Ah, the location link for this theater says “Avalon, Catalina Island” and that for the Avalon simply says “Catalina Island,” so they don’t both share an “Avalon, California” listing page.
I didn’t know that there was a theater in El Encanto, either. Was it only used for stage productions?
I have a cousin who spent several years of her childhood in Avalon. Next time I’m in touch with her, I’ll ask her about the Riviera. I doubt that she’d know whether or not it was originally the Strand, though, as she wasn’t born until 1933 or 1934. She might have been too young to have known anything about the theater which presumably became the Post Office, either, but I’ll ask her about that, too. She’d probably at least remember where the Post Office was in those days.
I have found that there is a reference to a Strand Theater in Avalon, being re-opened after improvements, in the L.A. Times issue of January 15th, 1922. No address is given.
There is also an article in Southwest Builder and Contractor of December 12th, 1924, saying that architects (Walter I.) Webber, (William F.) Staunton and (Sumner Maurice) Spaulding had prepared plans for a 600 seat theater to be erected in Avalon. Neither name nor location is given. However, a librarians note on this card says that this is believed to be the building which, after the opening of the Casino and its theater, was converted into the Post Office.
The Casino, opened in 1930, was itself designed by Webber and Spaulding. I don’t know if they were responsible for the interior of the movie theatre which was (and is, though I believe it is currently closed) on the ground floor of that massive landmark, but they probably were. Their firm did quite a bit of work at Catalina in those days.
My mother, though she lived in Avalon for a couple of years in the 1930s, has no memory of the Riviera Theater, or any theater on the island, other than the Casino. (It seems as though a second theater would be hard not to notice in such a small town, but maybe it was closed for a while in those years.)
In any case, I’m wondering if the Riviera might be the Strand, renamed. It might be possible to find an old postcard view of Avalon showing the theatre. There are usually quite a few Catalina cards on display in the postcard auction section of e-Bay. Avalon was, for decades, one of the most photographed places in California, and hundreds of different postcard views of it were published, and they sold in vast numbers.
Was this theater still called by this name in the 1960s? It would have been right down the block form the Regent, the only Main Street theatre I ever attended, but I have no memory of the Banner. I do remember that there was a theatre called the Admiral, AKA Rector’s Admiral, on the east side of Main somewhere between the Regent and the Burbank. Could the Banner and the Admiral have been the same theatre? I was less familiar with Main Street than with the streets farther west, as Main Street was already pretty gritty, even in those days. There might have been a second theatre on that stretch of the street, but I can’t bring the image of it to mind.
Here is a biographical sketch of Lotta Crabtree, at a web site devoted to San Francisco history. I remember seeing the small but ornate fountain which she donated to the city in 1875, and which still stands on a triangle of land where Market, Geary and Kearney Streets intersect.
Though born in New York City, in 1847, she spent most of her childhood in the Sierra mining town of Grass Valley, only a few dozen miles from where I live. One of California’s most colorful golden era characters, she went on to become, in the late 19th century, one of the most successful performers on the New York stage. She retired at the age of 45, living first in rural New Jersey and then, after the death of her mother, in Boston. Upon her death at the age of 76, Boston newpapers reported that her extensive real estate holdings had made her the city’s second largest taxpayer.
Wise in her investments, she died in 1924, leaving much of her considerable fortune to benefit disabled WWI veterans, and some for animal welfare, destitute thespians, and discharged convicts. A considerable, but undisclosed, amount of her fortune remains today in the Lotta Agricultural Trust Fund, which provides loans to New England farmers. (See the “New Standard: 1/28/98” link on the page at the link above.)
A search on 233 N. Vermont at Terraserver fetches a recent aerial view of the area, and there are no buildings that resemble a theater (at least from directly above) there today. The shadow of that pitched roof on the front of the building would surely show in an aerial view. I think that this theatre must have been demolished.
Yes. The card with the reference to the wedding apparently had a misspelling of the name. It is Chotiner, rather than Chotner. All the other cards with references to the Chotiner family at the site are spelled correctly.
