This entry needs to be corrected. I beleive the correct address is 523 South Main. 533 South Main was the address of the Optic Theatre. This rough map, c1950, shows the “Gayety” theatre north of the Star Theatre, which was at 529 South Main. I believe that the Gaiety was a later name for the theatre at 523 South Main, which was opened by Charles Alphin some years before 1914, and at various times went by the names Olympic (before 1914), Alphin (c1914), Omar (c1917) and Moon (c1923.)
Here is a circa 1917 photograph showing the Omar Theatre at lower left. I’ve come to these conclusions about this theatre mainly from information in various comments by vokoban, ken mc, and Alphin on Cinema Treasures Optic Theatre page.
Maybe somebody familiar with Lincoln Heights can help clarify an old memory I have. A few times when I was a kid we drove through the neighborhood around Five Points, and somewhere in that area I recall seeing a very old theatre which had been converted into a school supply store. This was in the late 1950’s-early 1960’s, and the place looked as though it hadn’t been used as a theatre for years. I can’t remember which street it was on, but it was close to a main intersection. I don’t know what it’s name had been as a theatre, either, so I don’t know if it is listed at Cinema Treasures or not. I don’t think it was on North Broadway, because I recall the street it was on as being narrower. This vague memory has been nagging me for years, and I’d be happy to know just where this place was.
Stockton was a fairly large city by the time movies were invented and, until the recent burgeoning of Bakersfield, was long the third largest city in the central valley. I’d be very surprised if the city had not had at least a dozen movie theatres over the years. Unfortunately, Stockton’s old center was largely wiped out by urban renewal projects beginning in the 1960’s, so it’s unlikely that many of the buildings containing those theatres survived. I only ever visited downtown Stockton three or four times, and that in the 1970’s when demolition was already well advanced.
Incidentally, the web page listing Robert Lippert Theatres (the company owned two in Stockton; the Liberty and the Lincoln) has expired, ints domain name not having been renewed. For the time being you can still see the Google cache of the page here.
The Fox opened as the Rivoli in 1925. Like the nearby Carolina Theatre, opened the same year, it was designed by local architects Beacham and LeGrand. As the Rivoli, it seated 750. Closed in 1949, it was renovated and reopened as the Fox, which then operated until 1978.
Patsy: I’ve searched for photos of Greenville’s theatres on the web, but I’ve found only one small picture of a theatre called the State at this CinemaTour page.
A story published today (Feb 8, 2006- I believe it will be available for seven days) at the web site GreenvilleOnline describes the Carolina Theater. The article gives the opening as June, 1925; says that the theatre was fitted out for stage productions as well as movies; gives the seating capacity as 1,400; reveals that the theatre’s Wurlitzer organ cost $20,000 dollars; and names the designers as local architects Beacham and LeGrand. It confirms that the theatre was located on Main Street, but the exact address is not given. It was closed sometime in the 1960’s.
Several other Greenville theatres are mentioned in the article, but with little detail. Names, and a few opening and closing dates are given.
Here is a brief essay about the Metropolitan, on the occasion of its closing, from the Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. There are three small photographs of the theatre.
Welcome to Cinema Treasures, Howard. You might find some of your grandfather’s other theatres listed here (though if their names have changed over the years, they’ll probably be listed under their later names.) Any information you can provide about any of them would be welcome, as would information about any theatres not yet listed here.
The Colorado was a rather plain theatre, especially when compared to its competitor a few blocks away, the Egyptian-styled Uptown. The Quonset hut style became popular for a while in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. I know of two other quonset hut theatres from that period within a few miles of Pasadena: the Garmar, in Montebello, and the Star in La Puente. I recall seeing quonset hut theatres in other parts of Los Angeles, but can’t remember their names offhand.
I’ve also seen quite a few such theatres in other places listed at Cinema Treasures. Not even counting theatres on military bases, many of which were in quonset huts, large or small, I think it’s likely that upward of a hundred quonset hut theatres were built in the U.S. during those years. It was about the cheapest form of construction available at the time.
