The September 17, 1949, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that the Plumas Theatre had recently opened. It was owned by Randall Goldenson, who also operated the Tobin Theatre at Tobin, also in Plumas County.
That comment should read page 265, which is page 23 of the Modern Theatre section. There are two additional photos on the following page. Issuu renumbers the pages for the digital version.
Photos of the Fox appear on page 271 of the November 15, 1947, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The original auditorium, like its replacement, was a quonset structure, but Charles D. Strong’s designs for the facade and decoration were all decidedly Moderne.
Photos of the Vogue appeared in the Modern Theatre section of Boxoffice Magazine, November 15, 1947. The accompanying text said that the new theater had opened in May that year (the May 3 issue of Boxoffice had said that the opening was scheduled for May 22.) The Vogue was designed by the architecture firm of White & Boenish, with Warner Brothers building engineer D. Leonard Halper supervising.
I can’t see any building resembling the theater in Google street view. It must be gone. There’s a newer building with six store fronts which looks like it occupies the theater site and a couple of adjacent parcels as well, though it has the address 1534 E. Grand. The building next door is definitely not the theater.
The December 3, 1949, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that construction had begun on a new theater for Alvin and Harvey Hatch at Half Moon Bay. Opening was scheduled for spring of 1950. The Patio Theatre, with 500 seats, was on the magazine’s July 22, 1950, list of new theaters recently opened. Just three years after opening, Harvey Hatch closed the house due to lack of business, according to the September 26, 1953, issue of Boxoffice.
The Patio was reopened by a new owner, Loren Powell, on May 14, 1954, according to the May 22 issue of Boxoffice. The house did well enough to install CinemaScope later that year. By 1956, Boxoffice is saying that Ward Stoops is the owner of the Patio, and in the early 1960s, various issues name the owner as Tesco Tesi.
The June 22, 1970, issue of Boxoffice said the Patio was temporarily closed for refurbishing and redecorating. I’ve found nothing about it after that.
Although the Patio may have had a Spanish theme, I doubt that a suburban concrete block theater built in 1949 would have qualified as full-blown Spanish Renaissance in style. I can’t find any photos of it, but I’d imagine it was some sort of Spanish Moderne style.
The opening of the Manor Theatre is mentioned in the November 15 and November 22, 1941, issues of Boxoffice Magazine. The exact date is not given, but appears to have been shortly before the 15th. The house was built for Harvey Amusements. 10,000 booklets about the theater were distributed door-to-door in San Mateo to publicize the opening. I wonder if any of them are still around?
By the late 1940s, the Manor was being operated by Blumenfeld Theatres. It was bought by Roy Cooper Theatres in 1961, according to an item published in Boxoffice of August 14 that year.
According to the October 25, 1971, issue of Boxoffice, Cooper’s West Valley Theatres had adopted an all seats 50-cents policy for the Manor, following the lead of the El Camino in San Bruno and several other Bay Area houses operated by Dan Tocchini’s Associated Theatres.
I’ve been unable to find any later mentions of the Manor.
The Ivar did show at least one movie before 1971, when it began running adult films. In March, 1967, the Ivar began the exclusive Los Angeles run of Arch Oboler’s 3-D science fiction movie, “The Bubble.”
The Palace was sold at auction to Dubonet Realty Co. of Newark for $34,210 late in 1951, according to Boxoffice Magazine, December 15 that year. The house had been owned by Walter Reade. The building’s contents, including projectors, amplifiers, seats, and other furnishings, were sold to SOS Cinema Supply Corp. for a mere $210.
The Laemmle Grande 4-Plex was designed by architect Thomas Berkes, whose Woodland Hills-based firm has been designing movie theaters in California since the 1980s. Here’s a partial list of their theater projects. The Grande is listed as having 800 seats.
The Village Drive-In was built for the Redwood Theatres circuit in 1952. The concession area, rest rooms, and projection booth were located at the rear of the lot, giving the projectors a throw of 530 feet. The building was of modern rustic design, with brick, stone, and rough-sawn redwood on the exterior, and a split shake roof.
Interiors featured wood panelling and exposed wooden beams. The lot was surrounded by an eight foot high redwood fence in a basket weave pattern. Boxoffice Magazine published a two-page article about the Village Drive-In in its issue of January 3, 1953. The architect for the project was San Francisco theater designer Gale Santocono.
