The Odeon Twin was the subject of an article in the American trade publication Boxoffice Magazine, October 25, 1965. It says that the plans for the 1964-65 rebuilding were made by the architectural firm of Harry W. Weedon and Partners, and the interior design consultants were Trevor Stone and Mavis Stone. Among the photos accompanying the article is one of the marquee displaying the announcement “Grand Opening July 12th.”
The Tyrone Square 6 and the Crossroads were different theaters, and it turns out that the AMC Crossroads 8 was yet another. I found a 1972 reference to the Crossroads Theatre being at 1900 Tyrone Boulevard, so the AMC Crossroads 8 at 2190 Tyrone doesn’t have a Cinema Treasures page yet either.
Movie Listings in The St. Petersburg Evening Independent, January 28, 1984, show AMC then operating five houses in the area: Tyrone Square 6; Countryside 6; Crossroads 2; Clearwater 4; Seminole 2.
Plans for construction of the 2200 seat AMC Crossroads 8 were announced in the St. Petersburg Times of August 8, 1986. The article said that the Crossroads 2 would be closed when the new house was opened in 1987, and would be converted to retail space.
Also, the August 16, 1965, issue of Boxoffice has a list of theaters recently opened in shopping centers, and one of them is a 1000 seat house called the Tyrone Theatre, located in the Tyrone Shopping Center, St. Petersburg. There’s a photo of the front, and it shows a typical, nondescript shopping center theater of the era. An ad for the Tyrone Theatre in the August 14, 1965, issue of The St. Petersburg Evening Independent includes the line “Wurlitzer Concert on our stage, 8:00PM.” The feature film, “Lord Jim,” was also scheduled at 8:00PM. That must have produced quite a cacophony.
Roger: Issuu has some issues of Boxoffice available online. I find them easier to search via Google than through the site’s own search feature. Use Google’s advanced search and use issuu.com as the domain, and put boxoffice (single word) in the top box of the form, along with words specific to the subject you’re searching for. Fewer words are usually better than more.
A photograph of a handsome art moderne stairway in the Belle Meade Theatre was published in the February 22, 1941, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The caption attributes the design of the house to the noted Nashville architectural firm Marr & Holman, also the architects of Nashville’s Tennessee Theatre.
The May 18, 1946 issue of Boxoffice Magazine gives the date of the fire which destroyed this theater as July 12, 1945. An earlier mention of the fire in the July 21, 1945, issue of Boxoffice calls it the Livingston Theatre, at Livingston, operated by Stanly Court. A few even earlier issues of Boxoffice also call it the Livingston Theatre. That have been the name of the house during the early 1940s, or the copy writer at Boxoffice might have just been careless. Local newspaper ads or a directory listing for the theater during that period could provide an answer, if somebody has access to either.
Here’s still more information about the Vogue, from the February 22, 1941, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The caption of a photograph of the Vogue’s art moderne foyer lounge area attributes the design of the house to architect Vincent G Raney.
Raney also designed the Rodeo Theatre (later the Plaza Theatre) in the same city.
Here’s a brief item from the October 13, 1945, issue of Boxoffice Magazine: “Construction has begun on the new Court Theatre on Third near C. by the A.R. Liner Co. of Merced. Stanley Court, owner, offers no guess as to when the building will be completed.”
And then from the May 18, 1946 issue of Boxoffice comes this item:
“LIVINGSTON, CALIF.— Without motion pictures almost a year, this town welcomed the recent opening of the new Court Theatre. It replaces a theatre destroyed by fire last July 12 and was built by Mayor Stanley Court, who with his father, the late Albert Court, gave Livingston its first motion pictures in the old town hall in 1912, and who later built the original Court Theatre.”
(I can’t absolutely swear to the accuracy of the dates July 12 and 1912, as the scan of this issue of Boxoffice is pretty sketchy and hard to read, but I’m about 90% certain they’re right.)
