The work on the Lynn Theatre in the 1930s appears not to have been a simple remodeling, but major reconstruction. According to a card in the Los Angeles Public Library’s California Index, Southwest Builder and Contractor issue of September 26, 1930, announced that Los Angeles architects W.J. Saunders & Son were completing the working plans for the theatre for Fred Aufdenkamp. The estimated cost of the project was $50,000.
Another card in the Index cites a Los Angeles Times article of October 19, 1930, saying that Walter J. Saunders was preparing plans for the Lynn Theatre at Laguna Beach.
The only other reference in the California Index to Walter J. Saunders in connection with a theatre notes his 1912 plans for remodeling the 1882 San Bernardino Opera House.
I don’t know if this was the final closure of the Maynard Theatre or not, but Boxoffice magazine’s issue of May 6, 1950, carried a brief item saying that Harry Vinnicof had shuttered the Maynard Theatre due to poor business conditions.
Harry Vinicoff was a long-time exhibitor in the Los Angeles area. The earliest reference to him I’ve found is from 1937, when Vinnicof bought the Eagle Theatre in the Eagle Rock district of Los Angeles. At various times, Vinnicof also operated the Congress Theatre and the Temple Theatre, both on south Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles.
There’s also a brief item in the May 6, 1950, issue of Boxoffice magazine saying that Harry Vinnicof had shuttered his Maynard Theatre in Los Angeles due to poor business conditions. The Maynard Theatre was on Washington Boulevard at Arlington.
In the 1950s, the Vinnicof circuit owned a half interest (Edwards Theatres owned the other half) in the Garfield Theatre in Alhambra. After the Grove opened, the Garfield sometimes used tickets printed with the Grove Theatre name on them.
Built in former retail space in an outlet mall, Prime 11 Cinemas opened on May 5, 2006. It was the first movie theatre to operate in Anderson since the closing of the Gateway Theater in 1996. I recall reading somewhere online that it had a total of only around 1000 seats in its 11 auditoriums, but I’ve been unable to track down the source.
There was also an even earlier movie house in Anderson called the Valley Theatre, which was closed sometime before I first saw it around 1970.
Formerly known as Riverside Plaza Cinemas. It was acquired by Prime Cinemas in May, 2008, and re-opened under its new name after a week-long $500,000 renovation. It is the third house in the Prime Cinemas chain.
Plans for the Enean Theatre, by architect F. Frederic Amandes, were announced in the March, 1936, issue of Architect & Engineer magazine.
That same year, Amandes was the architect for remodelings of the Strand Theatre in Alameda, the Egyptian Theatre on San Francisco’s Market Street (listed at CT as the Guild Theatre), and the former T&D Theatre in Richmond, which became the Fox Theatre and then the United Artists Theatre.
Another photo showing a bit of the Strand has surfaced: This postcard view from the 1940s. It shows just a bit of the marquee at far right, but it’s only the second photo I’ve ever seen that includes even a part of this theatre.
Thanks, Ken. I like the look of the building, being a fan of some (though certainly not all) midcentury modern design, and South America has some of the most interesting buildings in the style. This one I like especially, as it appears to fit into the streetscape, unlike many from the era.
Laurie M: The comment by CT member BarrySGoodkin on Dec 11, 2001, says that the Fox Phoenix opened on January 5, 1929. This date is corroborated by the websites Silent Sundays and Ron Heberlee’s Orpheum Theatre Phoenix page.
As for your Grandfather’s plaster work, I’m not sure if any of the interior photos of the Orpheum at Ron Heberlee’s page show the original work, or some sort of modern recreations. In any case, it was common in building theatres in that era for the architects to order many of the big plaster decorations pre-made from a company specializing in decorative plasterwork, and then a local contractor would install them, making sure they fit together seamlessly, and doing all the plain plasterwork such as wall surfaces (which were often not all that plain, since many styles of architecture required finish coats of special textures.)