I think that the Music Box had become the Pix Theatre by the 1950s, and was showing movies. I think it most likely that the last two seasons of the Lux program were broadcast from the KNX studios on Sunset Boulevard.
I have a vague memory of some mention of a CBS Playhouse being located in the Sunset Boulevard facility. It was somewhere in the History of KNX section of the station’s web site. I think it was a caption to one of the pictures there (reached by a small link near the top of that page.) There is also one good photograph of the Vine Street Theater there, and another which I think is of the Music Box, but the captions of both refer to them as the CBS Playhouse.
A search on “Calhoun” and “Alice” (one name in each of the first two search boxes) at the L.A. Public Library’s California Index fetches 11 scanned index cards (I’m presuming that the actual items these cards reference are available at the library itself, probably the central library downtown) with references to her. According to one, she is indeed silent film star Alice Beatrice Calhoun (1904-1966), and another card refers to an article in the Hollywood Citizen of January 5th, 1927, announcing her marriage to M.C. Chotner, who I know was himself the owner of several theatres in the Los Angeles area. Many of them are listed here at Cinema Treasures, but I can’t remember their names offhand.
Stonewood Center is at the northeast corner of Firestone and Lakewood, about a half mile east of Downey’s old downtown. It was an open air shopping center when it was built in 1958, and became an enclosed mall when it was expanded in 1990. My Google search turned up a Lynn’s Hallmark Card and Party Shop for the address 136 Stonewood, though George Redfox says there is a fabric shop in the theatre’s old location. There is a JoAnn’s Fabrics at the center, in a building with an outside entrance, not on the mall proper, but I can’t find an exact address for it. I remember the theatre being in such a peripheral building, so that must be it. I think that addresses may have been shuffled in the expansion.
I’ve been having the same problem with it. I think that the collection has only recently been added to the college web site, and they probably don’t have the kinks worked out yet.
The Hidalgo/Miramar is probably the theatre designed by Clifford Balch, the plans for which were announced in the July 2, 1937 issue of Southwest Builder and Contractor. Balch designed a large number of theaters in the Spanish Colonial/Mission Revival styles in that era.
I don’t believe that The Casino Capistrano was ever a movie theater. It was a multi-purpose community building, built by the developers as an inducement to attract residential property buyers. I know that it was used as a ballroom for many years. Even in the early picture of it on this page of the San Clemente web site, it is topped by a sign reading “DANCE.” There is no marquee visible on the building.
My grandfather had a vacation house in an area about midway between Capistrano and San Clemente, and from my visits to the town in the 1950s, I know that it had only this one theatre.
I have a copy of the Los Angeles Times theatre listings from February of 1973, and at that time the Showcase was apparently still a single screen house, as no second screen is listed. I remember Stonewood Mall itself having been built in the 1950s. I think the theatre dates from the same time.
Thanks, Ken. I went to a few movies at the Music Box in the 1960s, when it was called the Pix Theatre. Then, I had no idea that it had had such a long and varied career.
I also remember passing by the Huntington Hartford, and having no idea what was under that modern facade. Until recently, I was under the impression that it had actually been built from the ground up by Hartford in the 1950s.
Do you happen to know the years during which the Lux Radio Theater was broadcast from the old Music Box (now Henry Fonda) Theater on Hollywood Boulevard? I know that the show started in New York City, then moved to Hollywood, where it was broadcast both from the CBS Playhouse and the Music Box, but I don’t know which theater was used first, or for how long each was used.
You can find some pictures of some of Hunt’s other buildings, particularly his work at Occidental College, online in the Robert Winter Collection, which is maintained by Occidental. Their campus, located in the Eagle Rock district of Los Angeles, is worth a visit, too.