At extreme right in the 1939 USC photo, is that the Burbank Theatre’s vertical sign that says “Mexico” on it? Though the marquee is hard to read, it looks like it says “Peliculas” on the first line.
I checked the city directories for 1938 and 1939, and the Burbank is listed in both (under the “Theatres” section rather than “Motion Picture Theatres” and there is no Mexico Theatre listed for either year. The Burbank is listed under Motion Picture Theatres in the 1942 directory.
Unfortunately the L.A. Library doesn’t have a 1940 directory online, or I’d check that. If the Burbank was a Spanish-language movie house called the Mexico, it must have been for a very brief time.
The May 29, 1937, issue of Boxoffice mentioned that Dave Cantor had built the Park Theatre in Highland Park the previous year. In 1937, Cantor was buying the Canoga Theatre from its original owner, Nate Scheinberg.
Several issues of Boxoffice from 1950 mention the opening of the Gold Front Theatre. The Bowling Alley was apparently pre-existing. A couple of the Boxoffice items say that the theater was “…built over the Gold Front bowling alleys….” The building in the photos does look too old to have been built in 1950, so the theater was probably located in converted retail space. The house opened in June. Boxoffice gives the seating capacity as 780 in some items and 888 in another.
The Joyce Theatre, which had been converted into western art gallery called the Montana Trails Gallery, was destroyed on March 5, 2009, by a gas explosion which leveled three historic downtown Bozeman buildings and severely damaged others.
Bozeman Daily Chronicle article (in case you have to be logged in to Cinematour to see their posts. I can’t remember if non-members can read them or not.)
As the projectors had probably been installed before the February 2 Ashcraft ad was published, 1956 does seem a likely year for the drive-in to have opened.
The Boulevard was being outfitted in mid-1940. The July 6 issue of Boxoffice listed drapes and carpets for the Boulevard among the equipment ordered for various theaters from the Wil-Kin Theatre Supply Co. of Atlanta.
S.A. Lynch, a regional partner of Paramount Theatres, was building the Boulevard, according to another item in the same issue of Boxoffice. The new house was expected to be open later that month.
The 110-Drive-In must have opened in 1957, not 1959. An ad for Ashcraft’s Super Cinex projectors appeared in the February 2 issue of Boxoffice Magazine that year, saying that these projectors had been installed at the Century 110 Drive-In.
It was certainly open by September of 1957, as the September 7 issue of Boxoffice carried an item about a promotion at the theater which involved giving away 6,000 barbecued beef sandwiches over a four day period.
The October 19, 1957, issue of Boxoffice ran an article about drive-in concession stands which featured several paragraphs about the operation at the 110 Drive-In, with two photos of its concession area.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has a number of drawings by Timothy Pflueger that can be seen on-line, including some depicting the Tulare Theatre. Enter Tulare in the search box. You can also search on Pflueger and then select the resulting “works by” link to see drawings of some of his other projects.
Also, the “firm” listing on this page should show Miller & Pflueger.
Patsy: Use Google Advanced Search, put issuu.com in the “site or domain” box, and the date January 03 1942 in the “exact wording or phrase” box. The article about the Grand starts on page 58.
My outgoing email isn’t working, so I’ll be unable to contact you until I get a different client set up. In any case, everthing I know about the Grand came from the online issues of Boxoffice.
There have been a lot of theaters called the Grand in California. but I’ve never been to any of them. Did you have a particular one in mind?
The Mayfair was the last of Trenton’s eight downtown theaters to close, according to an article Boxoffice Magazine of December 6, 1976, which announced the closing. Vincent Henry was the last manager of the house, and the last movies shown were “Saga In Africa” and “Burnt Offerings.”
This Boxoffice item says that the Henry family had operated the house since acquiring it in 1940, at which time they had changed the name to Mayfair. However, the January 3, 1942, issue of Boxoffice had said that the Hildingers (Charles and Helen) had reopened the former Orpheum as the Mayfair curing Christmas week.
The house had originally opened on March 29, 1922, as the Orpheum Theatre, owned by George B. Ten Eyck. The first feature at the Orpheum was the Coleen Moore film “Come On Over.”
