Here is an interesting view fromn 1963. JFK Stadium is to the south. The drive-in is where Veterans Stadium was before it too was demolished. The Spectrum had not yet been built. http://tinyurl.com/ya85epj
Here is part of a September 1988 article in the LA Times:
The neighborhood theater, with its low ticket prices and double features, appears to be going the way of newsreels and Flash Gordon serials. Revival houses and second-run theaters like the Fox Venice, the Criterion, the Rialto, the Vista, the Gordon and several others have closed their doors or changed their bookings to compete with places like the Cineplex Odeon theaters in Universal City.
But cheap tickets ($4) and double features still survive at the Aero Theater, a comfortable, mid-sized movie house located somewhat incongruously on Santa Monica’s trendy Montana Avenue. In an area where older businesses are razed every month, the Aero is preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary. “Basically, we are a neighborhood theater, and the people nearby are the ones who have supported us over the years,” said Joe Domenico, who has owned the Aero since 1978. “Some people around here have been coming for decades.”
Aircraft magnate Donald Douglas Jr. built the Aero in 1939. It opened in 1940 and served the general public and workers from the Douglas Aircraft plant (near the present-day Santa Monica Airport). When World War II arrived and employees were working around the clock, Douglas kept the Aero showing movies at all hours, so workers on all shifts could enjoy “Abbott and Costellos, Gene Autrys, all of that,” Domenico said. “It was a great morale-booster.”
After the war the Aero continued as the only movie house in the north end of Santa Monica, Domenico said. As television took its toll on the movie industry in the 1950s and ‘60s, the Aero found ways to survive. Fridays became teen nights, and the Aero became a meeting place for Westside teen-agers looking for weekend recreation.
Today the major threat to the Aero comes from changing economic conditions on Montana Avenue. Rent in the tony shopping district is between $4 and $4.50 a square foot, said Alexis Scharff, chairman of the Montana Merchants Committee. Others put it nearer to $5. That’s up from $3.50 six years ago. The increase has led to single storefronts' being renovated, carved up and reopened as tiny boutiques. Older tenants, like the Sweet Sixteen Grill, a neighborhood fixture since 1942, have disappeared. The Aero is awfully tempting.
“The landlord, I’m sure, has been barraged by offers to sell the property,” Domenico said. “We have rumors start sometimes. A couple of years ago people were coming in here-some with tears in their eyes-asking if it was going to be knocked down, destroyed and rebuilt as something else. Some people were very emotional.”
The proliferation of multiple-screen theaters might also pose a threat to the Aero. There are only seven movie screens in Santa Monica, but there are to be 22 by 1990. The Mann and Cineplex corporations are building four-screen theaters on the soon-to-be-renovated 3rd Street mall, and AMC Theaters is putting in seven at the corner of Arizona Avenue and 3rd Street.
Can the Aero survive? Domenico isn’t sure, but he’s hopeful. “Well, we might not be able to get new movies as quickly then,” he said. “We might be the last stop before they go to video.” At present the theater is doing well, Domenico said. The changes on Montana Avenue have brought in new patrons, he said, and attendance has grown steadily for eight years. It’s especially good when the theater manages to book double bills of recent hits like last winter’s “Broadcast News” and “Wall Street.”
Andy Lerner, a Santa Monica Canyon resident, was there recently to see “Presidio” and “Big Business.” He found the Aero more comfortable, convenient and inexpensive than the theaters in Westwood and West Los Angeles. “It’s nice to go into a theater that has a small-town feel to it,” Lerner said. “And you don’t have to go to a shopping mall and fight your way past yogurt stands to see a movie.”
Small-town is the term that comes up most often when talking to Aero patrons. Hollywood location managers apparently agree: the Aero has been seen in movies like “From 10 to Midnight” and “Three on a Match.” Most recently it doubled as a Cape Cod movie house in the Meg Tilly-Rob Lowe picture “Masquerade.”
Although the projection and sound systems are contemporary, not much else has changed at the Aero since 1940. The white Streamline Moderne facade remains the same, as do the marquee, the terrazzo walkway, the light fixtures and even the seats. The popcorn maker dates back to the ‘50s, as does a kitschy serve-yourself ice cream case. Lumpy, comfortable sofas line the lobby. In one corner an antique soft- drink machine still stands, but it hasn’t worked for years. The company stopped making replacement parts for it years ago.
Although there’s not a theater anywhere that still charges 10 or 12 cents admission, ticket prices at the Aero are about as low as they come, especially for a double feature: General admission is $4, and children and the elderly pay $2. The price draws people from all over Los Angeles and helped earned the Aero the title of “Best Neighborhood Theater” in Los Angeles magazine.
Domenico laments the passing of what he calls “a sleepy little street,” but he says he’ll keep the Aero open as long as he can. “Who knows what will happen?” Domenico said, shrugging. “Venerable places like the Brown Derby have been knocked down. When I first got here, there were six or seven service stations on Montana. Now, apparently, the one next door is leaving, and we’ll have one left. "That’s progress. But it’s also a shame.”
Here is part of a December 1988 article in the LA Times:
Since its opening in 1981, the Baldwin Hills Theater in Los Angeles has stood as a symbol of pride to its mostly black patrons and a reminder to the nearby Hollywood entertainment community that black neighborhoods, traditionally under-served by major chains, will support top quality theaters showing first-run films.
Now, however, the Baldwin — one of the nation’s few black-owned movie theaters — has quietly been put up for sale after a series of financial and legal setbacks that threatened the owners' dream of bringing more such theaters to the black community.
Although hit movies such as “The Color Purple,” “Purple Rain” and “School Daze,” drew sizable audiences to the theater complex at 3741 S. La Brea Ave., the lingering financial fallout from a bitter 1981 lawsuit and a costly lease arrangement proved to be too big a burden to shoulder, according to owners Ernest E. Simms, 40, and Nelson Bennett, 38. The theater has also been hurt by a lackluster 1988 film season and rising film rental costs.
“Ernest and myself have done everything that two people can possibly do to try to provide first-run quality product for the Baldwin Hills entertainment complex,” said Bennett, who worked his way up from movie usher to various theater management posts before becoming vice president of Royal Entertainment Inc., the concern that operates the Baldwin. “It has been increasingly difficult to do that… . We’re not the big boys on the block; we’re the new kids on the block and we’re independents.”
While there are a handful of black-owned theaters around the country, the Baldwin is the only such theater that shows first-run films, according to Bennett. And it has been the focus of intense interest from both the powerful community of Southern California theater owners as well as the largely black, middle class Baldwin Hills area that supported Simms' and Nelson’s efforts to renovate what was a dilapidated, 39-year-old movie house and turn it into a first-class facility.
“I support their attempt to become movie theater entrepreneurs,” said David B. Humdy, a Walt Disney Co. executive who is also president of the Black Media & Entertainment Assn., a Los Angeles-based organization of entertainment industry professionals. “When you are in a market where you are competing against the major studios, it’s very difficult. But we need black theaters, and we need places so that we can exhibit (black films). We (blacks) owned more theaters in the ‘30s and '40s than we own today."
Bennett and Simms say they are weighing several offers — including one from an unidentified black buyer — to purchase the theater. They say they hope to sell the complex in the next few months and start over at another location with new financial backers.