So, many or all of the big pieces of ornamental plaster (almost all the decorative pieces in such a theatre would probably have been plaster, though in some buildings quite a bit of interior terra cotta was used) in the Orpheum might have been made by your Grandfather’s company, or some of them might have been ordered from another company. Someone would have to see the contracts or work orders from the time of construction to be sure. Maybe that’s where Mr. Driggs got his information. Maybe you could track him down.
ylyly: If you have commented on any particular page at Cinema Treasures and have ever checked the “Notify me when someone replies to my comment?” box at the bottom of a comment form, you will receive a notification e-mail every time any new comment is added to that page, regardless of the content of that comment (i.e. whether or not it is a response specifically replying to your own earlier comment.) Cinema Treasures does not post replies to specific comments on any page other than the one on which that specific comment was posted, so if you don’t see a comment specifically replying to your earlier comment here, there are none.
You will continue to receive Cinema Treasures notifications for a page on which you’ve commented until you click on the “To remove yourself from receiving further notifications from this thread, click here:” link at the bottom of the e-mail itself, which will un-subscribe you from that page (though you might also stop receiving Cinema Treasures comment notifications- as I have- if your e-mail service simply decides not to deliver them. I haven’t gotten any notifications for almost three months, due to my ISP e-mail service, the mediocre AT&T-Yahoo, having put Cinema Treasures mail on its “no delivery” list.)
Here’s the official website for Cinerama El Pacifico</a> and its two sister cinemas. Click on the “Nuestras Cines” link to see a couple of interior photos- though there are no captions to identify which of the three are depicted.
Here is a website featuring a more recent exterior photo of El Pacifico, and a longish text in Spanish which appears to be (at least in part) a review of the theatre. From what I can puzzle out with my very limited Spanish, it seems that El Pacifico was a large, single-screen house with balcony, which has been remodeled more than once to become the 12-screen multiplex it now is (I’d appreciate an English translation or paraphrase of those parts which are about the theatre itself.) Judging from its architectural style in the photo above, the place most likely dates from around the 1950s.
The Lewiston Flagship Cinemas multiplex is located at the end of Promenade Mall which was once occupied by Bradlees Discount Department Store (they discounted everything- including apostrophes, apparently.) Here’s a recent photo at Flickr.
I remember passing by the Brea Theatre a couple of times in the 1950s. From the outside it was quite unprepossessing, and I never would have guessed it had the ornate interior described above. All I recall is that it had a tiny marquee and a somewhat shabby facade.
Nick’s second link doesn’t work anymore. Here’s the photo showing Tait’s Coffee House. This photo was taken during the period when the Pantages had become Dalton’s Theatre.
Tif: Prior to the period when Landmark ran the theatre (documented in meheuck’s comment of November 16, 2007, above) I don’t think the Vista presented any premiers- unless they were premiers of porn movies during its long years as a porn house.
I have a vague recollection of the Vista showing Russian movies during the early 1960s, but before that it was operated for ages by Fox-West Coast Theatres as a neighborhood house, and Lou Bard’s circuit which opened the theatre also operated it as a neighborhood house, unlikely to have been chosen as a venue for a big premier.
This .pdf file from the L.A. Library gives a brief history of the Vista and the Bard Circuit, though it makes no mention of any premiers.
I noticed that in a comment of May 22, 2005, above, alaskaman says that he saw the premier of Ed Wood at the Vista. That movie was released in 1994, so there may have been some other premiers after the brief period covered in meheuck’s comment.
There was a State Theatre in Hollister by 1932, when its manager, Harold Wright, was mentioned in an item in the Motion Picture Herald issue of January 16.
The California Index cites an article in the Los Angeles Times of January 27, 1929, headed “Theatre crop for 1929 grows.” The index card indicates that the Hollister theatre mentioned in the article was either named the West Coast Theatre, or was at least operated by the West Coast Circuit.
