Roxy Theatre

This house didn’t become the Savoy until sometime in the 1940s. The Savoy Theatre that got the Wurlitzer organ in 1923 was a different house, at 3rd Avenue and C Street. It was a legitimate house for most of its history, but it was on the Pantages vaudeville circuit for a while, which is probably when the organ was installed.

It’s actually Greystone the Steakhouse. My misteak. Here are some recent photos:
http://tinyurl.com/32824j
http://tinyurl.com/3ybt8z
http://tinyurl.com/3bwxqu

There’s a cover article in today’s San Diego Reader, detailing the histories of all the downtown theaters once run by Vince Miranda, at one time co-owner of California’s Pussycat Theatre chain. This is one of the theaters chronicled in the piece, which is built from a series of email interviews with Cinema Treasures contribs Dan Whitehead and Tim David (David is Miranda’s godson). Unfortunately, the online version doesn’t have any of the great photos and graphics seen in the printed version – I wrote the piece and will probably put scans of the graphics on my own webpage before much longer, after the next issue comes out. Here’s a link to the article on the Reader site:

View link

This is our second major feature on southern CA theaters in about a year (the other, “Field Of Screens,” is just on San Diego drive-ins and can be found on the Reader site with the search bar). If anyone here likes the article(s) and would like to encourage the publisher to greenlight more, feel free to leave your thoughts about the piece in the comment section after article. The paper really pays attention to reader comments!
http://www.sdreader.com/ed/cover/

Much appreciated, good sir. Will have some fun rooting through those references. I can certainly appreciate your dissatisfaction with the current scene as it runs pretty deep with me, too. You might pick up on some of that in my Loma Theater post, among others.

CinemaTreasures is a wonderful site, but I have some difficulty with certain San Diego theaters, some of which, like Landmark Hillcrest Cinema, may never have had an entry. The former Guild, a block away on 5th did, but nothing for the Hillcrest. I was there last night to see “An Inconvenient Truth” – don’t miss it, BTW – so I guess I’ll have to contact my friend, regional manager Chris Principio, and see if he can get something going…

Again, thx, DanW!!!

Thx, DanW. When I listed Cass St. in my Google search, the other Roxy popped right up. I posted there yesterday. Hope I can eventually put up a link to that photo of colorful murals on the north wall.

In trying to locate a few other theaters (including an unsuccessful one for the Fox downtown), I spotted your posts (and replies) for a few theaters. It’s refreshing to know that San Diego has someone around like you. Take that as a compliment. Today I’m having difficulty finding the Landmark Hillcrest Cinema. I swear, east coast venues are so much easier to locate.

I wish I could help you there, but I can’t. Sorry. I left San Diego in 2000 and am now completely out of touch. I haven’t heard the Roxy in Pacific Beach mentioned, except for here, in decades and didn’t even remember that it was in Pacific Beach. In 1972 I was a rookie projectionist at the old Cabrillo Theatre which used to be at Horton Plaza (the real Horton Plaza) on Plaza Street (which no longer exists) and we cross plugged for the Roxy (not important, just a little ‘70s San Diego trivia).

Dear Broklyn Jim
You have the wrong theatre. This theatre was in 5th Avenue in downtown, just a couple doors South of “G” Street. The Roxy you’re remembering was in one of the beach towns but I can’t remember if it was Mission or Pacific Beach.

I remember the Cass St. Roxy in Pacific Beach. It should have its own entry on Cinema Treasures.

It was the first theater I encountered when I moved here in 1978. What was most memorable about this old beach theater was the 4 colorful murals that adorned the north side wall: W.C. Fields, Marilyn Monroe, and two others. I have a photo of it from about 1980, prior to demoltion, that I’ll try to post once I find it, unless someone puts up a link before then…

I was working for Walnut Properties (aka Pussycat Theatres) when they bought this theatre. At that time it was called the Savoy and had been closed for a long time. We changed the name to the Bijou. I installed all of the projection equipment as the theatre had been completely stripped. I was intimately connected with the following downtown theatres from November of 1972 through April of 1994: Plaza, Cabrillo, Balboa, Off-Broadway, Pussycat, Aztec, Casino and Bijou (which, as I say, was known as the Savoy when Walnut bought it and had been many other names over the years). All these theatres closed one by one and I removed the projection equipment from many of them. Ah, those were the days.

From the photo, this first opened as the Rivoli, then went through a series of name changes.