The decision to sell the Baldwin Theater came after a futile 18-month-long search for a lender willing to provide additional funds to help reduce debt at the three-screen, 970-seat movie house as well as finance their ambitious plan to acquire and manage theaters in other black neighborhoods. The theater’s problems began in 1981 when Simms and Bennett filed a suit against the Mann Theater chain and Warner Bros., complaining that they unfairly restrained trade by barring film distributors from playing a film at the Baldwin if Mann had booked the movie in one of its big Westwood theaters nine miles away. The suit was settled out of court in 1984. Baldwin now gets an equal crack at first-run films. But the lawsuit, Simms said, “cost us more than $500,000 in legal fees. It buried us in debt.”
Rising film rental fees and the lackluster films produced in the wake of the Hollywood writers strike have also hurt business. Simms would not disclose how much costs have risen but said that it would take at least three additional screens at the Baldwin to make the theater cost-effective. A greater variety of films playing at one site increases the likelihood that theaters will attract more moviegoers, he said.
Although investors expressed interest in helping Simms and Bennett expand to other sites, no one wanted to bail out the Baldwin after examining its books and lease arrangement. And it remains to be seen whether the pair can establish a successful new theater chain and theater consulting business in an industry increasingly dominated by a handful of large, corporate players.
“There’s no question there’s a market for good films written with black themes that would appeal to the black community,” said Bernard Anderson, managing partner of the Urban Affairs Partnership, a privately held urban development consulting firm in Philadelphia. “But I don’t see any market out there for management or consulting services to theater owners. The margin of profit on these places is very small, and most owners would think, `Why get somebody else to manage it when I can do it myself?‘” Only a year ago, Simms and Bennett reported doing record business at the Baldwin when, for the first time in its history, their movie house opened a black-oriented, big-studio picture on each of its three screens.
The owners did not disclose how much business was generated by the three films — Disney’s “Shoot to Kill,” Columbia’s “School Daze,” and Lorimar’s “Action Jackson.” But in a deposition taken in a 1987 lawsuit against the theater, Bennett estimated that the Baldwin Theater complex would earn total gross profit of more than $80,000 a month after it added a third theater in 1986.
Much of the money has been eaten up in legal fees, higher rental fees and a costly lease arrangement under which the landlord of the Baldwin Theater is paid a percentage of ticket sales, Simms said. Such lease arrangements were once rare, experts say, but they have become more common recently with the rise of smaller multiplex theater facilities, which take up less space but can generate more revenue than one big movie house.
“These guys have gone through the full gamut seeking out investors and venture capital firms … but they just haven’t been able to secure any interest in” an expansion deal that would allow them to hold on to the Baldwin, said Kenneth T. Lombard, senior vice president at ERC Capital Fund, a venture capital firm in Lynwood that helped finance the Baldwin when it first opened in 1981.
“It’s not like we have a wealth of resources out there available to us,” explained Simms, a soft-spoken entrepreneur who has a masters degree in business administration from Harvard. “We have to make our own way. And we’ve been told that this is the best way to do it — for the financial community to feel comfortable in giving us the kind of dollars we are talking about. The only major asset we both own, since we are not independently wealthy, is the theater.”
CARNEGIE, PA.-William H. Fox, 54, died July 27 as the result of injuries sustained when he fell down basement stairs in his home that day. Manager and auditor for the theater interests of Mrs. Louisa Herman, widow of the late Dr. C.E. Herman, Fox had supervised construction of the Greentree Drive-In on Noblestown Road between Crafton and Carnegie, which opened a number of weeks ago. He held a partnership interest in this enterprise with Mrs. Herman, Mrs. William Walker and Mrs. Harry Walker, widows of Carnegie and Crafton exhibitors.
Here is an item in the August 1, 1953 edition of Boxoffice magazine:
NEW YORK-Police arrested a ring of youthful theatre bandits Wednesday whose members said they concentrated on houses showing 3-D pictures “because they take in more moneyâ€.
The holdups began June 12 with a $1,600 haul at the Sunnyside Theatre, Queens. On June 28, according to police charges, the robbers got $1,300 from the Bliss Theatre in Queens, on July 8 $800 from the Fortway Theatre in Brooklyn, and $400 from the Dover Theatre, Bronx, Monday July 27. In between theatre jobs, the bandits are alleged to have held up a number of taverns.
I read that item too, Howard. They mention the “former 333 Theater” and also a fifteen year lease to Fisch’s Parking Places. I don’t think this theatre exists anymore.
Cluny’s Movies, on Alvarado, shows what appear to be blown-up 8 mm. mail order films (made for home viewing) so that the girls look like they are doing their thing underwater. At least at the Cluny the price is right: $1.50 for a couple of hours of what is essentially a low-grade girlie magazine come to pseudo-life.
The Park, down the block, is 50 cents up the scale. It has what it cleverly calls its “Little GAL-lery-Last Six Rows on the Left for Ladies Only.†(Most theaters don’t cater to single ladies at all.) It was here that I saw Hot Bed, written by Big Daddy Epstein III. Other theaters on about this level include the Vista on Sunset, the Apollo Arts on Hollywood, the Monica, down from the Paris. In the dark, it’s hard to tell them apart.
PASADENA-A disturbance involving more than 70 juveniles at a movie theater resulted in the closing of the theater Sunday evening. Police were called to the Washington Theater, 845 E. Washington Street, after the manager informed them that the juveniles were turning over cigaret machines, dumping ash trays and had started a fire in a wastebasket in the men’s room. There were no arrests.
When Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights” premiered downtown at the 1931 opening of the Los Angeles Theater at 615 S. Broadway, even the theater lobby-trimmed in gilt and featuring a crystal fountain-sparkled like city lights. In the ‘30s, going to the movies meant entering a setting so elegant that the escapism on screen extended to the theater itself. The Los Angeles, designed by architect S. Charles Lee, 87, was fashioned after Versailles, with mirrors, marble columns and trompe l'oeil murals.
“It was a popular concept of the time,” Lee explained in an interview. “We made people with 20 cents to spend feel like they owned the palace.” On four consecutive Wednesdays beginning at 8 tonight at the Orpheum (842 S. Broadway), the Los Angeles Conservancy will offer that experience to modern filmgoers with “The Last Remaining Seats,” a series of classic films presented in four of the 10 grand old movie palaces that still operate downtown.
A six-block section of Broadway, containing 12 movie houses built between 1910 and 1932, is the only theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, said Gregg Davidson, assistant to the executive director of the conservancy. With the recent closures of two of those theaters, the Globe at 744 S. Broadway and the Tower at 802 S. Broadway, more downtown movie palaces have shut their doors in the last six months than in the last 55 years, Davidson said. Both theaters are being converted, the Tower into a dance club and the Globe into a swap meet. The conservancy hopes to encourage what Davidson calls “reversible conversions”-the Tower, he said, can be restored as a theater in the future, but the Globe has been gutted and can never be a theater on the same scale again.
Uncertainty about the future of the remaining theaters and a desire to reawaken public awareness to their existence fostered “The Last Remaining Seats.” The series echoes a similar program, “The Best Remaining Seats,” which was presented by the American Film Institute in the summer of 1979 and featured 10 vintage Southern California movie houses, including one in Santa Barbara.
