I can’t find any recent information on the state of this building. I fear that it may either have already been demolished, or is in imminent danger of being demolished, to make way for a major mixed use development project which is associated with the Cypress Park-Lincoln Heights station of MTA’s Gold Line, which is a couple of blocks from the theatre at Avenue 26.
A property report generated for 452 Broadway by the city planning department’s zoning information system gives the address as 450 and 452 S. Broadway, and says the building was erected in 1908. The small building at left in ken mc’s photo (linked in his comment of January 15) must be the former home of the American Theatre.
I said above that in ken mc’s recent photos of this former theatre (linked in his comment of June 16 this year) the building looks as though it had been converted to a theatre from retail space. Ken’s comment of August 13 reveals that the building housed a theatre at least as far back as 1925. There’s still a possibility that the building began as retail space though. A Los Angeles planning department report available in .pdf from the department’s zone information system (search on building address) says that the building was erected in 1910.
It does seem possible that this house might have opened as the New Arlington Theatre. In the 2004 TerraServer aerial view, the building certainly looks as though it had been built as a theater,which reduces the likelihood that it was converted to theatrical use sometime after construction.
The two theatres were very close, the newer one (seen in this expanded view of the photo at the top of the page) being a few doors west of Arlington on the north side of Washington, and the older United Arlington being a couple of doors east of Arlington on the south side of Washington.
As the older theatre had the big “United” blade sign, it could be that it was known primarily by that name locally, which would have reduced the confusion that might arise from the partly-shared name. Given that both were neighborhood theatres, it wouldn’t have mattered much if people from outside the area were confused.
Here is a photograph of Washington Boulevard at Arlington in the early 1920s. I’d say it’s safe to surmise that the “United” blade sign in the fancy-fronted building at center belonged to the United Arlington Theatre, later to become the Maynard Theatre.
This was the Rainbow Ballroom at least back to the 1930s, and I’ve found references to a Fresno-based orchestra called “Spike Hennessey and his Rainbow Ballroom Band” being featured on the first live radio broadcast from the city’s first radio station in 1925. All the indications are that this 1918 building went directly from being the Fresno Natatorium (an indoor swimming pool) to being the Rainbow Ballroom, which it has been ever since. Despite its theatrical marquee, I can find no evidence that the building has ever been used as a theatre.
A few additional bits about the Glendale Theatre have turned up. The L.A. Times announced the theatre’s opening on October 31, 1920. The project was financed by a Dr. W.C. Goodno. A few years later, at the time of the theatre’s 1924 expansion, the owner was named as Louise Goodno.
The theatre’s organ was dedicated early in 1921, according to an article in The Verdugo Foothills Record on January 22 of that year. The organist was Maude Moore Clement.
At the time the Glendale Theatre was wired for sound, its seating capacity was 1231, according to the item published in Exhibitor’s Herald & Motion Picture World on December 28, 1928.
The photo to which Bryan Krefft linked on June 22, 2005, has been moved to a different URL. There’s just a glimpse of the theatre’s marquee and blade sign in the background of this view north along Brand Boulevard in the (judging from the cars visible) mid-1950s.
About half of the theatre’s facade can be seen at extreme right in this 1920s photograph.
I can’t find a U.S. Cinema among the listings for Glendale in my August 24, 1986, copy of the L.A. Times Calendar section. However, in that issues listings for Pacific Theatres, there is a theatre called the Regency 2 at 232 S. Brand Boulevard, which I believe would be the address of the storefront in the Masonic Temple Building immediately adjacent (on the north) to the Temple Theatre’s entrance: See this photo from the 1950s, looking north on Brand (its the same photo to which Bryan Krefft linked above- the URL has been changed.) I never visited that block of Brand in the 1980s, so I don’t know for sure if Regency 2 was an aka for the Temple or not, but it seems likely. There was also a Regency 1 Theatre in the 1986 Pacific Theatres listings, located just up the block at at 210 S. Brand Boulevard. In 1971, 210 S. Brand had been the location of the independently operated Sands Theatre. I don’t think that house is listed at Cinema Treasures yet under any name.
