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.
Blueprints for a Cameo Theatre at Eau Claire are in the collection of the papers of the architectural firm Liebenberg and Kaplan held by the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Various items about the theater in the collection are dated 1940, 1945 and 1946. I don’t know if this was a new building in 1940, or if Liebenberg and Kaplan just did a remodeling of an existing theater.
Although the S.C. Lee archives list this house as the Puente Theatre, I don’t believe it ever operated under that name. I think Puente theatre was just Lee’s working name for it. The owners probably hadn’t chosen the final name when he began working on the design. By Puente Theatre, Lee meant theater project in Puente.
Notice that in this Lee rendering it is called the “Name” Theatre (though obviously not. It just indicates that it hadn’t been given a name yet.) Also note that Bob Garrison and Steve Chambers in comments above both remember it as the Star Theatre as far back as the early 1950s. I certainly remember it as the Star Theatre in the later 1950s.
An early newspaper ad or directory listing for the house under the name Puente Theatre would, of course, convince me otherwise.
I wouldn’t call this a quonset hut theater. A true quonset hut has no walls, but has the arc of its roof extending all the way to the ground like this. The term quonset hut refers to a type of construction rather than to an architectural style, anyway. I’d just as soon see Cinema Treasures drop “Quonset Hut” as a style
What most of the theaters identified at Cinema Treasures as quonset huts really had were what are called barrel vault or tunnel vault roofs, on top of standard, if sometimes low, walls (and judging from the photos the Southside’s walls don’t appear to be any lower than the walls of most other single-floor theaters.) Given the period during which barrel vault roofs were common, most theaters that had them got modern or art moderne decoration.
Many of the theatres that had true quonset huts for their auditoriums were hybrid buildings, in any case, like the Avon Theatre in Bothell, Washington, which had a boxy and decidedly modern entrance. Others, like Star Theatre in La Puente, California, were entirely quonset hut buildings which had little more than a bit of moderne detailing and signage attached to their facades. Still, such theaters have quonset style construction, but modern architectural details.
Read William’s description of the Southside in his comment of December 16, 2003, above. The style of the theater as he describes it sounds modern to me. The entrance depicted in the photo looks modern, too.
I finally found the exact address for this theater. The Whittwood was listed in a 1968 L.A. Times Independent Theatres guide at 10125 Whittwood Drive. Google Maps places its marker symbol for this address farther from Whittier Boulevard than I remember the theater actually being, but it’s been so long since I was there that I don’t know if it’s Google or my memory that’s off by a few hundred feet.
The February 16, 1957, issue of Boxoffice Magazine announced that Dubuque’s Avon Theatre had closed, and that demolition of the building would commence on April 1, to make way for a new J.C. Penney store.
The house was built in 1908 by William Bradley, and was opened as the Princess Theatre. After operating it for a year, Bradley leased the house to Harvey Fulton of the Standard Amusements Company. In 1916 it was taken over by James Yiannias, who operated it until it closed. In its final year, the Avon was open only three days a week. The Boxoffice article does not give the year in which the name was changed from Princess to Avon.
The Navarre Amphitheatre Drive-In was designed by the Minneapolis architectural firm of Liebenberg and Kaplan. It was scheduled for a spring, 1953, opening according to Boxoffice Magazine’s November 8, 1952, issue. The drive-in’s capacity was to be 575 cars.
A pencil drawing of the drive-in is among the Liebenberg and Kaplan papers collected at the Andersen Library of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
The American Theatre may have been designed by the Minneapolis architectural firm of Liebenberg and Kaplan. A pencil drawing of it is in the collection of the Liebenberg and Kaplan papers in the Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Whether the design was theirs, or one of them simply make a drawing of it for reference, as architects sometimes do, the dates the library’s index for the papers list with the entry for this theater are 1928-29 and 1931. If the theater is older than that, perhaps Liebenberg and Kaplan only did some remodeling work on it.
The Starlight Drive-In was the work of the Minneapolis architectural firm of Liebenberg and Kaplan. The blueprints are in the collection of Liebenberg and Kaplan papers in the Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. The theater is listed in the papers as the Albert Lea Outdoor Theatre, but it appears to have opened as the Starlight Drive-In Theatre.