Another concern of the conservancy, Davidson said, is that home video is luring away some of Broadway’s clientele. The movie houses now cater to a largely Latino audience, offering a mixed fare of Mexican features and action-oriented American movies. Six of the movie palaces downtown play Spanish-language films and two others show American movies with Spanish subtitles. But the recent influx of Spanish-language films on home video and the affordability of VCRs are depleting the audience, Davidson said.
But Bruce Corwin, president of Metropolitan Theaters, which owns and operates the movie houses on Broadway and donated the use of the Orpheum, Palace, United Artists and Los Angeles theaters for the conservancy evenings, emphasized that the theaters are far from being fading relics. “It’s not a deteriorating area at all,” Corwin said. “It’s an area that’s in constant flux and constant change… . When video becomes less of a toy, business will improve.”
“The Last Remaining Seats” opens at the Orpheum (842 S. Broadway) tonight with a screening of Buster Keaton’s silent comedy “Steamboat Bill Jr.” The theater was chosen because of its restored Wurlitzer organ, which can simulate more than 14,000 orchestral sounds. Gaylord Carter, an organist who played during the era of silent films, will provide the accompaniment. Also scheduled are “Billy Blazes, Esq.,” a Harold Lloyd short; vintage newsreels and a cartoon.
A live stage show and rare film clips of vaudeville acts will be the offering next Wednesday at the Palace (630 S. Broadway). Milt Larsen of the Magic Castle and Variety Arts Center will emcee. On July 29, “The Taming of the Shrew,” Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks' only movie together, is slated to screen at the United Artists (933 S. Broadway), the theater they helped finance. The UA was the only flagship theater built by a studio in the downtown area.
The series will conclude Aug. 5 at the Los Angeles Theater with a gala reception and a scheduled guest appearance by architect Lee following a screening of “Dames,” with musical numbers staged by Busby Berkeley. All programs begin at 8 p.m.; doors open at 7:15 p.m. Tickets may be purchased in advance by writing to the Los Angeles Conservancy, 849 S. Broadway, Suite M-22, Los Angeles 90014. Subscription tickets to all four shows are $35; individual tickets are $10 each and $12 at the door. Tickets to the closing-night reception are $10.
This is from the Las Vegas Review-Journal on 3/13/91:
Triumph and loss. Conflict and conciliation. Suspense and intrigue. They’re the dramatic elements you’d find in a good movie. But you can find the same elements off-screen -playing now at a theater near you. Las Vegas' volatile movie theater scene has undergone some upheavals in recent weeks-some large, some small.
Late last month, a two-screen independent theater, the Torrey Pines Cinema, closed after less than a year of trying to compete with local first-run theaters operated by well-established circuits. By next week, the three-screen Mountain View Cinema- which shut its doors late last year-will reopen as a locally operated discount house.
What could be the most significant change of all, however, showed up at the Las Vegas Drive-in: the suspense thriller “The Silence of the Lambs,” which has been the nation’s top box-office attraction for four weeks running. The presence of a box-office hit at Las Vegas' only remaining drive-in theater might not seem at all unusual. But “Silence of the Lambs” is an Orion Pictures release. San Francisco-based Syufy Enterprises operates the Las Vegas Drive-in. And “Silence” is the first Orion release to play a Syufy theater in Las Vegas in more than five years.
Orion and Syufy officials became tangled in a protracted contract dispute after Syufy balked at playing Francis Ford Coppola’s 1984 drama “The Cotton Club.” In turn, Orion refused to license its pictures to Syufy theaters. In Las Vegas, that meant Orion releases played at theaters operated by rival United Artists, which bought the locally owned Roberts chain in August 1987. Until now.
While “Silence of the Lambs” continues to play at UA’s Paradise 6 and the UA-affiliated Gold Coast Twin, its presence at the drive-in signals a peace treaty in the longtime Orion-Syufy war. “I guess there comes a time when whatever it is that makes people not do business together goes by the wayside, and you do business,” said Syufy general manager Jack Myhill in a telephone interview from the company’s California headquarters. “It’s possible we’ll play some of their pictures in Las Vegas. We’re hopeful our relationship is going to be rebuilt.”
That could happen as soon as next month, when Orion is scheduled to release “F/X 2,” but may be unable to book it at the Gold Coast if “Silence” and Kevin Costner’s Oscar favorite “Dances With Wolves” continue their strong runs. “These things happen-wars don’t last forever,” said UA’s Charles Boeckman, who formerly booked the chain’s Las Vegas theaters. “Other companies have been out with other exhibitors for a long time and they come back.”
Clouding the picture further is the fact that UA’s three Las Vegas theaters are up for sale. Only the Paradise 6 shows first-run movies on a consistent basis; the Sunrise 7 and Cinema 8 are both discount houses. (UA also books the Gold Coast Hotel-Casino’s two-screen theater, which shows first-run features.) But the Syufy-Orion truce “isn’t even a criterion” in the decision to put the theaters on the market, said Robert Vallone, general manager for UA’s Western theaters. UA’s top management has “decided that a lot of states don’t fit into their core,” Vallone said. “For years, we were basically a coastal company- California, Florida, all the Eastern Seaboard.” Selling the Las Vegas theaters is part of a “back to basics” move, he commented.
Boeckman said that speculation surrounding a Syufy-Orion truce had been circulating for “over a year.” But Orion’s box-office success with its two recent hits “might have speeded things up, who knows.” The hit status of Orion’s “Dances With Wolves” and “Silence of the Lambs” at the Gold Coast also affected the Torrey Pines Cinemas, which picked up two other first-run Orion releases, Woody Allen’s Oscar-nominated “Alice” and the science fiction action thriller “Eve of Destruction,” before it closed Feb. 28.
The Torrey Pines filed for reorganization Feb. 8 under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act and remained open while showing “Alice” and “Eve of Destruction.” According to court documents, Torrey Pines operator Ted Pantazis owes more than $200,000-including, his landlord alleges, almost $69,000 in rent for the theater, located in the West Sahara Town Center at Sahara Avenue and Torrey Pines Drive.
On Feb. 25, however, the Torrey Pines filed a motion to dismiss the bankruptcy case, stating Pantazis wanted to file an anti-trust case against various movie distributors and could not do so unless the bankruptcy filing was dismissed. According to the motion filed by Pantazis attorney Eleissa C. Lavelle, the Torrey Pines had doubled the gross revenues of previous months with its first-run showing of “Alice.”
“The greatest impediment to the success of the (Torrey Pines) … has been the inability … to obtain quality first-run films from film distributors, which (Pantazis) believes "may be the result of illegal agreements with (Pantazis') only competition in this market,” Lavelle’s motion states.
The “only competition” referred to is Syufy, which owns and operates 32 screens at the Cinedome 6, Redrock 11, Century 12 and three-screen Parkway walk-in theaters, as well as the four-screen Las Vegas Drive-in. Syufy has been the target of numerous lawsuits, including a 1986 Justice Department suit alleging the chain has conspired to monopolize the Las Vegas movie market by buying out its competitors, which previously operated the Redrock, Parkway, Fox Charleston and Cine Boulevard theaters. (The Fox Charleston was demolished and the Cine Boulevard closed in 1989, after six unsuccessful months as a discount theater.)