As the other theatre in Hollister (the Granada) was far smaller than the State, and West Coast Theatres built fairly large houses in the 1920s, even in small towns, the State is the more likely of the two to have been the theater built for West Coast in 1929.
Either I was blind or inattentive last time I looked for Calexico theaters in the California Index, or the Index belched, because I now see a card there citing Southwest Builder & Contractor of 3/21/1930 which reveals that John Paxton Perrine was the architect of the theatre being built for Fox West Coast on an unspecified street between Heber and Hefferman Streets in Calexico.
The Valley Theatre was mentioned, along with the Palace Theatre, in a Los Angeles Times article on March 4, 1924, headlined “Angelenos purchase El Centro theaters.”
A Southwest Builder & Contractor item of August 16, 1935, says that architect Clifford Balch was making alterations to the Valley Theatre.
This theater was designed by John Paxton Perrine, according to Southwest Builder & Contractor of July 22, 1927. West Coast Theatres had arranged to lease the house, which was to seat 1400. The article also announced that the project was to include a 1200 seat airdome theatre- a suitable arrangement for the torrid summers in the desert town of El Centro.
I also want to note that Cinema Treasures currently lists the architect as John Paxton Perine (with only one “r”), but that 90% of the references to him in the California Index spell his name Perrine, with a double r. Every other website I’ve seen his name on also spells it Perrine, as do published works featured by Google Books.
This theatre is located in the former Wilshire-Doheny Plaza (renamed 9100 Wilshire after the 1992 renovation), a major office-retail complex designed by Beverly Hills architectural firm Maxwell Starkman & Associates. Starkman was a Toronto-born architect who began his career in the office of Richard Neutra in 1950. His own company, founded a few years later, had become the fourth-largest architectural and engineering firm in the U.S. by the early 1980s. Maxwell Starkman’s last project was the Museum of Tolerance, in Los Angeles.
In 1978, the Doheny Plaza Theatre scheduled a British documentary film called “The Palestinian” which was produced and narrated by anti-Zionist actor Vanessa Redgrave. At 4:16 A.M. on June 15, a small bomb was detonated at the theatre, causing about $1,000 damage. After hasty repairs to the theatre, the film opened on schedule. Two men were arrested for the bombing. There’s no word on how much of an audience the movie attracted, but Jewish groups picketed the theatre.
Apparently I misspelled this theatre’s name, and the correct spelling is “Superba.”
The Superba was located in the two story building on the far corner of the intersection just right of center in this 1920 photo of Main Street. The small, free-standing building with gabled tile roof on the near corner was the Alhambra station of the Pacific Electric Railway.
Gackle is shrinking. I’m amazed that town of 290 (July 2006 estimate) manages to keep even a seasonal, part-time movie house running. But then, with a median household income of $27,500 and the median price of a house only $29,200 the residents of Gackle must have money to burn.
I have only just noticed that the L.A. Library’s photo of the Dome Theatre (featured in reduced size at the top of Cinema Treasures' Fox Dome Theatre page shows the marquee of the Rosemary Theatre, but above the marquee is the name Dome Orpheum, using the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit’s standard script lettering. The Fox Rosemary must have had Orpheum Vaudeville in its early days. In any case, Dome Orpheum Theatre might have been an aka for the place around the mid-late 1920s. Can anybody dig up a period newspaper ad or something to confirm this?
In Los Angeles you could pick up a modest house in a marginal neighborhood for $675,000. Or if you already have one, sell it and buy a 1600 seat movie palace with ballroom.
But judging from the Wikimedia Commons photo, the Temple building doesn’t have much in the way of other uses to provide revenue- it looks like one little retail store and no offices or apartments to rent out. Whoever buys it will have to make it pay as an entertainment venue- unless they’re stinking rich and they intend to use it as a pied-a-terre for weekends in town, or something of the sort.