During the 1930s the Orpheum was operated by the William Hunt Theatres Circuit of Wildwood, New Jersey.
I don’t have time to read through all the comments, so pardon me if this information has previously been posted. The January 3, 1942, issue of Boxoffice Magazine ran an article about the recently-opened Grand Theatre in its Modern Theatre section.
From the photos with the article I’d say the Grand was definitely Art Moderne in style, rather than Art Deco. The article identified the architect of the new house as Michael J. DeAngelis. The seating capacity at opening was given as 850. Total cost of the project was a mere $65,000. The original owner was Kenneth Blakely.
An architect’s rendering of the Grand had earlier appeared in Boxoffice’s “Just Off the Boards” feature in the April 21, 1941, issue.
Various issues of Boxoffice Magazine indicate that the Del Oro Theatre was not built by United Artists, nor operated by that chain during its early years. Construction was begun in 1941 by Golden State Theatres, but apparently the house was being operated by Albert and William Forman’s United Theatres Circuit later in the 1940s.
An item in the April 16, 1949, issue of Boxoffice said that a $36,000 damage suit against United Theatres and Del Oro manager Jack Keegan was being tried in Nevada County superior court. Mr. Terry T. Whitesides of Grass Valley alleged that he had fallen in the aisle of the theater on September 28, 1947.
I’ve been unable to discover when United Artists took over the house, but they were operating it when it was triplexed in 1975.
There are some interesting discrepancies among various sources of information about the theater and about Mr. Darress. The theater web site has a picture of Charles Darress. Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of May 14, 1979, has an article about recent two theater closings, the State being one of them, and it says that the theater was opened in 1922 by Clare Darress.
Then there’s this page about a landmarked house for sale in Boonton, which says the house was designed by “…Clair Darress, a famous architect of many homes in the area, and creator of the Darress theatre on Main Street.”
Whether Charles, Clare, or Clair, it seems reasonable that, being an architect, Mr. Darress would have designed his theater himself.
The September 17, 1949, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that the Plumas Theatre had recently opened. It was owned by Randall Goldenson, who also operated the Tobin Theatre at Tobin, also in Plumas County.
That comment should read page 265, which is page 23 of the Modern Theatre section. There are two additional photos on the following page. Issuu renumbers the pages for the digital version.
Photos of the Fox appear on page 271 of the November 15, 1947, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The original auditorium, like its replacement, was a quonset structure, but Charles D. Strong’s designs for the facade and decoration were all decidedly Moderne.
Photos of the Vogue appeared in the Modern Theatre section of Boxoffice Magazine, November 15, 1947. The accompanying text said that the new theater had opened in May that year (the May 3 issue of Boxoffice had said that the opening was scheduled for May 22.) The Vogue was designed by the architecture firm of White & Boenish, with Warner Brothers building engineer D. Leonard Halper supervising.
I can’t see any building resembling the theater in Google street view. It must be gone. There’s a newer building with six store fronts which looks like it occupies the theater site and a couple of adjacent parcels as well, though it has the address 1534 E. Grand. The building next door is definitely not the theater.
The December 3, 1949, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that construction had begun on a new theater for Alvin and Harvey Hatch at Half Moon Bay. Opening was scheduled for spring of 1950. The Patio Theatre, with 500 seats, was on the magazine’s July 22, 1950, list of new theaters recently opened. Just three years after opening, Harvey Hatch closed the house due to lack of business, according to the September 26, 1953, issue of Boxoffice.
The Patio was reopened by a new owner, Loren Powell, on May 14, 1954, according to the May 22 issue of Boxoffice. The house did well enough to install CinemaScope later that year. By 1956, Boxoffice is saying that Ward Stoops is the owner of the Patio, and in the early 1960s, various issues name the owner as Tesco Tesi.
The June 22, 1970, issue of Boxoffice said the Patio was temporarily closed for refurbishing and redecorating. I’ve found nothing about it after that.
Although the Patio may have had a Spanish theme, I doubt that a suburban concrete block theater built in 1949 would have qualified as full-blown Spanish Renaissance in style. I can’t find any photos of it, but I’d imagine it was some sort of Spanish Moderne style.