Booking the critically acclaimed “Alice” in January signaled a breakthrough for the Torrey Pines, according to the theater’s bankruptcy affidavit, “and it was anticipated following that breakthrough, that additional quality, first-run films would be forthcoming.” But the bankruptcy petition, filed to give the Torrey Pines “sufficient time to reorganize its debts, in anticipation of its receipt of the first-run movies over the next several months” instead “has had an unexpected, unforeseeable adverse effect, in that the film distributors have now completely refused to allocate any additional films” to the Torrey Pines, the motion alleges.
Lavelle declined to comment on the motion because it is scheduled to be heard March 26 in Bankruptcy Court. Some industry observers, however, attributed the Torrey Pines Cinemas' problem to its small size, location and lack of a track record in drawing audiences.
One of the theater’s first attractions was a first-run showing of “Gremlins 2: The New Batch,” which “performed poorly” at the Torrey Pines, said a distribution official for Warner Bros., which released the movie, who asked not to be quoted by name. The movie “did much better” across town at the Syufy-operated Century Desert 12, he said. Even box-office returns on “Alice,” which court documents stated had doubled the theater’s grosses, were “awful,” said Boeckman. “I don’t have the Vegas (box-office) charts, but I know the gross was low. I compared it to the last Woody Allen picture, which I think was `Crimes and Misdemeanors,‘ which I think did 10 times better” at the Gold Coast.
The Torrey Pines may have had a promising Spring Valley location, “but it’s very difficult today to operate a theater with two or three screens,” said Syufy’s Myhill. The Torrey Pines “should never have been built,” said Don Lesh, former operator of the Huntridge Theater who will be running the Mountain View Cinema when it reopens as a bargain house. “It’s a very nice theater, but what do you do with the damn thing?” Its two screens provided inadequate competition for Syufy’s six-screen Cinedome and 11-screen Redrock in western Las Vegas, he said.
The Justice Department’s 1986 suit was one of the few antitrust cases pursued during the Reagan Administration, but it lost the case in February 1989, when U.S. District Judge William Orrick of San Francisco ruled in Syufy’s favor with a ground-breaking opinion that cited recent entertainment breakthroughs including home video and cable television. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Orrick’s decision in May 1990. The Solicitor General declined to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last month in a related case, U.S. District Judge Irving Hill granted Syufy a summary judgment, dismissing monopoly charges in a lawsuit the Roberts Co. filed in 1984, when the group operated the Mountain View and Huntridge theaters. (Roberts subsequently built the Paradise and Sunrise and acquired the Cinema 8 from another theater operator before selling out to UA.) Syufy’s legal victories may signal a tough road ahead for the Torrey Pines, said one observer who asked not to be quoted by name. “So the guy’s going to sue,” he said. “If the Justice Department can’t beat Syufy, then how can he?”
The Syufy case “established some very good law from their point of view,” said Dallas attorney Edwin Tobolowsky, whom Pantazis consulted regarding possible legal action. Tobolowsky has “represented a lot of motion picture exhibitors, independent theater operators who have had difficulty in obtaining first-run pictures,” he said during a telephone interview from Dallas.
On behalf of the Torrey Pines, Tobolowsky “wrote letters to all the major studios asking for the right to license movies free of any bids,” Tobolowsky said. But the studios declined, contending that the Torrey Pines drew the same audience as Syufy’s western theaters and would have to compete with the chain-operated theaters for the right to show movies.
“The Torrey Pines was just located too close to the others as far as the distributors were concerned,” Tobolowsky said. “For him to be successful, he would have had to have a steady stream of first-run movies. If you play first-run one week and not the next week, people don’t really understand what you’re playing. Moviegoing is, to some extent, a matter of habit.”
In Las Vegas, that moviegoing habit is, by and large, restricted to mainstream big-studio releases. The Torrey Pines, on occasion, gave moviegoers a chance to see “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams” and catch the Oscar-winning Italian comedy-drama “Cinema Paradiso” after its brief run at Syufy’s Parkway. Finding a home for such specialized movies in Las Vegas remains a problem, said Tom Ortenberg, western division manager for Hemdale Pictures.
“I think Las Vegas is a great film town-it turns out great grosses and it has some great theaters,” he said. “For commercial fare, the Las Vegas moviegoing public is served royally. But for movies that need a little TLC …”
Here is an article in the San Diego Union dated 2/28/87:
The 940-seat Cinerama theater, showcase for Hollywood blockblusters for 25 years, will be demolished and replaced by a six- miniscreen complex, Pacific Theatres announced yesterday. The new theaters will be part of a $20 million, 230,000-square- foot redevelopment of the 1950s Belleview shopping center at 59th Street and University Avenue, south of San Diego State University, said Douglas Allred, the Belleview owner who is leasing the theater site to Pacific.
Only three weeks ago, Mann Theatres announced that it plans to close the 985-seat Loma theater in the Midway area so the property owner can redevelop the site into shops and restaurants. Pacific officials in Los Angeles could not be reached for comment, but the theater’s local managers said the Cinerama has been consistently successful with blockbusters such as “Amadeus,” the currently running “Platoon,” three of the four “Star Trek” films and “The Empire Strikes Back,” the second “Star Wars” movie that sold out every performance for six months in 1979 and 1980.
“It’s a shame to lose a big theater,” Allred said, “but we’re going to make a whole new property that we hope everybody will be proud of.” He said he still needs city approval of a development permit and signed leases from anchor tenants, including a supermarket and home improvement store. He hopes to begin construction by the end of the year.
The loss of the Cinerama and the Loma will leave only three large single-screen theaters locally: Cinema Grossmont at Grossmont Center in La Mesa, also owned by Pacific; and Cinema 21 and Valley Circle, both in Mission Valley and both owned by Mann.
Developed by the New England-based Lockwood and Gordon theater chain, the $500,000 Cinerama opened in November 1962 as San Diego’s first theater designed to show movies filmed in the “Cinerama” split- screen process. Early examples were “How the West Was Won” and “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.” It also was the first cinema built in a San Diego shopping center.
Three years later, Pacific acquired the theater along with the 986-seat, Cinerama-equipped Center theater in Mission Valley, which was converted to a triplex in 1971. “I hate to see the place go,” said Richard Koldoff, the semi- retired projectionist who operated the Cinerama cameras from 1962 to 1970, when they were removed.
Andy Friedenberg, director of the Cinema Society of San Diego, said, “Theater owners should be aware that their strength lies in their present big theaters with big sound that can’t be duplicated on a television screen. When I hear news like this, I think it’s going the wrong way.”
Here is a photo circa 1940s:
http://tinyurl.com/ycz8yoz
Apparently this museum has the old marquee:
http://tinyurl.com/ycu478k
Here is an interesting view fromn 1963. JFK Stadium is to the south. The drive-in is where Veterans Stadium was before it too was demolished. The Spectrum had not yet been built.
http://tinyurl.com/ya85epj
Here is a marquee photo:
http://tinyurl.com/yanbaut
Adios. Status should be changed to closed/demolished.
http://tinyurl.com/yeebu75
http://tinyurl.com/y97z7lj
This should be the back of the theater building:
http://tinyurl.com/yeqo98x
Here is part of a September 1988 article in the LA Times:
The neighborhood theater, with its low ticket prices and double features, appears to be going the way of newsreels and Flash Gordon serials. Revival houses and second-run theaters like the Fox Venice, the Criterion, the Rialto, the Vista, the Gordon and several others have closed their doors or changed their bookings to compete with places like the Cineplex Odeon theaters in Universal City.