Also of interest, earlier issues of Boxoffice, including that of July 21, 1945, which reported that the fire had occurred, invariably refer to Stanly Court as the operator of the Livingston Theatre in Livingston. The item about the fire says: “The Livingston Theatre, Livingston, was the scene of a fire the other evening. The amount of damage has not been reported. Owner of the house is Stanley Court, who also runs the Atwater at the town of the same name.”
A few other issues also mention Stanly Court as the operator of the Atwater Theatre, and issues from the mid 1950s add that he was by then also operating the Delhi Theatre at Delhi.
There was a Valley Theatre operating in Camarillo in 1946, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of May 18 that year: “CAMARILLO, CALIF.— S. and J.D. Burger, Operators of the Valley Theatre here, have commissioned Harold E. Burkett, Ventura architect, to draw plans for a 500-seat house to be erected on Ventura Blvd. here on a site which they acquired a year ago.”
Maybe the planned theater was a replacement for the original Valley Theatre? But if it didn’t open until 1956, the planning stage was awfully long.
The L.A. Library’s California Index has a card citing a theater catalog (no publication date given) which contains an illustration of the plans for the Rodeo Theatre in Salinas by architect Vincent G. Raney.
The September 2, 1963, issue of Boxoffice Magazine announced that a September 11 opening was planned for the Fox Northridge. The architect of the theater was Clarence Smale, with Carl G. Moeller, design partner. Boxoffice gave the seating capacity as 806.
The October 3, 1936, issue of Boxoffice ran an item about all three local movie houses in Salinas reopening after having been closed during riots related to a lettuce workers strike. The three theaters were the Crystal, the Fox, and the El Rey.
The Vogue opened three years later. The August 5, 1939, issue of Boxoffice carried this single-line item: “Homer Techmeyer’s new Vogue Theatre in Salinas was opened with many local trade figures present.”
So this was the Vogue Theatre from 1939 until (probably) 1959, the Globe International from its renovation in 1961 until about 1975 (and perhaps just Globe Theatre for part of that time), and Cinema 7 from then until closing in the 1980s.
The L.A. Library’s California Index contains a card citing an item in the May, 1935, issue of Architect & Engineer which said that architect Alexander A. Cantin had prepared the plans for remodeling the T&D Theatre in Salinas, and that the house would now be called the Fox Theatre.
I can’t find anything about who did the 1949 remodeling, but my guess would be that it was Charles Skouras’s favorite designer of the era, Carl G. Moeller.
Designed by Behr Browers Architects, as the renderings show.
2600 seats, as the Ventura newspaper reports.
Style: What is that? Neo-Deco Faux-Classical Art-Googied Postmoderne? I guess we’ll have to wait for the academic critics who usually name styles to stop reeling and catch up with what theater architects are doing these days.
Loew’s 1973 annual report said that the Troy Hills house was among those slated to be twinned.
A few photos of this theater were published in the May 16, 1966, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. One photo showed that it had a fairly typical curtain-wall auditorium. The caption gave the seating capacity on opening as 1200.
Mike and Lost: The Wometco house that opened in December 1965 was called the Crossroads Theatre. It was the subject of an article in the May 16, 1966 issue of Boxoffice. A first-run luxury house, and the Wometco circuit’s 39th theater in Florida, it was located in the Crossroads Shopping Center, just off of Tyrone Boulevard. It opened as a 1200 seat single screener, but provisions were made to add a second auditorium, to seat 600-800 patrons, and the article said that Wometco intended to add the second auditorium later that year. The architect of the Crossroads Theatre was A. Herbert Mathes of Miami.
Some sketchy results of Google searches suggest that the Crossroads Theatre was later replaced by, or altered into, the AMC Crossroads 8 Theatres, at 2190 Tyrone Blvd., which appears to have opened in 1987, and after closing in September, 2002, was demolished along with some other buildings in the shopping center to make way for a Home Depot.
