In the 1950’s, this theater was called Edwards San Gabriel. The name was changed to Edwards Century in the early 1960’s, when a new marquee was installed. At about that time, most of the Edwards theaters in the western San Gabriel Valley were renovated, with modern marquees replacing the older neon models, and several of the theaters were re-named. Alhambra’s Coronet became the Capri, Arcadia’s Santa Anita became Cinemaland, and I think there were other name changes among Edwards theaters in the eastern San Gabriel Valley as well.
The San Gabriel was one of several Edwards theaters in the area which had a low price policy through the mid-1950’s, charging only thirty cents for adult tickets and ten cents for children, this for double features and a cartoon, with extra cartoons added for Saturday matinees. Needless to say, the theaters were very popular, and it was not unusual to see nearly packed houses on Friday and Saturday nights. At the end of the decade, the prices were raised to fifty cents for adults and twenty cents for children, but the theaters remained popular.
I attended movies at the San Gabriel several times, from about 1952-1960, and remember it as a well-maintained house with a pleasant staff. The auditorium had two aisles, and comfortable seats, but I don’t recall anything special about the decor.
This Temple theater was one door east of Rosemead Boulevard, on the north side of Las Tunas Drive. It was built for the Edwards circuit, and was designed by Lee in a style similar to that he used for Edwards' Tumbleweed Theater at Five Points in nearby El Monte the year before. The Temple was a bit smaller, but both theaters featured two-aisle auditoriums with open beamed ceilings, and, in lieu of the usual walled entrance foyer, had roofed, open sided walkways leading from the box office to the lobby entrance. These unusual entryways featured low wooden fences, rather like farm fences, painted white. In addition, the Temple, whose auditorium ran parallel to Las Tunas Drive, had a covered walkway along its street side, which was set back some fifty feet. This walk gave access to and from the parking lot located to the east of the building.
When this building was demolished, sometime about 1980, it was replaced by a four-screen theater, also owned by Edwards until quite recently.
Ken:
This theater was just off of Huntington Drive, and I passed by it frequently while riding the bus to downtown Los Angeles along that street in the early 1960’s. At that time it was indeed an American Legion Hall.
The Monterey was at 619 N. Garfield Avenue, Monterey Park. It was originally known as The Mission, and is listed under that name at this site: /theaters/2421/
By the early 1950’s, it was being operated by the Edwards circuit, which continued to run the theater until c1980. In its last few years, the Monterey was one of several theaters in the area which showed Chinese language movies.
The Mission was at 619 N. Garfield Avenue, Monterey Park. It was later known as The Monterey, and by the early 1950’s was being operated by the Edwards circuit, which continued to run the theater until c1980. In its last few years, the Monterey was one of several theaters in the area which showed Chinese language movies.
The Tower was still called the Newsreel as late as 1964, and usually ran a documentary film or two with its program of (of course) newsreels. It was at that time that I saw there a sensationalist documentary called “Mondo Cane” (Dog’s World) which created quite a stir for its cynical views.
An interesting feature of the theater at that time was a small additional theater set up in the basement, adjacent to the rest rooms in what had probably been the lounge. Here were a few dozen seats facing a large projection television which played closed circuit programs, including newscasts and sporting events.
The Tower was not the first news theater in downtown Los Angeles. I recall seeing an old advertisement for the Palace, from the WWII era, when it was called the News-Palace.
I don’t recall the exact year in which the Tower name was restored, but I remember seeing “Bonnie and Clyde” there a few weeks after it was released, so it had to have been before that movie came out in 1967.
The main thing I remember about the interior of the theater is the splendid grand staircase which spills down into the tiny, ornate lobby, taking up such a large part of it. The effect is really quite impressive.
The Rialto is one of those rare old theaters that features stadium-style seating at the back of the house, with an ordinary raked floor section at the front. Access to the auditorium is via two tunnel-like aisles that slope up to a cross aisle which bisects the house about midway, at the bottom of the stadium section. Given the current popularity of stadium seating in new multiplex theaters, the Rialto was some three quarters of a century ahead of its time.
I did see the news of the project west of the library at the Alhambra city web site, noname. The Fourth Street corner of that block once was the site of one of the old Spanish style Ralph’s markets, built in the 1920’s, and ruined in the late 1950’s by being clad in an ugly aluminum and plaster skin. I’ve also seen the pictures of the new cineplex at Garfield. It’s remarkably garish and awkward, and actually looks sort of cheap. I also saw that the Edwards Alhambra Place on Bay State Street is being demolished to make way for an apartment complex. That cineplex was only built in the mid 1980’s, as I recall. It certainly didn’t last long!