So, the theatre must have opened in very late 1924 or early 1925 as the New Broadway Theater, and then dropped the “New” from its name before March of 1926 (assuming that the Times' reporters got the names right.) The building’s owners were lucky to get such a reliable tenant as the Broadway. That endless parade of arriving and departing retail tenants prior to the theatre’s 60-some year occupancy must have been annoying.
I notice that Rivest’s latest list only shows “? 1930-1988” for this theatre. I wonder what his source for the original 1919 date was? Both Tally’s New Broadway at 554 S. and the Tally’s Broadway at 833 S. are documented in the L.A. library photo collection, but this theatre isn’t, and it isn’t mentioned in the library’s California Index, either.
Apparently, Tally gave up the original New Broadway when he opened the Broadway next to Hamburger’s (later the May Company), and that’s when it became the Garnett. As the Broadway remained open until 1929, when it was demolished to make way for an expansion to the May Company, it would have made sense for Tally to revive the New Broadway name for this theatre at 428 S. Broadway. Even at that, the question remains of exactly when this theatre opened, though.
vokoban: The theatre in the 1914 ad might have been the one later called the Alvarado, and in its last years the Park. It opened in 1911, but the Cinema Treasures page for it doesn’t list Westlake as an earlier name for it, so there might have been yet another theatre on Alvarado near 7th.
hdtv: I’ve never seen Jail Bait myself, but William Gabel says that the scene you mention was shot in the Monterey Theatre in Monterey Park. I’ve been keeping an eye on the cable channels in hope that the movie will show up on one of them and I can see for myself. If any of the shots show the back of the house (the screen end of the room was rather nondescript), I’d probably recognize it, as I went to that Monterey many times. It was one of that handful of older theatres that had a section of stadium seating at the back of the auditorium. I never attended the Whittier Boulevard Monterey, but if, as listed above, its style was Spanish Renaissance, then it was probably more ornate than the Monterey in Monterey Park.
The Muse, at 417 S. Main, was a few doors north of the Rosslyn Hotel’s original building. The Rosslyn Theatre, at 431 S. Main was probably either in the old hotel building itself, or right next to it. I’ve never seen any trace of either theatre in period pictures of Main Street, and they were both fairly small, so I suspect that both were in converted retail space and probably didn’t have proper marquees. Both were still open into the early 1950’s, so there were plenty of chances for them to show up in photographs. I still hope to stumble across a picture that includes one or both of them someday.
My mind boggles at the thought that the Rosslyn Hotel has been converted to lofts.
I think the RTD building extended north from about mid-block, and there was a multi-level garage between it and the Rosslyn Hotel’s north building. The Rosslyn Hotel, in the late 19th century, was in a four story building just south of mid-block. Then they took over another hotel in a taller building immediately south of that, and then built their first tower building on the northwest corner of 5th and Main in 1914-1915. I think the building on the southwest corner of 5th and Main was built in 1921 or 1922. The Rosslyn Theatre was most likely located in converted retail space in the earliest Rosslyn Hotel building, now the garage site. The Muse was north of that, where the RTD building was later built.
I remember visiting the RTD headquarters a couple of times in the mid-1980’s, to speak to the customer relations representatives about problems with particular bus routes. It was indeed like going into a bunker. There were armed guards in the lobby, and visitors had to sign in, and they had to wear an authorization tag while they were in the building. The atmosphere was oppressive. I doubt that many customers ever bothered to come in to report problems, not only because of the seedy location on decayed and half-vacant Main Street, but because of the almost paranoid atmosphere inside the building. I suspect that this building was one of the factors that caused the RTD’s management to get so completely out of touch with the bus system’s users.
R.W.: According to his memoirs on the web page linked above, Charles Hermann began working in 1911, so it seems unlikely that he’d still be living. Perhaps his granddaughter, Penny Allen Nelson, is still maintaining that web site (the most recent date mentioned on her own web page is 2004.) If her e-mail address posted at the bottom of that page is still working, you could try contacting her to ask if she has any further information about her grandfather’s career in Akron’s theatres.