But cheap tickets ($4) and double features still survive at the Aero Theater, a comfortable, mid-sized movie house located somewhat incongruously on Santa Monica’s trendy Montana Avenue. In an area where older businesses are razed every month, the Aero is preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary. “Basically, we are a neighborhood theater, and the people nearby are the ones who have supported us over the years,” said Joe Domenico, who has owned the Aero since 1978. “Some people around here have been coming for decades.”
Aircraft magnate Donald Douglas Jr. built the Aero in 1939. It opened in 1940 and served the general public and workers from the Douglas Aircraft plant (near the present-day Santa Monica Airport). When World War II arrived and employees were working around the clock, Douglas kept the Aero showing movies at all hours, so workers on all shifts could enjoy “Abbott and Costellos, Gene Autrys, all of that,” Domenico said. “It was a great morale-booster.”
After the war the Aero continued as the only movie house in the north end of Santa Monica, Domenico said. As television took its toll on the movie industry in the 1950s and ‘60s, the Aero found ways to survive. Fridays became teen nights, and the Aero became a meeting place for Westside teen-agers looking for weekend recreation.
Today the major threat to the Aero comes from changing economic conditions on Montana Avenue. Rent in the tony shopping district is between $4 and $4.50 a square foot, said Alexis Scharff, chairman of the Montana Merchants Committee. Others put it nearer to $5. That’s up from $3.50 six years ago. The increase has led to single storefronts' being renovated, carved up and reopened as tiny boutiques. Older tenants, like the Sweet Sixteen Grill, a neighborhood fixture since 1942, have disappeared. The Aero is awfully tempting.
“The landlord, I’m sure, has been barraged by offers to sell the property,” Domenico said. “We have rumors start sometimes. A couple of years ago people were coming in here-some with tears in their eyes-asking if it was going to be knocked down, destroyed and rebuilt as something else. Some people were very emotional.”
The proliferation of multiple-screen theaters might also pose a threat to the Aero. There are only seven movie screens in Santa Monica, but there are to be 22 by 1990. The Mann and Cineplex corporations are building four-screen theaters on the soon-to-be-renovated 3rd Street mall, and AMC Theaters is putting in seven at the corner of Arizona Avenue and 3rd Street.
Can the Aero survive? Domenico isn’t sure, but he’s hopeful. “Well, we might not be able to get new movies as quickly then,” he said. “We might be the last stop before they go to video.” At present the theater is doing well, Domenico said. The changes on Montana Avenue have brought in new patrons, he said, and attendance has grown steadily for eight years. It’s especially good when the theater manages to book double bills of recent hits like last winter’s “Broadcast News” and “Wall Street.”
Andy Lerner, a Santa Monica Canyon resident, was there recently to see “Presidio” and “Big Business.” He found the Aero more comfortable, convenient and inexpensive than the theaters in Westwood and West Los Angeles. “It’s nice to go into a theater that has a small-town feel to it,” Lerner said. “And you don’t have to go to a shopping mall and fight your way past yogurt stands to see a movie.”
Small-town is the term that comes up most often when talking to Aero patrons. Hollywood location managers apparently agree: the Aero has been seen in movies like “From 10 to Midnight” and “Three on a Match.” Most recently it doubled as a Cape Cod movie house in the Meg Tilly-Rob Lowe picture “Masquerade.”
Although the projection and sound systems are contemporary, not much else has changed at the Aero since 1940. The white Streamline Moderne facade remains the same, as do the marquee, the terrazzo walkway, the light fixtures and even the seats. The popcorn maker dates back to the ‘50s, as does a kitschy serve-yourself ice cream case. Lumpy, comfortable sofas line the lobby. In one corner an antique soft- drink machine still stands, but it hasn’t worked for years. The company stopped making replacement parts for it years ago.
Although there’s not a theater anywhere that still charges 10 or 12 cents admission, ticket prices at the Aero are about as low as they come, especially for a double feature: General admission is $4, and children and the elderly pay $2. The price draws people from all over Los Angeles and helped earned the Aero the title of “Best Neighborhood Theater” in Los Angeles magazine.
Domenico laments the passing of what he calls “a sleepy little street,” but he says he’ll keep the Aero open as long as he can. “Who knows what will happen?” Domenico said, shrugging. “Venerable places like the Brown Derby have been knocked down. When I first got here, there were six or seven service stations on Montana. Now, apparently, the one next door is leaving, and we’ll have one left. "That’s progress. But it’s also a shame.”
Here is part of a December 1988 article in the LA Times:
Since its opening in 1981, the Baldwin Hills Theater in Los Angeles has stood as a symbol of pride to its mostly black patrons and a reminder to the nearby Hollywood entertainment community that black neighborhoods, traditionally under-served by major chains, will support top quality theaters showing first-run films.
Now, however, the Baldwin — one of the nation’s few black-owned movie theaters — has quietly been put up for sale after a series of financial and legal setbacks that threatened the owners' dream of bringing more such theaters to the black community.
Although hit movies such as “The Color Purple,” “Purple Rain” and “School Daze,” drew sizable audiences to the theater complex at 3741 S. La Brea Ave., the lingering financial fallout from a bitter 1981 lawsuit and a costly lease arrangement proved to be too big a burden to shoulder, according to owners Ernest E. Simms, 40, and Nelson Bennett, 38. The theater has also been hurt by a lackluster 1988 film season and rising film rental costs.
“Ernest and myself have done everything that two people can possibly do to try to provide first-run quality product for the Baldwin Hills entertainment complex,” said Bennett, who worked his way up from movie usher to various theater management posts before becoming vice president of Royal Entertainment Inc., the concern that operates the Baldwin. “It has been increasingly difficult to do that… . We’re not the big boys on the block; we’re the new kids on the block and we’re independents.”
While there are a handful of black-owned theaters around the country, the Baldwin is the only such theater that shows first-run films, according to Bennett. And it has been the focus of intense interest from both the powerful community of Southern California theater owners as well as the largely black, middle class Baldwin Hills area that supported Simms' and Nelson’s efforts to renovate what was a dilapidated, 39-year-old movie house and turn it into a first-class facility.
“I support their attempt to become movie theater entrepreneurs,” said David B. Humdy, a Walt Disney Co. executive who is also president of the Black Media & Entertainment Assn., a Los Angeles-based organization of entertainment industry professionals. “When you are in a market where you are competing against the major studios, it’s very difficult. But we need black theaters, and we need places so that we can exhibit (black films). We (blacks) owned more theaters in the ‘30s and '40s than we own today."
Bennett and Simms say they are weighing several offers — including one from an unidentified black buyer — to purchase the theater. They say they hope to sell the complex in the next few months and start over at another location with new financial backers.