The Patterson is no longer closed. It re-opened on May 16th, 2003, as an arts center and theater operated by Creative Alliance
Their web site describes the facility as providing two galleries, a 250 seat flexible theater, a classroom, media lab, offices, and live/work studios for artists. The address is now given as 3134 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore MD 21224, and the telephone number as 410-276-1651. Their e-mail address is
The web site’s brief history of the theater says that there was an earlier Patterson Theater built at the same location in 1910, which was demolished in 1929. The current building was opened in September, 1930, twinned in 1975, and closed in 1995. When opened in 1929, the Patterson was operated by the Grand Theater Company, an affiliate of Durkee Enterprises. The history page also mentions the marquee and the art deco sign, lighted by “a plethora of bulbs,” but it appears to be referring to the blade sign only. At least that feature was able to be saved and restored.
I have run across mentions of S. Charles Lee having remodeled a “Studio Theater” on Vine Street in 1936, but thought they were mistaken, because there was a Studio Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. This clears up the mystery.
I’ve never seen a picture of Mr. Woodley (Frank Erwin Woodley was his full name, I believe, and he was born in 1865, so he would have been the right age to be balding), but I can easily imagine any exhibitor of the day jumping at the chance to be in a movie. Think of the talk it would generate among the theatre’s patrons, and their friends and acquaintances, and the consequent increase in business!
It’s undoubtedly difficult to spot specific locations of the city in old movies, not only because of the way the movie scenes were shot out of sequence, but because so many places in Los Angeles looked so much like so many other places in Los Angeles. So much of the city was built over such a short time that all the buildings ended up being in designed in the same few styles.
Maybe someday you’ll run across an identified interior photograph of that theatre in “Career” and recognize it.
The only old pictures I’ve seen of the Vine Street Theater (all exterior shots, unfortunately) are those few in the L.A. Public Library photo database. (Click on the “Photo Collection” link, use the search terms “Theater Vine Street” and choose the search type “Subject Headings” from the menu. That brings up nine pictures. Some are of the building while under construction, some after completion.
I also know that the first alteration to the Vine Street Theater came as early as 1936, when S. Charles Lee designed a new marquee, and new heating and ventilating systems were installed. Lee sometimes did sketches of buildings to which he made alterations. If he made any of the Vine STreet, then they would probably be in the collection of his drawings and papers which, I believe, is held by UCLA. Since he made a major change only to the outside of this theater, though, he might not have bothered to make any interior sketches.
When Huntington Hartford bought the place in the 1950s, the remodeling he ordered was so complete that almost nothing remained of the original theatre but the outer walls. There are probably photographs of the old interior somewhere in the world- in old magazines and such, perhaps- but I have no idea where to find them.
The place also went by the name Mirror Theater for a while, but I don’t know if that was before or after it was the Huntington Hartford Theater. If it was earlier, then pictures of it from before the rebuilding might be sought out by that name as well as by the original name.
I remember when the book store moved from it’s original location on the northwest corner of Garfield and Main into the building that had once been half of Montgomery Ward’s Department Store. (The other half of Ward’s had been in the building with the small art deco tower on it, one door to the west, which later was renovated and occupied by Prober’s Shoes.) They had the biggest selection of paperbacks in the San Gabriel Valley after they moved to the new location. The place was huge.
The book store opened in its original location about 1964 or 1965, and was owned by the people who had formerly operated the Bungalow News on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. The store had been busier when it was at the corner of Garfield, even though the new location was bigger. I think they made a mistake by moving it. That mid-block location at the east end of town wasn’t as visible. They probably weren’t helped by the opening of a Waldenbooks on the Mervyn’s center in the early 1980s, either.
The Garfield didn’t have a balcony. You must be thinking of the Monterey Theatre, on Garfield Avenue in Monterey Park, which had a section of stadium seating in the back half of the auditorium. It was the only theatre in the area that had that arrangement, and none of the theatres in Alhambra ever had a balcony of any sort.
The Garfield Theatre, less than a mile north of the Monterey, at the corner of Garfield and Valley in Alhambra, had the rest rooms upstairs, on either side of the projection room, and there were small anterooms adjacent to them that had glazed windows overlooking the auditorium. The one adjacent to the Women’s rest room was probably used as a crying room, and might have had seating- I don’t know, since I never went up there. The one next to the men’s room had no seats, though, but you would often find guys using it as a smoking room, since smoking wasn’t allowed in the auditorium itself.