The work on the Lynn Theatre in the 1930s appears not to have been a simple remodeling, but major reconstruction. According to a card in the Los Angeles Public Library’s California Index, Southwest Builder and Contractor issue of September 26, 1930, announced that Los Angeles architects W.J. Saunders & Son were completing the working plans for the theatre for Fred Aufdenkamp. The estimated cost of the project was $50,000.
Another card in the Index cites a Los Angeles Times article of October 19, 1930, saying that Walter J. Saunders was preparing plans for the Lynn Theatre at Laguna Beach.
The only other reference in the California Index to Walter J. Saunders in connection with a theatre notes his 1912 plans for remodeling the 1882 San Bernardino Opera House.
I don’t know if this was the final closure of the Maynard Theatre or not, but Boxoffice magazine’s issue of May 6, 1950, carried a brief item saying that Harry Vinnicof had shuttered the Maynard Theatre due to poor business conditions.
The first instance of the name Vinnicof in my comment above is misspelled. It’s supposed to be two n’s and one f.
Harry Vinicoff was a long-time exhibitor in the Los Angeles area. The earliest reference to him I’ve found is from 1937, when Vinnicof bought the Eagle Theatre in the Eagle Rock district of Los Angeles. At various times, Vinnicof also operated the Congress Theatre and the Temple Theatre, both on south Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles.
There’s also a brief item in the May 6, 1950, issue of Boxoffice magazine saying that Harry Vinnicof had shuttered his Maynard Theatre in Los Angeles due to poor business conditions. The Maynard Theatre was on Washington Boulevard at Arlington.
In the 1950s, the Vinnicof circuit owned a half interest (Edwards Theatres owned the other half) in the Garfield Theatre in Alhambra. After the Grove opened, the Garfield sometimes used tickets printed with the Grove Theatre name on them.
Built in former retail space in an outlet mall, Prime 11 Cinemas opened on May 5, 2006. It was the first movie theatre to operate in Anderson since the closing of the Gateway Theater in 1996. I recall reading somewhere online that it had a total of only around 1000 seats in its 11 auditoriums, but I’ve been unable to track down the source.
There was also an even earlier movie house in Anderson called the Valley Theatre, which was closed sometime before I first saw it around 1970.
Formerly known as Riverside Plaza Cinemas. It was acquired by Prime Cinemas in May, 2008, and re-opened under its new name after a week-long $500,000 renovation. It is the third house in the Prime Cinemas chain.
Plans for the Enean Theatre, by architect F. Frederic Amandes, were announced in the March, 1936, issue of Architect & Engineer magazine.
That same year, Amandes was the architect for remodelings of the Strand Theatre in Alameda, the Egyptian Theatre on San Francisco’s Market Street (listed at CT as the Guild Theatre), and the former T&D Theatre in Richmond, which became the Fox Theatre and then the United Artists Theatre.
Another photo showing a bit of the Strand has surfaced: This postcard view from the 1940s. It shows just a bit of the marquee at far right, but it’s only the second photo I’ve ever seen that includes even a part of this theatre.
Thanks, Ken. I like the look of the building, being a fan of some (though certainly not all) midcentury modern design, and South America has some of the most interesting buildings in the style. This one I like especially, as it appears to fit into the streetscape, unlike many from the era.
Laurie M: The comment by CT member BarrySGoodkin on Dec 11, 2001, says that the Fox Phoenix opened on January 5, 1929. This date is corroborated by the websites Silent Sundays and Ron Heberlee’s Orpheum Theatre Phoenix page.
As for your Grandfather’s plaster work, I’m not sure if any of the interior photos of the Orpheum at Ron Heberlee’s page show the original work, or some sort of modern recreations. In any case, it was common in building theatres in that era for the architects to order many of the big plaster decorations pre-made from a company specializing in decorative plasterwork, and then a local contractor would install them, making sure they fit together seamlessly, and doing all the plain plasterwork such as wall surfaces (which were often not all that plain, since many styles of architecture required finish coats of special textures.)