The opening of the Manor Theatre is mentioned in the November 15 and November 22, 1941, issues of Boxoffice Magazine. The exact date is not given, but appears to have been shortly before the 15th. The house was built for Harvey Amusements. 10,000 booklets about the theater were distributed door-to-door in San Mateo to publicize the opening. I wonder if any of them are still around?
By the late 1940s, the Manor was being operated by Blumenfeld Theatres. It was bought by Roy Cooper Theatres in 1961, according to an item published in Boxoffice of August 14 that year.
According to the October 25, 1971, issue of Boxoffice, Cooper’s West Valley Theatres had adopted an all seats 50-cents policy for the Manor, following the lead of the El Camino in San Bruno and several other Bay Area houses operated by Dan Tocchini’s Associated Theatres.
I’ve been unable to find any later mentions of the Manor.
The Ivar did show at least one movie before 1971, when it began running adult films. In March, 1967, the Ivar began the exclusive Los Angeles run of Arch Oboler’s 3-D science fiction movie, “The Bubble.”
The Palace was sold at auction to Dubonet Realty Co. of Newark for $34,210 late in 1951, according to Boxoffice Magazine, December 15 that year. The house had been owned by Walter Reade. The building’s contents, including projectors, amplifiers, seats, and other furnishings, were sold to SOS Cinema Supply Corp. for a mere $210.
This theatre was designed by architect Thomas Berkes. This list of theaters he designed gives the seating capacity of this multiplex as 1,800.
The Laemmle Grande 4-Plex was designed by architect Thomas Berkes, whose Woodland Hills-based firm has been designing movie theaters in California since the 1980s. Here’s a partial list of their theater projects. The Grande is listed as having 800 seats.
The Village Drive-In was built for the Redwood Theatres circuit in 1952. The concession area, rest rooms, and projection booth were located at the rear of the lot, giving the projectors a throw of 530 feet. The building was of modern rustic design, with brick, stone, and rough-sawn redwood on the exterior, and a split shake roof.
Interiors featured wood panelling and exposed wooden beams. The lot was surrounded by an eight foot high redwood fence in a basket weave pattern. Boxoffice Magazine published a two-page article about the Village Drive-In in its issue of January 3, 1953. The architect for the project was San Francisco theater designer Gale Santocono.
At extreme right in the 1939 USC photo, is that the Burbank Theatre’s vertical sign that says “Mexico” on it? Though the marquee is hard to read, it looks like it says “Peliculas” on the first line.
I checked the city directories for 1938 and 1939, and the Burbank is listed in both (under the “Theatres” section rather than “Motion Picture Theatres” and there is no Mexico Theatre listed for either year. The Burbank is listed under Motion Picture Theatres in the 1942 directory.
Unfortunately the L.A. Library doesn’t have a 1940 directory online, or I’d check that. If the Burbank was a Spanish-language movie house called the Mexico, it must have been for a very brief time.
The May 29, 1937, issue of Boxoffice mentioned that Dave Cantor had built the Park Theatre in Highland Park the previous year. In 1937, Cantor was buying the Canoga Theatre from its original owner, Nate Scheinberg.
Several issues of Boxoffice from 1950 mention the opening of the Gold Front Theatre. The Bowling Alley was apparently pre-existing. A couple of the Boxoffice items say that the theater was “…built over the Gold Front bowling alleys….” The building in the photos does look too old to have been built in 1950, so the theater was probably located in converted retail space. The house opened in June. Boxoffice gives the seating capacity as 780 in some items and 888 in another.
The Joyce Theatre, which had been converted into western art gallery called the Montana Trails Gallery, was destroyed on March 5, 2009, by a gas explosion which leveled three historic downtown Bozeman buildings and severely damaged others.
Cinematour Forum post on the event.
Bozeman Daily Chronicle article (in case you have to be logged in to Cinematour to see their posts. I can’t remember if non-members can read them or not.)
As the projectors had probably been installed before the February 2 Ashcraft ad was published, 1956 does seem a likely year for the drive-in to have opened.
The Boulevard was being outfitted in mid-1940. The July 6 issue of Boxoffice listed drapes and carpets for the Boulevard among the equipment ordered for various theaters from the Wil-Kin Theatre Supply Co. of Atlanta.