I attended the Whittwood only once, in the mid-1980s. The theatre did indeed have a stadium-type seating section at the back of the auditorium. This was a feature it shared in common with only a few theatres in the Los Angles area, among which were the 1917 Rialto on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, the 1924 Monterey in Monterey Park, and the more recent Loyola in the Westchester district of Los Angeles, and Crest in Long Beach.
I used to go to the Monterey frequently in the 1950s, and always liked sitting in the stadium section, though nobody called it that in those days. Everybody, including the theatre manager and staff, referred to it as the balcony, even though it wasn’t a proper balcony at all. The Whittwood was a much nicer theatre than the Monterey, though. In any case, both of them are gone now, along with the Crest, and the Loyola has been converted to offices, and the Rialto sits dark and empty, its lobby used for retail shops. These theatres were ahead of their time, and now they all but forgotten by most of the world.
It might be of interest to some that the architect of this theatre, William H. Wheeler, was also the architect of the very theatrical 5500 seat Angelus Temple, built in 1923 in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles, for the notorious radio Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. There were few who understood show business as well as did Sister Aimee. She chose her architect well.
Southwest Builder and Contractor, June 4th, 1920, says that Walter P. Williams had the contract for the construction of a theatre building on Grand Avenue, Escondido, to seat 625 persons, and that work would commence at once. The owner of the theater was named as A. H. Nelson.
Southwest Builder and Contractor of April 23rd, 1937, announced that Clifford Balch had prepared the plans for a theatre at Escondido. The name of the theatre was not given in my source, but the timing was right for it to be the Ritz.
The earlier publication, Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer, issue of September 18th, 1909, mentions a theatre (again, no name given) that was to be erected at 5th and B Streets, Escondido, for a Mr. John Johnston, Jr. Apparently, the Johnston family was in the theatre business in Escondido for a long time.
Ah, the location link for this theater says “Avalon, Catalina Island” and that for the Avalon simply says “Catalina Island,” so they don’t both share an “Avalon, California” listing page.
I didn’t know that there was a theater in El Encanto, either. Was it only used for stage productions?
I have a cousin who spent several years of her childhood in Avalon. Next time I’m in touch with her, I’ll ask her about the Riviera. I doubt that she’d know whether or not it was originally the Strand, though, as she wasn’t born until 1933 or 1934. She might have been too young to have known anything about the theater which presumably became the Post Office, either, but I’ll ask her about that, too. She’d probably at least remember where the Post Office was in those days.
I have found that there is a reference to a Strand Theater in Avalon, being re-opened after improvements, in the L.A. Times issue of January 15th, 1922. No address is given.
There is also an article in Southwest Builder and Contractor of December 12th, 1924, saying that architects (Walter I.) Webber, (William F.) Staunton and (Sumner Maurice) Spaulding had prepared plans for a 600 seat theater to be erected in Avalon. Neither name nor location is given. However, a librarians note on this card says that this is believed to be the building which, after the opening of the Casino and its theater, was converted into the Post Office.
The Casino, opened in 1930, was itself designed by Webber and Spaulding. I don’t know if they were responsible for the interior of the movie theatre which was (and is, though I believe it is currently closed) on the ground floor of that massive landmark, but they probably were. Their firm did quite a bit of work at Catalina in those days.
My mother, though she lived in Avalon for a couple of years in the 1930s, has no memory of the Riviera Theater, or any theater on the island, other than the Casino. (It seems as though a second theater would be hard not to notice in such a small town, but maybe it was closed for a while in those years.)
In any case, I’m wondering if the Riviera might be the Strand, renamed. It might be possible to find an old postcard view of Avalon showing the theatre. There are usually quite a few Catalina cards on display in the postcard auction section of e-Bay. Avalon was, for decades, one of the most photographed places in California, and hundreds of different postcard views of it were published, and they sold in vast numbers.