For many years, beginning in the late 1950’s, this theater and the large retail store next door to it on the west, served as the Salvation Army Thrift Shop. That was what it was the first time I saw it, about 1960. At that time, the orchestra floor had simply been stripped of its seats, and the merchandise (mostly used furniture) was displayed there, leaning at an angle. A few years later, the back half of the orchestra floor was leveled by having a platform built over it at the level of the lobby floor, but the theater aisles remained sloped, to reach the lower part of orchestra floor. (The slope of the front half of the auditorium was slight to nonexistent, of course.) The stage and proscenium remained intact at least until the late 1960’s, which was the last time I was in the store.
This was a four aisle theater, with a large balcony. I don’t know what the original interior design was, but by the time I first saw the place it was rather plain, with white plaster walls. I suspect that it had been simplified at some time. I also don’t believe that the mission style facade was original to the building. This area was the main business district of Pasadena until the 1920’s, and Colorado Boulevard was narrow when this building was built. In the late 1920’s, the city widened the street, making it necessary to chop several feet from the front of each building. With the exception of a few small buildings whose Victorian fronts were moved back intact, every structure along several blocks of Colorado Boulevard was remodeled, most of them in the currently popular Art Deco, Mission, or Churrigueresque/Spanish Colonial styles.
I think that this theater probably had a more ornate style to begin with, and also began its life with a different name. When I first saw it, the outside of the stage house, visible from DeLacy Street and Union Street, had the peeling paint of a sign which was not entirely unreadable, but very nearly so, but I got the impression that the theater was at one time called either the Orange or the Orange Grove. If someone has access to old copies of Pasadena newspapers from the early 1920’s, (perhaps available at the Pasadena public library) they could check the advertisements for theaters at that time. I’m fairly sure that this very old building antedates the formation of the Fox theater circuit. It might even have begun life as a stage house.
Hi, Noname. I have been checking the City of Alhambra’s web site periodically, and a few months ago I saw there a picture of a new project at the corner of Fourth and Main. It is a mixed use building, with apartments upstairs and commercial space on the ground floor. The corner shop is occupied by a Denny’s restaurant. I just checked the Alhambra web site again, and it must have been updated, because the picture of the new building is gone, but I found the Denny’s in a Google search: View link
The address of Denny’s is given as 369 W. Main. The picture that is gone from the city web site showed a fairly wide building, so it must occupy the site of the theater as well as the corner lot (where there used to be a print shop in a single story spanish style building set back behind a small lawn) and probably the lots east of the theater’s site, too, where there used to be a long, low commercial building.
I’d like to get back to Alhambra and take a look at all the recent changes, but I don’t know when I’ll get the chance.
El Rey went through a number of changes through the years. I first attended a movie there in the early 1950’s. By that time, the triple arch had been replaced by a conventional entrance with a central, freestanding box office, and there was a taller marquee, reaching all the way to the cornice line, with the theater name and detail in colorful neon. I don’t have any memory of the decorated parapet with its classic urns, but I believe that the window-like niches on either side of the entrance were still there.
Inside, there was a compact lobby, with concession stand opposite the front doors, and between the doors to the two aisles. Again, I have no memory of any ornate decoration there, but I have the impression of a fairly modern-looking space, so it had probably been remodeled at the same time as the outer lobby and marquee. The auditorium had a shallowly vaulted ceiling, hung with six rather simple octagonal chandeliers of colored glass panels in metalwork frames. There were simple buttresses along the walls, topped by light fixtures of frosted, colored glass, but I don’t remember what color.
Unlike the other theaters in Alhambra, which all had big leather seats in their loge sections, El Rey’s loges were plush upholstered seats a bit larger than the regular seats, and their backrests had fancy, art-moderne looking tops, rather than the simple rounded tops of the cheaper seats. Their upholstery was a different shade, too, but I don’t remember the colors. (I seem to have a very bad memory for color.)
Though we went to the movies every Friday or Saturday night, we seldom went to this theater because, being operated by Fox as a first-run house, admission was considerably more expensive than at several other theaters in the area. I think we only went there once before it became the first theater in the area to install a Cinemascope screen. When that was done, we went for the second time, to see the Cinemascope remake of “Cimmaron.” It was the first Cinemascope picture I ever saw.
Sometime around 1960, El Rey came under the ownership of the Edwards circuit. With this acquisition, Edwards was in control of all the theaters in Alhambra, San Gabriel, Temple City, Arcadia, Monterey Park and South San Gabriel. (They shared a half interest in Alhambra’s Garfield Theater with another small circuit, which I believe was called Vinicoff, but Edwards managed the Garfield.)