I’ve found a page about the Rialto at the web site of a firm that sells architectural antiques. They mined the building for its relics before it was demolished. Their text claims that the building was built in 1898, and merely renovated, rather than rebuilt from the ground up (though they claim that the renovation took place in the 1920’s, which seems unlikely, as the decorative details on the exterior are surely 1930’s era streamline moderne style.) They show a small but decent photo of the theatre in its last days, and the exterior design does look as though it had been attached to an older structure.
The similar names of Visalia’s theatres has caused a lot of confusion. It should be noted that the photo to which ken mc linked in his comment of Oct 28, above, does not depict the Theatre Visalia, but rather the 1930 Fox Visalia Theatre to which Magic Lantern linked in his comment of Jan 12.
Dennis, I do recall that the El Rey was the first theatre in Alhambra to get a CinemaScope screen. The very first CinemaScope movie ever released was “The Robe” which was released on September 16th, 1953, but I don’t think the El Rey’s screen was installed early enough to have shown that movie on its initial release. It actually took a couple of years for CinemaScope screens to make their way into a majority of theatres, partly because it took a while for the studios to demonstrate that there would be enough movies in the format to induce theatre owners to make the substantial investment to install new screens and projection equipment.
In the meantime, many movies (including The Robe itself) were released in both CinemaScope and in standard 35mm versions. For a couple of years, theatres which had installed the new system would often find themselves short of new CinemaScope product, and, to fill the gap, would show either non-CinemaScope movies, or earlier CinemaScope releases which the studios kept available especially for that purpose.
Finding out when specific theatres installed CinemaScope would require a bit of research- probably looking through their ads in local newspapers, as a theatre which had installed it would always advertise the fact. For the first couple of years, most theatres with newly-installed CinemaScope systems would inaugurate them by showing “The Robe” for one week. My fuzzy memory of when the El Rey got CinemaScope is complicated by the fact that I think the first wide-screen movie I saw at that particular theatre was the 1960 version of “Cimarron” (being a Fox-West Coast house, the El Rey had highest ticket prices in Alhambra, so we didn’t go there often.)
The reason I think that the El Rey might not have gotten CinemaScope until 1955 is that I believe that the one time we went there before the new screen was installed was to see a re-release of “Gone with the Wind”, and according to the GwtW release dates page at IMDB, that re-release had to have been the one in December of 1954.
I do remember being in the El Rey and seeing the screen surrounded by the framework which was going to be used in the demolition of the proscenium to make room for the new screen. If that happened before the December, 1954 screening of GwtW that we saw there, then I must have gone to the El Rey once before then, but I have no memory of having done so.
Dennis, I think that the fact that the organ was still in use at the theatre you attended in the 1940’s is interesting. By the time I began attending the theatres in the area, the Rialto in South Pasadena was the only one that still had a working organ, and I never got to hear that one. My first visit to the Rialto wasn’t until a couple of years after a fire on the stage had destroyed the organ console, in the early 1970’s.
It’s possible that the Granada still had an operating organ until it was remodeled and renamed the Coronet, but I’m not sure what year that happened- it was most likely in the mid-late 1940’s, as the remodeling took place before I ever saw the place.
I only went to the El Rey once before it was given a CinemaScope screen, and I don’t remember seeing an organ console at that time. If the organ was still there when CinemaScope was installed (1955, I think), it certainly would have been removed to make way for the wider screen.
There was a three story building on the northeast corner of Garfield and Main. The ground floor of that building was for a long time the location of the Thrifty Drug Store. The building on the northwest corner, with the Owl Rexall store in it, was when I first saw it in the late 1940’s only one story tall. After Owl moved out, it was the location of Lucky Auto Supply for a long time. Both of these buildings have since been demolished. The top two floors of the one on the northeast corner were removed after being damaged by the 1971 earthquake. The remainder was demolished, along with the old Kress building next door to it, just a couple of years ago to make way for an new Edwards multiplex theatre (which is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.)
I don’t recall a stamp shop on Garfield. By the mid 1950’s, the only stamp shop I knew of was on the south side of Main just west of Second, in the same block as Pedrini’s music store. I don’t remember the name of it. Then next nearest stamp store that I knew of was Royal Stamp Supply on Raymond Avenue in Pasadena.