Was this theater still called by this name in the 1960s? It would have been right down the block form the Regent, the only Main Street theatre I ever attended, but I have no memory of the Banner. I do remember that there was a theatre called the Admiral, AKA Rector’s Admiral, on the east side of Main somewhere between the Regent and the Burbank. Could the Banner and the Admiral have been the same theatre? I was less familiar with Main Street than with the streets farther west, as Main Street was already pretty gritty, even in those days. There might have been a second theatre on that stretch of the street, but I can’t bring the image of it to mind.
Here is a biographical sketch of Lotta Crabtree, at a web site devoted to San Francisco history. I remember seeing the small but ornate fountain which she donated to the city in 1875, and which still stands on a triangle of land where Market, Geary and Kearney Streets intersect.
Though born in New York City, in 1847, she spent most of her childhood in the Sierra mining town of Grass Valley, only a few dozen miles from where I live. One of California’s most colorful golden era characters, she went on to become, in the late 19th century, one of the most successful performers on the New York stage. She retired at the age of 45, living first in rural New Jersey and then, after the death of her mother, in Boston. Upon her death at the age of 76, Boston newpapers reported that her extensive real estate holdings had made her the city’s second largest taxpayer.
Wise in her investments, she died in 1924, leaving much of her considerable fortune to benefit disabled WWI veterans, and some for animal welfare, destitute thespians, and discharged convicts. A considerable, but undisclosed, amount of her fortune remains today in the Lotta Agricultural Trust Fund, which provides loans to New England farmers. (See the “New Standard: 1/28/98” link on the page at the link above.)
A search on 233 N. Vermont at Terraserver fetches a recent aerial view of the area, and there are no buildings that resemble a theater (at least from directly above) there today. The shadow of that pitched roof on the front of the building would surely show in an aerial view. I think that this theatre must have been demolished.
Yes. The card with the reference to the wedding apparently had a misspelling of the name. It is Chotiner, rather than Chotner. All the other cards with references to the Chotiner family at the site are spelled correctly.
Christian:
I think that the Music Box had become the Pix Theatre by the 1950s, and was showing movies. I think it most likely that the last two seasons of the Lux program were broadcast from the KNX studios on Sunset Boulevard.
I have a vague memory of some mention of a CBS Playhouse being located in the Sunset Boulevard facility. It was somewhere in the History of KNX section of the station’s web site. I think it was a caption to one of the pictures there (reached by a small link near the top of that page.) There is also one good photograph of the Vine Street Theater there, and another which I think is of the Music Box, but the captions of both refer to them as the CBS Playhouse.
Sue:
A search on “Calhoun” and “Alice” (one name in each of the first two search boxes) at the L.A. Public Library’s California Index fetches 11 scanned index cards (I’m presuming that the actual items these cards reference are available at the library itself, probably the central library downtown) with references to her. According to one, she is indeed silent film star Alice Beatrice Calhoun (1904-1966), and another card refers to an article in the Hollywood Citizen of January 5th, 1927, announcing her marriage to M.C. Chotner, who I know was himself the owner of several theatres in the Los Angeles area. Many of them are listed here at Cinema Treasures, but I can’t remember their names offhand.
Stonewood Center is at the northeast corner of Firestone and Lakewood, about a half mile east of Downey’s old downtown. It was an open air shopping center when it was built in 1958, and became an enclosed mall when it was expanded in 1990. My Google search turned up a Lynn’s Hallmark Card and Party Shop for the address 136 Stonewood, though George Redfox says there is a fabric shop in the theatre’s old location. There is a JoAnn’s Fabrics at the center, in a building with an outside entrance, not on the mall proper, but I can’t find an exact address for it. I remember the theatre being in such a peripheral building, so that must be it. I think that addresses may have been shuffled in the expansion.
I’ve been having the same problem with it. I think that the collection has only recently been added to the college web site, and they probably don’t have the kinks worked out yet.