The decision to sell the Baldwin Theater came after a futile 18-month-long search for a lender willing to provide additional funds to help reduce debt at the three-screen, 970-seat movie house as well as finance their ambitious plan to acquire and manage theaters in other black neighborhoods. The theater’s problems began in 1981 when Simms and Bennett filed a suit against the Mann Theater chain and Warner Bros., complaining that they unfairly restrained trade by barring film distributors from playing a film at the Baldwin if Mann had booked the movie in one of its big Westwood theaters nine miles away. The suit was settled out of court in 1984. Baldwin now gets an equal crack at first-run films. But the lawsuit, Simms said, “cost us more than $500,000 in legal fees. It buried us in debt.”
Rising film rental fees and the lackluster films produced in the wake of the Hollywood writers strike have also hurt business. Simms would not disclose how much costs have risen but said that it would take at least three additional screens at the Baldwin to make the theater cost-effective. A greater variety of films playing at one site increases the likelihood that theaters will attract more moviegoers, he said.
Although investors expressed interest in helping Simms and Bennett expand to other sites, no one wanted to bail out the Baldwin after examining its books and lease arrangement. And it remains to be seen whether the pair can establish a successful new theater chain and theater consulting business in an industry increasingly dominated by a handful of large, corporate players.
“There’s no question there’s a market for good films written with black themes that would appeal to the black community,” said Bernard Anderson, managing partner of the Urban Affairs Partnership, a privately held urban development consulting firm in Philadelphia. “But I don’t see any market out there for management or consulting services to theater owners. The margin of profit on these places is very small, and most owners would think, `Why get somebody else to manage it when I can do it myself?‘” Only a year ago, Simms and Bennett reported doing record business at the Baldwin when, for the first time in its history, their movie house opened a black-oriented, big-studio picture on each of its three screens.
The owners did not disclose how much business was generated by the three films — Disney’s “Shoot to Kill,” Columbia’s “School Daze,” and Lorimar’s “Action Jackson.” But in a deposition taken in a 1987 lawsuit against the theater, Bennett estimated that the Baldwin Theater complex would earn total gross profit of more than $80,000 a month after it added a third theater in 1986.
Much of the money has been eaten up in legal fees, higher rental fees and a costly lease arrangement under which the landlord of the Baldwin Theater is paid a percentage of ticket sales, Simms said. Such lease arrangements were once rare, experts say, but they have become more common recently with the rise of smaller multiplex theater facilities, which take up less space but can generate more revenue than one big movie house.
“These guys have gone through the full gamut seeking out investors and venture capital firms … but they just haven’t been able to secure any interest in” an expansion deal that would allow them to hold on to the Baldwin, said Kenneth T. Lombard, senior vice president at ERC Capital Fund, a venture capital firm in Lynwood that helped finance the Baldwin when it first opened in 1981.
“It’s not like we have a wealth of resources out there available to us,” explained Simms, a soft-spoken entrepreneur who has a masters degree in business administration from Harvard. “We have to make our own way. And we’ve been told that this is the best way to do it — for the financial community to feel comfortable in giving us the kind of dollars we are talking about. The only major asset we both own, since we are not independently wealthy, is the theater.”
Here is a 1957 aerial view:
http://tinyurl.com/yd2scbf
Here is a 1980 aerial view:
http://tinyurl.com/ybcncrs
This was in Boxoffice on 8/1/53:
CARNEGIE, PA.-William H. Fox, 54, died July 27 as the result of injuries sustained when he fell down basement stairs in his home that day. Manager and auditor for the theater interests of Mrs. Louisa Herman, widow of the late Dr. C.E. Herman, Fox had supervised construction of the Greentree Drive-In on Noblestown Road between Crafton and Carnegie, which opened a number of weeks ago. He held a partnership interest in this enterprise with Mrs. Herman, Mrs. William Walker and Mrs. Harry Walker, widows of Carnegie and Crafton exhibitors.
I’m a procrastinator.
Here is an item in the August 1, 1953 edition of Boxoffice magazine:
NEW YORK-Police arrested a ring of youthful theatre bandits Wednesday whose members said they concentrated on houses showing 3-D pictures “because they take in more moneyâ€.
The holdups began June 12 with a $1,600 haul at the Sunnyside Theatre, Queens. On June 28, according to police charges, the robbers got $1,300 from the Bliss Theatre in Queens, on July 8 $800 from the Fortway Theatre in Brooklyn, and $400 from the Dover Theatre, Bronx, Monday July 27. In between theatre jobs, the bandits are alleged to have held up a number of taverns.
It’s doubtful. I think almost all theaters closed that weekend.
Some photos of the Cinderella were on the cover of Boxoffice in August 1953. Click on a photo to expand it.
http://tinyurl.com/ybblo68
I read that item too, Howard. They mention the “former 333 Theater” and also a fifteen year lease to Fisch’s Parking Places. I don’t think this theatre exists anymore.
Here is a part of a February 1968 article in the LA Times:
The theaters where girlie films are shown range from the moderate comforts of the Paris, next door to P.J.’s on Santa Monica, to drab downtown houses. In this case, drabness of surroundings does not equal blueness of films-all theaters are subject to the same laws and the ones with the grimmest décor show the cheapest, oldest and fuzziest films.
Cluny’s Movies, on Alvarado, shows what appear to be blown-up 8 mm. mail order films (made for home viewing) so that the girls look like they are doing their thing underwater. At least at the Cluny the price is right: $1.50 for a couple of hours of what is essentially a low-grade girlie magazine come to pseudo-life.
The Park, down the block, is 50 cents up the scale. It has what it cleverly calls its “Little GAL-lery-Last Six Rows on the Left for Ladies Only.†(Most theaters don’t cater to single ladies at all.) It was here that I saw Hot Bed, written by Big Daddy Epstein III. Other theaters on about this level include the Vista on Sunset, the Apollo Arts on Hollywood, the Monica, down from the Paris. In the dark, it’s hard to tell them apart.
From the LA Times on 5/16/66:
PASADENA-A disturbance involving more than 70 juveniles at a movie theater resulted in the closing of the theater Sunday evening. Police were called to the Washington Theater, 845 E. Washington Street, after the manager informed them that the juveniles were turning over cigaret machines, dumping ash trays and had started a fire in a wastebasket in the men’s room. There were no arrests.
Here is an article about the fire in January 1951:
http://tinyurl.com/yesr48w
210 Main is a park now. Status should be changed to closed/demolished.
This is part of an LA Times article in July 1987:
When Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights” premiered downtown at the 1931 opening of the Los Angeles Theater at 615 S. Broadway, even the theater lobby-trimmed in gilt and featuring a crystal fountain-sparkled like city lights. In the ‘30s, going to the movies meant entering a setting so elegant that the escapism on screen extended to the theater itself. The Los Angeles, designed by architect S. Charles Lee, 87, was fashioned after Versailles, with mirrors, marble columns and trompe l'oeil murals.
“It was a popular concept of the time,” Lee explained in an interview. “We made people with 20 cents to spend feel like they owned the palace.” On four consecutive Wednesdays beginning at 8 tonight at the Orpheum (842 S. Broadway), the Los Angeles Conservancy will offer that experience to modern filmgoers with “The Last Remaining Seats,” a series of classic films presented in four of the 10 grand old movie palaces that still operate downtown.