I don’t have a clear memory of the decor in the Bun ‘n’ Burger. We only went there a couple of times, and that was probably after 1955. My dad grew up mostly in Manhattan Beach, and that’s where his favorite hamburger joint was. When he wanted a hamburger, we’d usually hop in the car and drive the twenty or so miles to the beach (on surface streets all the way) to get one. We always lived in South San Gabriel, either near Garvey and San Gabriel Boulevard, or in the hills near Potrero Heights. My frequent jaunts to Alhambra were facilitated by the fact that we always lived within a couple of blocks of one of the local bus lines operated by Foster Transportation. Alhambra was our downtown, and from the earliest times I remember, we went there at least once a week.
Dennis, you saw the theatres in Alhambra before I did. The first time I went to a movie on Main Street was probably about 1953. I lived in the area until 1986, and attended all the theatres you mention except the Ritz.
The Ritz was not in Alhambra, but on Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena, a block north of Mission Street. The Ritz was the first theatre in the area to be closed and demolished. I’m not sure exactly when, but it must have been before 1961 or 1962.
The Rialto was also in South Pasadena, three blocks south of the Ritz, on the other side of the street, at the Corner of Oxley. The Rialto is still there, still open, and still operating as a single screen theatre. It is the only intact survivor among the old theatres in the western San Gabriel Valley.
The El Rey Was the theatre across Main Street from the old main building of Alhambra High School. It was operated by Fox-West Coast in the 1950’s, while the other two theatres on Main Street were both operated by Edwards Theatre Circuit.
The Alhambra Theatre (which is listed at Cinema Treasures under its final name, Alhambra Twin Cinemas) was at the southeast corner of Atlantic Boulevard and Main Street. If you attended it in the early 1940’s, you must have been there at the time The Annex (built in adjacent retail space in 1941) was operating. I don’t remember seeing The Annex in use until it was re-opened as the Gold Cinema sometime about 1970.
The Granada, was the original name of the third theatre on Main Street (and it was probably the oldest), but its name was changed to The Coronet some time before the early 1950’s, and then changed again in the early 1960’s to The Capri. This might be the theatre you’re thinking of, but it was not east of Garfield. It was located in the building on the southeast corner of Second and Main, catty-corner from the old Alhambra City Hall. If I remember correctly, the corner retail space in the building was, when I first saw it, the location of a music store, and then there was a stairway up to the second floor where there was a dance studio, then a small lunch room next to that, and then a tiny jewelery store next to the theatre entrance. I don’t remember what was in the tiny shop on the other side of the theatre entrance. This was the first Main Street theatre to be demolished, after it was badly damaged in the Sylmar earthquake of 1971.
As far back as I can remember, there were no theatres on Main Street east of Garfield. My earliest memories of Main Street go back to about 1948 or 1949, but they only involve the shopping district, not the theatres. I remember, very vaguely, when the Owl Drug Store was on the northwest corner of Garfield and Main. I remember, very clearly, when J.C. Penney moved from its small store where Downer’s was later located to its big new building east of Chapel Avenue. I even recall going in the old J.J. Newberry store, and then seeing it demolished and replaced by W.T. Grant’s new building. But at that time, there were no theatres east of Garfield. It was nothing but shops and a few lunch rooms and, a bit later, a couple of banks.
I do remember the Bun and Burger. In fact, it is one of the places that is listed at L.A. Time Machines, a web site devoted to surviving bars and restaurants (and a few other businesses) which are largely unchanged from decades ago.
For some reason, my E-mail address doesn’t display on my user info page here (I thought it did.) I don’t know how secure Cinema Treasures message board pages are from address-collecting bots, so I don’t want to post it here. You can use the E-mail address I have posted on this page at LiveJournal.