A couple of years after taking over El Rey, Edwards did a major remodeling of the facade, covering all the remaining plaster work with slabs of marble (which may have been faux marble- I’m not sure) and installing a new marquee, slanted rather than square, and featuring the theater’s name in dozens of somewhat retro blinking lights instead of the former neon. When the old marquee was being taken down, I happened to pass by, and saw that the carved stone below the cornice line featuring the theater’s former name was revealed, but it was swiftly covered again by the new marquee. I was only inside the place a couple of times after that, and recall that the lobby had been spruced up a bit, too, but I don’t remember any great changes in the auditorium, which had been fairly simple for as long as I had known it.
I last saw El Rey in the summer of 1986, a few weeks before I moved away from Los Angeles. The next year, both it and the nearby Alhambra Theater were severely damaged by the Whittier Narrows earthquake, and both had to be demolished. I have pleasant memories of both, and I’m sorry that they have been lost.
The Warner Beverly was the place I saw both Lawrence of Arabia and Becket, in their road show engagements. That was in 1962 and 1963. The theater was impressive, and was still very well kept at that time. It was my favorite building in Beverly Hills, and, both inside and out, one of the best pieces of art deco in California.
In 1963, a friend of mine opened an art gallery in a storefront a few doors west of the Colorado Theater. One day, when he was preparing for his first show, we were standing in front of the building and the manager of the Colorado came down to see what was going into the building. He told us that the Laemmle company was converting a building near the east end of the block into a theater, and intended to show art films. The Colorado at that time was still a second-run neighborhood house. The new theater was the Esquire.
Until this conversion, the building that became Laemmle’s Esquire had for many years been a pizza parlor, which I believe was called McGoo’s. As far as I know, that particular building had never before been used as a movie theater. The manager of the Colorado (whose name I don’t recall after all these years) said that the construction crews had to rip out the building’s concrete floor to create a rake for the theater seats.
The Esquire opened in 1964, but a couple of years passed before I attended a movie there. The interior, as I recall, was done in a simple, 1960’s contemporary style, as was the facade. It was a pleasant enough theater, if a bit small, but I never became a regular patron. I always prefered Laemmle’s flagship theater, the Los Feliz on Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood.
In the 1950’s, this theater was called Edwards San Gabriel. The name was changed to Edwards Century in the early 1960’s, when a new marquee was installed. At about that time, most of the Edwards theaters in the western San Gabriel Valley were renovated, with modern marquees replacing the older neon models, and several of the theaters were re-named. Alhambra’s Coronet became the Capri, Arcadia’s Santa Anita became Cinemaland, and I think there were other name changes among Edwards theaters in the eastern San Gabriel Valley as well.
The San Gabriel was one of several Edwards theaters in the area which had a low price policy through the mid-1950’s, charging only thirty cents for adult tickets and ten cents for children, this for double features and a cartoon, with extra cartoons added for Saturday matinees. Needless to say, the theaters were very popular, and it was not unusual to see nearly packed houses on Friday and Saturday nights. At the end of the decade, the prices were raised to fifty cents for adults and twenty cents for children, but the theaters remained popular.
I attended movies at the San Gabriel several times, from about 1952-1960, and remember it as a well-maintained house with a pleasant staff. The auditorium had two aisles, and comfortable seats, but I don’t recall anything special about the decor.
This Temple theater was one door east of Rosemead Boulevard, on the north side of Las Tunas Drive. It was built for the Edwards circuit, and was designed by Lee in a style similar to that he used for Edwards' Tumbleweed Theater at Five Points in nearby El Monte the year before. The Temple was a bit smaller, but both theaters featured two-aisle auditoriums with open beamed ceilings, and, in lieu of the usual walled entrance foyer, had roofed, open sided walkways leading from the box office to the lobby entrance. These unusual entryways featured low wooden fences, rather like farm fences, painted white. In addition, the Temple, whose auditorium ran parallel to Las Tunas Drive, had a covered walkway along its street side, which was set back some fifty feet. This walk gave access to and from the parking lot located to the east of the building.
When this building was demolished, sometime about 1980, it was replaced by a four-screen theater, also owned by Edwards until quite recently.
Ken:
This theater was just off of Huntington Drive, and I passed by it frequently while riding the bus to downtown Los Angeles along that street in the early 1960’s. At that time it was indeed an American Legion Hall.