It appears that, before it moved to the location down the street at 2517 W. Washington, the Arlington Theatre was located in this building. Items in Southwest Builder and Contractor in 1920 give 2488 W. Washington as the address of the Arlington Theatre, as does the Los Angeles Times in 1925 (when it was called the United Arlington Theatre, according to a comment of June 3, 2007, by ken mc on Cinema Treasures' Arlington Theatre page.) The date when the Arlington operation moved to the new location is not yet known.
The building at 2517 West Washington Boulevard was erected in 1923, according to a property profile report by the Los Angeles Department of City Planning. The 6000+ sq. ft. building on a 10,000 sq. ft. lot at this location had to have been the second home of the Arlington Theatre. The L.A. library’s California Index contains a card citing an article in the January 30, 1920 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor which announced alterations to the Arlington Theatre at 2488 West Washington Boulevard. It had to have been that location at which the Robert-Morgan organ mentioned in Lost Memory’s comment above was installed in 1921.
The February 22 issue of the same publication that year announced that the Arlington Theatre had been sold. A City Planning Department property profile of 2488 Washington reveals that the building on the site today was built in 1988, so the first home of the Arlington is gone.
Now here’s the interesting wrinkle in all this: 2488 W.Washington is the address given at CT for the Maynard Theatre (aka Gem, according to William.) If, as ken mc’s comment of June 3, 2007 says, the United Arlington Theatre was still being advertised in The Times as being at 2488 W. Washington in 1925, and this building at 2517 W. Washington was built in 1923 (per the planning department’s property profile), then either this building was converted to a theatre at some date after its construction, or it opened as a theatre with a different name which we have yet to identify.
Also, Cinema Treasures' Maynard Theatre entry needs to be updated to show United Arlington Theatre as an aka.
The Cosmo Theatre was built in 1925. Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of January 30 that year announced the plans, describing it as a one-story brick picture theatre and store building, to cost $16,000. It was financed by a Mr. S.P. Offut.
Daily Variety of July 18, 1941, announced that Grover Smith planned to close the Cosmo Theatre and build a new theatre nearby. Whether the Cosmo was closed at that time or not, according to Southwest Builder & Contractor’s issue of July 11, Mr. Smith had already been named as the lessee of the new Vogue Theatre, which was soon to be built across Brand Boulevard from the Cosmo.
In the 1940s, the California was being operated by Fox-West Coast Theatres. Southwest Builder & Contractor of November 7, 1941, contained an item saying that architect S. Charles Lee had prepared plans for remodeling the California Theatre in Glendale. Alterations to the foyer, lobby, ticket booth and front were to cost $12,000.
The Oviatt Library 1936 photo to which ken mc linked on October 27, 2005, is no longer at that URL. For now, it is here.
The Kansas City Shubert Theater was designed by architect Benjamin Marshall of the Chicago firm Marshall & Fox. His partner Charles Fox acted as construction supervisor and project manager.
There’s quite a bit of information about the original Nixon Theatre on this web page and two linked pages, all apparently part of some sort of local oral histories collection.
From what I’ve read at that site, the original Nixon Theater was always a stage house, right up until its closing in 1950. However, on this page at rootsweb, the caption of a photo scanned from the September 28, 1924 issue of The Pittsburgh Press reveals that Cecil B. DeMille’s production of The Ten Commandments was playing at the Nixon Theater. I’d say that qualifies the original Nixon for its own page at Cinema Treasures.
This venerable house opened as the Banning Theatre on May 23, 1928, and only later became part of the Fox-West Coast circuit. The opening of the Banning Theatre was featured in an article in Exhibitor’s Herald & Moving Picture World issue of June 9, 1928. Equipped with a stage and fly tower, the house could host Vaudeville and other live theatrical events in addition to showing movies. According to local Banning history buff Kenneth Holzclaw, it once hosted a live broadcast of Bob Hope’s radio show.
This undated photo from the L.A. Library depicts Pacific Avenue northward from Zoe toward Gage. That appears to be the Park Theatre at center. This house dated back to the 1920s at least. An article in the L.A. Times of March 17, 1929, says that the lease on the Park Theatre had changed hands. Judging from the style of the building in the photograph, it looks as though it might even have dated from the 1910s.
Ed: Yes, that’s the Paris, formerly Carmel, on Santa Monica Boulevard. Compare the marquee in this 1970s night shot from the UCLA/L.A. Times archives (this is the same photo brett421 linked to on May 16. UCLA has changed the URLs of its photos and his link no longer works.)
