Mann Rossmoor Theatre
12535 Seal Beach Boulevard,
Seal Beach,
CA
90740
12535 Seal Beach Boulevard,
Seal Beach,
CA
90740
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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.
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.
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.
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. :–)
Found this photo for everyone to enjoy: View link
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
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”!
So the bank replaced the theater after it was demolished?
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.
Here is a March 1977 ad:
http://tinyurl.com/y9mpamz
“Crossed Swords” was playing at the Rossmoor in March 1978, according to this LA Times ad. Click on the ad for a better view.
http://tinyurl.com/d3j9p9
The Fox Rossmoor Theatre was scheduled for a July 15, 1964, opening, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine issue of July 13 that year. It opened as a deluxe, single-screen house with 838 seats.
It looks like church services are also held in the theater building:
http://tinyurl.com/6dsh57
Here is a 1970 ad from the LA Times:
http://tinyurl.com/23v64j
I grew up walking distance from this theatre (when it was called the Fox), and I have some very specific memories of going there in the 70’s. Movies I can remember seeing there: “The Wizard Of Oz”, “Batman: The Movie” (I got scared during one scene and ran out… I think it was the sharks), some Dick Van Dyke movie (the title escapes me), “Oh God” (on a rainy day with my parents), and some latter day Jerry Lewis film. Inside, I seem to remember a lot of light bulbs. Oh, and the chocolate drops (the kind in the foil/cardboard tubes) were my favortite treat there. I only recall attending when it was a quad venue, but I do remember the days of seeing single movie titles on the big marquee on the street (“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” & “All The President’s Men”). I wish I could find some pictures of this theater, as it was the movie house of my youth. :–)
I attended this theatre frequently as a child. It was known as the Fox then, and was a stand-alone shopping center theatre. I remember the exterior walls were clad in a pebbly texture which was so common in those days.
At first, Rossmoor was a separate community from Seal Beach, but was later annexed, thus Seal Beach instantly had two theatres—the Fox, and the 1940s era BAY downtown (still in operation).
I particularly remember seeing a double feature of “101 Dalmatians” and a Disney live action B-feature, “Hang Your Hat on the Wind.”
When we moved from Seal Beach in 1973, the Fox was still a single screener, but I’m told that under Mann Theatres it was quadded (and very cramped). I drove by it a few years ago, and it had been turned into a bank.