so here’s the link to my Old South Bay album, including pics of the Fox Redondo. Check out the overhead shot of the Torrance Drive-In, surrounded by oil derricks.
http://picasaweb.google.com/stevebopp/OldSouthBay

Wow! It’s nice to know the other “kids” who were probably sitting close by me long ago in the 60’s. The RH theater was the one of the last grand Saturday Matinee triple feature venues. Thanks to whoever posted the other activities we would do on those Saturdays the dance contest which was either doing the limbo or the twist. During those Saturdays the owner would always come in go up on stage and have the audience say “Hi Clyde!” the projectionist. In other words this theater was owned by a showman the last of his kind. Sigh. I too remember the murders which happened by the time I was a junior at Miraleste High School. I was shocked. At the time there was this awful serial killer
making headlines first as the 5&10 killer later updated to the TG&Y killer. Also during those days the term “serial killer” was not used in the Daily Breeze. The murders rocked the community to it’s core. Btw my name is Joe Hall in case anyone from the ‘old days’ knows me. I would have liked to have seen some of the other names of the kids that went there who have posted here. I remember most the Elvis movies and the cheap Japanese Godzilla and Mothra movies. Admission was 60 cents but it used to be only 50 cents. Cudos to all who remember the details of the shopping center as well. The old J.J. Newberry’s with the old fashioned lunch counter, Foods Co., Swedish Smorgasbord, and of course the fabulous Parasol restaurant. And yes to that guy who seems so worked up about the UA theater located EXACTLY on the corner of PCH & Crenshaw but on the opposite side of Crenshaw. Also although the location was and is Torrance the area was referred to as the Palos Verdes Penninsula by all who lived there even though technically it was quite on the penninsula. Yes it was safe back then parents thought nothing of letting all us kids walk down to the theater on our own and be rid of us for the day for a mere $3 or less. Didn’t “SkaterDater” win an Oscar for best short? I’ll have to look that up. I have not been back for awhile but isn’t Seymor’s Jewlers still there. Btw I grew up with Scott, Seymor’s son the family’s last name is Billowit and both Scott and his sister Gail are both very successful jewlers Scott has his store in Hermosa Bch. now and he had one in Marina Del Rey as well but may have lost that in a divorce. So many memories of that time of innocence and of the area where one could hike in the hills nearby and look for snakes. While I’m posting does anyone remember the VERY OLD Fox Redondo Theater down at the pier???? Any pictures of it as a movie theater not the old 1927 pic shown on this site? One last detail the Lucky’s super market used to be called Shopper’s Market was back in the early 60’s.

I remember Skaterdater. We would see it on rainy days at Newton Middle School. I didn’t remember it as a love story, but it is. I have a copy of it on VHS somewhere. I believe it was a student film at UCLA and won some awards. It is fun to see what Rolling Hills Plaza looked like before the big box retailers took it over. There was Newberry’s, Florence Fabrics, Seymor’s Jewelers and the Tea House. I remember the murders even after all these years. Some of my childhood innocence was lost after the tragedy. The double features were great. The UA Theatre across the street was a nice theatre as well. There was also The Parasol, Lucky Market and a Go Cart Track near by.

Some DVD discs made at home on some DVD recorders will not work on old DVD players. It’s not a bad disc, the older players can’t play them.

Same here, a couple of times a month was how I spent my Saturday afternoons at the theater. I found a very nice copy of ‘Skaterdater’ by following the link below. The seller, Scott, dosn’t list it but you can email him through ebay. For some reason it will not work on my older DVD player but it works great on newer ones and on the computer. Enjoy! (http://www.antigravitypress.com/wordpress/?p=293)

A couple of shots of Rolling Hills Theater can be seen here (http://www.barefooters.org/scrapbook/iotw0006.html). This was around 1964/65.

Hi Kim. I honestly don’t remember any live shows or audience participation activities at the Rolling Hills Theater, but my time there was around ‘69-'73. Things I do remember: The L-shaped shopping mall that stood on the western edge of the RHT parking lot included a JJ Newberry’s (where my mother worked in the '50s, and where we would often go to sit at the counter for lunch or ice cream), and a large fabric store (where my mother would spend seemingly endless hours looking through pattern books). A small strip of stores stood on the east side of the RHT parking lot, and included a Swedish Smorgasbord (buffet-style) restaurant that seemed wildly exciting at the time. Then, of course, there was the fabulous Parasol restaurant across PCH, and the UA Torrance theatre across Crenshaw. Both the UA and Rolling Hills had huge screens and curtains that opened dramatically before screenings. (I can vividly remember the Buena Vista logo before Disney films at the RHT undulating as it was projected on the opening curtains.) This block at that time – with the two theatres, Newberry’s, Swedish Smorgasbord and The Parasol – was a real center of attraction for my family during those years. After the murders, focus moved to the Del Amo Mall a couple of miles northwest, and then briefly to the Old Towne Mall (a creepy carnival-themed disaster) another mile north. By the end of the '70s, with Torrance having quickly developed, there was no “center” of anything anymore. I remember going back to the now-split Rolling Hills Theater in '79 or '80 to see 'Apocalypse Now’, and finding the place full of too many sad memories. The murders were the stuff of legend in high school, but for those of us who had actually spent our younger years there, they were a distinct dividing line in our lives.