Crest Theatre
102-108 Freeman Street,
Oceanside,
CA
92054
102-108 Freeman Street,
Oceanside,
CA
92054
2 people
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Previously operated by: Pussycat Theatres
Functions: Church
Styles: Streamline Moderne
Nearby Theaters
The Crest Theatre was constructed in 1950 and was built for Erwin and Bertha Sklar (Erwin Sklar later became Mayor of Oceanside). It opened around March 1951 and remained in the ownership of the Sklar’s until the mid-1960’s when it was sold to a property developer who purchased other theatres in Oceanside.
The Crest Theatre was operated by Pussycat Theatres, and continued as a movie theatre into at least the late-1980’s. It is now used as a church (Grace Church) but movies can still be screened, as in summer of 2004, when Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” had screenings.
Contributed by
KenRoe
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Recent comments (view all 5 comments)
I maintained the projection and sound equipment in this house starting in the early ‘80s when it was purchased by Walnut Properties (along with the Palomar, Star and Towne). It was a very nice house. It ran as a spanish speaking house for a while.
There are some current photos of the Crest Theater at this site:
http://www.cinematour.com/tour/us/2670.html
There’s a cover article in today’s San Diego Reader, detailing the histories of all the downtown theaters once run by Vince Miranda, at one time co-owner of California’s Pussycat Theatre chain. This is one of the theaters chronicled in the piece, which is built from a series of email interviews with Cinema Treasures contribs Dan Whitehead and Tim David (David is Miranda’s godson). Unfortunately, the online version doesn’t have any of the great photos and graphics seen in the printed version – I wrote the piece and will probably put scans of the graphics on my own webpage before much longer, after the next issue comes out. Here’s a link to the article on the Reader site:
View link
This is our second major feature on southern CA theaters in about a year (the other, “Field Of Screens,” is just on San Diego drive-ins and can be found on the Reader site with the search bar). If anyone here likes the article(s) and would like to encourage the publisher to greenlight more, feel free to leave your thoughts about the piece in the comment section after article. The paper really pays attention to reader comments!
http://www.sdreader.com/ed/cover/
Featured on 9/13/79 – “Malibu High” and “Best Friends”.
They had a surf film festival at the Crest in November 2008:
http://tinyurl.com/ybux7mn