The Hidalgo/Miramar is probably the theatre designed by Clifford Balch, the plans for which were announced in the July 2, 1937 issue of Southwest Builder and Contractor. Balch designed a large number of theaters in the Spanish Colonial/Mission Revival styles in that era.
I don’t believe that The Casino Capistrano was ever a movie theater. It was a multi-purpose community building, built by the developers as an inducement to attract residential property buyers. I know that it was used as a ballroom for many years. Even in the early picture of it on this page of the San Clemente web site, it is topped by a sign reading “DANCE.” There is no marquee visible on the building.
My grandfather had a vacation house in an area about midway between Capistrano and San Clemente, and from my visits to the town in the 1950s, I know that it had only this one theatre.
I have a copy of the Los Angeles Times theatre listings from February of 1973, and at that time the Showcase was apparently still a single screen house, as no second screen is listed. I remember Stonewood Mall itself having been built in the 1950s. I think the theatre dates from the same time.
Thanks, Ken. I went to a few movies at the Music Box in the 1960s, when it was called the Pix Theatre. Then, I had no idea that it had had such a long and varied career.
I also remember passing by the Huntington Hartford, and having no idea what was under that modern facade. Until recently, I was under the impression that it had actually been built from the ground up by Hartford in the 1950s.
Ken:
Do you happen to know the years during which the Lux Radio Theater was broadcast from the old Music Box (now Henry Fonda) Theater on Hollywood Boulevard? I know that the show started in New York City, then moved to Hollywood, where it was broadcast both from the CBS Playhouse and the Music Box, but I don’t know which theater was used first, or for how long each was used.
You can find some pictures of some of Hunt’s other buildings, particularly his work at Occidental College, online in the Robert Winter Collection, which is maintained by Occidental. Their campus, located in the Eagle Rock district of Los Angeles, is worth a visit, too.
The Patterson is no longer closed. It re-opened on May 16th, 2003, as an arts center and theater operated by Creative Alliance
Their web site describes the facility as providing two galleries, a 250 seat flexible theater, a classroom, media lab, offices, and live/work studios for artists. The address is now given as 3134 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore MD 21224, and the telephone number as 410-276-1651. Their e-mail address is
The web site’s brief history of the theater says that there was an earlier Patterson Theater built at the same location in 1910, which was demolished in 1929. The current building was opened in September, 1930, twinned in 1975, and closed in 1995. When opened in 1929, the Patterson was operated by the Grand Theater Company, an affiliate of Durkee Enterprises. The history page also mentions the marquee and the art deco sign, lighted by “a plethora of bulbs,” but it appears to be referring to the blade sign only. At least that feature was able to be saved and restored.
I have run across mentions of S. Charles Lee having remodeled a “Studio Theater” on Vine Street in 1936, but thought they were mistaken, because there was a Studio Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. This clears up the mystery.
I’ve never seen a picture of Mr. Woodley (Frank Erwin Woodley was his full name, I believe, and he was born in 1865, so he would have been the right age to be balding), but I can easily imagine any exhibitor of the day jumping at the chance to be in a movie. Think of the talk it would generate among the theatre’s patrons, and their friends and acquaintances, and the consequent increase in business!
It’s undoubtedly difficult to spot specific locations of the city in old movies, not only because of the way the movie scenes were shot out of sequence, but because so many places in Los Angeles looked so much like so many other places in Los Angeles. So much of the city was built over such a short time that all the buildings ended up being in designed in the same few styles.
Maybe someday you’ll run across an identified interior photograph of that theatre in “Career” and recognize it.
Christian:
The only old pictures I’ve seen of the Vine Street Theater (all exterior shots, unfortunately) are those few in the L.A. Public Library photo database. (Click on the “Photo Collection” link, use the search terms “Theater Vine Street” and choose the search type “Subject Headings” from the menu. That brings up nine pictures. Some are of the building while under construction, some after completion.
I also know that the first alteration to the Vine Street Theater came as early as 1936, when S. Charles Lee designed a new marquee, and new heating and ventilating systems were installed. Lee sometimes did sketches of buildings to which he made alterations. If he made any of the Vine STreet, then they would probably be in the collection of his drawings and papers which, I believe, is held by UCLA. Since he made a major change only to the outside of this theater, though, he might not have bothered to make any interior sketches.