Incidentally, A. Herbert Mathes was a noted Miami architect who designed a number of large buildings in that city and in Miami Beach, including the Versailles hotel tower and ballroom addition to the Fontainebleau Hotel.
pablo el sueco’s comment of Dec 21, 2005, is correct. The year after the theater opened, Boxoffice Magazine published an article about the Americana in its issue of May 16, 1966. It named Trans-Texas Theatres as the operating company, Earl Podolnick as the President of the company, and Joe Charles Dyer as the manager of the theater.
It also mentions that the theater’s decoration was designed by Earl Podolnick himself, and said that the architect of the house was William B. Saunders, of Austin. The seating capacity of the Americana was given as 783. The cost of the theater was $360,000.
The March 29, 1965, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that Roy Metcalfe’s Times Theatre had been closed for extensive remodeling, and that it would reopen as the New Times 70 Theatre, with the first 70mm projection equipment in the Cedar Rapids area. The seating capacity was to be reduced, allowing for staggered seats in rows 40 inches apart, thus improving sight lines and increasing leg room.
The May 16, 1966, issue of Boxoffice published photos of the auditorium, lobby, and lounge of the New Times 70 Theatre. The auditorium, now with 523 seats, featured six abstract black light paintings on the side walls, satin drapes on the screen wall, and like the rest of the house had a color scheme predominantly of emerald and aqua.
The lobby boasted walnut paneling, contemporary furniture, and decorative panels of colored glass. The lounge, with black and white vinyl tile flooring that extended into the rest rooms, contained a low table and matching chairs of an ornate antique style which looked as though they might have been retained from the theater’s earlier period.
The earlier Boxoffice article mentions that Roy Metcalfe also operated the New World Playhouse in Cedar Rapids (by which they must have meant the World Theatre), and that he was President of a trade organization called the Allied Independent Theatre Owners of Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota. It also mentions that he had been operating the Times Theatre for fifteen years, and had recently acquired a long term lease on the house.
In that case, the 1940 date on the Liebenberg and Kaplan papers web site might be a mistake, or perhaps a plan to build in 1940 ran into problems, and then the owner had to wait until after the war to get the project built.
This house was called the Harris-Alvin Theatre in many Boxoffice Magazine items as far back as 1935. Contrary to what Ed Blank was told (comment of May 28, 2008, above), the Alvin was apparently not destroyed by a fire. Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of November 16, 1940, has the real story.
It says that a 100 foot by 40 foot section of the roof of the theater had collapsed the previous Tuesday evening (November 14), and four people were injured in the consequent scramble for the exits. The roof had been leaking and bits of plaster falling for an hour before the collapse, so attendants had moved patrons from the balcony and the front section of the orchestra floor into dry seats protected by the overhang of the balcony. Fortunately, the balcony itself did not collapse, and no one was killed.
The building had been inspected less than two weeks earlier, and had passed. The collapse was later attributed to dry rot in the fifty year old wooden beams supporting the roof. The Alvin had undergone an extensive renovation in 1935, and the balcony had been retrofitted with steel support beams at that time, which was probably what prevented its collapse onto the estimated 175 patrons seated under it. Had the roof also been retrofitted in 1935, the disaster would probably not have happened.
I can’t find any information about whether the Alvin was partly salvaged or had to be demolished and replaced with a new building, but a later Boxoffice article about the event, in the December 7, 1940, issue, said that the house was being rebuilt and was expected to open within a few months. Neither can I find an exact reopening date, but a Boxoffice article from July 17, 1943, about the demolition of another Harris house, mentioned in passing that the circuit’s flagship, the J.P. Harris Theatre, was located on the site of the Alvin Theatre in Pittsburgh.
Nobody has yet created Cinema Treasures pages for the Fox Theatre’s two predecessors (mentioned in Ken Roe’s comment of January 2, 2005, above), the 1911 Idyl Hour Theatre at 6265 Hollywood Boulevard, and the 1913 Iris Theatre at 6415 Hollywood Boulevard. Does somebody want to do that, or should I post them? Ken?
