The Los Angeles is one of the few downtown theatres which has two balconies. I only saw the second balcony opened once, when the theatre was four-walled for an exploitation movie called “Poor White Trash” in about 1963.
That is the Sierra Theatre in Susanville, California. This picture from the U.C. Davis collection gives the location. Susanville is the county seat of Lassen County, and is about 90 miles northwest of Reno, Nevada. The Sierra Theatre may still be open, but it is not yet listed n Cinema Treasures.
Oroville State Theatre. It’s still standing, and it’s been largely restored (I don’t think they’ve finished restoring the balcony yet.) I’ve actually never been to the Oroville State, even though it’s only about twenty miles from where I live.
ken mc: What you have there is an aerial view of the El Monte Drive-In on Lower Azusa Road. The Cinema Treasures entry on the El Monte Drive-In mistakenly attributes the design to William Glenn Balch. W.G. Balch and his father, Clifford Balch did design the Starlite Drive-In in South El Monte, but both the Tumbleweed and the El Monte Drive-In were designed by S. Charles Lee.
ken mc: I’m wondering if maybe this isn’t the El Rey Theatre (opened as the Majestic in 1905) in Chico, California. It was called the American from 1939 to 1946, and the street looks very much like Chico’s 2nd Street. The building is the right shape, too. I see another theatre is across the street, and on its side wall is painted a sign with “CHIC…” visible. I’ve never heard of an Empire Theatre existing in Chico, but it’s a definite possibility.
OK, I’ve just found the small early picture of the Majestic/El Rey at the top of this page, and the building next door to the theatre in that picture appears to be the same one that appears in the picture you’ve found. Now I’m convinced. That’s the El Rey, probably some time about 1939-1940.
Ken Layton is correct about the music in many public domain films still being under copyright. The music departments of the movie studios were often more careful to renew their copyrights on all their holdings than were the people responsible for overseeing the copyrights on the movies themselves. Also, studios sometimes used music under license from a composer or an outside publisher, and those copyrights are often still in effect, and the exhibition of those movies is still subject to the terms of those license agreements, even though a film itself may have fallen into the public domain. It’s wise to be careful when dealing with public domain movies, since the images and the musical score were almost invariably copyrighted separately.
University of Calgary Press has published a book about the city’s history from 1912 to 2005, in which the Lougheed Building and the Grand Theatre are prominently featured: Calgary’s Grand Story. (The page displays a very small picture of the interior of The Grand, as featured on the book’s cover.)
The clearest picture I’ve found of the Majestic is this excellent scan_01.jpg) of a frame from Harold Lloyd’s “Safety Last” which shows the theatre in the background. The scan is from the excellent Dr. Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans. I haven’t had a chance to peruse much of the site, but I expect that it might contain at least a few other scans of scenes from early movies shot on the streets of Southern California which might contain glimpses of other theatres.
Jeane Mari: The Bruce Torrence Collection has pictures of Ken Murray’s Blackouts (with Marie Wilson) at the Vine Street El Capitan. The biggest hit record of “Got a Date with an Angel” was probably the one by Hal Kemp and his orchestra, but I doubt that they could have fit onto the back of a truck.
The actual date of the fire which gutted the El Rey was August 5th, 1975. The event was reported in the Los Angeles Times the next day.
The El Rey was built by William Peters. San Francisco architects Mark T. Jorgensen and Otto A. Deichmann prepared the plans, according to the Better Theatres section of The Motion Picture Herald, October 17th, 1936. The theatre probably opened in 1937.
I’ve come across a contradiction in the Los Angeles Public Library’s database. Though text entries give the location of the Silent Building as 733 S. Hill Street (the theatre entrance was at the right end of the building), the data accompanying a a picture of the building gives an address of 730 S. Hill Street, which would put the building on the east side of the street. If the address on the west side of the street is correct, then the buildingis gone. If the address on the west side of the street is correct, then the building might well still exist.
