Regent Theatre

Thanks. Construction of the 101 took out a lot of older buildings in the Main/Aliso area. My favorite sandwich place, Philippe´s, had to move over to Alameda and Ord. I´m in Rio right now and pining for a French dip and a kosher pickle. Not to be found here.

Here is a pre-renovation photo from you-are-here.com:
http://tinyurl.com/23vkd7

Here are two March 2007 photos:
http://tinyurl.com/2b9ylo
http://tinyurl.com/2arf77

Thanks, that would be great.

Downtown: The 2004 aerial photo of that block you can fetch at TerraServer (the red pin icon for 448 S. Main is actually in front of the next building north) shows a building without a stage house, so I’m guessing the Regent was built as a movie house during the silent era.

Somewhere in my messy file cabinets I hope a copy of that ancient report still exist. Brother Andrew donated his copy of this (under my real name) paper to THS. Thank goodness I was able to locate some of my yellowed notes on this subject.
My original intent was to document studio back lots, but by the time I got to filmdom most of them had been paved over. I decided to study early silent era theatres instead.
In order to conduct research I was living in downtown LA at the Rainbow Hotel, next door to the public library. Almost twenty-five years have passed since then and my memories have grown vague. After viewing an image of the Main Theatre, I don’t think I ever saw it. Then again, all those S. Main St. porn houses looked so much alike.
It took a lot of effort to get inside the closed down Optic, only to find everything of interest had been removed, or stolen.
Nuf sed …

Seymour: My visit to the Regent was around 1963. As a grind house it served as a flop for winos and homeless people (who were far fewer in number in those days than now), and it may have been more the unwashed and wine-sodden audience than the theatre which smelled bad. But then I’m sure that the seats weren’t turquoise in 1963, so the seats had probably been either reupholstered or replaced (maybe with used seats from another theatre, thus accounting for the shopworn condition) before your visit there. The old seats probably had acquired an odor from their years of use.

There were probably no homeless people using the Regent as a flop during its porno days, as porn theatres had much higher admission prices than grind houses did. By 1983, the homeless were probably sleeping in the all-night triple feature houses on Broadway.

I have a question for you; In your 1983 visits to the downtown theatres, did you go to a Main Street theatre called the Admiral? It was on the east side of the street, and not too far from the Regent. My last visits to downtown L.A. were in the mid-1980’s, but I only got to Main Street a couple of times in those days and I don’t recall seeing (or not seeing) the Admiral at that time. I know for sure it was there in the late 1960’s. My vague memory places the Admiral south of the Regent, but it may have been an earlier name for the Main Theatre, a bit north of the Regent, which was operating as a porn house in the early 1980’s.

The turquoise treatment Seymour describes must have been an artifact of the Regent’s porn period. When I went there during the theatre’s triple feature grind house days, there was no bright color in any part of the auditorium. Everything was dark and dingy and worn. The paint looked as though someone had bought a few cans of various shades and mixed them all together and it turned out a a brownish gray. I don’t recall there being any carpeting on the aisles at all. I don’t recall the Gothic walls and ceiling. Their impression had probably been overwhelmed by the uniform dinginess of the place.

I remember the Regent Theatre because it looked as if it dated way back to early silent picture days. A nice size lobby had obviously been modernized with a sleek look, but the seedy auditorium appeared to be of the original Gothic treatment. Gothic style arches lined sidewalls, with an intricate vaulted ceiling. Everything was turquoise, walls, seats, stage drapes, even the carpeting, which was a bit overpowering.
Two XXX hard core porn loops were shown the night I attended the Regent and both of these films were of the cheapest quality. Feature one was quite annoying to watch as the camera angle switched back and forth to always show only the person being talked to. Loop two was even worse with the same awful jazz tune playing over and over and over, underneath an irritating soundtrack of constant, monotone ooh, oooh, aaah moans that repeated about every fifteen seconds.
Older gay men cruised back rows. Bums snored in side sections. Couples snuggled together in center seats.

They are showing films sometimes. The Old Bank Video next to Pete’s does that. If you stop in there, I’m sure there are flyers on what’s playing and when. It’s a very renegade operation right now because Gilmore is just letting people do stuff in there until rennovations start, just to breathe life into the empty spaces. Skid row is basically poised on the doorstep of the Regent. As much as we think it may be sad to Re-locate them, I think it’s inevitable.

There was a performance art exhibition on November 9th with downtown art walk on the Regent stage. It was a modern vaudevillian show by Commander Dazzle called “U.S.O. Meet the Middle East.” It might have been the first performance on that stage since God knows when! It was a real spectacle! The spaces on either side of the theater are being run as art galleries by emmeric james konrad and Lilli Muller. There are openings every second Thursday of the month for Art Walk.

Nothing is going on now as far as I can see. They may have stripped the inside and are waiting for more money, or something. I was on Main three times this week and didn’t see any renovation efforts.

This location and adjacent alleyway was used in a 1975 episode of Kolchak the Nightstalker episode title “Chopper”.

There was also an episode of “LAPD Life on the Beat” circa 1997 that a guy at the Regent had his wallet lifted. It showed the inside of the place as the officers were waiting outside for the manager to let them through the security cages that had been built. this was the only time ever I have seen what the setup was like in its era as a Porno House, showed a counter where they sold canned food to the transients that would occupy the place.

Really sad to have seen the place decline however it appears a new dawn may emerge for the old Regent.