Incidentally, the 1915 Los Angeles City Directory lists the Iris Theatre at 6417 Hollywood Boulevard. I believe that lot was absorbed into the parcel on which the Warner Bros. Hollywood Theatre was built. Unless there was some shifting of addresses over the years, the original Iris might have been demolished then.
Also, though the Idyl Hour Theatre appears to have been the first movie house built on Hollywood Boulevard, it might not have been the first in the Hollywood district. The building in which the Ivy Theatre was operating in 1915, and which is now the location of the Chaplin Stage of the El Centro Theatre, was erected in 1910. So far I don’t know if this building was built as a theater, or if it was converted into a theater within a few years of its construction, but if it was built as a theater then the Idyl Hour was not Hollywood’s first movie house.
TheatreMonkey: Thanks for your efforts in preserving this historic building.
Following is additional information about the El Centro Theatre’s buildings, which I didn’t include in my original submission of the theater to Cinema Treasures, as it involves a bit too much speculation, and I thought it would be more suitable to a comment until more evidence about the Ivy’s history can be found.
The L.A. County Assessor’s Office says there are two buildings on this property: 1) A 2086 square foot building built in 1910, with an effective year built (meaning a major alteration or addition at the later time) of 1924; 2) A 3690 square foot building built in 1914, with an effective year built of 1927.
Judging from the satellite views of the buildings at Google Maps, I’d surmise that the building housing the Chaplin Stage is the 1910 structure, and the corner store building which was converted into the Circle Theatre in 1946 is the one built in 1914, and that what looks from above like a third building to the east of the corner building is an addition which gave the corner building its effective year built of 1927.
Even assuming that the older building was built in 1910 does not mean that it was built specifically as a theater, of course. It might have been built for some other purpose and then converted into a theater by 1915, when it was listed as such in the City Directory. However, if it was in fact built specifically as a theater, it would displace the Idyl Hour Theatre built in 1911 at 6265 Hollywood Boulevard (now demolished) as Hollywood’s earliest known movie house.
I don’t have access to any city directories from before 1915, or between 1915 and 1929, so I can’t check to see if the Ivy was listed (under that name or another) before 1915, or how late it might have been listed (it might not show up in an L.A. directory for 1910 in any case, as that was the year Hollywood was annexed to Los Angeles, and the directory for that year would probably have gone to press before the annexation took place.) I can’t find a theater listed at this address in the 1929 directory. My guess would be that the Assessor’s effective year built of 1924 would mark the conversion of the building into a garage, and the closing date of the theater might have happened either then or some time earlier.
I believe that some other Cinema Treasures contributors have access to more city directories than I do, and they might be able to check the theater listings in them to see if the Ivy is listed in years other than 1915.
The Bexley Theatre was the subject of an article in the November 16, 1935, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The article includes most of the information in the introduction above and on the web site Ron Newman linked to, but differs from the web site in saying that the screens at the Bexley were 9' by 12' rather than 8' by 10'.
The article also says that the plan and design of the theater were done by Ted Lindenberg and Bert Williams, the latter being president of the Ardmore Amusement Company, the Columbus, Ohio, corporation which originally owned and operated the house.
Photographs of the lobby and one auditorium show a fairly austere modern style, with little decoration in the lobby, and plain walls and in the auditorium. Seating in the narrow auditorium was continental style, with the aisles confined to the sides. The text refers to the interiors of the theater as being “painted with light.”
The moderne facade was also lit, by a pair of powerful spotlights at the corners of the lot, and there was a carbon arc lamp placed in front of the theater, shining straight up, the beam of which could be seen from several miles away.
Rich37: The Whittwood didn’t have a traditional marquee. Jutting out at a right angle from the front of the building was a two-sided attraction board of the sort that were used at drive-ins. There’s a photo of it in the March 15, 1965, issue of Boxoffice Magazine.