The extensive 1957 remodeling of the Shubert Theatre into the Academy Theatre (which, according to the intro above “…was so completely refurbished it requires its own entry in the Cinema Treasures listings,” was the work of the Minneapolis architectural firm Liebenberg & Kaplan.
The 600-seat Pine Hollow Theatre was designed by architect Drew Eberson. The recently opened theater was the subject of an illustrated article in the Modern Theatre section of Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of March 4, 1963. The house was originally operated by Skouras Theatres.
The Vogue Theatre in Pittsburg was opened by the Blumenfeld Circuit on February 20, 1948, according to Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of April 3 that year.
Somehow I never got back to this page until now. The theater’s web site doesn’t give me any problems anymore.
I was surprised to see among the photos there one showing that the Garland’s main level seating was continental style, with the aisles confined to the sides of the auditorium. That was a very rare configuration for an American movie theater of the period- or just about any period. In fact the only movie theater I’ve ever been to that had continental seating was the Hastings in Pasadena.
This place looks like a real gem. I especially like that art moderne lobby. If I ever get to Spokane, I’ll be sure to check it out.
The L.A. Library’s California Index contains several cards citing articles about theaters in Huntington Beach, but most of them are puzzling. Most of the cards have no theater names attached, and it seems likely that several of the projects mentioned were never carried out.
One card does indicate that there had been a movie house operating in Huntington Beach before the Princess was opened, though. It cites a Southwest Builder & Contractor item of April 18, 1914. Here’s a link to the card. From the bit about the lease expiring, it sounds like it might have been a storefront nickelodeon.
The Hudson Plaza Cinema opened on December 22, 1967, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of January 1, 1968. It was one of five new theaters opened across the country by General Cinema on the same day.
Here’s a brief item from Boxoffice Magazine, May 28, 1962:
“Approximately $75,000 was expended to give the Cinema Theatre a complete facelift in time for the Pacific Coast premier of ‘Through a Glass Darkly.’ Remodeling included a new lobby, marquee, carpets, drapes, and an elaborate mezzanine art gallery.”
My first visit to the Cinema must have been fairly soon after this. I don’t remember ever seeing the old marquee, or being in the theatre before the art gallery (not so elaborate, really) was installed.
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.
Blueprints for a Cameo Theatre at Eau Claire are in the collection of the papers of the architectural firm Liebenberg and Kaplan held by the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Various items about the theater in the collection are dated 1940, 1945 and 1946. I don’t know if this was a new building in 1940, or if Liebenberg and Kaplan just did a remodeling of an existing theater.
Although the S.C. Lee archives list this house as the Puente Theatre, I don’t believe it ever operated under that name. I think Puente theatre was just Lee’s working name for it. The owners probably hadn’t chosen the final name when he began working on the design. By Puente Theatre, Lee meant theater project in Puente.
Notice that in this Lee rendering it is called the “Name” Theatre (though obviously not. It just indicates that it hadn’t been given a name yet.) Also note that Bob Garrison and Steve Chambers in comments above both remember it as the Star Theatre as far back as the early 1950s. I certainly remember it as the Star Theatre in the later 1950s.
An early newspaper ad or directory listing for the house under the name Puente Theatre would, of course, convince me otherwise.
I wouldn’t call this a quonset hut theater. A true quonset hut has no walls, but has the arc of its roof extending all the way to the ground like this. The term quonset hut refers to a type of construction rather than to an architectural style, anyway. I’d just as soon see Cinema Treasures drop “Quonset Hut” as a style
What most of the theaters identified at Cinema Treasures as quonset huts really had were what are called barrel vault or tunnel vault roofs, on top of standard, if sometimes low, walls (and judging from the photos the Southside’s walls don’t appear to be any lower than the walls of most other single-floor theaters.) Given the period during which barrel vault roofs were common, most theaters that had them got modern or art moderne decoration.
Many of the theatres that had true quonset huts for their auditoriums were hybrid buildings, in any case, like the Avon Theatre in Bothell, Washington, which had a boxy and decidedly modern entrance. Others, like Star Theatre in La Puente, California, were entirely quonset hut buildings which had little more than a bit of moderne detailing and signage attached to their facades. Still, such theaters have quonset style construction, but modern architectural details.
Read William’s description of the Southside in his comment of December 16, 2003, above. The style of the theater as he describes it sounds modern to me. The entrance depicted in the photo looks modern, too.
