William Fox established what was probably the first Newsreel theatre in the U.S. in 1929, when he converted the Embassy Theatre in Times Square to an all-newsreel operation. The Fox company closed the house in December, 1933, and it was re-opened in 1934 by Newsreel Theatres, Inc., a company founded by two former employees of Fox’s Movietone News division.
While Fox and his partners had planned to open a nationwide chain of newsreel houses following the success of the Embassy, I don’t know that this ever happened. The depression hit, and not long after that William Fox lost control of the company. Fox Movietone News, though, continued to be a major supplier of footage to the companies such as Telenews that did operate specialized newsreel houses. This Cinema Treasures page is the only place I’ve ever heard of the Oaland Telenews having been called the Fox News Theatre.
The Telenews chain opened its first theatre, the San Francisco Telenews, in September, 1939. Telenews ran footage from the newsreels of all the five major companies, but they were cut together and supplemented with local footage by the managers of the individual theatres. An article about the Telenews company was published in a scholarly journal a couple of years ago, but I’ve never read it as you need a subscription to do so.
However, an interesting bit of background dug up by the Dallas Historical Society for one of the authors of the article can be read online right here.
Aside from being too small, and not looking at all like something that would date to the 1920s, the church building in Ken’s photos from last August faces on 64th Street, and shows no signs of ever having had an entrance on the West Boulevard side. Surely it was never the Seville Theatre. I don’t know about the building across the street and parking lot to the north, but unless there was some serious inconsistency in the numbering system, or we’ve got the Seville’s address wrong, I don’t see how it could be the Seville either. Can we get a confirmation of the address as 6405?
The Inglewood News of January 18, 1924 announced the clearance of the site where the Granada Theatre would be built. Southwest Builder & Contractor had announced in its issue of January 11 that architect Leonard L. Jones was preparing the plans. The owner was Arthur Bennett. The construction contract was awarded to General Construction Company, of Glendale, according to SwB&C’s issue of May 9 that year. I’ve been unable to find the opening date, but would surmise late 1924. The photo showing the Granada to which ken mc linked above is dated November 10, 1925.
Here is a 1940 William Reagh photo of the view west along 3rd Street, the block west of Hope Street in the foreground. Though I’ve seen this photo many times, I never before realized that the single-storey building with the ornate facade at near left could have been (and probably was) the Tunnel Theatre.
Assessor info in the ZIMAS report for the existing building at this address says it was built in 1912. It must be the theatre, remodeled beyond regognition.
Though there are some Internet sources which say that the State Theatre was built on the site of the Marysville Theatre, it was actually the Tower which was erected on the Marysville’s site. Links to photos of the Marysville can be found on its Cinema Treasures page.
Prior to the mid-1920s fire which destroyed it, the Marysville had been operating under the name Atkins Theatre. After the fire, for some time a small movie house called the Liberty Theatre occupied the location. There is a photo of the Liberty ca.1927 on page 121 of the Arcadia Publishing Company book Marysville, part of its Images of America series. The Tower, with its moderne design, apparently dates to the 1930s or early 1940s.
The California Index contains a card citing an article in Motion Picture Herald, issue of September 1936, which says that Edwin Atkins had plans for remodeling the Lyric Theatre in Marysville.
About 1920, the former Marysville Theatre, one block south of the Lyric, had been operating under the name Atkins Theatre. Same guy, perhaps? The site of the Atkins Theatre eventually became the site of the Tower Theatre.
According to a card in the California Index, an item on page 114 of Architect & Engineer, September 1926, mentions a theatre in Chico designed for the Valley Empire Theatres Company by Sacramento architects Starks & Flanders. I wonder if this could refer to the Empire? In the 1940 photo linked above, the building looks too old fashioned to have been built as late as 1926, but the card doesn’t indicate that the house was newly built at that time. If anybody has access to a copy of that issue of A&E, please check it and see what it says.
The Online Archive of California provides this 1908 photo of the Marysville Theatre, from the collection of the Yuba County Library. The date on the facade above the name (and note the “Theatre” spelling) shows that it was built in 1907. The architectural style is Mission Revival. The information page for this photo, however, gives the location as the NE corner of 1st and D Streets, which does not match the address above. After poking around on the Internet, I’ve found confirmation of this.