The Monterey was at 619 N. Garfield Avenue, Monterey Park. It was originally known as The Mission, and is listed under that name at this site: /theaters/2421/
By the early 1950’s, it was being operated by the Edwards circuit, which continued to run the theater until c1980. In its last few years, the Monterey was one of several theaters in the area which showed Chinese language movies.
The Mission was at 619 N. Garfield Avenue, Monterey Park. It was later known as The Monterey, and by the early 1950’s was being operated by the Edwards circuit, which continued to run the theater until c1980. In its last few years, the Monterey was one of several theaters in the area which showed Chinese language movies.
The Tower was still called the Newsreel as late as 1964, and usually ran a documentary film or two with its program of (of course) newsreels. It was at that time that I saw there a sensationalist documentary called “Mondo Cane” (Dog’s World) which created quite a stir for its cynical views.
An interesting feature of the theater at that time was a small additional theater set up in the basement, adjacent to the rest rooms in what had probably been the lounge. Here were a few dozen seats facing a large projection television which played closed circuit programs, including newscasts and sporting events.
The Tower was not the first news theater in downtown Los Angeles. I recall seeing an old advertisement for the Palace, from the WWII era, when it was called the News-Palace.
I don’t recall the exact year in which the Tower name was restored, but I remember seeing “Bonnie and Clyde” there a few weeks after it was released, so it had to have been before that movie came out in 1967.
The main thing I remember about the interior of the theater is the splendid grand staircase which spills down into the tiny, ornate lobby, taking up such a large part of it. The effect is really quite impressive.
The Rialto is one of those rare old theaters that features stadium-style seating at the back of the house, with an ordinary raked floor section at the front. Access to the auditorium is via two tunnel-like aisles that slope up to a cross aisle which bisects the house about midway, at the bottom of the stadium section. Given the current popularity of stadium seating in new multiplex theaters, the Rialto was some three quarters of a century ahead of its time.
I did see the news of the project west of the library at the Alhambra city web site, noname. The Fourth Street corner of that block once was the site of one of the old Spanish style Ralph’s markets, built in the 1920’s, and ruined in the late 1950’s by being clad in an ugly aluminum and plaster skin. I’ve also seen the pictures of the new cineplex at Garfield. It’s remarkably garish and awkward, and actually looks sort of cheap. I also saw that the Edwards Alhambra Place on Bay State Street is being demolished to make way for an apartment complex. That cineplex was only built in the mid 1980’s, as I recall. It certainly didn’t last long!
For many years, beginning in the late 1950’s, this theater and the large retail store next door to it on the west, served as the Salvation Army Thrift Shop. That was what it was the first time I saw it, about 1960. At that time, the orchestra floor had simply been stripped of its seats, and the merchandise (mostly used furniture) was displayed there, leaning at an angle. A few years later, the back half of the orchestra floor was leveled by having a platform built over it at the level of the lobby floor, but the theater aisles remained sloped, to reach the lower part of orchestra floor. (The slope of the front half of the auditorium was slight to nonexistent, of course.) The stage and proscenium remained intact at least until the late 1960’s, which was the last time I was in the store.
This was a four aisle theater, with a large balcony. I don’t know what the original interior design was, but by the time I first saw the place it was rather plain, with white plaster walls. I suspect that it had been simplified at some time. I also don’t believe that the mission style facade was original to the building. This area was the main business district of Pasadena until the 1920’s, and Colorado Boulevard was narrow when this building was built. In the late 1920’s, the city widened the street, making it necessary to chop several feet from the front of each building. With the exception of a few small buildings whose Victorian fronts were moved back intact, every structure along several blocks of Colorado Boulevard was remodeled, most of them in the currently popular Art Deco, Mission, or Churrigueresque/Spanish Colonial styles.
I think that this theater probably had a more ornate style to begin with, and also began its life with a different name. When I first saw it, the outside of the stage house, visible from DeLacy Street and Union Street, had the peeling paint of a sign which was not entirely unreadable, but very nearly so, but I got the impression that the theater was at one time called either the Orange or the Orange Grove. If someone has access to old copies of Pasadena newspapers from the early 1920’s, (perhaps available at the Pasadena public library) they could check the advertisements for theaters at that time. I’m fairly sure that this very old building antedates the formation of the Fox theater circuit. It might even have begun life as a stage house.
Hi, Noname. I have been checking the City of Alhambra’s web site periodically, and a few months ago I saw there a picture of a new project at the corner of Fourth and Main. It is a mixed use building, with apartments upstairs and commercial space on the ground floor. The corner shop is occupied by a Denny’s restaurant. I just checked the Alhambra web site again, and it must have been updated, because the picture of the new building is gone, but I found the Denny’s in a Google search:
View link
The address of Denny’s is given as 369 W. Main. The picture that is gone from the city web site showed a fairly wide building, so it must occupy the site of the theater as well as the corner lot (where there used to be a print shop in a single story spanish style building set back behind a small lawn) and probably the lots east of the theater’s site, too, where there used to be a long, low commercial building.