The Odeon Twin was the subject of an article in the American trade publication Boxoffice Magazine, October 25, 1965. It says that the plans for the 1964-65 rebuilding were made by the architectural firm of Harry W. Weedon and Partners, and the interior design consultants were Trevor Stone and Mavis Stone. Among the photos accompanying the article is one of the marquee displaying the announcement “Grand Opening July 12th.”
The Tyrone Square 6 and the Crossroads were different theaters, and it turns out that the AMC Crossroads 8 was yet another. I found a 1972 reference to the Crossroads Theatre being at 1900 Tyrone Boulevard, so the AMC Crossroads 8 at 2190 Tyrone doesn’t have a Cinema Treasures page yet either.
Movie Listings in The St. Petersburg Evening Independent, January 28, 1984, show AMC then operating five houses in the area: Tyrone Square 6; Countryside 6; Crossroads 2; Clearwater 4; Seminole 2.
Plans for construction of the 2200 seat AMC Crossroads 8 were announced in the St. Petersburg Times of August 8, 1986. The article said that the Crossroads 2 would be closed when the new house was opened in 1987, and would be converted to retail space.
Also, the August 16, 1965, issue of Boxoffice has a list of theaters recently opened in shopping centers, and one of them is a 1000 seat house called the Tyrone Theatre, located in the Tyrone Shopping Center, St. Petersburg. There’s a photo of the front, and it shows a typical, nondescript shopping center theater of the era. An ad for the Tyrone Theatre in the August 14, 1965, issue of The St. Petersburg Evening Independent includes the line “Wurlitzer Concert on our stage, 8:00PM.” The feature film, “Lord Jim,” was also scheduled at 8:00PM. That must have produced quite a cacophony.
Roger: Issuu has some issues of Boxoffice available online. I find them easier to search via Google than through the site’s own search feature. Use Google’s advanced search and use issuu.com as the domain, and put boxoffice (single word) in the top box of the form, along with words specific to the subject you’re searching for. Fewer words are usually better than more.
A photograph of a handsome art moderne stairway in the Belle Meade Theatre was published in the February 22, 1941, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The caption attributes the design of the house to the noted Nashville architectural firm Marr & Holman, also the architects of Nashville’s Tennessee Theatre.
Oh, “That might have been the name….”
Clearly, I’m careless enough to have been a copy writer at Boxoffice Magazine myself.
The May 18, 1946 issue of Boxoffice Magazine gives the date of the fire which destroyed this theater as July 12, 1945. An earlier mention of the fire in the July 21, 1945, issue of Boxoffice calls it the Livingston Theatre, at Livingston, operated by Stanly Court. A few even earlier issues of Boxoffice also call it the Livingston Theatre. That have been the name of the house during the early 1940s, or the copy writer at Boxoffice might have just been careless. Local newspaper ads or a directory listing for the theater during that period could provide an answer, if somebody has access to either.
Here’s still more information about the Vogue, from the February 22, 1941, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The caption of a photograph of the Vogue’s art moderne foyer lounge area attributes the design of the house to architect Vincent G Raney.
Raney also designed the Rodeo Theatre (later the Plaza Theatre) in the same city.
More news for members of the Court family:
Here’s a brief item from the October 13, 1945, issue of Boxoffice Magazine: “Construction has begun on the new Court Theatre on Third near C. by the A.R. Liner Co. of Merced. Stanley Court, owner, offers no guess as to when the building will be completed.”
And then from the May 18, 1946 issue of Boxoffice comes this item:
(I can’t absolutely swear to the accuracy of the dates July 12 and 1912, as the scan of this issue of Boxoffice is pretty sketchy and hard to read, but I’m about 90% certain they’re right.)Also of interest, earlier issues of Boxoffice, including that of July 21, 1945, which reported that the fire had occurred, invariably refer to Stanly Court as the operator of the Livingston Theatre in Livingston. The item about the fire says: “The Livingston Theatre, Livingston, was the scene of a fire the other evening. The amount of damage has not been reported. Owner of the house is Stanley Court, who also runs the Atwater at the town of the same name.”