I found one web page which says that the Tower Theatre was built on the site of the Marysville Theatre, and then I found this ca.1920s photograph of D Street, looking north from 1st Street, with the Marysville Theatre building on the right. This page provides the additional information that the Marysville Theatre was by that time called the Atkins Theatre. The name Atkins Theatre is also found on this page at Architect DB.
So, Marysville Theatre; built 1907; aka Atkins Theatre; on D Street at NE corner of 1st (probably 103 N. D Street, the current address of the Tower); succeeded by the Tower Theatre, not the National/State.
The Stadium is the only pre-war Los Angeles area Fox house with a stadium section that I can recall, but I remember a few more that were built in the 1940s, including the Culver, the Loyola, the Fox in Inglewood, and the Crest in Long Beach. I think there were others, but my memory refuses to jog.
Beverly Hills Speedway, west of Rodeo, south of Wilshire, had the only large stadium in the area that I know of. That photo is ca.1920, and the place lasted until 1924 when increasing value of the land in the area led the the track’s operators to move to a cheaper location near Culver City. They probably made a bundle subdividing the land. Here’s an aerial view, about 1921.
Unfortunately, this location is outside the L.A. city limits, so I’m unable to generate a report on it from the city planning department’s website. But after looking at the aerial view on TerraServer my guess would be that it’s possible that 8717 is actually part of the Balboa’s parcel, and the Jurdan may have been demolished when the Balboa was built.
I wish that L.A. County would set up something like the city’s ZIMAS service.
There are cards in the California Index containing citations which strongly imply that it was the Million Dollar project that brought Architect William Woollett to Los Angeles from San Francisco (theatre lessee Sid Grauman was a recent arrival from San Francisco himself and I suppose may have had something to do with the choice of Woollett as designer of the theatre portion of the project.) They also reveal that Woollett worked on the Million Dollar in Martin’s office, not on his own. One Architect & Engineer article refers to Woollett as Martin’s associate in the project.
I don’t know what name A.C. Martin’s firm went by in 1918, but whatever it was should probably be the name in the “firm” spot on the Million Dollar’s Cinema Treasures page.
vokoban: It’s entirely possible that the caption writer got the year wrong, and that the Cozy didn’t open until 1937.
LM: Martin also remodeled for Lou Bard the commercial building which became Bard’s Hill Street Theatre in 1920. A Southwest Builder & Contractor item of May 30, 1921, credits Martin with the design of an amusement complex on Sunset Pier in Venice which was to include a 1200 seat movie theatre. In addition, the California Index contains a card citing an article in Architect & Engineer of August, 1918, naming Martin as the architect of a theatre to be erected at the corner of 8th and Broadway in San Diego.
I’ve also found some cards I’ve not seen before in the Index, regarding the Million Dollar project, but I guess I’ll post about those on that theatre’s page.
This building was remodeled some time after 1939, losing its original fancy cornice. In this view of the 1939 fire which destroyed the nearby Gray Building, the cornice is still there. The wide Chicago windows look to have always been there.
I’d say A.C. Martin is certainly a possibility as architect of the theatre, the building, or both. He was born in 1879, and is known to have designed theatres in the 1910s & 1920s. The Cozy would have been a pretty small project for a guy who was in 1927 part of the team designing L.A.’s new city hall, though.
I’ve also come across cards in the California Index which cite L.A. Times issues of August 16 and September 5, 1929. The first article announces that the Mayan will soon be presenting a talking movie, and the second is about the world premier of the new Marion Davies film “Marianne”, to take place at the Mayan that night.
The USC Digital Archive has changed the URLs for the photos of the Mayan to which ken mc linked in his post of October 4, 2006. Rather than recreate the individual links which might vanish again, here’s the Archive’s home page. Search on “Mayan Theater” (note the spelling- using “theatre” will fetch only three results) to access 21 historic photos and renderings of this splendid building, most of them ca.1925.
Heh! The asbestos curtain was decorated with a painted curtain!
William Fox established what was probably the first Newsreel theatre in the U.S. in 1929, when he converted the Embassy Theatre in Times Square to an all-newsreel operation. The Fox company closed the house in December, 1933, and it was re-opened in 1934 by Newsreel Theatres, Inc., a company founded by two former employees of Fox’s Movietone News division.
While Fox and his partners had planned to open a nationwide chain of newsreel houses following the success of the Embassy, I don’t know that this ever happened. The depression hit, and not long after that William Fox lost control of the company. Fox Movietone News, though, continued to be a major supplier of footage to the companies such as Telenews that did operate specialized newsreel houses. This Cinema Treasures page is the only place I’ve ever heard of the Oaland Telenews having been called the Fox News Theatre.
The Telenews chain opened its first theatre, the San Francisco Telenews, in September, 1939. Telenews ran footage from the newsreels of all the five major companies, but they were cut together and supplemented with local footage by the managers of the individual theatres. An article about the Telenews company was published in a scholarly journal a couple of years ago, but I’ve never read it as you need a subscription to do so.
However, an interesting bit of background dug up by the Dallas Historical Society for one of the authors of the article can be read online right here.
Aside from being too small, and not looking at all like something that would date to the 1920s, the church building in Ken’s photos from last August faces on 64th Street, and shows no signs of ever having had an entrance on the West Boulevard side. Surely it was never the Seville Theatre. I don’t know about the building across the street and parking lot to the north, but unless there was some serious inconsistency in the numbering system, or we’ve got the Seville’s address wrong, I don’t see how it could be the Seville either. Can we get a confirmation of the address as 6405?
The Inglewood News of January 18, 1924 announced the clearance of the site where the Granada Theatre would be built. Southwest Builder & Contractor had announced in its issue of January 11 that architect Leonard L. Jones was preparing the plans. The owner was Arthur Bennett. The construction contract was awarded to General Construction Company, of Glendale, according to SwB&C’s issue of May 9 that year. I’ve been unable to find the opening date, but would surmise late 1924. The photo showing the Granada to which ken mc linked above is dated November 10, 1925.
Mark: Just upload your video to YouTube and link to it from here.
Here is a 1940 William Reagh photo of the view west along 3rd Street, the block west of Hope Street in the foreground. Though I’ve seen this photo many times, I never before realized that the single-storey building with the ornate facade at near left could have been (and probably was) the Tunnel Theatre.
Assessor info in the ZIMAS report for the existing building at this address says it was built in 1912. It must be the theatre, remodeled beyond regognition.
Though there are some Internet sources which say that the State Theatre was built on the site of the Marysville Theatre, it was actually the Tower which was erected on the Marysville’s site. Links to photos of the Marysville can be found on its Cinema Treasures page.
Prior to the mid-1920s fire which destroyed it, the Marysville had been operating under the name Atkins Theatre. After the fire, for some time a small movie house called the Liberty Theatre occupied the location. There is a photo of the Liberty ca.1927 on page 121 of the Arcadia Publishing Company book Marysville, part of its Images of America series. The Tower, with its moderne design, apparently dates to the 1930s or early 1940s.
The California Index contains a card citing an article in Motion Picture Herald, issue of September 1936, which says that Edwin Atkins had plans for remodeling the Lyric Theatre in Marysville.
About 1920, the former Marysville Theatre, one block south of the Lyric, had been operating under the name Atkins Theatre. Same guy, perhaps? The site of the Atkins Theatre eventually became the site of the Tower Theatre.
JMAX Productions now features upcoming El Rey events on its website. They’re few and far between, but at least something is going on there.
According to a card in the California Index, an item on page 114 of Architect & Engineer, September 1926, mentions a theatre in Chico designed for the Valley Empire Theatres Company by Sacramento architects Starks & Flanders. I wonder if this could refer to the Empire? In the 1940 photo linked above, the building looks too old fashioned to have been built as late as 1926, but the card doesn’t indicate that the house was newly built at that time. If anybody has access to a copy of that issue of A&E, please check it and see what it says.
An aerial view of Bruen’s Sundown Theatre, apparently from about the time of its opening in 1954, given the freshness of the blacktop.
The Online Archive of California provides this 1908 photo of the Marysville Theatre, from the collection of the Yuba County Library. The date on the facade above the name (and note the “Theatre” spelling) shows that it was built in 1907. The architectural style is Mission Revival. The information page for this photo, however, gives the location as the NE corner of 1st and D Streets, which does not match the address above. After poking around on the Internet, I’ve found confirmation of this.
I found one web page which says that the Tower Theatre was built on the site of the Marysville Theatre, and then I found this ca.1920s photograph of D Street, looking north from 1st Street, with the Marysville Theatre building on the right. This page provides the additional information that the Marysville Theatre was by that time called the Atkins Theatre. The name Atkins Theatre is also found on this page at Architect DB.
So, Marysville Theatre; built 1907; aka Atkins Theatre; on D Street at NE corner of 1st (probably 103 N. D Street, the current address of the Tower); succeeded by the Tower Theatre, not the National/State.
LOL!
The Online Archive of California presents this phhoto of a Pastime Theatre, dated 1924, from the Kern County Library collection.
The Crest in Long Beach had the neon “Preview” sign as well, but alongside the vertical name sign, as shown in this photo, dated March 27, 1947.
Now Showing! The Headless Brides!
The Stadium is the only pre-war Los Angeles area Fox house with a stadium section that I can recall, but I remember a few more that were built in the 1940s, including the Culver, the Loyola, the Fox in Inglewood, and the Crest in Long Beach. I think there were others, but my memory refuses to jog.
Beverly Hills Speedway, west of Rodeo, south of Wilshire, had the only large stadium in the area that I know of. That photo is ca.1920, and the place lasted until 1924 when increasing value of the land in the area led the the track’s operators to move to a cheaper location near Culver City. They probably made a bundle subdividing the land. Here’s an aerial view, about 1921.
Unfortunately, this location is outside the L.A. city limits, so I’m unable to generate a report on it from the city planning department’s website. But after looking at the aerial view on TerraServer my guess would be that it’s possible that 8717 is actually part of the Balboa’s parcel, and the Jurdan may have been demolished when the Balboa was built.
I wish that L.A. County would set up something like the city’s ZIMAS service.
There are cards in the California Index containing citations which strongly imply that it was the Million Dollar project that brought Architect William Woollett to Los Angeles from San Francisco (theatre lessee Sid Grauman was a recent arrival from San Francisco himself and I suppose may have had something to do with the choice of Woollett as designer of the theatre portion of the project.) They also reveal that Woollett worked on the Million Dollar in Martin’s office, not on his own. One Architect & Engineer article refers to Woollett as Martin’s associate in the project.
I don’t know what name A.C. Martin’s firm went by in 1918, but whatever it was should probably be the name in the “firm” spot on the Million Dollar’s Cinema Treasures page.
vokoban: It’s entirely possible that the caption writer got the year wrong, and that the Cozy didn’t open until 1937.
LM: Martin also remodeled for Lou Bard the commercial building which became Bard’s Hill Street Theatre in 1920. A Southwest Builder & Contractor item of May 30, 1921, credits Martin with the design of an amusement complex on Sunset Pier in Venice which was to include a 1200 seat movie theatre. In addition, the California Index contains a card citing an article in Architect & Engineer of August, 1918, naming Martin as the architect of a theatre to be erected at the corner of 8th and Broadway in San Diego.
I’ve also found some cards I’ve not seen before in the Index, regarding the Million Dollar project, but I guess I’ll post about those on that theatre’s page.
This building was remodeled some time after 1939, losing its original fancy cornice. In this view of the 1939 fire which destroyed the nearby Gray Building, the cornice is still there. The wide Chicago windows look to have always been there.
I’d say A.C. Martin is certainly a possibility as architect of the theatre, the building, or both. He was born in 1879, and is known to have designed theatres in the 1910s & 1920s. The Cozy would have been a pretty small project for a guy who was in 1927 part of the team designing L.A.’s new city hall, though.
That date should be ca.1927, of course.
I’ve also come across cards in the California Index which cite L.A. Times issues of August 16 and September 5, 1929. The first article announces that the Mayan will soon be presenting a talking movie, and the second is about the world premier of the new Marion Davies film “Marianne”, to take place at the Mayan that night.
The USC Digital Archive has changed the URLs for the photos of the Mayan to which ken mc linked in his post of October 4, 2006. Rather than recreate the individual links which might vanish again, here’s the Archive’s home page. Search on “Mayan Theater” (note the spelling- using “theatre” will fetch only three results) to access 21 historic photos and renderings of this splendid building, most of them ca.1925.