The Granada was financed by C.W. Post of the Post Cereal family. It was originally designed in a Spanish architectural style, but much of the interior was remodeled in 1937 in the art deco style. The original proscenium was still intact as of 1993, and a plaster letter “P” for Post could be seen at the tops of the flanking columns. Though it was operated in its last years by Metropolitan Theatres, it opened as a West Coast Theatres house, and had been a Fox-West Coast house from the late 1920s into the 1960s.
Source: abstract of a paper from the Wilmington Historical Society, available in PDF format from the L.A. Public Library.
I had completely forgotten about that Broadway entrance to the Metropolitan! There was originally an entrance on Hill Street, as well, but only the Sixth Street entrance remained when I first saw the theatre. The L.A. Library has a photo of the interior of the Broadway entrance to the Metropolitan.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of January 9th, 1925, revealed that the plans for the Lyric Theatre were being prepared by the firm of Wilson, Merrill and Wilson, 128 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles. The building was to be 70' x 150' and the projected cost was $75,000. The owners and operators would be National Theatres.
If the Park Theatre was operating during the silent era, then it was not the T&D, plans for which (by San Francisco architect Albert A. Larsen) were announced in The Los Angeles Times on November 24th, 1929.
From Southwest Builder and Contractor, issue of 10/27/1928:[quote]“San Luis Obispo— Mrs. W.B. Martin has secured a permit for reconstruction the El Monterey Theater. The cost will be $20,000.”[quote]
The Reel Joy was operating as early as February, 1928, when it was mentioned in the 2/11/1928 issue of Exhibitor’s Herald and Moving Picture World.
The magazine Architect and Engineer, issue of February 1938, reported that work had begun on a remodeling of the theatre, to plans prepared by Oakland architects Miller & Warnecke.
RAGNAR: As near as I’ve been able to puzzle it out from the limited, scattered sources available to me, this is the relationship of the various theatre circuits which became Fox-West Coast: T&D was a San Francisco-based theatre circuit, owned by Fred Dahnken and William G. Turner. It began sometime early in the 20th century. There was some association with a circuit called Southwest Theaters, operated by C.L. Langley, who was also the managing director of T&D. Langley was also associated in some way with West Coast Theaters. In the 1920s, a partnership called West Coast-Langley operated theatres in Pasadena, among other places.
Eventually, all these companies were joined in a series of deals and mergers, under the West Coast Theaters banner, and by 1929, William Fox (who had opened his first nickelodeon in Brooklyn in 1904, and began producing movies in 1913 in order to have a reliable source of product to exhibit in his chain of theatres in the east) had acquired a controlling interest in the chain, which then became Fox-West Coast Theaters.
It was partly the debt Fox incurred in wiring several hundred theatres for sound that led to his bankruptcy in 1930. He then lost control of both the studio and the theatres, which in 1935 came under the control of Darryl Zanuck’s 20th Century Pictures.
I haven’t been able to discover the relationship of T&D Junior to Fox. Some theatres attributed to that company’s ownership were built quite a while after the merger of TD&L with Fox, and were operated by Fox-West Coast in later years.
Southwest Builder and Contractor of July 11, 1914, named the Fresno architectural firm of Swartz, Hotchin and Swartz as those who prepared the plans for remodeling the armory into Theatre Visalia for Spaulding, Mitchell and Levi. An issue of the same magazine from May, 1913, had mentioned two Los Angeles architects as being engaged for the project, but that deal must have fallen through.
Jack, you are correct that Variety has long called indoor movie theatres “hardtops” to distinguish them from “ozoners” or “passion pits” (Variety nomenclature for drive-ins.) Variety has always had a language of its own, and even has its own name for that language, and now features a web page with a handy glossary of its terms: Slanguage. Many terms originated at Variety have made their way into general use (“sex appeal” being an example), and there are others that deserve to. I’m particularly fond of “sprocket opera” for film festival, and “zitcom” for a T.V. comedy aimed at a teenage audience.
The current appearance of the United Artists Pasadena can be seen in this picture.
The Los Angeles is one of the few downtown theatres which has two balconies. I only saw the second balcony opened once, when the theatre was four-walled for an exploitation movie called “Poor White Trash” in about 1963.
