Mann Rossmoor Theatre
12535 Seal Beach Boulevard,
Seal Beach,
CA
90740
12535 Seal Beach Boulevard,
Seal Beach,
CA
90740
No one has favorited this theater yet
Additional Info
Previously operated by: Fox West Coast Theatres, Mann Theatres
Firms: Burke, Kober, Nicolais & Archuleta
Functions: Bank
Previous Names: Fox Rossmoor Theatre
Nearby Theaters
The Fox Theatre was opened on July 15, 1964 with a ‘special preview’. It had seating for 838. The following day it opened to the public with James Darren in “For Those Who Think Young”. On May 28, 1976 it became a 3-screen theatre. It was closed on November 1, 1979. It was converted into a bank in 1980.
Contributed by
William Gabel
Want to be emailed when a new comment is posted about this theater?
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater.
Recent comments (view all 16 comments)
Here is a March 1977 ad:
http://tinyurl.com/y9mpamz
In 1988, this became the Rossmoor Super Saver 7 Cinemas, with ticket prices always a buck or two, until it was torn down in 2002.
So the bank replaced the theater after it was demolished?
I went to this theatre as a kind in the 1990s when it was the Rossmoor Super Saver. My family used to save money by going to see movies on the cheap. This was always my favorite theatre when I was a kid because the lobby was full of crazy neon lights and had a very strange tunnel that you walked through to your theatre. I used to pretend I was in a space ship when i was a kid!
I remember the last film I saw there was “Robin Hood: Men in Tights”!
And, yes, the theatre is demolished. The bank is a new building. Go here for the fact sheet for the new Shops at Rossmoor that they built after they tore down the old shopping cetner. View link
Found this photo for everyone to enjoy: View link
Just to clear a few things up and add some more detail… I don’t recall this building being torn down when the theater closed. I am pretty sure they simply modified the long and slender building to accommodate its new tenant, Town & Country Bank. These days, that building houses the Farmers & Merchants Bank, and if you drive by, that big green sign out on Seal Beach Boulevard is what used to be the street marquee for the theater. Also, a couple posts here have mentioned that this theater turned into the Super Saver Cinemas 7 theater. This is incorrect. The Super Saver (which I co-managed during its first two years) replaced a long-vacant space that used to be a furniture store called Larry’s Maple Shop. I may post more about that theater on its own page, but I just wanted to make it clear that these were two entirely different theaters. Sadly, the Super Saver theater went away in 2002, but not before I managed to snag an exit sign and a piece of one of the screens before the final demolition. :–)
Both the Boxoffice article that Tinseltoes linked to and this page of the October, 1964, issue of International Projectionist attribute the design of the Fox Rossmoor Theatre to the firm of Burke, Kober & Nicolais. However, Millard Archuleta joined the firm in 1961, so the design should probably be attributed to Burke, Kober, Nicolais & Archuleta. Archuleta was probably left off the list because the original firm had begun designing the shopping center in which the theater was located four years before the theater itself was built.
Deadchet is totally correct on his post that the Rossmoor Fox was not torn down but renovated to house a bank — it is currently the Farmers & Merchants Bank building. The SuperSaver Cinema was a different building in the shopping center slightly to the northwest.
Despite its Seal Beach Boulevard address, this theater is best viewed in Google’s street view from around 3401 St. Cloud Drive, which runs along the south side of the shopping center.
The view from St. Cloud currently shows the building with its exposed, white concrete columns and beams and the arched entrance (partly seen in the International Projectionist photo I linked to earlier) and the exposed masonry panels between the columns still visible, but if you move street view onto the driveway of the shopping center in front of the building you get a more recent view in which you can see the results of a remodeling which mostly covered up these original features and plastered everything.
It’s not an entirely happy change, to my eye. The next time Google’s camera car passes along St. Cloud, the old view of the building will vanish, so see it while you may.