This entry needs to be corrected. I beleive the correct address is 523 South Main. 533 South Main was the address of the Optic Theatre. This rough map, c1950, shows the “Gayety” theatre north of the Star Theatre, which was at 529 South Main. I believe that the Gaiety was a later name for the theatre at 523 South Main, which was opened by Charles Alphin some years before 1914, and at various times went by the names Olympic (before 1914), Alphin (c1914), Omar (c1917) and Moon (c1923.)
Here is a circa 1917 photograph showing the Omar Theatre at lower left. I’ve come to these conclusions about this theatre mainly from information in various comments by vokoban, ken mc, and Alphin on Cinema Treasures Optic Theatre page.
Maybe somebody familiar with Lincoln Heights can help clarify an old memory I have. A few times when I was a kid we drove through the neighborhood around Five Points, and somewhere in that area I recall seeing a very old theatre which had been converted into a school supply store. This was in the late 1950’s-early 1960’s, and the place looked as though it hadn’t been used as a theatre for years. I can’t remember which street it was on, but it was close to a main intersection. I don’t know what it’s name had been as a theatre, either, so I don’t know if it is listed at Cinema Treasures or not. I don’t think it was on North Broadway, because I recall the street it was on as being narrower. This vague memory has been nagging me for years, and I’d be happy to know just where this place was.
Stockton was a fairly large city by the time movies were invented and, until the recent burgeoning of Bakersfield, was long the third largest city in the central valley. I’d be very surprised if the city had not had at least a dozen movie theatres over the years. Unfortunately, Stockton’s old center was largely wiped out by urban renewal projects beginning in the 1960’s, so it’s unlikely that many of the buildings containing those theatres survived. I only ever visited downtown Stockton three or four times, and that in the 1970’s when demolition was already well advanced.
Incidentally, the web page listing Robert Lippert Theatres (the company owned two in Stockton; the Liberty and the Lincoln) has expired, ints domain name not having been renewed. For the time being you can still see the Google cache of the page here.
The Fox opened as the Rivoli in 1925. Like the nearby Carolina Theatre, opened the same year, it was designed by local architects Beacham and LeGrand. As the Rivoli, it seated 750. Closed in 1949, it was renovated and reopened as the Fox, which then operated until 1978.
Patsy: I’ve searched for photos of Greenville’s theatres on the web, but I’ve found only one small picture of a theatre called the State at this CinemaTour page.
The Fox was Greenville’s last surviving downtown theatre. It closed in 1978.
A story published today (Feb 8, 2006- I believe it will be available for seven days) at the web site GreenvilleOnline describes the Carolina Theater. The article gives the opening as June, 1925; says that the theatre was fitted out for stage productions as well as movies; gives the seating capacity as 1,400; reveals that the theatre’s Wurlitzer organ cost $20,000 dollars; and names the designers as local architects Beacham and LeGrand. It confirms that the theatre was located on Main Street, but the exact address is not given. It was closed sometime in the 1960’s.
Several other Greenville theatres are mentioned in the article, but with little detail. Names, and a few opening and closing dates are given.
Here is a brief essay about the Metropolitan, on the occasion of its closing, from the Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. There are three small photographs of the theatre.
The second link posted by Lost Memory on May 25 2005 no longer works.
Here is the new Moore Theatre Home Page.
Here is the Moore Theatre History Page.
Welcome to Cinema Treasures, Howard. You might find some of your grandfather’s other theatres listed here (though if their names have changed over the years, they’ll probably be listed under their later names.) Any information you can provide about any of them would be welcome, as would information about any theatres not yet listed here.
The Colorado was a rather plain theatre, especially when compared to its competitor a few blocks away, the Egyptian-styled Uptown. The Quonset hut style became popular for a while in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. I know of two other quonset hut theatres from that period within a few miles of Pasadena: the Garmar, in Montebello, and the Star in La Puente. I recall seeing quonset hut theatres in other parts of Los Angeles, but can’t remember their names offhand.
I’ve also seen quite a few such theatres in other places listed at Cinema Treasures. Not even counting theatres on military bases, many of which were in quonset huts, large or small, I think it’s likely that upward of a hundred quonset hut theatres were built in the U.S. during those years. It was about the cheapest form of construction available at the time.