A few other issues also mention Stanly Court as the operator of the Atwater Theatre, and issues from the mid 1950s add that he was by then also operating the Delhi Theatre at Delhi.
There was a Valley Theatre operating in Camarillo in 1946, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of May 18 that year: “CAMARILLO, CALIF.— S. and J.D. Burger, Operators of the Valley Theatre here, have commissioned Harold E. Burkett, Ventura architect, to draw plans for a 500-seat house to be erected on Ventura Blvd. here on a site which they acquired a year ago.”
Maybe the planned theater was a replacement for the original Valley Theatre? But if it didn’t open until 1956, the planning stage was awfully long.
The L.A. Library’s California Index has a card citing a theater catalog (no publication date given) which contains an illustration of the plans for the Rodeo Theatre in Salinas by architect Vincent G. Raney.
I noticed that it took quite a while for that comment to get posted. I wonder if other comments are replicating?
The September 2, 1963, issue of Boxoffice Magazine announced that a September 11 opening was planned for the Fox Northridge. The architect of the theater was Clarence Smale, with Carl G. Moeller, design partner. Boxoffice gave the seating capacity as 806.
The October 3, 1936, issue of Boxoffice ran an item about all three local movie houses in Salinas reopening after having been closed during riots related to a lettuce workers strike. The three theaters were the Crystal, the Fox, and the El Rey.
The Vogue opened three years later. The August 5, 1939, issue of Boxoffice carried this single-line item: “Homer Techmeyer’s new Vogue Theatre in Salinas was opened with many local trade figures present.”
So this was the Vogue Theatre from 1939 until (probably) 1959, the Globe International from its renovation in 1961 until about 1975 (and perhaps just Globe Theatre for part of that time), and Cinema 7 from then until closing in the 1980s.
The L.A. Library’s California Index contains a card citing an item in the May, 1935, issue of Architect & Engineer which said that architect Alexander A. Cantin had prepared the plans for remodeling the T&D Theatre in Salinas, and that the house would now be called the Fox Theatre.
I can’t find anything about who did the 1949 remodeling, but my guess would be that it was Charles Skouras’s favorite designer of the era, Carl G. Moeller.
Designed by Behr Browers Architects, as the renderings show.
2600 seats, as the Ventura newspaper reports.
Style: What is that? Neo-Deco Faux-Classical Art-Googied Postmoderne? I guess we’ll have to wait for the academic critics who usually name styles to stop reeling and catch up with what theater architects are doing these days.
Loew’s 1973 annual report said that the Troy Hills house was among those slated to be twinned.
A few photos of this theater were published in the May 16, 1966, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. One photo showed that it had a fairly typical curtain-wall auditorium. The caption gave the seating capacity on opening as 1200.
Mike and Lost: The Wometco house that opened in December 1965 was called the Crossroads Theatre. It was the subject of an article in the May 16, 1966 issue of Boxoffice. A first-run luxury house, and the Wometco circuit’s 39th theater in Florida, it was located in the Crossroads Shopping Center, just off of Tyrone Boulevard. It opened as a 1200 seat single screener, but provisions were made to add a second auditorium, to seat 600-800 patrons, and the article said that Wometco intended to add the second auditorium later that year. The architect of the Crossroads Theatre was A. Herbert Mathes of Miami.
Some sketchy results of Google searches suggest that the Crossroads Theatre was later replaced by, or altered into, the AMC Crossroads 8 Theatres, at 2190 Tyrone Blvd., which appears to have opened in 1987, and after closing in September, 2002, was demolished along with some other buildings in the shopping center to make way for a Home Depot.
