Southgate Indoor Outdoor Theater
7700 Stockton Boulevard,
Sacramento,
CA
95823
7700 Stockton Boulevard,
Sacramento,
CA
95823
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Additional Info
Previously operated by: United Artists Theater Circuit Inc.
Architects: George K. Raad
Firms: George Raad & Associates
Previous Names: Southgate Auto Movies
Nearby Theaters
Southgate Auto Movies was both an indoor single screen and the outdoor drive-in. It opened on September 4, 1964 with Doris Day in “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” & Debbie Reynolds in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”. It was closed in 1979.
Contributed by
Bud Kress
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Recent comments (view all 5 comments)
During the early days of drive-ins, combination indoor-outdoor theaters were fairly common in regions where winters are harsh. I was a bit surprised to hear that there had been such a theater in palmy Sacramento until I remembered the winter tule fogs that often plague the Central Valley. There were probably many nights when the outdoor screen would have been hard to see even from the front rows, and even assuming that the image from the projector could have reached the screen without fading and blurring.
The Southgate Indoor-Outdoor Theatre is one of several drive-ins featured on this page at Historic Aerials. The United Artists operation opened in 1964 and closed in 1979, according to the author of the caption of the aerial view taken during the early stage of construction. There is now a discount department store on the site.
This opened on September 4th, 1964. Grand opening ad posted.
https://www.genealogybank.com/nbshare/AC01110225224715029151557005204
Opened with “Please don’t the daises” and “The unsinkable Molly Brown”.
The indoor theatre, in its last days, showed Mexican movies, but by around 1976 it was shuttered. The drive in, however, did show triple features on a seasonable basis until towards the end of the ‘70s when they showed more family-oriented fare (Disney, for example) before closing for good around September, 1979 (a number of drive-ins in the Sacramento area also closed, such as the Starlite and Fruitridge).
But this theatre’s closing was not the end of the story. The theatre’s owner, United Artists Theatres, continued to own the site for many years after its demolition. They had intended to build a new indoor plex, but it was not to be. A warehouse was eventually built on a large chunk of the site, while the back where the drive in screen was became a mini-arcade. Both eventually closed. Today another swap meet warehouse stands on the former site.
Rip Doris Day!! 😣