So, the theatre must have opened in very late 1924 or early 1925 as the New Broadway Theater, and then dropped the “New” from its name before March of 1926 (assuming that the Times' reporters got the names right.) The building’s owners were lucky to get such a reliable tenant as the Broadway. That endless parade of arriving and departing retail tenants prior to the theatre’s 60-some year occupancy must have been annoying.
I notice that Rivest’s latest list only shows “? 1930-1988” for this theatre. I wonder what his source for the original 1919 date was? Both Tally’s New Broadway at 554 S. and the Tally’s Broadway at 833 S. are documented in the L.A. library photo collection, but this theatre isn’t, and it isn’t mentioned in the library’s California Index, either.
Apparently, Tally gave up the original New Broadway when he opened the Broadway next to Hamburger’s (later the May Company), and that’s when it became the Garnett. As the Broadway remained open until 1929, when it was demolished to make way for an expansion to the May Company, it would have made sense for Tally to revive the New Broadway name for this theatre at 428 S. Broadway. Even at that, the question remains of exactly when this theatre opened, though.
Maybe the letters were stolen. Investigators should look for a guy named Bo.
vokoban: The theatre in the 1914 ad might have been the one later called the Alvarado, and in its last years the Park. It opened in 1911, but the Cinema Treasures page for it doesn’t list Westlake as an earlier name for it, so there might have been yet another theatre on Alvarado near 7th.
hdtv: I’ve never seen Jail Bait myself, but William Gabel says that the scene you mention was shot in the Monterey Theatre in Monterey Park. I’ve been keeping an eye on the cable channels in hope that the movie will show up on one of them and I can see for myself. If any of the shots show the back of the house (the screen end of the room was rather nondescript), I’d probably recognize it, as I went to that Monterey many times. It was one of that handful of older theatres that had a section of stadium seating at the back of the auditorium. I never attended the Whittier Boulevard Monterey, but if, as listed above, its style was Spanish Renaissance, then it was probably more ornate than the Monterey in Monterey Park.
The Muse, at 417 S. Main, was a few doors north of the Rosslyn Hotel’s original building. The Rosslyn Theatre, at 431 S. Main was probably either in the old hotel building itself, or right next to it. I’ve never seen any trace of either theatre in period pictures of Main Street, and they were both fairly small, so I suspect that both were in converted retail space and probably didn’t have proper marquees. Both were still open into the early 1950’s, so there were plenty of chances for them to show up in photographs. I still hope to stumble across a picture that includes one or both of them someday.
My mind boggles at the thought that the Rosslyn Hotel has been converted to lofts.
I think the RTD building extended north from about mid-block, and there was a multi-level garage between it and the Rosslyn Hotel’s north building. The Rosslyn Hotel, in the late 19th century, was in a four story building just south of mid-block. Then they took over another hotel in a taller building immediately south of that, and then built their first tower building on the northwest corner of 5th and Main in 1914-1915. I think the building on the southwest corner of 5th and Main was built in 1921 or 1922. The Rosslyn Theatre was most likely located in converted retail space in the earliest Rosslyn Hotel building, now the garage site. The Muse was north of that, where the RTD building was later built.
I remember visiting the RTD headquarters a couple of times in the mid-1980’s, to speak to the customer relations representatives about problems with particular bus routes. It was indeed like going into a bunker. There were armed guards in the lobby, and visitors had to sign in, and they had to wear an authorization tag while they were in the building. The atmosphere was oppressive. I doubt that many customers ever bothered to come in to report problems, not only because of the seedy location on decayed and half-vacant Main Street, but because of the almost paranoid atmosphere inside the building. I suspect that this building was one of the factors that caused the RTD’s management to get so completely out of touch with the bus system’s users.
R.W.: According to his memoirs on the web page linked above, Charles Hermann began working in 1911, so it seems unlikely that he’d still be living. Perhaps his granddaughter, Penny Allen Nelson, is still maintaining that web site (the most recent date mentioned on her own web page is 2004.) If her e-mail address posted at the bottom of that page is still working, you could try contacting her to ask if she has any further information about her grandfather’s career in Akron’s theatres.
