Warner Huntington Park

Reopened by Pacific Theatres showing Spanish-language movies on April 30th, 1978. Grand opening ad posted.

Blink Fitness' local manager, first name Edgar, is generally welcoming of people interested to have a look around the interior of the building, including taking photos.

The Warner is now the home of Blink Fitness, a gym. Most of the wall and ceiling decor in lobby and auditorium is intact, and even nicely restored. Some sort of piping has been suspended from the ceiling, which prevents a full view of it from any given spot on the ground floor, but there’s a good view of the ceiling from the former balcony. The locker rooms are in the former stage area.

The floors have been leveled, of course, including that of the balcony which is now two terraces. It looks like they were just built over, though, rather than ripped out. The mezzanine lounge has somewhat more alteration, but its ceiling is still partly visible. It looks like the projection booth is still there, too, but closed off.

I never went to this theater but if it was like the Warner Beverly it would have had an ornate lounge and rest rooms in the basement, but I can’t find any photos of them, so I don’t know what they are being used for (if they exist.) The terrazzo out front looks pretty good, as does the ornate soffit of the marquee. The box office is gone.

While this project probably increased to cost of any future plans to return the building to theatrical use, it could have been way worse. The building was not gutted, and most of the Art Deco detailing is intact. I don’t know how the gym management feels about people coming in just to look at it, but maybe somebody who can get to Huntington Park can talk to someone there about it. They obviously did put a lot of thought into their adaptive reuse, and I would think they might like to show it off a bit to members of the non-exercising general public.

Google has lots of interior photos (you can move around in them just like in stret views.)

City of Huntington Park Historic Preservation Commission meeting 5 pm Tuesday, December 16 — Be there to support the Warner. The owner wants to remove the seats and level the floor in preparation for retail use of the theatre. The meeting, at City Hall, will consider the owner’s request for the permit required to do this work. See the Friends of the Warner Facebook page for updates: https://www.facebook.com/FriendsoftheWarner

The blog posts on my projectionist stint (in case the link doesn’t for folks) is below:

View link

HTH

Please ignore. Stupidly removed myself from email notification. This is to put myself back on ;–)

Great b/w shot, Chuck1231. Over the weekend, I was down there and took these. Thanks.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who remembers this beautiful lady fondly.

I’ve kicked around the idea the last couple of years of somehow buying the theater and showing classic films…..in similar fashion to the Bay Theater down in Seal Beach.

If only I didn’t already owe so much on my college loans.

who owns this theatrical geme? anyone know?

Growing up (during my Junior and High School days) in rival South Gate, I regularly came to Huntington Park to take in the movies at any of the three theaters that were so closely located on Pacific blvd. SG only had its drive-in and a small theater on Tweedy compared to HP’s better commercial area. Later, I worked there as a part-time projectionist back in the mid-70’s (I was in jr. college while my brother worked there full-time). Owned by an Armenian-American business man who also owned some other theaters (one of them might have been the Warners San Pedro). I have some fond memories of this place. When I was first there, it ran spanish-speaking or -dubbed movies. And, it had a weekly amateur night on their stage (the projectionists were then re-deployed to do the audio/microphone/spotlight support)—some of the singers were surprisingly good.

Later, the owner switched the content to popular U.S. movie releases and re-releases. It was an independent, but could, from time-to-time, get some first-run movies. My favorite of those was probably Eastwood’s now recognized early great, The Outlaw Josey Wales. Heck, there were times I would go to the distributors and pick-up/return the reel cans! The two longest playing films there (during my time) were Jaws (6 weeks) and The Exorcist (4 weeks), both in re-release. They were there so long, the projectionist didn’t need to watch the film cues for the changeovers. We could do it just by listening to the dialog (they played so long).

It also had roof-access from the projectionist booth. And that area served as the best location to view the annual Huntington Park Christmas Lane parade come each December. I left before the twin-screen renovation. I’ve been to and seen the Wiltern, San Pedro, Pantages, and other art-deco designed theaters, and the Huntington Park Warner (when it was in good shape) compared very favorably as a grand lady of movie theaters. I hope someone restores her to her previous glory.

replicmike, it all depends on how many screens in the complex. At this theatre one man could run both booths, but over at CityWalk before the Imax room it took two projectionists to run. And at some Pacific Drive-In locations that were nearby. They had one projectionist run both theatres, Studio Drive-In and Centinela Drive-In. Over in Glendale, Pacific had one man running the Roxy and Regency plus Mann’s Alex Theatre. It’s all in scheduling start times and timers.

What’s your thought on the way projection booths are today? Looks like they need only one projectionest for their multi-flexs

Wiltern was my favorite Warner theatre. You must have been a manager working in their theatres.