According to the June 8, 1923 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor, the Egyptian Theatre was remodeled from an existing building which had been a garage. The conversion was designed by Long Beach architects Hugh R. Davies and Edward S. Baume, associated.
In 1936, S. Charles Lee prepared this concept rendering for a facade remodeling of the theatre, which appears not to have been carried out.
The design probably relied mostly on the brightly colored frescoes on walls and ceiling.
Still, the Casino must have seemed surprisingly old fashioned to audiences within a short time of the theatre’s opening. It was only two years later that the 2700 seat Temple Auditorium opened, with its large balcony cantilevered 27 feet from the back wall. The Casino’s whole auditorium was only 60 by 72 feet.
Lost Memory: I don’t think that the 1924 Casino Theatre on Central Avenue has been added to Cinema Treasures yet. It was the second of two Central Avenue Theatres which were renamed for dancer Bill Robinson, the first having been the former Tivoli Theatre, one block north of the Casino. Apparently, the Bill Robinson name was moved from the former Tivoli at Central and 42nd to the former Casino at Central and 43rd sometime in the 1940s. Both the 1921 Tivoli and the 1924 Casino were designed by architect L.A. Smith.
The place definitely showed films as the Empress, and it was almost certainly only one theatre under different names (unless perhaps there were also small nickelodeons in two of the storefronts at various times- but that would be difficult to confirm at this late date.) I’d say there’s enough information now to justify adding the Hotchkiss, though probably under one of its later names, since as the Casino and the Hotchkiss it appears to have been entirely or primarily a live theatre.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of November 5, 1937, named Clifford Balch as the architect of the La Mar.
Though I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, my dad was born in Manhattan Beach in 1909, and we often visited his friends who still lived there in later years. I never saw a movie at the La Mar, but I passed by it many times in the 1950s-60s. I remember that it seemed pretty plushy for a neighborhood theatre.
I can’t find any recent information on the state of this building. I fear that it may either have already been demolished, or is in imminent danger of being demolished, to make way for a major mixed use development project which is associated with the Cypress Park-Lincoln Heights station of MTA’s Gold Line, which is a couple of blocks from the theatre at Avenue 26.
A property report generated for 452 Broadway by the city planning department’s zoning information system gives the address as 450 and 452 S. Broadway, and says the building was erected in 1908. The small building at left in ken mc’s photo (linked in his comment of January 15) must be the former home of the American Theatre.
I said above that in ken mc’s recent photos of this former theatre (linked in his comment of June 16 this year) the building looks as though it had been converted to a theatre from retail space. Ken’s comment of August 13 reveals that the building housed a theatre at least as far back as 1925. There’s still a possibility that the building began as retail space though. A Los Angeles planning department report available in .pdf from the department’s zone information system (search on building address) says that the building was erected in 1910.
It does seem possible that this house might have opened as the New Arlington Theatre. In the 2004 TerraServer aerial view, the building certainly looks as though it had been built as a theater,which reduces the likelihood that it was converted to theatrical use sometime after construction.
The two theatres were very close, the newer one (seen in this expanded view of the photo at the top of the page) being a few doors west of Arlington on the north side of Washington, and the older United Arlington being a couple of doors east of Arlington on the south side of Washington.
As the older theatre had the big “United” blade sign, it could be that it was known primarily by that name locally, which would have reduced the confusion that might arise from the partly-shared name. Given that both were neighborhood theatres, it wouldn’t have mattered much if people from outside the area were confused.
Here is a photograph of Washington Boulevard at Arlington in the early 1920s. I’d say it’s safe to surmise that the “United” blade sign in the fancy-fronted building at center belonged to the United Arlington Theatre, later to become the Maynard Theatre.
This was the Rainbow Ballroom at least back to the 1930s, and I’ve found references to a Fresno-based orchestra called “Spike Hennessey and his Rainbow Ballroom Band” being featured on the first live radio broadcast from the city’s first radio station in 1925. All the indications are that this 1918 building went directly from being the Fresno Natatorium (an indoor swimming pool) to being the Rainbow Ballroom, which it has been ever since. Despite its theatrical marquee, I can find no evidence that the building has ever been used as a theatre.