So, many or all of the big pieces of ornamental plaster (almost all the decorative pieces in such a theatre would probably have been plaster, though in some buildings quite a bit of interior terra cotta was used) in the Orpheum might have been made by your Grandfather’s company, or some of them might have been ordered from another company. Someone would have to see the contracts or work orders from the time of construction to be sure. Maybe that’s where Mr. Driggs got his information. Maybe you could track him down.
ylyly: If you have commented on any particular page at Cinema Treasures and have ever checked the “Notify me when someone replies to my comment?” box at the bottom of a comment form, you will receive a notification e-mail every time any new comment is added to that page, regardless of the content of that comment (i.e. whether or not it is a response specifically replying to your own earlier comment.) Cinema Treasures does not post replies to specific comments on any page other than the one on which that specific comment was posted, so if you don’t see a comment specifically replying to your earlier comment here, there are none.
You will continue to receive Cinema Treasures notifications for a page on which you’ve commented until you click on the “To remove yourself from receiving further notifications from this thread, click here:” link at the bottom of the e-mail itself, which will un-subscribe you from that page (though you might also stop receiving Cinema Treasures comment notifications- as I have- if your e-mail service simply decides not to deliver them. I haven’t gotten any notifications for almost three months, due to my ISP e-mail service, the mediocre AT&T-Yahoo, having put Cinema Treasures mail on its “no delivery” list.)
Here’s the official website for Cinerama El Pacifico</a> and its two sister cinemas. Click on the “Nuestras Cines” link to see a couple of interior photos- though there are no captions to identify which of the three are depicted.
Here is a website featuring a more recent exterior photo of El Pacifico, and a longish text in Spanish which appears to be (at least in part) a review of the theatre. From what I can puzzle out with my very limited Spanish, it seems that El Pacifico was a large, single-screen house with balcony, which has been remodeled more than once to become the 12-screen multiplex it now is (I’d appreciate an English translation or paraphrase of those parts which are about the theatre itself.) Judging from its architectural style in the photo above, the place most likely dates from around the 1950s.
The Lewiston Flagship Cinemas multiplex is located at the end of Promenade Mall which was once occupied by Bradlees Discount Department Store (they discounted everything- including apostrophes, apparently.) Here’s a recent photo at Flickr.
I remember passing by the Brea Theatre a couple of times in the 1950s. From the outside it was quite unprepossessing, and I never would have guessed it had the ornate interior described above. All I recall is that it had a tiny marquee and a somewhat shabby facade.
Nick’s second link doesn’t work anymore. Here’s the photo showing Tait’s Coffee House. This photo was taken during the period when the Pantages had become Dalton’s Theatre.
Tif: Prior to the period when Landmark ran the theatre (documented in meheuck’s comment of November 16, 2007, above) I don’t think the Vista presented any premiers- unless they were premiers of porn movies during its long years as a porn house.
I have a vague recollection of the Vista showing Russian movies during the early 1960s, but before that it was operated for ages by Fox-West Coast Theatres as a neighborhood house, and Lou Bard’s circuit which opened the theatre also operated it as a neighborhood house, unlikely to have been chosen as a venue for a big premier.
This .pdf file from the L.A. Library gives a brief history of the Vista and the Bard Circuit, though it makes no mention of any premiers.
I noticed that in a comment of May 22, 2005, above, alaskaman says that he saw the premier of Ed Wood at the Vista. That movie was released in 1994, so there may have been some other premiers after the brief period covered in meheuck’s comment.
There was a State Theatre in Hollister by 1932, when its manager, Harold Wright, was mentioned in an item in the Motion Picture Herald issue of January 16.
The California Index cites an article in the Los Angeles Times of January 27, 1929, headed “Theatre crop for 1929 grows.” The index card indicates that the Hollister theatre mentioned in the article was either named the West Coast Theatre, or was at least operated by the West Coast Circuit.