S.A. Lynch, a regional partner of Paramount Theatres, was building the Boulevard, according to another item in the same issue of Boxoffice. The new house was expected to be open later that month.
The 110-Drive-In must have opened in 1957, not 1959. An ad for Ashcraft’s Super Cinex projectors appeared in the February 2 issue of Boxoffice Magazine that year, saying that these projectors had been installed at the Century 110 Drive-In.
It was certainly open by September of 1957, as the September 7 issue of Boxoffice carried an item about a promotion at the theater which involved giving away 6,000 barbecued beef sandwiches over a four day period.
The October 19, 1957, issue of Boxoffice ran an article about drive-in concession stands which featured several paragraphs about the operation at the 110 Drive-In, with two photos of its concession area.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has a number of drawings by Timothy Pflueger that can be seen on-line, including some depicting the Tulare Theatre. Enter Tulare in the search box. You can also search on Pflueger and then select the resulting “works by” link to see drawings of some of his other projects.
Also, the “firm” listing on this page should show Miller & Pflueger.
Patsy: Use Google Advanced Search, put issuu.com in the “site or domain” box, and the date January 03 1942 in the “exact wording or phrase” box. The article about the Grand starts on page 58.
My outgoing email isn’t working, so I’ll be unable to contact you until I get a different client set up. In any case, everthing I know about the Grand came from the online issues of Boxoffice.
There have been a lot of theaters called the Grand in California. but I’ve never been to any of them. Did you have a particular one in mind?
The Mayfair was the last of Trenton’s eight downtown theaters to close, according to an article Boxoffice Magazine of December 6, 1976, which announced the closing. Vincent Henry was the last manager of the house, and the last movies shown were “Saga In Africa” and “Burnt Offerings.”
This Boxoffice item says that the Henry family had operated the house since acquiring it in 1940, at which time they had changed the name to Mayfair. However, the January 3, 1942, issue of Boxoffice had said that the Hildingers (Charles and Helen) had reopened the former Orpheum as the Mayfair curing Christmas week.
The house had originally opened on March 29, 1922, as the Orpheum Theatre, owned by George B. Ten Eyck. The first feature at the Orpheum was the Coleen Moore film “Come On Over.”
During the 1930s the Orpheum was operated by the William Hunt Theatres Circuit of Wildwood, New Jersey.
I don’t have time to read through all the comments, so pardon me if this information has previously been posted. The January 3, 1942, issue of Boxoffice Magazine ran an article about the recently-opened Grand Theatre in its Modern Theatre section.
From the photos with the article I’d say the Grand was definitely Art Moderne in style, rather than Art Deco. The article identified the architect of the new house as Michael J. DeAngelis. The seating capacity at opening was given as 850. Total cost of the project was a mere $65,000. The original owner was Kenneth Blakely.
An architect’s rendering of the Grand had earlier appeared in Boxoffice’s “Just Off the Boards” feature in the April 21, 1941, issue.
Various issues of Boxoffice Magazine indicate that the Del Oro Theatre was not built by United Artists, nor operated by that chain during its early years. Construction was begun in 1941 by Golden State Theatres, but apparently the house was being operated by Albert and William Forman’s United Theatres Circuit later in the 1940s.
An item in the April 16, 1949, issue of Boxoffice said that a $36,000 damage suit against United Theatres and Del Oro manager Jack Keegan was being tried in Nevada County superior court. Mr. Terry T. Whitesides of Grass Valley alleged that he had fallen in the aisle of the theater on September 28, 1947.
I’ve been unable to discover when United Artists took over the house, but they were operating it when it was triplexed in 1975.
There are some interesting discrepancies among various sources of information about the theater and about Mr. Darress. The theater web site has a picture of Charles Darress. Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of May 14, 1979, has an article about recent two theater closings, the State being one of them, and it says that the theater was opened in 1922 by Clare Darress.
Then there’s this page about a landmarked house for sale in Boonton, which says the house was designed by “…Clair Darress, a famous architect of many homes in the area, and creator of the Darress theatre on Main Street.”
Whether Charles, Clare, or Clair, it seems reasonable that, being an architect, Mr. Darress would have designed his theater himself.