A few additional bits about the Glendale Theatre have turned up. The L.A. Times announced the theatre’s opening on October 31, 1920. The project was financed by a Dr. W.C. Goodno. A few years later, at the time of the theatre’s 1924 expansion, the owner was named as Louise Goodno.
The theatre’s organ was dedicated early in 1921, according to an article in The Verdugo Foothills Record on January 22 of that year. The organist was Maude Moore Clement.
At the time the Glendale Theatre was wired for sound, its seating capacity was 1231, according to the item published in Exhibitor’s Herald & Motion Picture World on December 28, 1928.
The photo to which Bryan Krefft linked on June 22, 2005, has been moved to a different URL. There’s just a glimpse of the theatre’s marquee and blade sign in the background of this view north along Brand Boulevard in the (judging from the cars visible) mid-1950s.
About half of the theatre’s facade can be seen at extreme right in this 1920s photograph.
I can’t find a U.S. Cinema among the listings for Glendale in my August 24, 1986, copy of the L.A. Times Calendar section. However, in that issues listings for Pacific Theatres, there is a theatre called the Regency 2 at 232 S. Brand Boulevard, which I believe would be the address of the storefront in the Masonic Temple Building immediately adjacent (on the north) to the Temple Theatre’s entrance: See this photo from the 1950s, looking north on Brand (its the same photo to which Bryan Krefft linked above- the URL has been changed.) I never visited that block of Brand in the 1980s, so I don’t know for sure if Regency 2 was an aka for the Temple or not, but it seems likely. There was also a Regency 1 Theatre in the 1986 Pacific Theatres listings, located just up the block at at 210 S. Brand Boulevard. In 1971, 210 S. Brand had been the location of the independently operated Sands Theatre. I don’t think that house is listed at Cinema Treasures yet under any name.
It appears that, before it moved to the location down the street at 2517 W. Washington, the Arlington Theatre was located in this building. Items in Southwest Builder and Contractor in 1920 give 2488 W. Washington as the address of the Arlington Theatre, as does the Los Angeles Times in 1925 (when it was called the United Arlington Theatre, according to a comment of June 3, 2007, by ken mc on Cinema Treasures' Arlington Theatre page.) The date when the Arlington operation moved to the new location is not yet known.
The building at 2517 West Washington Boulevard was erected in 1923, according to a property profile report by the Los Angeles Department of City Planning. The 6000+ sq. ft. building on a 10,000 sq. ft. lot at this location had to have been the second home of the Arlington Theatre. The L.A. library’s California Index contains a card citing an article in the January 30, 1920 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor which announced alterations to the Arlington Theatre at 2488 West Washington Boulevard. It had to have been that location at which the Robert-Morgan organ mentioned in Lost Memory’s comment above was installed in 1921.
The February 22 issue of the same publication that year announced that the Arlington Theatre had been sold. A City Planning Department property profile of 2488 Washington reveals that the building on the site today was built in 1988, so the first home of the Arlington is gone.
Now here’s the interesting wrinkle in all this: 2488 W.Washington is the address given at CT for the Maynard Theatre (aka Gem, according to William.) If, as ken mc’s comment of June 3, 2007 says, the United Arlington Theatre was still being advertised in The Times as being at 2488 W. Washington in 1925, and this building at 2517 W. Washington was built in 1923 (per the planning department’s property profile), then either this building was converted to a theatre at some date after its construction, or it opened as a theatre with a different name which we have yet to identify.
Also, Cinema Treasures' Maynard Theatre entry needs to be updated to show United Arlington Theatre as an aka.
The Cosmo Theatre was built in 1925. Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of January 30 that year announced the plans, describing it as a one-story brick picture theatre and store building, to cost $16,000. It was financed by a Mr. S.P. Offut.
Daily Variety of July 18, 1941, announced that Grover Smith planned to close the Cosmo Theatre and build a new theatre nearby. Whether the Cosmo was closed at that time or not, according to Southwest Builder & Contractor’s issue of July 11, Mr. Smith had already been named as the lessee of the new Vogue Theatre, which was soon to be built across Brand Boulevard from the Cosmo.
In the 1940s, the California was being operated by Fox-West Coast Theatres. Southwest Builder & Contractor of November 7, 1941, contained an item saying that architect S. Charles Lee had prepared plans for remodeling the California Theatre in Glendale. Alterations to the foyer, lobby, ticket booth and front were to cost $12,000.
