New Century Theater

In the early 1950’s I heard the local evening news discuss the latest thriller playing at the Larkin. The movie Diabolique was a French Film with subtitles that had the city talking. One Sunday afternoon we went to see the black & white movie which had some well thoughtout scenes that I will never forget. I left a nightlight on for a week. It played at the Larkin for months. Decades later I happen to see it playing on TV but some scenes had been cut and I think it was given a different name. The Larkin was a vogue theater for its time but like many of San Francisco fine theaters gave way to television.

It has been done.

robboehm: There were actually two movie houses called the Elite in San Francisco around 1916. The one that isn’t listed here was on Market Street opposite Seventh Street. The other was the house in Presidio Heights that is now called the Vogue. Our page for the Vogue is currently missing the aka.

Not about the New Century but other SF porno venues that are not listed in Cinema Treasures. I have addresses if anyone is interested, Peekarama, Turk St.Follies, Copenhagen, Gayety, Mini Adult. Penthouse, Pink Cat, Aquarius, Film Festival Theater. These are all from the mid-70’s.

A document prepared for the NRHP says that this theater was designed by architect William Knowles. This was probably William F. Knowles, who practiced in San Francisco early in the 20th century, but as the document doesn’t specify, I suppose there is a slight possibility that it refers to the much younger William K. Knowles as the architect of a later remodeling.

The document, which is a bit ambiguous, appears to indicate that there was a theater at this location as early as 1914, that the Larkin Theatre operated as a movie house from 1920 to 1962, and that it began operating as the Century Theatre in 1980. It doesn’t offer any clues as to what went on between 1962 and 1980. A document about the Uptown Tenderloin Historic District prepared for the NRHP mentions the Larkin as a live theater that was in operation by 1915.

Blurb in the LA Times, dated 3/3/78:

The Mitchell Brothers, Artie & Jim, will give the San Francisco Larkin Theater six months to fare well as a straight movie house, with foreign classics and short experimental films slated on the bill of fare. Otherwise, the former porno house will “go gay hardcore”.

My photograph of the CENTURY View link

A while after it had opened in New York in August of 1947, Vittorio De Sica’s film “Shoe Shine” played at the Larkin for eight weeks. That shattering neo-realist movie about the aftermath of World War II and life in a boys' prison was distributed at the time by Lopert Films, Inc.