As the other theatre in Hollister (the Granada) was far smaller than the State, and West Coast Theatres built fairly large houses in the 1920s, even in small towns, the State is the more likely of the two to have been the theater built for West Coast in 1929.
Either I was blind or inattentive last time I looked for Calexico theaters in the California Index, or the Index belched, because I now see a card there citing Southwest Builder & Contractor of 3/21/1930 which reveals that John Paxton Perrine was the architect of the theatre being built for Fox West Coast on an unspecified street between Heber and Hefferman Streets in Calexico.
The Valley Theatre was mentioned, along with the Palace Theatre, in a Los Angeles Times article on March 4, 1924, headlined “Angelenos purchase El Centro theaters.”
A Southwest Builder & Contractor item of August 16, 1935, says that architect Clifford Balch was making alterations to the Valley Theatre.
This theater was designed by John Paxton Perrine, according to Southwest Builder & Contractor of July 22, 1927. West Coast Theatres had arranged to lease the house, which was to seat 1400. The article also announced that the project was to include a 1200 seat airdome theatre- a suitable arrangement for the torrid summers in the desert town of El Centro.
I also want to note that Cinema Treasures currently lists the architect as John Paxton Perine (with only one “r”), but that 90% of the references to him in the California Index spell his name Perrine, with a double r. Every other website I’ve seen his name on also spells it Perrine, as do published works featured by Google Books.
This theatre is located in the former Wilshire-Doheny Plaza (renamed 9100 Wilshire after the 1992 renovation), a major office-retail complex designed by Beverly Hills architectural firm Maxwell Starkman & Associates. Starkman was a Toronto-born architect who began his career in the office of Richard Neutra in 1950. His own company, founded a few years later, had become the fourth-largest architectural and engineering firm in the U.S. by the early 1980s. Maxwell Starkman’s last project was the Museum of Tolerance, in Los Angeles.
In 1978, the Doheny Plaza Theatre scheduled a British documentary film called “The Palestinian” which was produced and narrated by anti-Zionist actor Vanessa Redgrave. At 4:16 A.M. on June 15, a small bomb was detonated at the theatre, causing about $1,000 damage. After hasty repairs to the theatre, the film opened on schedule. Two men were arrested for the bombing. There’s no word on how much of an audience the movie attracted, but Jewish groups picketed the theatre.
Apparently I misspelled this theatre’s name, and the correct spelling is “Superba.”
The Superba was located in the two story building on the far corner of the intersection just right of center in this 1920 photo of Main Street. The small, free-standing building with gabled tile roof on the near corner was the Alhambra station of the Pacific Electric Railway.
Gackle is shrinking. I’m amazed that town of 290 (July 2006 estimate) manages to keep even a seasonal, part-time movie house running. But then, with a median household income of $27,500 and the median price of a house only $29,200 the residents of Gackle must have money to burn.
I have only just noticed that the L.A. Library’s photo of the Dome Theatre (featured in reduced size at the top of Cinema Treasures' Fox Dome Theatre page shows the marquee of the Rosemary Theatre, but above the marquee is the name Dome Orpheum, using the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit’s standard script lettering. The Fox Rosemary must have had Orpheum Vaudeville in its early days. In any case, Dome Orpheum Theatre might have been an aka for the place around the mid-late 1920s. Can anybody dig up a period newspaper ad or something to confirm this?
In Los Angeles you could pick up a modest house in a marginal neighborhood for $675,000. Or if you already have one, sell it and buy a 1600 seat movie palace with ballroom.
But judging from the Wikimedia Commons photo, the Temple building doesn’t have much in the way of other uses to provide revenue- it looks like one little retail store and no offices or apartments to rent out. Whoever buys it will have to make it pay as an entertainment venue- unless they’re stinking rich and they intend to use it as a pied-a-terre for weekends in town, or something of the sort.