A six-block section of Broadway, containing 12 movie houses built between 1910 and 1932, is the only theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, said Gregg Davidson, assistant to the executive director of the conservancy. With the recent closures of two of those theaters, the Globe at 744 S. Broadway and the Tower at 802 S. Broadway, more downtown movie palaces have shut their doors in the last six months than in the last 55 years, Davidson said. Both theaters are being converted, the Tower into a dance club and the Globe into a swap meet. The conservancy hopes to encourage what Davidson calls “reversible conversions”-the Tower, he said, can be restored as a theater in the future, but the Globe has been gutted and can never be a theater on the same scale again.
Uncertainty about the future of the remaining theaters and a desire to reawaken public awareness to their existence fostered “The Last Remaining Seats.” The series echoes a similar program, “The Best Remaining Seats,” which was presented by the American Film Institute in the summer of 1979 and featured 10 vintage Southern California movie houses, including one in Santa Barbara.
Another concern of the conservancy, Davidson said, is that home video is luring away some of Broadway’s clientele. The movie houses now cater to a largely Latino audience, offering a mixed fare of Mexican features and action-oriented American movies. Six of the movie palaces downtown play Spanish-language films and two others show American movies with Spanish subtitles. But the recent influx of Spanish-language films on home video and the affordability of VCRs are depleting the audience, Davidson said.
But Bruce Corwin, president of Metropolitan Theaters, which owns and operates the movie houses on Broadway and donated the use of the Orpheum, Palace, United Artists and Los Angeles theaters for the conservancy evenings, emphasized that the theaters are far from being fading relics. “It’s not a deteriorating area at all,” Corwin said. “It’s an area that’s in constant flux and constant change… . When video becomes less of a toy, business will improve.”
“The Last Remaining Seats” opens at the Orpheum (842 S. Broadway) tonight with a screening of Buster Keaton’s silent comedy “Steamboat Bill Jr.” The theater was chosen because of its restored Wurlitzer organ, which can simulate more than 14,000 orchestral sounds. Gaylord Carter, an organist who played during the era of silent films, will provide the accompaniment. Also scheduled are “Billy Blazes, Esq.,” a Harold Lloyd short; vintage newsreels and a cartoon.
A live stage show and rare film clips of vaudeville acts will be the offering next Wednesday at the Palace (630 S. Broadway). Milt Larsen of the Magic Castle and Variety Arts Center will emcee. On July 29, “The Taming of the Shrew,” Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks' only movie together, is slated to screen at the United Artists (933 S. Broadway), the theater they helped finance. The UA was the only flagship theater built by a studio in the downtown area.
The series will conclude Aug. 5 at the Los Angeles Theater with a gala reception and a scheduled guest appearance by architect Lee following a screening of “Dames,” with musical numbers staged by Busby Berkeley. All programs begin at 8 p.m.; doors open at 7:15 p.m. Tickets may be purchased in advance by writing to the Los Angeles Conservancy, 849 S. Broadway, Suite M-22, Los Angeles 90014. Subscription tickets to all four shows are $35; individual tickets are $10 each and $12 at the door. Tickets to the closing-night reception are $10.
Here is a 1986 aerial view:
http://tinyurl.com/y8vbvkc
Good question.
This is from the Las Vegas Review-Journal on 3/13/91:
Triumph and loss. Conflict and conciliation. Suspense and intrigue. They’re the dramatic elements you’d find in a good movie. But you can find the same elements off-screen -playing now at a theater near you. Las Vegas' volatile movie theater scene has undergone some upheavals in recent weeks-some large, some small.
Late last month, a two-screen independent theater, the Torrey Pines Cinema, closed after less than a year of trying to compete with local first-run theaters operated by well-established circuits. By next week, the three-screen Mountain View Cinema- which shut its doors late last year-will reopen as a locally operated discount house.
What could be the most significant change of all, however, showed up at the Las Vegas Drive-in: the suspense thriller “The Silence of the Lambs,” which has been the nation’s top box-office attraction for four weeks running. The presence of a box-office hit at Las Vegas' only remaining drive-in theater might not seem at all unusual. But “Silence of the Lambs” is an Orion Pictures release. San Francisco-based Syufy Enterprises operates the Las Vegas Drive-in. And “Silence” is the first Orion release to play a Syufy theater in Las Vegas in more than five years.
Orion and Syufy officials became tangled in a protracted contract dispute after Syufy balked at playing Francis Ford Coppola’s 1984 drama “The Cotton Club.” In turn, Orion refused to license its pictures to Syufy theaters. In Las Vegas, that meant Orion releases played at theaters operated by rival United Artists, which bought the locally owned Roberts chain in August 1987. Until now.
While “Silence of the Lambs” continues to play at UA’s Paradise 6 and the UA-affiliated Gold Coast Twin, its presence at the drive-in signals a peace treaty in the longtime Orion-Syufy war. “I guess there comes a time when whatever it is that makes people not do business together goes by the wayside, and you do business,” said Syufy general manager Jack Myhill in a telephone interview from the company’s California headquarters. “It’s possible we’ll play some of their pictures in Las Vegas. We’re hopeful our relationship is going to be rebuilt.”
That could happen as soon as next month, when Orion is scheduled to release “F/X 2,” but may be unable to book it at the Gold Coast if “Silence” and Kevin Costner’s Oscar favorite “Dances With Wolves” continue their strong runs. “These things happen-wars don’t last forever,” said UA’s Charles Boeckman, who formerly booked the chain’s Las Vegas theaters. “Other companies have been out with other exhibitors for a long time and they come back.”
Clouding the picture further is the fact that UA’s three Las Vegas theaters are up for sale. Only the Paradise 6 shows first-run movies on a consistent basis; the Sunrise 7 and Cinema 8 are both discount houses. (UA also books the Gold Coast Hotel-Casino’s two-screen theater, which shows first-run features.) But the Syufy-Orion truce “isn’t even a criterion” in the decision to put the theaters on the market, said Robert Vallone, general manager for UA’s Western theaters. UA’s top management has “decided that a lot of states don’t fit into their core,” Vallone said. “For years, we were basically a coastal company- California, Florida, all the Eastern Seaboard.” Selling the Las Vegas theaters is part of a “back to basics” move, he commented.
Boeckman said that speculation surrounding a Syufy-Orion truce had been circulating for “over a year.” But Orion’s box-office success with its two recent hits “might have speeded things up, who knows.” The hit status of Orion’s “Dances With Wolves” and “Silence of the Lambs” at the Gold Coast also affected the Torrey Pines Cinemas, which picked up two other first-run Orion releases, Woody Allen’s Oscar-nominated “Alice” and the science fiction action thriller “Eve of Destruction,” before it closed Feb. 28.
The Torrey Pines filed for reorganization Feb. 8 under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act and remained open while showing “Alice” and “Eve of Destruction.” According to court documents, Torrey Pines operator Ted Pantazis owes more than $200,000-including, his landlord alleges, almost $69,000 in rent for the theater, located in the West Sahara Town Center at Sahara Avenue and Torrey Pines Drive.
On Feb. 25, however, the Torrey Pines filed a motion to dismiss the bankruptcy case, stating Pantazis wanted to file an anti-trust case against various movie distributors and could not do so unless the bankruptcy filing was dismissed. According to the motion filed by Pantazis attorney Eleissa C. Lavelle, the Torrey Pines had doubled the gross revenues of previous months with its first-run showing of “Alice.”