Incidentally, A. Herbert Mathes was a noted Miami architect who designed a number of large buildings in that city and in Miami Beach, including the Versailles hotel tower and ballroom addition to the Fontainebleau Hotel.
pablo el sueco’s comment of Dec 21, 2005, is correct. The year after the theater opened, Boxoffice Magazine published an article about the Americana in its issue of May 16, 1966. It named Trans-Texas Theatres as the operating company, Earl Podolnick as the President of the company, and Joe Charles Dyer as the manager of the theater.
It also mentions that the theater’s decoration was designed by Earl Podolnick himself, and said that the architect of the house was William B. Saunders, of Austin. The seating capacity of the Americana was given as 783. The cost of the theater was $360,000.
The March 29, 1965, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that Roy Metcalfe’s Times Theatre had been closed for extensive remodeling, and that it would reopen as the New Times 70 Theatre, with the first 70mm projection equipment in the Cedar Rapids area. The seating capacity was to be reduced, allowing for staggered seats in rows 40 inches apart, thus improving sight lines and increasing leg room.
The May 16, 1966, issue of Boxoffice published photos of the auditorium, lobby, and lounge of the New Times 70 Theatre. The auditorium, now with 523 seats, featured six abstract black light paintings on the side walls, satin drapes on the screen wall, and like the rest of the house had a color scheme predominantly of emerald and aqua.
The lobby boasted walnut paneling, contemporary furniture, and decorative panels of colored glass. The lounge, with black and white vinyl tile flooring that extended into the rest rooms, contained a low table and matching chairs of an ornate antique style which looked as though they might have been retained from the theater’s earlier period.
The earlier Boxoffice article mentions that Roy Metcalfe also operated the New World Playhouse in Cedar Rapids (by which they must have meant the World Theatre), and that he was President of a trade organization called the Allied Independent Theatre Owners of Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota. It also mentions that he had been operating the Times Theatre for fifteen years, and had recently acquired a long term lease on the house.
In that case, the 1940 date on the Liebenberg and Kaplan papers web site might be a mistake, or perhaps a plan to build in 1940 ran into problems, and then the owner had to wait until after the war to get the project built.
This house was called the Harris-Alvin Theatre in many Boxoffice Magazine items as far back as 1935. Contrary to what Ed Blank was told (comment of May 28, 2008, above), the Alvin was apparently not destroyed by a fire. Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of November 16, 1940, has the real story.
It says that a 100 foot by 40 foot section of the roof of the theater had collapsed the previous Tuesday evening (November 14), and four people were injured in the consequent scramble for the exits. The roof had been leaking and bits of plaster falling for an hour before the collapse, so attendants had moved patrons from the balcony and the front section of the orchestra floor into dry seats protected by the overhang of the balcony. Fortunately, the balcony itself did not collapse, and no one was killed.
The building had been inspected less than two weeks earlier, and had passed. The collapse was later attributed to dry rot in the fifty year old wooden beams supporting the roof. The Alvin had undergone an extensive renovation in 1935, and the balcony had been retrofitted with steel support beams at that time, which was probably what prevented its collapse onto the estimated 175 patrons seated under it. Had the roof also been retrofitted in 1935, the disaster would probably not have happened.
I can’t find any information about whether the Alvin was partly salvaged or had to be demolished and replaced with a new building, but a later Boxoffice article about the event, in the December 7, 1940, issue, said that the house was being rebuilt and was expected to open within a few months. Neither can I find an exact reopening date, but a Boxoffice article from July 17, 1943, about the demolition of another Harris house, mentioned in passing that the circuit’s flagship, the J.P. Harris Theatre, was located on the site of the Alvin Theatre in Pittsburgh.
Nobody has yet created Cinema Treasures pages for the Fox Theatre’s two predecessors (mentioned in Ken Roe’s comment of January 2, 2005, above), the 1911 Idyl Hour Theatre at 6265 Hollywood Boulevard, and the 1913 Iris Theatre at 6415 Hollywood Boulevard. Does somebody want to do that, or should I post them? Ken?