When Huntington Hartford bought the place in the 1950s, the remodeling he ordered was so complete that almost nothing remained of the original theatre but the outer walls. There are probably photographs of the old interior somewhere in the world- in old magazines and such, perhaps- but I have no idea where to find them.
The place also went by the name Mirror Theater for a while, but I don’t know if that was before or after it was the Huntington Hartford Theater. If it was earlier, then pictures of it from before the rebuilding might be sought out by that name as well as by the original name.
I remember when the book store moved from it’s original location on the northwest corner of Garfield and Main into the building that had once been half of Montgomery Ward’s Department Store. (The other half of Ward’s had been in the building with the small art deco tower on it, one door to the west, which later was renovated and occupied by Prober’s Shoes.) They had the biggest selection of paperbacks in the San Gabriel Valley after they moved to the new location. The place was huge.
The book store opened in its original location about 1964 or 1965, and was owned by the people who had formerly operated the Bungalow News on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. The store had been busier when it was at the corner of Garfield, even though the new location was bigger. I think they made a mistake by moving it. That mid-block location at the east end of town wasn’t as visible. They probably weren’t helped by the opening of a Waldenbooks on the Mervyn’s center in the early 1980s, either.
The Garfield didn’t have a balcony. You must be thinking of the Monterey Theatre, on Garfield Avenue in Monterey Park, which had a section of stadium seating in the back half of the auditorium. It was the only theatre in the area that had that arrangement, and none of the theatres in Alhambra ever had a balcony of any sort.
The Garfield Theatre, less than a mile north of the Monterey, at the corner of Garfield and Valley in Alhambra, had the rest rooms upstairs, on either side of the projection room, and there were small anterooms adjacent to them that had glazed windows overlooking the auditorium. The one adjacent to the Women’s rest room was probably used as a crying room, and might have had seating- I don’t know, since I never went up there. The one next to the men’s room had no seats, though, but you would often find guys using it as a smoking room, since smoking wasn’t allowed in the auditorium itself.
I attended the Whittwood only once, in the mid-1980s. The theatre did indeed have a stadium-type seating section at the back of the auditorium. This was a feature it shared in common with only a few theatres in the Los Angles area, among which were the 1917 Rialto on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, the 1924 Monterey in Monterey Park, and the more recent Loyola in the Westchester district of Los Angeles, and Crest in Long Beach.
I used to go to the Monterey frequently in the 1950s, and always liked sitting in the stadium section, though nobody called it that in those days. Everybody, including the theatre manager and staff, referred to it as the balcony, even though it wasn’t a proper balcony at all. The Whittwood was a much nicer theatre than the Monterey, though. In any case, both of them are gone now, along with the Crest, and the Loyola has been converted to offices, and the Rialto sits dark and empty, its lobby used for retail shops. These theatres were ahead of their time, and now they all but forgotten by most of the world.
It might be of interest to some that the architect of this theatre, William H. Wheeler, was also the architect of the very theatrical 5500 seat Angelus Temple, built in 1923 in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles, for the notorious radio Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. There were few who understood show business as well as did Sister Aimee. She chose her architect well.
Southwest Builder and Contractor, June 4th, 1920, says that Walter P. Williams had the contract for the construction of a theatre building on Grand Avenue, Escondido, to seat 625 persons, and that work would commence at once. The owner of the theater was named as A. H. Nelson.
Southwest Builder and Contractor of April 23rd, 1937, announced that Clifford Balch had prepared the plans for a theatre at Escondido. The name of the theatre was not given in my source, but the timing was right for it to be the Ritz.
The earlier publication, Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer, issue of September 18th, 1909, mentions a theatre (again, no name given) that was to be erected at 5th and B Streets, Escondido, for a Mr. John Johnston, Jr. Apparently, the Johnston family was in the theatre business in Escondido for a long time.