“The greatest impediment to the success of the (Torrey Pines) … has been the inability … to obtain quality first-run films from film distributors, which (Pantazis) believes "may be the result of illegal agreements with (Pantazis') only competition in this market,” Lavelle’s motion states.
The “only competition” referred to is Syufy, which owns and operates 32 screens at the Cinedome 6, Redrock 11, Century 12 and three-screen Parkway walk-in theaters, as well as the four-screen Las Vegas Drive-in. Syufy has been the target of numerous lawsuits, including a 1986 Justice Department suit alleging the chain has conspired to monopolize the Las Vegas movie market by buying out its competitors, which previously operated the Redrock, Parkway, Fox Charleston and Cine Boulevard theaters. (The Fox Charleston was demolished and the Cine Boulevard closed in 1989, after six unsuccessful months as a discount theater.)
Booking the critically acclaimed “Alice” in January signaled a breakthrough for the Torrey Pines, according to the theater’s bankruptcy affidavit, “and it was anticipated following that breakthrough, that additional quality, first-run films would be forthcoming.” But the bankruptcy petition, filed to give the Torrey Pines “sufficient time to reorganize its debts, in anticipation of its receipt of the first-run movies over the next several months” instead “has had an unexpected, unforeseeable adverse effect, in that the film distributors have now completely refused to allocate any additional films” to the Torrey Pines, the motion alleges.
Lavelle declined to comment on the motion because it is scheduled to be heard March 26 in Bankruptcy Court. Some industry observers, however, attributed the Torrey Pines Cinemas' problem to its small size, location and lack of a track record in drawing audiences.
One of the theater’s first attractions was a first-run showing of “Gremlins 2: The New Batch,” which “performed poorly” at the Torrey Pines, said a distribution official for Warner Bros., which released the movie, who asked not to be quoted by name. The movie “did much better” across town at the Syufy-operated Century Desert 12, he said. Even box-office returns on “Alice,” which court documents stated had doubled the theater’s grosses, were “awful,” said Boeckman. “I don’t have the Vegas (box-office) charts, but I know the gross was low. I compared it to the last Woody Allen picture, which I think was `Crimes and Misdemeanors,‘ which I think did 10 times better” at the Gold Coast.
The Torrey Pines may have had a promising Spring Valley location, “but it’s very difficult today to operate a theater with two or three screens,” said Syufy’s Myhill. The Torrey Pines “should never have been built,” said Don Lesh, former operator of the Huntridge Theater who will be running the Mountain View Cinema when it reopens as a bargain house. “It’s a very nice theater, but what do you do with the damn thing?” Its two screens provided inadequate competition for Syufy’s six-screen Cinedome and 11-screen Redrock in western Las Vegas, he said.
The Justice Department’s 1986 suit was one of the few antitrust cases pursued during the Reagan Administration, but it lost the case in February 1989, when U.S. District Judge William Orrick of San Francisco ruled in Syufy’s favor with a ground-breaking opinion that cited recent entertainment breakthroughs including home video and cable television. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Orrick’s decision in May 1990. The Solicitor General declined to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last month in a related case, U.S. District Judge Irving Hill granted Syufy a summary judgment, dismissing monopoly charges in a lawsuit the Roberts Co. filed in 1984, when the group operated the Mountain View and Huntridge theaters. (Roberts subsequently built the Paradise and Sunrise and acquired the Cinema 8 from another theater operator before selling out to UA.) Syufy’s legal victories may signal a tough road ahead for the Torrey Pines, said one observer who asked not to be quoted by name. “So the guy’s going to sue,” he said. “If the Justice Department can’t beat Syufy, then how can he?”
The Syufy case “established some very good law from their point of view,” said Dallas attorney Edwin Tobolowsky, whom Pantazis consulted regarding possible legal action. Tobolowsky has “represented a lot of motion picture exhibitors, independent theater operators who have had difficulty in obtaining first-run pictures,” he said during a telephone interview from Dallas.
On behalf of the Torrey Pines, Tobolowsky “wrote letters to all the major studios asking for the right to license movies free of any bids,” Tobolowsky said. But the studios declined, contending that the Torrey Pines drew the same audience as Syufy’s western theaters and would have to compete with the chain-operated theaters for the right to show movies.
“The Torrey Pines was just located too close to the others as far as the distributors were concerned,” Tobolowsky said. “For him to be successful, he would have had to have a steady stream of first-run movies. If you play first-run one week and not the next week, people don’t really understand what you’re playing. Moviegoing is, to some extent, a matter of habit.”
In Las Vegas, that moviegoing habit is, by and large, restricted to mainstream big-studio releases. The Torrey Pines, on occasion, gave moviegoers a chance to see “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams” and catch the Oscar-winning Italian comedy-drama “Cinema Paradiso” after its brief run at Syufy’s Parkway. Finding a home for such specialized movies in Las Vegas remains a problem, said Tom Ortenberg, western division manager for Hemdale Pictures.
“I think Las Vegas is a great film town-it turns out great grosses and it has some great theaters,” he said. “For commercial fare, the Las Vegas moviegoing public is served royally. But for movies that need a little TLC …”
Here is an article in the San Diego Union dated 2/28/87:
The 940-seat Cinerama theater, showcase for Hollywood blockblusters for 25 years, will be demolished and replaced by a six- miniscreen complex, Pacific Theatres announced yesterday. The new theaters will be part of a $20 million, 230,000-square- foot redevelopment of the 1950s Belleview shopping center at 59th Street and University Avenue, south of San Diego State University, said Douglas Allred, the Belleview owner who is leasing the theater site to Pacific.
Only three weeks ago, Mann Theatres announced that it plans to close the 985-seat Loma theater in the Midway area so the property owner can redevelop the site into shops and restaurants. Pacific officials in Los Angeles could not be reached for comment, but the theater’s local managers said the Cinerama has been consistently successful with blockbusters such as “Amadeus,” the currently running “Platoon,” three of the four “Star Trek” films and “The Empire Strikes Back,” the second “Star Wars” movie that sold out every performance for six months in 1979 and 1980.
“It’s a shame to lose a big theater,” Allred said, “but we’re going to make a whole new property that we hope everybody will be proud of.” He said he still needs city approval of a development permit and signed leases from anchor tenants, including a supermarket and home improvement store. He hopes to begin construction by the end of the year.
The loss of the Cinerama and the Loma will leave only three large single-screen theaters locally: Cinema Grossmont at Grossmont Center in La Mesa, also owned by Pacific; and Cinema 21 and Valley Circle, both in Mission Valley and both owned by Mann.
Developed by the New England-based Lockwood and Gordon theater chain, the $500,000 Cinerama opened in November 1962 as San Diego’s first theater designed to show movies filmed in the “Cinerama” split- screen process. Early examples were “How the West Was Won” and “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.” It also was the first cinema built in a San Diego shopping center.
Three years later, Pacific acquired the theater along with the 986-seat, Cinerama-equipped Center theater in Mission Valley, which was converted to a triplex in 1971. “I hate to see the place go,” said Richard Koldoff, the semi- retired projectionist who operated the Cinerama cameras from 1962 to 1970, when they were removed.
Andy Friedenberg, director of the Cinema Society of San Diego, said, “Theater owners should be aware that their strength lies in their present big theaters with big sound that can’t be duplicated on a television screen. When I hear news like this, I think it’s going the wrong way.”