I’ve found a page about the Rialto at the web site of a firm that sells architectural antiques. They mined the building for its relics before it was demolished. Their text claims that the building was built in 1898, and merely renovated, rather than rebuilt from the ground up (though they claim that the renovation took place in the 1920’s, which seems unlikely, as the decorative details on the exterior are surely 1930’s era streamline moderne style.) They show a small but decent photo of the theatre in its last days, and the exterior design does look as though it had been attached to an older structure.
The similar names of Visalia’s theatres has caused a lot of confusion. It should be noted that the photo to which ken mc linked in his comment of Oct 28, above, does not depict the Theatre Visalia, but rather the 1930 Fox Visalia Theatre to which Magic Lantern linked in his comment of Jan 12.
Dennis, I do recall that the El Rey was the first theatre in Alhambra to get a CinemaScope screen. The very first CinemaScope movie ever released was “The Robe” which was released on September 16th, 1953, but I don’t think the El Rey’s screen was installed early enough to have shown that movie on its initial release. It actually took a couple of years for CinemaScope screens to make their way into a majority of theatres, partly because it took a while for the studios to demonstrate that there would be enough movies in the format to induce theatre owners to make the substantial investment to install new screens and projection equipment.
In the meantime, many movies (including The Robe itself) were released in both CinemaScope and in standard 35mm versions. For a couple of years, theatres which had installed the new system would often find themselves short of new CinemaScope product, and, to fill the gap, would show either non-CinemaScope movies, or earlier CinemaScope releases which the studios kept available especially for that purpose.
Finding out when specific theatres installed CinemaScope would require a bit of research- probably looking through their ads in local newspapers, as a theatre which had installed it would always advertise the fact. For the first couple of years, most theatres with newly-installed CinemaScope systems would inaugurate them by showing “The Robe” for one week. My fuzzy memory of when the El Rey got CinemaScope is complicated by the fact that I think the first wide-screen movie I saw at that particular theatre was the 1960 version of “Cimarron” (being a Fox-West Coast house, the El Rey had highest ticket prices in Alhambra, so we didn’t go there often.)
The reason I think that the El Rey might not have gotten CinemaScope until 1955 is that I believe that the one time we went there before the new screen was installed was to see a re-release of “Gone with the Wind”, and according to the GwtW release dates page at IMDB, that re-release had to have been the one in December of 1954.
I do remember being in the El Rey and seeing the screen surrounded by the framework which was going to be used in the demolition of the proscenium to make room for the new screen. If that happened before the December, 1954 screening of GwtW that we saw there, then I must have gone to the El Rey once before then, but I have no memory of having done so.
Dennis, I think that the fact that the organ was still in use at the theatre you attended in the 1940’s is interesting. By the time I began attending the theatres in the area, the Rialto in South Pasadena was the only one that still had a working organ, and I never got to hear that one. My first visit to the Rialto wasn’t until a couple of years after a fire on the stage had destroyed the organ console, in the early 1970’s.
It’s possible that the Granada still had an operating organ until it was remodeled and renamed the Coronet, but I’m not sure what year that happened- it was most likely in the mid-late 1940’s, as the remodeling took place before I ever saw the place.
I only went to the El Rey once before it was given a CinemaScope screen, and I don’t remember seeing an organ console at that time. If the organ was still there when CinemaScope was installed (1955, I think), it certainly would have been removed to make way for the wider screen.
There was a three story building on the northeast corner of Garfield and Main. The ground floor of that building was for a long time the location of the Thrifty Drug Store. The building on the northwest corner, with the Owl Rexall store in it, was when I first saw it in the late 1940’s only one story tall. After Owl moved out, it was the location of Lucky Auto Supply for a long time. Both of these buildings have since been demolished. The top two floors of the one on the northeast corner were removed after being damaged by the 1971 earthquake. The remainder was demolished, along with the old Kress building next door to it, just a couple of years ago to make way for an new Edwards multiplex theatre (which is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.)
