Here is a 1959 aerial photo. At that time Fontana was more agricultural than commercial, judging by the adjacent properties: http://tinyurl.com/yctnbas
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.
The Cherry Pass Drive-In was advertised in the LA Times from June 1951 to March 1967.
Here is a 1959 aerial photo. At that time Fontana was more agricultural than commercial, judging by the adjacent properties:
http://tinyurl.com/yctnbas
This should work:
http://tinyurl.com/y9l78gk
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