That is the Sierra Theatre in Susanville, California. This picture from the U.C. Davis collection gives the location. Susanville is the county seat of Lassen County, and is about 90 miles northwest of Reno, Nevada. The Sierra Theatre may still be open, but it is not yet listed n Cinema Treasures.
Oroville State Theatre. It’s still standing, and it’s been largely restored (I don’t think they’ve finished restoring the balcony yet.) I’ve actually never been to the Oroville State, even though it’s only about twenty miles from where I live.
TexasEscapes has a few small pictures and a brief essay about Electra’s Grand Theatre.
ken mc:
There was the Fox Cinemaland on Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim, but the entry here says it was demolished.
ken mc: What you have there is an aerial view of the El Monte Drive-In on Lower Azusa Road. The Cinema Treasures entry on the El Monte Drive-In mistakenly attributes the design to William Glenn Balch. W.G. Balch and his father, Clifford Balch did design the Starlite Drive-In in South El Monte, but both the Tumbleweed and the El Monte Drive-In were designed by S. Charles Lee.
ken mc: I’m wondering if maybe this isn’t the El Rey Theatre (opened as the Majestic in 1905) in Chico, California. It was called the American from 1939 to 1946, and the street looks very much like Chico’s 2nd Street. The building is the right shape, too. I see another theatre is across the street, and on its side wall is painted a sign with “CHIC…” visible. I’ve never heard of an Empire Theatre existing in Chico, but it’s a definite possibility.
OK, I’ve just found the small early picture of the Majestic/El Rey at the top of this page, and the building next door to the theatre in that picture appears to be the same one that appears in the picture you’ve found. Now I’m convinced. That’s the El Rey, probably some time about 1939-1940.
Ken Layton is correct about the music in many public domain films still being under copyright. The music departments of the movie studios were often more careful to renew their copyrights on all their holdings than were the people responsible for overseeing the copyrights on the movies themselves. Also, studios sometimes used music under license from a composer or an outside publisher, and those copyrights are often still in effect, and the exhibition of those movies is still subject to the terms of those license agreements, even though a film itself may have fallen into the public domain. It’s wise to be careful when dealing with public domain movies, since the images and the musical score were almost invariably copyrighted separately.
University of Calgary Press has published a book about the city’s history from 1912 to 2005, in which the Lougheed Building and the Grand Theatre are prominently featured: Calgary’s Grand Story. (The page displays a very small picture of the interior of The Grand, as featured on the book’s cover.)
Here is a decent picture of the Barron Building, taken during the time the theatre was closed.
The architect of the Uptown was John A. Cawston, of the firm of Stevenson, Cawston & Stevenson.
Here is a brief essay about the Barron Building, courtesy of the Calgary Public Library.
The clearest picture I’ve found of the Majestic is this excellent scan_01.jpg) of a frame from Harold Lloyd’s “Safety Last” which shows the theatre in the background. The scan is from the excellent Dr. Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans. I haven’t had a chance to peruse much of the site, but I expect that it might contain at least a few other scans of scenes from early movies shot on the streets of Southern California which might contain glimpses of other theatres.
Jeane Mari: The Bruce Torrence Collection has pictures of Ken Murray’s Blackouts (with Marie Wilson) at the Vine Street El Capitan. The biggest hit record of “Got a Date with an Angel” was probably the one by Hal Kemp and his orchestra, but I doubt that they could have fit onto the back of a truck.
The actual date of the fire which gutted the El Rey was August 5th, 1975. The event was reported in the Los Angeles Times the next day.
The El Rey was built by William Peters. San Francisco architects Mark T. Jorgensen and Otto A. Deichmann prepared the plans, according to the Better Theatres section of The Motion Picture Herald, October 17th, 1936. The theatre probably opened in 1937.
I’ve come across a contradiction in the Los Angeles Public Library’s database. Though text entries give the location of the Silent Building as 733 S. Hill Street (the theatre entrance was at the right end of the building), the data accompanying a a picture of the building gives an address of 730 S. Hill Street, which would put the building on the east side of the street. If the address on the west side of the street is correct, then the buildingis gone. If the address on the west side of the street is correct, then the building might well still exist.