I’d like to get back to Alhambra and take a look at all the recent changes, but I don’t know when I’ll get the chance.
El Rey went through a number of changes through the years. I first attended a movie there in the early 1950’s. By that time, the triple arch had been replaced by a conventional entrance with a central, freestanding box office, and there was a taller marquee, reaching all the way to the cornice line, with the theater name and detail in colorful neon. I don’t have any memory of the decorated parapet with its classic urns, but I believe that the window-like niches on either side of the entrance were still there.
Inside, there was a compact lobby, with concession stand opposite the front doors, and between the doors to the two aisles. Again, I have no memory of any ornate decoration there, but I have the impression of a fairly modern-looking space, so it had probably been remodeled at the same time as the outer lobby and marquee. The auditorium had a shallowly vaulted ceiling, hung with six rather simple octagonal chandeliers of colored glass panels in metalwork frames. There were simple buttresses along the walls, topped by light fixtures of frosted, colored glass, but I don’t remember what color.
Unlike the other theaters in Alhambra, which all had big leather seats in their loge sections, El Rey’s loges were plush upholstered seats a bit larger than the regular seats, and their backrests had fancy, art-moderne looking tops, rather than the simple rounded tops of the cheaper seats. Their upholstery was a different shade, too, but I don’t remember the colors. (I seem to have a very bad memory for color.)
Though we went to the movies every Friday or Saturday night, we seldom went to this theater because, being operated by Fox as a first-run house, admission was considerably more expensive than at several other theaters in the area. I think we only went there once before it became the first theater in the area to install a Cinemascope screen. When that was done, we went for the second time, to see the Cinemascope remake of “Cimmaron.” It was the first Cinemascope picture I ever saw.
Sometime around 1960, El Rey came under the ownership of the Edwards circuit. With this acquisition, Edwards was in control of all the theaters in Alhambra, San Gabriel, Temple City, Arcadia, Monterey Park and South San Gabriel. (They shared a half interest in Alhambra’s Garfield Theater with another small circuit, which I believe was called Vinicoff, but Edwards managed the Garfield.)
A couple of years after taking over El Rey, Edwards did a major remodeling of the facade, covering all the remaining plaster work with slabs of marble (which may have been faux marble- I’m not sure) and installing a new marquee, slanted rather than square, and featuring the theater’s name in dozens of somewhat retro blinking lights instead of the former neon. When the old marquee was being taken down, I happened to pass by, and saw that the carved stone below the cornice line featuring the theater’s former name was revealed, but it was swiftly covered again by the new marquee. I was only inside the place a couple of times after that, and recall that the lobby had been spruced up a bit, too, but I don’t remember any great changes in the auditorium, which had been fairly simple for as long as I had known it.
I last saw El Rey in the summer of 1986, a few weeks before I moved away from Los Angeles. The next year, both it and the nearby Alhambra Theater were severely damaged by the Whittier Narrows earthquake, and both had to be demolished. I have pleasant memories of both, and I’m sorry that they have been lost.
The Warner Beverly was the place I saw both Lawrence of Arabia and Becket, in their road show engagements. That was in 1962 and 1963. The theater was impressive, and was still very well kept at that time. It was my favorite building in Beverly Hills, and, both inside and out, one of the best pieces of art deco in California.
In 1963, a friend of mine opened an art gallery in a storefront a few doors west of the Colorado Theater. One day, when he was preparing for his first show, we were standing in front of the building and the manager of the Colorado came down to see what was going into the building. He told us that the Laemmle company was converting a building near the east end of the block into a theater, and intended to show art films. The Colorado at that time was still a second-run neighborhood house. The new theater was the Esquire.
Until this conversion, the building that became Laemmle’s Esquire had for many years been a pizza parlor, which I believe was called McGoo’s. As far as I know, that particular building had never before been used as a movie theater. The manager of the Colorado (whose name I don’t recall after all these years) said that the construction crews had to rip out the building’s concrete floor to create a rake for the theater seats.
The Esquire opened in 1964, but a couple of years passed before I attended a movie there. The interior, as I recall, was done in a simple, 1960’s contemporary style, as was the facade. It was a pleasant enough theater, if a bit small, but I never became a regular patron. I always prefered Laemmle’s flagship theater, the Los Feliz on Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood.