Comments from Joe Vogel

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Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Montalban Theatre on Nov 30, 2007 at 11:07 pm

Yes, it was the Huntington Hartford Theatre for some thirty years, from 1954 until at least 1984, longer than it bore any of its other names. It was Hartford who caused the original facade to be stripped away and replaced with the bland exterior the building wore for most of its history. The interior was gutted at that same time. The current facade is more a homage to than an actual recreation of the original that was lost to Hartford’s remodeling. For all practical purposes, none of Myron Hunt’s original work on the Vine Street Theatre remains.

The Doolittle name was in honor of James Doolittle, an impresario who for many years programed the Greek Theatre in Griffith Park, and then programmed the Hartford itself for a while starting in the mid-1960s. I think the theatre was called the Doolittle for about a dozen years.

Also missing is the one aka under which this house operated exclusively as a movie theatre, the Mirror Theatre. I’m sure that Lux Radio Playhouse was not an actual name the theatre itself bore, but was merely the name of one of the programs CBS broadcast from the house during its years as the Studio Theatre (another missing aka) and then as the CBS Radio Playhouse (not CBS Radio Theatre.)

For a full list of the theatre’s names in sequence see Ken Roe’s comment of January 1, 2005 above.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Rolling Hills Theatre on Nov 27, 2007 at 11:40 pm

BC: The Marina 3 is listed at Cinema Treasures under its original name, the Strand Theater.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Boulevard Cinema on Nov 27, 2007 at 8:13 pm

Most likely the luggage store now sprawls through several buildings. I noticed that in the Flickr photo you linked to there’s an arrow marked “Entrance” pointing south above the door where the theatre’s foyer once was.

Also I’m not positive about the Valley West name as an aka. Lavar reported it only as a rumor, and I haven’t found any confirmation anywhere. In the 1966 ad ken mc linked to it’s the Baronet, and as the building was built in 1961 and the place probably closed not long after August 1986, that doesn’t leave much time for the Valley West name to have been in use, if it ever was.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Boulevard Cinema on Nov 27, 2007 at 7:58 pm

No, wait, it’s not Woodland Hills. I rechecked the map and Vanowen marks the change from 6700/6800 N block of Topanga Canyon, so the 6900 block remains in Canoga Park.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Boulevard Cinema on Nov 27, 2007 at 7:47 pm

I should clarify that the theatre was in Canoga Park, but the building’s postal address today is in Woodland Hills due to a change made in 1992. A quarter section bounded by Victory, Vanowen, Topanga and Shoup was withdrawn from Canoga Park and added to Woodland Hills that year.

Boulevard is the name under which the theatre is listed in the L.A. Times Calender section on August 24, 1986. It is showing two features but there’s no indication that it’s a twin theatre. Admission price was $1.50. Quite a few older theatres were still showing double features in 1986, so I’m thinking it was probably a discount double feature house at that time.

In one comment above Lavar says that it closed in 1985, but it was still open in August 1986, so I’d guess that it probably closed not long after then and never got twinned.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Boulevard Cinema on Nov 27, 2007 at 7:22 pm

Yes, the Baronet is the same theatre as the Boulevard. Boulevard is the more recent name. Comment by Lavar on January 25 above says that it may have been aka the Valley West for a time. Assessor information says the building at 6937-6939 Topanga Canyon was built in 1961. Lavar also pointed out that the theatre was in the Canoga Park district, not the Woodland Hills District.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Mayan Theatre on Nov 24, 2007 at 12:21 am

Don S: The Hill Street Belasco isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures because nobody’s presented any evidence that it was ever used as a movie theatre. In short, it’s a theatrical treasure but not a cinema treasure. In fact I’m not sure it even has a projection room.

However, the Main Street Belasco is listed here under its final name, the Follies.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Meralta Theatre on Nov 22, 2007 at 10:38 pm

Two eras of the Meralta, from Flickr user The Downey Conservancy:

A very early photo of the original, 1925 design by architect Evan Jones in a Spanish Colonial style, handsomely executed in what appears to be brick and terra cotta.

A c1950 photo of the facade as remodeled in a restrained, art modern style by architect Clarence Smale. Smale’s 1940s remodel was so good that I can almost forgive its destruction of Jones’s delightful Spanish fantasy.

Sadly, both are landfill now.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Mission Theatre on Nov 22, 2007 at 10:33 pm

Assessors information on this building provides a 1913 construction date. Definitely not demolished.

For those curious, the City Planning Department report on the adjacent property (4250-4254 S. Broadway, plus 270 W. 42nd Place) describes that building (the Mission Hotel mentioned by ken mc in his comment of June 10, 2007) as a store-residential combination built in 1911.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about National Theatre on Nov 22, 2007 at 10:14 pm

The Assessor’s Information in the City Planning Department’s ZIMAS report on the addresses from 2229 to 2241 E. Cesar Chavez Ave. says that the building now on the site is a 12,000+ square foot market that was built in 1963. In the satellite views from TerraServer and Google Maps it does look like a big, modern building. I’d say the National is probably dust.

Also, the theatre was in the Boyle Heights district of the City of Los Angeles, not in the unincorporated community of East Los Angeles.

The National is one of several east side theatres briefly mentioned in Abe Hoffman’s reminiscence about growing up in the 1940s, A Boyle Heights Boyhood.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Congress Theatre on Nov 22, 2007 at 9:17 pm

A 2005 book called “Art Deco Los Angeles”, by Suzanne Tarbell Cooper and Amy Ronnebeck Hall, names Clarence J. Smale as the architect of the Congress Theatre.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Avenue Theatre on Nov 22, 2007 at 8:13 pm

Flickr user The Downey Conservancy also provides this aerial photo showing the business district of Downey during the late 1930s. The view is northward across Firestone Boulevard, with Downey Avenue running from lower left toward the upper right. Both the Downey/Victory/Avenue and the Meralta Theatre can be picked out. The Meralta is the larger, more northerly theatre, easily identifiable by its tall, white stage-house.

The Avenue Theatre is a block closer, but built of a darker material, probably red brick, and it sports a very dark roof. The auditorium runs parallel to Downey Avenue and its stage house backs up to 3rd Street. In this photo taken during the early 1960s remodeling of the house, the name Avenue Theatre can be seen on the stage-house wall rising from behind the shops to the left.

The 1960s alterations destroyed an earlier facade remodeling of the Avenue, a plain but handsome bit of modern design depicted in this c1950 ad for Cummings Theatres, which also features a nice shot of the modernized Meralta.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Avenue Theatre on Nov 22, 2007 at 4:18 pm

Apparently the Downey Theater in the photo is the one that became the Avenue, after spending some time as the Victory.

The three photos match one another, but they don’t match the description of the proposed theatre published in Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of May 30, 1924, which describes a building of two floors, and situated on the northwest corner of Crawford Street (Downey Avenue) and 2nd St. The previous issue of SwB&C had described the proposed building as being 106' by 140', which certainly doesn’t fit the Downey/Victory/Avenue. The building was supposed to contain a 900 seat theatre, nine storefronts, plus sixteen offices on the second floor. I’m thinking that this 1924 project at 2nd and Crawford must have fallen through.

Another bit of the puzzle is that there was apparently a Downey Theatre in operation before March 13, 1925, as the SwB&C issue of that date announced the plans for a theatre to be erected on 3rd Street in Downey (possibly also unbuilt), and said that the lessee of the new house would be “…L.R. Matthews, listed as owner of the Downey Theatre….” Matthews is mentioned again as owner of the Downey Theatre in another SwB&C article about the same project, published April 10, 1925.

This means that, unless there were two theatres in the town both called the Downey at different times, the Downey/Victory/Avenue almost certainly isn’t the one other theatre proposed for Downey Avenue in 1925, which was a project planned by Mr. Matthews on his own behalf. The SwB&C issue of May 15, 1925, only says that the proposed theatre was on a site occupied by a brick garage owned by the Downey Motor Company, which was to be moved and altered. It might be that this project fell thorough too, unless it was the theatre which eventually became El Teatro.

That leaves one more possible candidate to be the actual Downey/Victory/Avenue Theatre: the proposed theatre mentioned in the November 7, 1919 issue of SwB&C, described only as being financed by Willeford Hogan and designed by Harry Haden Whitely. Of course it’s possible that this 1919 building was the one that became El Teatro, as the SwB&C article gives a proposed seating capacity of only 275 for the house, which certainly doesn’t match the Avenue’s capacity of 850 listed above. Of course the building might have been expanded later.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on Nov 21, 2007 at 7:45 pm

This entry still duplicates the earlier entry for the Encore Theatre:

/theaters/1129/

Apparently the Encore page needs an aka as the Continental.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Cinemark Tinseltown 14 on Nov 20, 2007 at 11:28 pm

Here’s a photo of the Tinseltown’s box office area, and this photo is followed in the stream by several pictures of the theatre’s projection equipment.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about North Valley Plaza 3 on Nov 20, 2007 at 10:45 pm

As can be seen in the photo at the Butte Bible Fellowship website, this rather plain and boxy 1970s-style former triplex has been altered (no pun intended) at one end, so it looks like a church, but the theatre’s original entrance is recognizable around the corner.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Cinemark Movies 10 Chico on Nov 20, 2007 at 10:33 pm

A photo of the former Movies 10 as it looks now that it’s been converted into a church appears on the main page of the Calvary Chapel Chico website. They even kept the marquee!

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Lyric Theatre on Nov 20, 2007 at 8:37 pm

The overhead sign and arched entrance of this early theatre can be glimpsed in a photo that appears on the cover of the Chico volume of Arcadia Publishing Company’s Images of America series. The cover can be seen in the book’s preview at Google Books by searching with the terms “images Chico California”.

Here is a 1948 view of Chico’s Broadway showing at left the three story building which had housed the Lyric. The altered storefront is partly concealed behind the parked truck.

A few years ago the Chico News & Review published an article which mentioned the names of several of the town’s vanished theatres, the Lyric among them. Other names listed were the Star, the Gem, the Empire, the Dreamland, the Iris, the Broadway (said to have had a movable roof that could be opened to the night sky during the valley’s sultry summers), and the Airdrome, which was always open-air.

Some of these names may have denoted the same theatre at different times, but even taking that into consideration, it looks as though Chico has historically been generously endowed with theatres. So far I’ve been unable to track down any solid information about any of these missing theatres, other than the Lyric and the Empire.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Empire Theatre on Nov 20, 2007 at 4:15 pm

The Empire was apparently closed when this 1940 photograph was taken. The marquee reads “Always a Good Show, American and Senator Theatres”, and there’s a lot of stuff piled on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. A renovation, perhaps, or maybe evidence that the Empire had been closed for good and the space was being converted to some other use?

A few years after this photo was taken, the larger and fancier American Theatre across the street from the Empire would be gutted by a fire and then rebuilt, minus its upper floor and classical architecture, and be renamed the El Rey, the name it retains today as an occasional live performance venue.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Fairfax Cinemas on Nov 20, 2007 at 6:16 am

I lost track of this thread. To take up the question of storefronts in theatre buildings, I think that whether or not a given theatre devoted much of its frontage to shops had to do with the value of the land for retail uses, and this in turn was a function of location.

A theatre builder in a fairly busy neighborhood with lots of pedestrian traffic would be inclined to devote as much of the valuable street frontage as possible to shops. That’s why most of the large downtown theatres had them. Retailers would pay very high rents for frontage on Broadway or Hill Street, as well as on Hollywood Boulevard, Colorado Street in Pasadena, Third Street in Santa Monica, or any busy suburban business district.

On the other hand, builders erecting theatres on streets with few pedestrians and more motorized traffic were less likely to devote land to shops, as the rents were apt to be too low to justify the cost of building them. As a rule, the earlier a theatre was built, the more likely it was to be built in a fairly dense business district, and the more likely it was to have many shops built as part of the project.

The Fairfax was not unique for its time. Other theatres on suburban business streets with many shops in their buildings included the Garfield in Alhambra, The Alex in Glendale, The Golden Gate in East Los Angeles, Bard’s Pasadena (now the Academy) in Pasadena, the Fox Ritz on Wilshire Boulevard, the Leimert (now the Vision Theatre) in Leimert Park… I could go on for quite a while.

It’s true that the greatest number of shops accompanied theatres on corner lots but, valuable though it was, the extra street frontage was probably not the main draw for theatre builders. It was probably the high visibility of the major intersections that attracted them. The opportunity to make more rent from more shops was a bonus.

Later large theatres, such as the Academy in Inglewood, the Crest in Westwood, the Tumbleweed in El Monte, and the Baldwin near Baldwin Hills Village, were usually built on the edge of or well outside the denser business districts and were almost always built without adjacent shops. By that time, nearby parking for theatre patrons was more important to builders than was access to transit or being in an area with heavy pedestrian traffic. Once you start building large parking lots around your theatre, you’ve pretty much ruined the location for pedestrian-dependent retail shops.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Gateway Film Center on Nov 20, 2007 at 3:59 am

The Drexel Gateway Theater was designed by the Toronto firm of Mesbur+Smith Architects; David K. Mesbur, lead architect.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Regent Showcase Theater on Nov 20, 2007 at 3:48 am

The architect for the renovation of the Gordon was David K. Mesbur. He received a Los Angeles Architectural Conservancy Award for the project in 1987.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Grand Theater on Nov 20, 2007 at 12:41 am

I was lucky to stumble upon a brief biography of the elder Octavius Morgan, which reveled his connection to Keysor and to the Grand. It turns out that Morgan was quite young when he became Keysor’s partner. He was born in Canterbury in 1850 (no date given, unfortunately) and studied architecture in England (no indication of exactly where) before emigrating to the United States in 1871. He was in Denver two years before moving to Los Angeles, so he must have been 23. Keysor was born in 1835, and thus quite a bit older than his new business partner.

Also, the L.A. Library’s California Index claims that “Keysor” is an erroneous spelling, and his name is actually spelled “Kysor”. They attribute the error to Harold Kirker’s 1960 book, “California’s Architectural Frontier”, published by the Huntington Library, no less. However, the Keysor spelling is used in my source, “An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California” which was published in Chicago in 1889.

I suppose the library is most likely to be correct, and the index does have multiple references using Ezra “Kysor” and only two using Ezra “Keysor”, one of which is the correction itself. Still, I’ve seen mistakes in the index before. And the Huntington, after all, is the Huntington. I wish the smart people would agree on these things.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Linda Lea Theatre on Nov 18, 2007 at 7:27 pm

Remember the Linda Lea!

A rebuilding that shall live in infamy!

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel commented about Grand Theater on Nov 18, 2007 at 7:25 pm

I made a typo in paragraph two of the comment immediately above where it says that Ezra Keysor retired in 1877. He retired a decade later, of course, in 1887, three years after the Grand was completed, and it was then that John Walls became a partner in the firm.

It has occurred to me that, as this firm was the first and, for quite a while, one of the busiest practices in Los Angeles, and given the fact that they designed the first big theatre in the city, and that 26 years later they designed a major vaudeville house for Pantages, they might have designed other theatres as well in the years between 1884 and 1910. Several large theatres were built during that time, and the architects of only a few have been identified.