The L.A. Public Library misidentifies this 1928 photo as being of the California Theatre in Bakersfield. Given the Moorish detailing, suitable for a theatre called the Granada, I wonder if perhaps it actually depict this house. The size and shape of the facade is a good match for that of the Granada, which can be seen on this page as it looked long after its 1950 remodeling.
I wonder if the 1928 photo ken mc posted on September 26, 2007, which the L.A. Library misidentifies as the California Theatre, could actually depict the Granada Theatre, which opened about that time? The theatre in the photo does have some Moorish design elements, suitable for a theatre of that name, and its facade is about the same size as the Granada’s, seen on this page some years after its 1950 remodeling.
The only photo I’ve found showing the Rialto is this ca.1940s shot of Baker Street, with the theatre at some distance in the center. A vertical sign for the Granada Theatre (presumably around the corner) can be seen at right.
Here’s an interesting bit of advertising history touching on this theater. In the late 1920’s, the Kellogg company used Hal Roach’s “Our Gang” to promote its new cereal, Kellogg’s Pep. On this page there’s a letter sent from the Pathe Exchange to the Classic Theatre in Watertown, Wisconsin, “suggesting” to the theater’s operator a course of action by which the house could secure “…additional and earlier bookings on OUR GANG comedies….” The already somewhat overbearing tone of the letter was given a sinister note by the “SEES ALL – KNOWS ALL” watermark which appeared on Pathe’s stationery.
Whether S. Charles Lee did any work for the final design of the Carmel Theatre or not, there is information about his relationship to it in Box 1, Folder 22 of his collected papers, according to the online finding aid for the collection at UCLA. If somebody with access to the collection itself comes across this page, I hope they’ll take a look at what’s in that folder and report back to us about it. If there are photos or drawings of it, they probably haven’t been digitized or they’d probably be on the Lee website.
Laurie, you have a sharper eye than I do. I hadn’t noticed the lettering on that building. It must be the building on the southwest corner 5th, right across Whittier from the Security Bank building. The county assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1926 for the building on that lot now, so it must be the same one in the photo. Unfortunately the library doesn’t have any closer photos of it, except one showing one end of the 5th street side of it (at far right in this photo.) I’d be interested to know what your neighbor might remember about the building with the arched front, too.
Also, I checked the finding aid for the S. Charles Lee papers at UCLA, and it does list Alfred Olander as the owner of the Garmar Theatre.
Laurie & Droog: Thanks for the confirmation of the Vogue’s location. Now I can have it added to the Cinema Treasures database. An opening date of 1940s also confirms my suspicion that the Vogue was in a converted store building rather than a purpose-built theatre building. The assessor’s office says the building itself was erected in 1929.
The name Olander is familiar to me. An acquaintance named Don Olander some thirty years ago told me that his family ran either the bowling alley or the coffee shop in the bowling alley (the memory is dim) that was in the northern part of Montebello, southwest of Garfield and Pomona Boulevard. The subject of the Vogue never came up in our conversation, but the name Olander is not common so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same family.
But as one mystery is solved, another opens up. Or, now, two more. The building which is probably at 520 Whittier and which may have been a theater is still a mystery, now that we know it wasn’t the Vogue; and in addition we now have the Cameo on the opposite side of Whittier somewhere in that same area. I’m quite sure that only two theaters (the Garmar and the Vogue) were operating in Montebello by the late 1950s, so the odds of anyone showing up who remembers either the Cameo or the possible theater at 520 Whittier are slim, so this is probably another research mystery.
L.A. County Assessor’s office says the building currently on this site (southwest corner of Florence and Walnut) was built in 1981. The Florencita Theatre is gone.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives the effective year built for this building as 1940. The “Year Built” space on its page has “0000” in it. Grrrr, missing data!
