San Pablo Showcase

The building is now demolished as most of the shopping center is being redeveloped as residential. I don’t believe it was ever a Jerry Lewis Cinema, though. There was, however a Jerry Lewis Cinema in El Cerrito in the Safeway shopping center at San Pablo Ave and Moeser Lane briefly during the 70’s.

I have fond memories of the San Pablo Twin. I saw Meatballs, Private School & Flashdance here. Business dropped when Hilltop Cinemas opened & the final nail in the coffin was Century 9 opening in Pinole. The theater became 2 cheap clothing stores, I think one was called Foxy 9 & I can’t remember what the other was. Anyway, it’s all gone & became a townhouse development.

This house was originally called the Showcase Cinemas I and II, and was opened by Robert Lippert’s Transcontinental Theatres in May, 1970. As described in Boxoffice of June 1, each auditorium had 400 seats, and to maintain proper decorum, nobody under 18 would be admitted to the theater after 6:00 PM unless accompanied by an adult.

Boxoffice of September 21 that same year gave the seating capacity of the house as 900. Another item in Boxoffice of April 12, 1971, dropped the seating capacity to 700. At least these conflicting reports average out to the 800 given by the June, 1970, item.

As Georob noted in a comment above, this house was never a Jerry Lewis operation. However, by 1974 it was being operated by Chuck Boening who, according to Boxoffice of February 4 that year, had operated the Jerry Lewis Cinema in El Cerrito for nine months before closing it the previous June. The Jerry Lewis Cinema had opened in 1972, and was located at 10624 San Pablo Avenue, El Cerrito.

This list of theaters operated by Robert Lippert includes seven bearing the name Showcase. I don’t think any of them were ever operated by Showcase Cinemas, Sumner Redstone’s company, which used the name for many theaters in the eastern United States.