I finally found the exact address for this theater. The Whittwood was listed in a 1968 L.A. Times Independent Theatres guide at 10125 Whittwood Drive. Google Maps places its marker symbol for this address farther from Whittier Boulevard than I remember the theater actually being, but it’s been so long since I was there that I don’t know if it’s Google or my memory that’s off by a few hundred feet.
The February 16, 1957, issue of Boxoffice Magazine announced that Dubuque’s Avon Theatre had closed, and that demolition of the building would commence on April 1, to make way for a new J.C. Penney store.
The house was built in 1908 by William Bradley, and was opened as the Princess Theatre. After operating it for a year, Bradley leased the house to Harvey Fulton of the Standard Amusements Company. In 1916 it was taken over by James Yiannias, who operated it until it closed. In its final year, the Avon was open only three days a week. The Boxoffice article does not give the year in which the name was changed from Princess to Avon.
The Brainerd Theatre was designed by the Minneapolis architectural firm Liebenberg & Kaplan.
The Navarre Amphitheatre Drive-In was designed by the Minneapolis architectural firm of Liebenberg and Kaplan. It was scheduled for a spring, 1953, opening according to Boxoffice Magazine’s November 8, 1952, issue. The drive-in’s capacity was to be 575 cars.
A pencil drawing of the drive-in is among the Liebenberg and Kaplan papers collected at the Andersen Library of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
The American Theatre may have been designed by the Minneapolis architectural firm of Liebenberg and Kaplan. A pencil drawing of it is in the collection of the Liebenberg and Kaplan papers in the Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Whether the design was theirs, or one of them simply make a drawing of it for reference, as architects sometimes do, the dates the library’s index for the papers list with the entry for this theater are 1928-29 and 1931. If the theater is older than that, perhaps Liebenberg and Kaplan only did some remodeling work on it.
The Starlight Drive-In was the work of the Minneapolis architectural firm of Liebenberg and Kaplan. The blueprints are in the collection of Liebenberg and Kaplan papers in the Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. The theater is listed in the papers as the Albert Lea Outdoor Theatre, but it appears to have opened as the Starlight Drive-In Theatre.
The extensive 1957 remodeling of the Shubert Theatre into the Academy Theatre (which, according to the intro above “…was so completely refurbished it requires its own entry in the Cinema Treasures listings,” was the work of the Minneapolis architectural firm Liebenberg & Kaplan.
The 600-seat Pine Hollow Theatre was designed by architect Drew Eberson. The recently opened theater was the subject of an illustrated article in the Modern Theatre section of Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of March 4, 1963. The house was originally operated by Skouras Theatres.
The Vogue Theatre in Pittsburg was opened by the Blumenfeld Circuit on February 20, 1948, according to Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of April 3 that year.
Somehow I never got back to this page until now. The theater’s web site doesn’t give me any problems anymore.
I was surprised to see among the photos there one showing that the Garland’s main level seating was continental style, with the aisles confined to the sides of the auditorium. That was a very rare configuration for an American movie theater of the period- or just about any period. In fact the only movie theater I’ve ever been to that had continental seating was the Hastings in Pasadena.
This place looks like a real gem. I especially like that art moderne lobby. If I ever get to Spokane, I’ll be sure to check it out.
The L.A. Library’s California Index contains several cards citing articles about theaters in Huntington Beach, but most of them are puzzling. Most of the cards have no theater names attached, and it seems likely that several of the projects mentioned were never carried out.
One card does indicate that there had been a movie house operating in Huntington Beach before the Princess was opened, though. It cites a Southwest Builder & Contractor item of April 18, 1914. Here’s a link to the card. From the bit about the lease expiring, it sounds like it might have been a storefront nickelodeon.
General Cinema opened the Southland Cinema I & II on December 21, 1967, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of January 1, 1968.
The Hudson Plaza Cinema opened on December 22, 1967, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of January 1, 1968. It was one of five new theaters opened across the country by General Cinema on the same day.
Here’s a brief item from Boxoffice Magazine, May 28, 1962:
My first visit to the Cinema must have been fairly soon after this. I don’t remember ever seeing the old marquee, or being in the theatre before the art gallery (not so elaborate, really) was installed.