The Oviatt Library 1936 photo to which ken mc linked on October 27, 2005, is no longer at that URL. For now, it is here.
The Kansas City Shubert Theater was designed by architect Benjamin Marshall of the Chicago firm Marshall & Fox. His partner Charles Fox acted as construction supervisor and project manager.
There’s quite a bit of information about the original Nixon Theatre on this web page and two linked pages, all apparently part of some sort of local oral histories collection.
From what I’ve read at that site, the original Nixon Theater was always a stage house, right up until its closing in 1950. However, on this page at rootsweb, the caption of a photo scanned from the September 28, 1924 issue of The Pittsburgh Press reveals that Cecil B. DeMille’s production of The Ten Commandments was playing at the Nixon Theater. I’d say that qualifies the original Nixon for its own page at Cinema Treasures.
This venerable house opened as the Banning Theatre on May 23, 1928, and only later became part of the Fox-West Coast circuit. The opening of the Banning Theatre was featured in an article in Exhibitor’s Herald & Moving Picture World issue of June 9, 1928. Equipped with a stage and fly tower, the house could host Vaudeville and other live theatrical events in addition to showing movies. According to local Banning history buff Kenneth Holzclaw, it once hosted a live broadcast of Bob Hope’s radio show.
The Moore’s history page, to which I posted a direct link on February 2, 2006, has been moved once again. This new link should work for a while.
This undated photo from the L.A. Library depicts Pacific Avenue northward from Zoe toward Gage. That appears to be the Park Theatre at center. This house dated back to the 1920s at least. An article in the L.A. Times of March 17, 1929, says that the lease on the Park Theatre had changed hands. Judging from the style of the building in the photograph, it looks as though it might even have dated from the 1910s.
Ed: Yes, that’s the Paris, formerly Carmel, on Santa Monica Boulevard. Compare the marquee in this 1970s night shot from the UCLA/L.A. Times archives (this is the same photo brett421 linked to on May 16. UCLA has changed the URLs of its photos and his link no longer works.)
According to the June 8, 1923 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor, the Egyptian Theatre was remodeled from an existing building which had been a garage. The conversion was designed by Long Beach architects Hugh R. Davies and Edward S. Baume, associated.
In 1936, S. Charles Lee prepared this concept rendering for a facade remodeling of the theatre, which appears not to have been carried out.
The design probably relied mostly on the brightly colored frescoes on walls and ceiling.
Still, the Casino must have seemed surprisingly old fashioned to audiences within a short time of the theatre’s opening. It was only two years later that the 2700 seat Temple Auditorium opened, with its large balcony cantilevered 27 feet from the back wall. The Casino’s whole auditorium was only 60 by 72 feet.
Even more devastating to the Casino’s prestige must have been the opening in 1903 of the Mason Opera House: This auditorium photo is from the 1950s, but the balcony structure was unchanged from the 1903 design. And here’s an artist’s conception of the view from the Mason’s dress circle on its opening in 1903.
The Casino was decidedly outclassed from the beginning.
Of course we mustn’t forget this undated photo of the audience at the Casino Theatre from the L.A. library collection.
Lost Memory: I don’t think that the 1924 Casino Theatre on Central Avenue has been added to Cinema Treasures yet. It was the second of two Central Avenue Theatres which were renamed for dancer Bill Robinson, the first having been the former Tivoli Theatre, one block north of the Casino. Apparently, the Bill Robinson name was moved from the former Tivoli at Central and 42nd to the former Casino at Central and 43rd sometime in the 1940s. Both the 1921 Tivoli and the 1924 Casino were designed by architect L.A. Smith.
The place definitely showed films as the Empress, and it was almost certainly only one theatre under different names (unless perhaps there were also small nickelodeons in two of the storefronts at various times- but that would be difficult to confirm at this late date.) I’d say there’s enough information now to justify adding the Hotchkiss, though probably under one of its later names, since as the Casino and the Hotchkiss it appears to have been entirely or primarily a live theatre.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of November 5, 1937, named Clifford Balch as the architect of the La Mar.
Though I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, my dad was born in Manhattan Beach in 1909, and we often visited his friends who still lived there in later years. I never saw a movie at the La Mar, but I passed by it many times in the 1950s-60s. I remember that it seemed pretty plushy for a neighborhood theatre.