Incidentally, the 1915 Los Angeles City Directory lists the Iris Theatre at 6417 Hollywood Boulevard. I believe that lot was absorbed into the parcel on which the Warner Bros. Hollywood Theatre was built. Unless there was some shifting of addresses over the years, the original Iris might have been demolished then.
Also, though the Idyl Hour Theatre appears to have been the first movie house built on Hollywood Boulevard, it might not have been the first in the Hollywood district. The building in which the Ivy Theatre was operating in 1915, and which is now the location of the Chaplin Stage of the El Centro Theatre, was erected in 1910. So far I don’t know if this building was built as a theater, or if it was converted into a theater within a few years of its construction, but if it was built as a theater then the Idyl Hour was not Hollywood’s first movie house.
TheatreMonkey: Thanks for your efforts in preserving this historic building.
Following is additional information about the El Centro Theatre’s buildings, which I didn’t include in my original submission of the theater to Cinema Treasures, as it involves a bit too much speculation, and I thought it would be more suitable to a comment until more evidence about the Ivy’s history can be found.
The L.A. County Assessor’s Office says there are two buildings on this property: 1) A 2086 square foot building built in 1910, with an effective year built (meaning a major alteration or addition at the later time) of 1924; 2) A 3690 square foot building built in 1914, with an effective year built of 1927.
Judging from the satellite views of the buildings at Google Maps, I’d surmise that the building housing the Chaplin Stage is the 1910 structure, and the corner store building which was converted into the Circle Theatre in 1946 is the one built in 1914, and that what looks from above like a third building to the east of the corner building is an addition which gave the corner building its effective year built of 1927.
Even assuming that the older building was built in 1910 does not mean that it was built specifically as a theater, of course. It might have been built for some other purpose and then converted into a theater by 1915, when it was listed as such in the City Directory. However, if it was in fact built specifically as a theater, it would displace the Idyl Hour Theatre built in 1911 at 6265 Hollywood Boulevard (now demolished) as Hollywood’s earliest known movie house.
I don’t have access to any city directories from before 1915, or between 1915 and 1929, so I can’t check to see if the Ivy was listed (under that name or another) before 1915, or how late it might have been listed (it might not show up in an L.A. directory for 1910 in any case, as that was the year Hollywood was annexed to Los Angeles, and the directory for that year would probably have gone to press before the annexation took place.) I can’t find a theater listed at this address in the 1929 directory. My guess would be that the Assessor’s effective year built of 1924 would mark the conversion of the building into a garage, and the closing date of the theater might have happened either then or some time earlier.
I believe that some other Cinema Treasures contributors have access to more city directories than I do, and they might be able to check the theater listings in them to see if the Ivy is listed in years other than 1915.
The Bexley Theatre was the subject of an article in the November 16, 1935, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The article includes most of the information in the introduction above and on the web site Ron Newman linked to, but differs from the web site in saying that the screens at the Bexley were 9' by 12' rather than 8' by 10'.
The article also says that the plan and design of the theater were done by Ted Lindenberg and Bert Williams, the latter being president of the Ardmore Amusement Company, the Columbus, Ohio, corporation which originally owned and operated the house.
Photographs of the lobby and one auditorium show a fairly austere modern style, with little decoration in the lobby, and plain walls and in the auditorium. Seating in the narrow auditorium was continental style, with the aisles confined to the sides. The text refers to the interiors of the theater as being “painted with light.”
The moderne facade was also lit, by a pair of powerful spotlights at the corners of the lot, and there was a carbon arc lamp placed in front of the theater, shining straight up, the beam of which could be seen from several miles away.
Rich37: The Whittwood didn’t have a traditional marquee. Jutting out at a right angle from the front of the building was a two-sided attraction board of the sort that were used at drive-ins. There’s a photo of it in the March 15, 1965, issue of Boxoffice Magazine.