New Beverly Cinema

Joe Vogel on January 19, 2010 at 5:35 am

For a long time I’ve had a vague memory of having attended a movie at a twin theater on Beverly Boulevard in the early 1960s, and of having read an article about the opening of said theater in the Los Angeles Times some time before that.

I was pretty sure it was the theater that became the New Beverly, but nobody posting on this page ever mentioned anything about such a twin here, and the theater’s web site said nothing, so I didn’t comment (for several years I also had a very vivid memory, which turned out to be false, of there having been an Admiral Theatre on Main Street in downtown Los Angeles, so that embarrassing experience made me a bit gun shy.)

Now, I have found confirmation of the existence of this twin! Boxoffice of October 19, 1959, has an article with pictures of the very theater I remember, and it was indeed this one. Capri and Riviera were not sequential names for this theater, but the names of the two auditoriums of the twin opened at this address by Robert Lippert in the late 1950s.

The Capri and Riviera Theatres had to have been the first twin opened in the city of Los Angeles, and the first in Southern California after Jimmy Edwards opened the Annex at his Alhambra Theatre in suburban Alhambra in 1941.

I don’t recall the year in which I attended the Riviera, but it was probably no earlier than 1961. Boxoffice of September 16, 1963, tells me it couldn’t have been later than 1963, as that’s when the house was restored to a single-screen configuration, reopening as the New Yorker on Friday, September 13.

Both articles give the name of the “legitimate playhouse” (Boxoffice’s term) that had previously occupied the building as the Dahl Theatre. I’ve been unable to find out any details about it. The Los Angeles County Assessor’s office gives the date of construction of the building at 7165 Beverly as 1929, with an effective construction date of 1942. At least two sources say that Slapsie Maxie’s opened here in 1943, which would match well with the 1942 rebuilding.

An article in a 2004 issue of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles (PDF here) says that after Slapsie Maxie’s closed, the building became the New Globe Theatre, a venue for Yiddish plays. It was operating under that name in 1951.

The impression I got from the Boxoffice items about the Capri and Rivera was that the building had housed the Dahl Theatre immediately before Lippert converted it into a cinema. I haven’t had much luck with confirming this, but a Google search turned up a theater memorabilia site advertising a “VINTAGE PLAYGOER FROM DAHL THEATRE~LA~ 1958” for seven bucks. I couldn’t find the item on the site, and the Google results also said “No Image Available” in any case.

As for the many sources saying this was once a vaudeville theater, I’m skeptical. For one thing, the footprint was quite small. After allowing space for a stage house, even a theater with a balcony on this lot could scarcely have held five hundred patrons. For another, when Lippert converted the building the ceiling was so low that a special arrangement of mirrors had to be installed to allow the projector beam to reach the screen.

Finally, for anyone to have built a vaudeville theater in this location in 1929 would have been folly. It was not yet very densely populated, there were no streetcar lines on either Beverly or La Brea, and it would have been much easier for locals to leave the neighborhood to reach the large theaters of Hollywood, Carthay Center, and Beverly Hills than it would have been for any significant number of potential audience members to reach this location.

I suspect that, before becoming Slapsie Maxie’s, the building was most likely ordinary retail space, with a vanishingly small chance that it was a neighborhood movie house.

ChrisWillman on January 9, 2010 at 9:41 pm

What is happening with the missing signage?

socal09 on November 20, 2009 at 7:17 am

Driving by yesterday, there is some restoration and repainting of the facade going on.

Dublinboyo on August 19, 2009 at 3:23 pm

Thank you Michael for the confirmation for that is more then I could have expected. I see you at the theater when I attend as I did your father for many, many years. He was a good man and is very much missed. So, thank you again for that good news and also to Quentin Tatantino – a big thank you as well – for stepping in and saving this Los Angeles treasure. For those of us who remember when there were many such revival theaters in LA, the continued operation of the New Beverly is fantastic news as it is now the last of it’s kind and even more of a treasure especially as we watch as more single screen theaters are closing one by one. So, thanks again for confirming this good news and I’ll be sure to say hello if I see you in the box office or behind the snack bar counter. Cheers!

Dublinboyo on August 19, 2009 at 10:55 am

Tarantino bought the New Beverly? Can anybody else confirm this?

KJB2012 on August 18, 2009 at 5:08 pm

The world premiere of “That’s Entertainment” was held at the Beverly in Beverly Hills. That was back when Beverly Hills still had theates. Oh well times change.

kencmcintyre on August 18, 2009 at 12:21 am

Here is a February 1973 ad from the LAT:
http://tinyurl.com/qku26f

kencmcintyre on May 10, 2009 at 9:45 pm

There is an ad for the Europa at the bottom of this LA Times page, dated September 1969:
http://tinyurl.com/pvdsp6

Jasont3h on June 6, 2008 at 8:29 pm

I’m going to the Reservoir Dogs showing tonight, so I can ask about Tarantino. I wouldn’t put it past him, though, I just saw him a few weeks ago at the Piranha showing.

Dublinboyo on May 19, 2008 at 11:44 am

The New Beverly is celebrating their 30 year anniversary this month. Godspeed and here’s to another 30 years! In celebration, they are reproducing the May 1978 schedule film for film. It is truly a wonder that this theater is still with us and all credit goes to the late Sherman Torgan and his son Michael for continuing the tradition his father began way back in 1978. For me, it’s hard to believe that I have been going to the New Beverly since 1980 and it has been a constant in my life for the last 28 years. It is now the last of it’s kind, so come out and support the last great revival theater in Los Angeles! The New Beverly is indeed a treasure! Thank you Sherman (RIP) and thank you Michael for keeping the New Beverly going and for all the new and comfortable improvements you have made to the theater recently.

kencmcintyre on November 14, 2007 at 8:28 pm

I was trying to get over to a theater on the West Side once when I was new to LA. The directions indicated that I should take Beverly Boulevard. I consulted my trusty Thomas Guide, and it told me to take the 60 east and get off on Atlantic Boulevard, which of course put me on E. Beverly Boulevard in East Los Angeles. If you’re trying to get to the New Beverly, this is not the way to go.

fluffer1987 on October 7, 2007 at 4:33 pm

Someone earlier mentioned they saw Ginger and Fred at New Beverly in July of 86 — so did I!

I think the last thing I saw there was Killing of a Chinese Bookie in 1993.

First double-bill I saw was Parallax View and Conversation in September 1980 (I had just moved to LA to attend USC). I had just arrived in LA, checked listings in LA Times, and decided to go see this double-bill. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a map, so I just drove all over, somehow found Beverly Drive and ended up in Beverly Hills. I finally made a u-turn, drove a few more miles, and found the New Bev. I subsequently discovered Thomas Bros. maps. What a great theater. A few nights later, I caught a midnight show of Andy Warhol’s Bad. I saw so many movies there, it was like film school.

I remember seeing Inserts around that time, and there were old guys in raincoats in the audience who probably used to haunt the theater when it showed X-rated movies.

Other fun memories: A fight broke out during a Godard film, one guy jumped over another row of seats to get at someone else. During a screening of Salo, a woman got up and screamed that Pasolini deserved to die and then she stormed out.

kencmcintyre on August 18, 2007 at 4:19 pm

This theater was once known as the New Yorker, per an ad in the LA Times dated 11/23/63.