I don’t recall a stamp shop on Garfield. By the mid 1950’s, the only stamp shop I knew of was on the south side of Main just west of Second, in the same block as Pedrini’s music store. I don’t remember the name of it. Then next nearest stamp store that I knew of was Royal Stamp Supply on Raymond Avenue in Pasadena.
I don’t have a clear memory of the decor in the Bun ‘n’ Burger. We only went there a couple of times, and that was probably after 1955. My dad grew up mostly in Manhattan Beach, and that’s where his favorite hamburger joint was. When he wanted a hamburger, we’d usually hop in the car and drive the twenty or so miles to the beach (on surface streets all the way) to get one. We always lived in South San Gabriel, either near Garvey and San Gabriel Boulevard, or in the hills near Potrero Heights. My frequent jaunts to Alhambra were facilitated by the fact that we always lived within a couple of blocks of one of the local bus lines operated by Foster Transportation. Alhambra was our downtown, and from the earliest times I remember, we went there at least once a week.
Dennis, you saw the theatres in Alhambra before I did. The first time I went to a movie on Main Street was probably about 1953. I lived in the area until 1986, and attended all the theatres you mention except the Ritz.
The Ritz was not in Alhambra, but on Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena, a block north of Mission Street. The Ritz was the first theatre in the area to be closed and demolished. I’m not sure exactly when, but it must have been before 1961 or 1962.
The Rialto was also in South Pasadena, three blocks south of the Ritz, on the other side of the street, at the Corner of Oxley. The Rialto is still there, still open, and still operating as a single screen theatre. It is the only intact survivor among the old theatres in the western San Gabriel Valley.
The El Rey Was the theatre across Main Street from the old main building of Alhambra High School. It was operated by Fox-West Coast in the 1950’s, while the other two theatres on Main Street were both operated by Edwards Theatre Circuit.
The Alhambra Theatre (which is listed at Cinema Treasures under its final name, Alhambra Twin Cinemas) was at the southeast corner of Atlantic Boulevard and Main Street. If you attended it in the early 1940’s, you must have been there at the time The Annex (built in adjacent retail space in 1941) was operating. I don’t remember seeing The Annex in use until it was re-opened as the Gold Cinema sometime about 1970.
The Granada, was the original name of the third theatre on Main Street (and it was probably the oldest), but its name was changed to The Coronet some time before the early 1950’s, and then changed again in the early 1960’s to The Capri. This might be the theatre you’re thinking of, but it was not east of Garfield. It was located in the building on the southeast corner of Second and Main, catty-corner from the old Alhambra City Hall. If I remember correctly, the corner retail space in the building was, when I first saw it, the location of a music store, and then there was a stairway up to the second floor where there was a dance studio, then a small lunch room next to that, and then a tiny jewelery store next to the theatre entrance. I don’t remember what was in the tiny shop on the other side of the theatre entrance. This was the first Main Street theatre to be demolished, after it was badly damaged in the Sylmar earthquake of 1971.
As far back as I can remember, there were no theatres on Main Street east of Garfield. My earliest memories of Main Street go back to about 1948 or 1949, but they only involve the shopping district, not the theatres. I remember, very vaguely, when the Owl Drug Store was on the northwest corner of Garfield and Main. I remember, very clearly, when J.C. Penney moved from its small store where Downer’s was later located to its big new building east of Chapel Avenue. I even recall going in the old J.J. Newberry store, and then seeing it demolished and replaced by W.T. Grant’s new building. But at that time, there were no theatres east of Garfield. It was nothing but shops and a few lunch rooms and, a bit later, a couple of banks.
I do remember the Bun and Burger. In fact, it is one of the places that is listed at L.A. Time Machines, a web site devoted to surviving bars and restaurants (and a few other businesses) which are largely unchanged from decades ago.
Here is a photo of Lankershim Boulevard in 1926, with the El Portal nearing completion. (From the USC Archives.)
For some reason, my E-mail address doesn’t display on my user info page here (I thought it did.) I don’t know how secure Cinema Treasures message board pages are from address-collecting bots, so I don’t want to post it here. You can use the E-mail address I have posted on this page at LiveJournal.