The Granada was financed by C.W. Post of the Post Cereal family. It was originally designed in a Spanish architectural style, but much of the interior was remodeled in 1937 in the art deco style. The original proscenium was still intact as of 1993, and a plaster letter “P” for Post could be seen at the tops of the flanking columns. Though it was operated in its last years by Metropolitan Theatres, it opened as a West Coast Theatres house, and had been a Fox-West Coast house from the late 1920s into the 1960s.
Source: abstract of a paper from the Wilmington Historical Society, available in PDF format from the L.A. Public Library.
I had completely forgotten about that Broadway entrance to the Metropolitan! There was originally an entrance on Hill Street, as well, but only the Sixth Street entrance remained when I first saw the theatre. The L.A. Library has a photo of the interior of the Broadway entrance to the Metropolitan.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of January 9th, 1925, revealed that the plans for the Lyric Theatre were being prepared by the firm of Wilson, Merrill and Wilson, 128 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles. The building was to be 70' x 150' and the projected cost was $75,000. The owners and operators would be National Theatres.
If the Park Theatre was operating during the silent era, then it was not the T&D, plans for which (by San Francisco architect Albert A. Larsen) were announced in The Los Angeles Times on November 24th, 1929.
From Southwest Builder and Contractor, issue of 10/27/1928:[quote]“San Luis Obispo— Mrs. W.B. Martin has secured a permit for reconstruction the El Monterey Theater. The cost will be $20,000.”[quote]
The Reel Joy was operating as early as February, 1928, when it was mentioned in the 2/11/1928 issue of Exhibitor’s Herald and Moving Picture World.
The magazine Architect and Engineer, issue of February 1938, reported that work had begun on a remodeling of the theatre, to plans prepared by Oakland architects Miller & Warnecke.
RAGNAR: As near as I’ve been able to puzzle it out from the limited, scattered sources available to me, this is the relationship of the various theatre circuits which became Fox-West Coast: T&D was a San Francisco-based theatre circuit, owned by Fred Dahnken and William G. Turner. It began sometime early in the 20th century. There was some association with a circuit called Southwest Theaters, operated by C.L. Langley, who was also the managing director of T&D. Langley was also associated in some way with West Coast Theaters. In the 1920s, a partnership called West Coast-Langley operated theatres in Pasadena, among other places.
Eventually, all these companies were joined in a series of deals and mergers, under the West Coast Theaters banner, and by 1929, William Fox (who had opened his first nickelodeon in Brooklyn in 1904, and began producing movies in 1913 in order to have a reliable source of product to exhibit in his chain of theatres in the east) had acquired a controlling interest in the chain, which then became Fox-West Coast Theaters.
It was partly the debt Fox incurred in wiring several hundred theatres for sound that led to his bankruptcy in 1930. He then lost control of both the studio and the theatres, which in 1935 came under the control of Darryl Zanuck’s 20th Century Pictures.
I haven’t been able to discover the relationship of T&D Junior to Fox. Some theatres attributed to that company’s ownership were built quite a while after the merger of TD&L with Fox, and were operated by Fox-West Coast in later years.
Southwest Builder and Contractor of July 11, 1914, named the Fresno architectural firm of Swartz, Hotchin and Swartz as those who prepared the plans for remodeling the armory into Theatre Visalia for Spaulding, Mitchell and Levi. An issue of the same magazine from May, 1913, had mentioned two Los Angeles architects as being engaged for the project, but that deal must have fallen through.
Jack, you are correct that Variety has long called indoor movie theatres “hardtops” to distinguish them from “ozoners” or “passion pits” (Variety nomenclature for drive-ins.) Variety has always had a language of its own, and even has its own name for that language, and now features a web page with a handy glossary of its terms: Slanguage. Many terms originated at Variety have made their way into general use (“sex appeal” being an example), and there are others that deserve to. I’m particularly fond of “sprocket opera” for film festival, and “zitcom” for a T.V. comedy aimed at a teenage audience.