The county assessor’s office lists three structures on two lots at this address: A 6000 sq.ft. building erected in 1912; a 3600 sq.ft. building erected in 1914; and a 4320 sq.ft. building erected in 1957. TerraServer’s satellite view shows that the building just west of the one abutting the alley (see ken mc’s photos linked above) has a section behind it with a different style of roof than the street-front section.
The alley-side brick wall in Ken’s photo looks too old for 1957 so is probably from the 1910s. That building also looks a bit narrow for a theatre. The City’s ZIMAS site gives the addresses of the two lots as 1896 and 1898 W. Adams, so it seems likely that the theatre was in the building farther from the alley.
The question is, which section of the building next to the alley-side building is of 1910s vintage. From above, the back section of the western building looks more like it would have held an auditorium, but it also looks more like it might be newer construction. I wonder if the theatre’s auditorium was there, and replaced in 1957, or if the former front section of the theatre building was replaced then?
If the front of the theatre had originally been divided into lobby, foyer, and a couple of storefronts, with load-bearing walls separating them, then it would have made sense for someone converting the property for another use to demo and replace that part of the building, and keep the auditorium section with its clear span. In any case, it seems likely that at least part of the Adams Theatre has been demolished.
The 1939 L.A. City Directory has the Allena Theatre listed at 120 E. Santa Barbara Avenue. The 1942 directory has it at 126 E. Santa Barbara. In the 1956 directory, Kapp’s market is listed at 120 E. Santa Barbara, and the Allena Theatre is not listed at all. According to the L.A. County assessor’s office, the building currently on that lot, now numbered 120 E. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, was built in 1982.
Thanks, Laurie. I’ve checked Google Maps street view and the parcel viewer at the L.A. County Assessor’s website, and I see a building at 712 Whittier Boulevard that looks vaguely familiar to me. Could you take a look at this photo at Flickr and tell me if the building now housing Salon Maxx, and having an angled projection punctured by three round holes, is the building which housed the Vogue? As I said in my earlier comment, I only saw the place a few times, and that was ages ago, so my memory is pretty dim. But I do now have a vague recollection of that architectural feature with the three holes in it, and another vague memory that there was a parking lot just a little way east of the Vogue (and there is one just a bit east of this building), but I’m not at all positive about any of this.
Patsy and William: I don’t think the reference in Karol’s book could be to the El Capitan on Vine. From the early 1940s until 1949, the El Capitan on Vine Street was the venue of Ken Murray’s Blackouts, an extraordinarily popular stage review which ran for 3,844 performances, so I doubt the theatre would have been available for any other purpose.
Desi Arnaz was the bandleader on Bob Hope’s weekly (Tuesday night) radio show in 1946 and 1947, but I’m pretty sure the show originated from the NBC studios at Sunset and Vine, and the band would probably have been in the studio, as a rule.
It’s possible that the book is correct about the venue, though. Maybe Arnaz and the band did play at the Paramount Theatre at least once during 1947. Paramount’s production and exhibition arms were still united in 1947, and Bob Hope’s movies were released through Paramount. Any or all of his 1947 films (he made three that year) are likely to have had runs at the Hollywood Paramount. If so, then a remote broadcast of the radio show from the theatre (with Arnaz leading the orchestra as usual), to promote a Bob Hope movie, would not have been out of the question.
I’m just speculating about this, of course, but such an event at the Paramount seems more likely than an appearance by the Arnaz orchestra at the El Capitan on Vine in that year.
The various thumbnail pages for photos of the New Sequoia/Fox Theatre at the historical photos website usually include the information that the original Sequoia Theatre was located at 2114 Broadway and operated from 1917 to 1929. I can’t find any photos on that site showing a close view of the original Sequoia Theatre. However, in this 1947 aerial view in which you can see the New Sequoia dominating the center of the picture, note that in the next block closer, and on the right side of Broadway, there’s a dark building with a slope-roofed rear section, which I surmise is at, or very near, the old Sequoia’s address.
In satellite views fetched by searches on 2114 Broadway, Redwood City, at Google Maps and TerraServer, it looks as though this building still exists. Could this be the original Sequoia Theatre? The building was already there in this 1925 aerial photo, seen from the west side, just above and to the left of the Courthouse dome. The building could date from 1917, the original Sequoia’s opening year.
Citysearch gives the current address of Anderson’s TV in Redwood City as 901 El Camino Real. Searching on Google Maps with Street View, you get a decent view of the building by using the address 929 El Camino Real (Google Maps will then tell you you’re looking at 928 El Camino, I guess because Google maps is probably confused by Redwood City’s unorthodox practice of putting even numbers on the west sides of streets.) I don’t like using Google Maps Street View feature, because it takes forever for the pages to load. It’s like being back on a dial-up Internet connection. But with lots of patience you can get a look at the building that now squats where the Redwood Theatre once stood.
To get the Fox Skyline’s location to map properly on Google Maps, it will be necessary to change the address to Skyline Blvd. & Sharp Park Rd.. The shopping center had to have been at the southwest corner of the intersection, and Westborough Boulevard runs only east from Skyline. Also, the location given for the theatre on an official inaugural program displayed at Larry Goldsmith’s Fox Skyline Collection is Sharp Park Road and Skyline Boulevard.
Incidentally, this theatre’s location was just about directly on top of the San Andreas Fault. It would have been a great place to see “Earthquake!”
I’ve been picturing the Redwood Theatre being on the northwest corner of the intersection, but if it was on the southwest corner (which it would have to have been if the trees in the background were to the west, across El Camino), then the shops with the addresses of 44 and 46 on them must have been on California Street, too. The theatre would probably have been at 42 California Street, then.
I wonder what was in that building in the background with the fancy cornice? The lower part of that sign on its side looks like an old Pontiac emblem, but it’s too small to tell for sure. There was once a Balestra Pontiac at 1039 South El Camino, which is just below James Avenue. It seems possible that the building behind the Redwood was their location in the 1940s, and they later expanded into the next block, eventually moving their entire operation there. (Not relevant to the theatre, of course, but perhaps interesting to people from Redwood City.)
I’m still trying to track down information about the Vogue, Montebello’s other movie house, which is not yet listed at CT.
The L.A. Public Library has two old photos of Whittier Boulevard looking toward 5th Street, ca.1920 and ca.1935, and in each there is a building with a big arch making up most of the facade. In the 1935 photo, it looks as though this building has display cases form movie posters in its entryway. In the first photo the area is just sort of a muddle. The building might have been converted to a theatre at some date after this photo was taken, or it’s possible it was being remodeled at the time of the photograph.
Montebello was a good-sized town by 1920, and it seems likely that it would have had a move theatre then. The building is a bit narrow,and I’m wondering if maybe this was the elusive Vogue Theatre in an early incarnation. I went there maybe three or four times at most, back in the 1950s, all I remember of it was that it was on the north side of Whittler Boulevard and was very narrow, and the back couple of rows of seats were on risers so you had to go up a step or two from the aisle to reach them (each row had its own steps, so it wasn’t like stadium seating.)
I can’t remember exactly where on Whitter Boulevard the Vogue was, but I’ve always had the impression it was only a few blocks west of Bluff Road, and the block between 5th and 6th Streets would be about right. Does anybody in Montebello have the exact address of the Vogue? I’ve checked the L.A. County Assessor’s parcel viewer on the Internet and the buildings on the west end of that block in the second photo above are apparently still there.
The most likely candidate for the arched building is 520 W. Whittier, Montebello being one of the towns that puts even numbers on the north sides of streets. The building at that address has a construction date of 1915, and an effective construction date (major remodeling) of 1933, which would be about right for the fairly modern style of the Vogue as I remember it. If somebody could dig up the address of the Vogue, we’ll know whether or not this was it’s location.
I can’t find any listing for the Carson Twin (or any theatres at all in Carson) in my February 10, 1971, copy of the L.A. Times. In the August 24, 1986 issue, it’s listed in the Independent Theatres section as the Carson #1, which was showing “Friday the 13th pt.6” and “Reanimators” (perhaps 1985’s “Re-Animator”,unless there was a crappy sequel I’ve never heard of) and Carson #2, showing “Back to School” and “Seeking Susan” (or Desperately Seeking a Shorter Title for Our Diminutive Attraction Board.) A small building I presume is the theatre shows up on the aerial photo of 5/31/1994 at TerraServer.
South Bay Six Drive-in also shows up in the August 1986 listings, but not in February 1971. It, too, most likely opened in the early 1970s.
Gary: If the theatre-like building you saw is at 2114 Broadway, that’s the location of the original Sequoia Theatre from 1917 to 1929, according to the Bits of History website. Unfortunately, with all the photos of the New Sequoia/Fox Theatre, the website apparently doesn’t have a single shot of the original Sequoia.
I did find another photo of the Redwood, though, running movies released in 1944 and 1945. It shows the addresses of two shops on Montgomery/Winklebleck Street. Looking at the configuration of the theatre’s doors I’m now wondering if maybe it, too, didn’t have a Montgomery Street address?
One unique feature of Telenews Theatres was that the managers of each house in the chain would edit the newsreels provided by the major studios, adding in locally produced footage about local events. One brief bit of film that was probably produced by the San Francisco Telenews Theatre’s manager has survived in the Prelinger Archives, and is available at the Internet Archive. It’s called Dead Fair, and consists of scenes of the Golden Gate International Exposition’s grounds and buildings after the fair had closed in 1940. (Adobe Flash Player 7.0 or above required, and Javascript must be enabled)
There is now a Cinema Treasures page for the Vogue Theatre.
The L.A. Public Library misidentifies this 1928 photo as being of the California Theatre in Bakersfield. Given the Moorish detailing, suitable for a theatre called the Granada, I wonder if perhaps it actually depict this house. The size and shape of the facade is a good match for that of the Granada, which can be seen on this page as it looked long after its 1950 remodeling.
I wonder if the 1928 photo ken mc posted on September 26, 2007, which the L.A. Library misidentifies as the California Theatre, could actually depict the Granada Theatre, which opened about that time? The theatre in the photo does have some Moorish design elements, suitable for a theatre of that name, and its facade is about the same size as the Granada’s, seen on this page some years after its 1950 remodeling.
The only photo I’ve found showing the Rialto is this ca.1940s shot of Baker Street, with the theatre at some distance in the center. A vertical sign for the Granada Theatre (presumably around the corner) can be seen at right.
Here’s an interesting bit of advertising history touching on this theater. In the late 1920’s, the Kellogg company used Hal Roach’s “Our Gang” to promote its new cereal, Kellogg’s Pep. On this page there’s a letter sent from the Pathe Exchange to the Classic Theatre in Watertown, Wisconsin, “suggesting” to the theater’s operator a course of action by which the house could secure “…additional and earlier bookings on OUR GANG comedies….” The already somewhat overbearing tone of the letter was given a sinister note by the “SEES ALL – KNOWS ALL” watermark which appeared on Pathe’s stationery.
Whether S. Charles Lee did any work for the final design of the Carmel Theatre or not, there is information about his relationship to it in Box 1, Folder 22 of his collected papers, according to the online finding aid for the collection at UCLA. If somebody with access to the collection itself comes across this page, I hope they’ll take a look at what’s in that folder and report back to us about it. If there are photos or drawings of it, they probably haven’t been digitized or they’d probably be on the Lee website.
Laurie, you have a sharper eye than I do. I hadn’t noticed the lettering on that building. It must be the building on the southwest corner 5th, right across Whittier from the Security Bank building. The county assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1926 for the building on that lot now, so it must be the same one in the photo. Unfortunately the library doesn’t have any closer photos of it, except one showing one end of the 5th street side of it (at far right in this photo.) I’d be interested to know what your neighbor might remember about the building with the arched front, too.
Also, I checked the finding aid for the S. Charles Lee papers at UCLA, and it does list Alfred Olander as the owner of the Garmar Theatre.
Correction to my previous comment: The bowling alley I mentioned was southeast of Garfield and Pomona Boulevard, not southwest.
Laurie & Droog: Thanks for the confirmation of the Vogue’s location. Now I can have it added to the Cinema Treasures database. An opening date of 1940s also confirms my suspicion that the Vogue was in a converted store building rather than a purpose-built theatre building. The assessor’s office says the building itself was erected in 1929.
The name Olander is familiar to me. An acquaintance named Don Olander some thirty years ago told me that his family ran either the bowling alley or the coffee shop in the bowling alley (the memory is dim) that was in the northern part of Montebello, southwest of Garfield and Pomona Boulevard. The subject of the Vogue never came up in our conversation, but the name Olander is not common so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same family.
But as one mystery is solved, another opens up. Or, now, two more. The building which is probably at 520 Whittier and which may have been a theater is still a mystery, now that we know it wasn’t the Vogue; and in addition we now have the Cameo on the opposite side of Whittier somewhere in that same area. I’m quite sure that only two theaters (the Garmar and the Vogue) were operating in Montebello by the late 1950s, so the odds of anyone showing up who remembers either the Cameo or the possible theater at 520 Whittier are slim, so this is probably another research mystery.
L.A. County Assessor’s office says the building currently on this site (southwest corner of Florence and Walnut) was built in 1981. The Florencita Theatre is gone.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives the date of construction for the 7403 sq.ft. building at this address as 1925.
The whole block is a strip mall now, built in 1990.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives the effective year built for this building as 1940. The “Year Built” space on its page has “0000” in it. Grrrr, missing data!
The county assessor’s office lists three structures on two lots at this address: A 6000 sq.ft. building erected in 1912; a 3600 sq.ft. building erected in 1914; and a 4320 sq.ft. building erected in 1957. TerraServer’s satellite view shows that the building just west of the one abutting the alley (see ken mc’s photos linked above) has a section behind it with a different style of roof than the street-front section.
The alley-side brick wall in Ken’s photo looks too old for 1957 so is probably from the 1910s. That building also looks a bit narrow for a theatre. The City’s ZIMAS site gives the addresses of the two lots as 1896 and 1898 W. Adams, so it seems likely that the theatre was in the building farther from the alley.
The question is, which section of the building next to the alley-side building is of 1910s vintage. From above, the back section of the western building looks more like it would have held an auditorium, but it also looks more like it might be newer construction. I wonder if the theatre’s auditorium was there, and replaced in 1957, or if the former front section of the theatre building was replaced then?
If the front of the theatre had originally been divided into lobby, foyer, and a couple of storefronts, with load-bearing walls separating them, then it would have made sense for someone converting the property for another use to demo and replace that part of the building, and keep the auditorium section with its clear span. In any case, it seems likely that at least part of the Adams Theatre has been demolished.
The 1939 L.A. City Directory has the Allena Theatre listed at 120 E. Santa Barbara Avenue. The 1942 directory has it at 126 E. Santa Barbara. In the 1956 directory, Kapp’s market is listed at 120 E. Santa Barbara, and the Allena Theatre is not listed at all. According to the L.A. County assessor’s office, the building currently on that lot, now numbered 120 E. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, was built in 1982.
Thanks, Laurie. I’ve checked Google Maps street view and the parcel viewer at the L.A. County Assessor’s website, and I see a building at 712 Whittier Boulevard that looks vaguely familiar to me. Could you take a look at this photo at Flickr and tell me if the building now housing Salon Maxx, and having an angled projection punctured by three round holes, is the building which housed the Vogue? As I said in my earlier comment, I only saw the place a few times, and that was ages ago, so my memory is pretty dim. But I do now have a vague recollection of that architectural feature with the three holes in it, and another vague memory that there was a parking lot just a little way east of the Vogue (and there is one just a bit east of this building), but I’m not at all positive about any of this.
Patsy and William: I don’t think the reference in Karol’s book could be to the El Capitan on Vine. From the early 1940s until 1949, the El Capitan on Vine Street was the venue of Ken Murray’s Blackouts, an extraordinarily popular stage review which ran for 3,844 performances, so I doubt the theatre would have been available for any other purpose.
Desi Arnaz was the bandleader on Bob Hope’s weekly (Tuesday night) radio show in 1946 and 1947, but I’m pretty sure the show originated from the NBC studios at Sunset and Vine, and the band would probably have been in the studio, as a rule.
It’s possible that the book is correct about the venue, though. Maybe Arnaz and the band did play at the Paramount Theatre at least once during 1947. Paramount’s production and exhibition arms were still united in 1947, and Bob Hope’s movies were released through Paramount. Any or all of his 1947 films (he made three that year) are likely to have had runs at the Hollywood Paramount. If so, then a remote broadcast of the radio show from the theatre (with Arnaz leading the orchestra as usual), to promote a Bob Hope movie, would not have been out of the question.
I’m just speculating about this, of course, but such an event at the Paramount seems more likely than an appearance by the Arnaz orchestra at the El Capitan on Vine in that year.
The various thumbnail pages for photos of the New Sequoia/Fox Theatre at the historical photos website usually include the information that the original Sequoia Theatre was located at 2114 Broadway and operated from 1917 to 1929. I can’t find any photos on that site showing a close view of the original Sequoia Theatre. However, in this 1947 aerial view in which you can see the New Sequoia dominating the center of the picture, note that in the next block closer, and on the right side of Broadway, there’s a dark building with a slope-roofed rear section, which I surmise is at, or very near, the old Sequoia’s address.
In satellite views fetched by searches on 2114 Broadway, Redwood City, at Google Maps and TerraServer, it looks as though this building still exists. Could this be the original Sequoia Theatre? The building was already there in this 1925 aerial photo, seen from the west side, just above and to the left of the Courthouse dome. The building could date from 1917, the original Sequoia’s opening year.
Citysearch gives the current address of Anderson’s TV in Redwood City as 901 El Camino Real. Searching on Google Maps with Street View, you get a decent view of the building by using the address 929 El Camino Real (Google Maps will then tell you you’re looking at 928 El Camino, I guess because Google maps is probably confused by Redwood City’s unorthodox practice of putting even numbers on the west sides of streets.) I don’t like using Google Maps Street View feature, because it takes forever for the pages to load. It’s like being back on a dial-up Internet connection. But with lots of patience you can get a look at the building that now squats where the Redwood Theatre once stood.
To get the Fox Skyline’s location to map properly on Google Maps, it will be necessary to change the address to Skyline Blvd. & Sharp Park Rd.. The shopping center had to have been at the southwest corner of the intersection, and Westborough Boulevard runs only east from Skyline. Also, the location given for the theatre on an official inaugural program displayed at Larry Goldsmith’s Fox Skyline Collection is Sharp Park Road and Skyline Boulevard.
Incidentally, this theatre’s location was just about directly on top of the San Andreas Fault. It would have been a great place to see “Earthquake!”
I’ve been picturing the Redwood Theatre being on the northwest corner of the intersection, but if it was on the southwest corner (which it would have to have been if the trees in the background were to the west, across El Camino), then the shops with the addresses of 44 and 46 on them must have been on California Street, too. The theatre would probably have been at 42 California Street, then.
I wonder what was in that building in the background with the fancy cornice? The lower part of that sign on its side looks like an old Pontiac emblem, but it’s too small to tell for sure. There was once a Balestra Pontiac at 1039 South El Camino, which is just below James Avenue. It seems possible that the building behind the Redwood was their location in the 1940s, and they later expanded into the next block, eventually moving their entire operation there. (Not relevant to the theatre, of course, but perhaps interesting to people from Redwood City.)
I’m still trying to track down information about the Vogue, Montebello’s other movie house, which is not yet listed at CT.
The L.A. Public Library has two old photos of Whittier Boulevard looking toward 5th Street, ca.1920 and ca.1935, and in each there is a building with a big arch making up most of the facade. In the 1935 photo, it looks as though this building has display cases form movie posters in its entryway. In the first photo the area is just sort of a muddle. The building might have been converted to a theatre at some date after this photo was taken, or it’s possible it was being remodeled at the time of the photograph.
Montebello was a good-sized town by 1920, and it seems likely that it would have had a move theatre then. The building is a bit narrow,and I’m wondering if maybe this was the elusive Vogue Theatre in an early incarnation. I went there maybe three or four times at most, back in the 1950s, all I remember of it was that it was on the north side of Whittler Boulevard and was very narrow, and the back couple of rows of seats were on risers so you had to go up a step or two from the aisle to reach them (each row had its own steps, so it wasn’t like stadium seating.)
I can’t remember exactly where on Whitter Boulevard the Vogue was, but I’ve always had the impression it was only a few blocks west of Bluff Road, and the block between 5th and 6th Streets would be about right. Does anybody in Montebello have the exact address of the Vogue? I’ve checked the L.A. County Assessor’s parcel viewer on the Internet and the buildings on the west end of that block in the second photo above are apparently still there.
The most likely candidate for the arched building is 520 W. Whittier, Montebello being one of the towns that puts even numbers on the north sides of streets. The building at that address has a construction date of 1915, and an effective construction date (major remodeling) of 1933, which would be about right for the fairly modern style of the Vogue as I remember it. If somebody could dig up the address of the Vogue, we’ll know whether or not this was it’s location.
I can’t find any listing for the Carson Twin (or any theatres at all in Carson) in my February 10, 1971, copy of the L.A. Times. In the August 24, 1986 issue, it’s listed in the Independent Theatres section as the Carson #1, which was showing “Friday the 13th pt.6” and “Reanimators” (perhaps 1985’s “Re-Animator”,unless there was a crappy sequel I’ve never heard of) and Carson #2, showing “Back to School” and “Seeking Susan” (or Desperately Seeking a Shorter Title for Our Diminutive Attraction Board.) A small building I presume is the theatre shows up on the aerial photo of 5/31/1994 at TerraServer.
South Bay Six Drive-in also shows up in the August 1986 listings, but not in February 1971. It, too, most likely opened in the early 1970s.
Gary: If the theatre-like building you saw is at 2114 Broadway, that’s the location of the original Sequoia Theatre from 1917 to 1929, according to the Bits of History website. Unfortunately, with all the photos of the New Sequoia/Fox Theatre, the website apparently doesn’t have a single shot of the original Sequoia.
I did find another photo of the Redwood, though, running movies released in 1944 and 1945. It shows the addresses of two shops on Montgomery/Winklebleck Street. Looking at the configuration of the theatre’s doors I’m now wondering if maybe it, too, didn’t have a Montgomery Street address?
One unique feature of Telenews Theatres was that the managers of each house in the chain would edit the newsreels provided by the major studios, adding in locally produced footage about local events. One brief bit of film that was probably produced by the San Francisco Telenews Theatre’s manager has survived in the Prelinger Archives, and is available at the Internet Archive. It’s called Dead Fair, and consists of scenes of the Golden Gate International Exposition’s grounds and buildings after the fair had closed in 1940. (Adobe Flash Player 7.0 or above required, and Javascript must be enabled)