Thanks, ken mc! I hope Marl Protasel will visit this site someday. That DRACULA HAS RISEN…/FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED double feature was my first time seeing a horror movie in a theater. DRACULA HAS RISEN… was rated G for some reason, so my Dad took me to see it on a weekend afternoon. We only saw about eight minutes before I got too scared and we had to leave the theater. I’ve seen the scene that scared me since, and Dracula’s being seductive in it and this barmaid he’s about to bite is much aroused, but to me as a kid she seemed to be smiling from fright. Absolutely one of my top Fox Theater memories. Later I tried the double feature again, with my sister and a friend of hers, and when Dracula died at the end we were all teary-eyed with horror and compassion. FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED seemed kind of dull at the time, but I think it’s the better movie now.
Thanks for the new picture, ken mc. It’s a beauty!
I ran out of things to say about the Fox a while back, but I still visit this site now and then, and I was just thinking about the Fox this evening while I listened to my soundtrack CD of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (a movie I never actually saw at the Fox but which must have been great there).
Still hoping to see the lobby again someday.
I’m still using a Fox interior shot for my computer screen. Thanks again for another photo for the collection! Scott S.
Was that Pussycat Theater down the block and across the street from Torrance Community Theater?
My favorite shot in JACKIE BROWN is when Pam Grier leaves the mall and there’s a point-of-view shot through a doorway with the Union Bank Building across the street.
My favorite Del Amo 6 memory is of one foggy afternoon that I crossed the street from the Union Bank Building, where I was working, to see an early showing of Herzog’s NOSFERARTU, THE VAMPYRE, because I’d liked the poster. I was expecting a lot of gore, and what I saw instead put me to sleep—but that’s a perfect movie to doze off to, and it’s become one of my favorites because it always takes me back to that afternoon.
BrucieB: I was sort of kidding about the bookmarks anyway. The one poster you might have that I might be interested in is the one for DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE. Also—the night I saw NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD there was no poster outside, just some stills, and I saw the one where Duane Jones is helping Judith O'Day to put on her shoes. I thought they were in a shoe store and he was waiting on her. All through the movie I was thinking the people trapped in the house would get out eventually, because there was a scene coming up in a shoe store—and I remember the awful moment it dawned on me that they really weren’t getting out at all … So that’s a still I might be interested in later on. In the meantime I am enjoying your comments and only wish they could be gathered together in a book with lots of photographs. I told a friend a while back that if I could have two lives I would want one of them to be yours. I’d rather have grown up around a hotel and at the Fox than almost anywhere else.
She went to Hillcrest Junior High for certain, and she might also have gone to Redondo High. I think there may have been two daughters but Lisa’s the one I remember. And Fallbrook is somewhere near San Diego. My dad calls it “Avocado Country.”
My dad remembers Dan Ashcraft as one of the most level-headed officers he ever worked with. Dan retired about twenty years ago and moved to Fallbrook. His daughter Lisa was about the prettiest girl in my school.
Vaguest Fox Memory (for Manwithnoname): HAVE ROCKET WILL TRAVEL played at the Fox, too, I think, sometime in the early sixties. I was sitting toward the front with my sister.
Movie I Would Most Like to Have Seen at the Fox in the Late 1950’s: THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN. (I’ve read that Richard Matheson got the inspiration for his novel while sitting in a movie theater in Redondo Beach. I like to think the theater was the Fox and the movie was LITTLE WOMEN …)
I remember beatnicks! I thought they were all pretty dangerous until my cousin became one, then they were dangerous but family.
I went to school with a kid named Robbie who may have been the son or nephew of Fred and Alice.
Remember the plastic whales and stuff you got at Marineland? You could just about eat them. Thick soft plastic and my whale was blue.
Favorite movie promotional item: Little white plastic Angeliques they gave out when NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS premiered. (Also I’d love to have got a barf bag, but I didn’t get to see THE CORPSE GRINDERS, etc.)
Worst Marineland memory: I’m playing on our front lawn in Redondo and my dad drives up in his new sports car and says jump in. So I jump in and we head up through Palos Verdes and the whole way he’s shouting, Guess where we’re going! guess! guess! and I have no idea, until finally Marineland comes into view and I say, Marineland? Is it Marineland? and he says, Yep! Marineland! and we turn around and head home. The ride was the thing, he really loved that car.
The best thing about going to the Fox with my dad was that he was a cop, so we got in free and I felt more important than the average moviegoer.
Here’s a great Dad-memory to make up for the last one: He figured out ahead of time what Soylent Green was, so we left the movie and went for a ride in a police boat. Man, it went fast! Pretty scary and pretty fun! (Picture me in the boat and the Fox somewhere over my shoulder …)
I ate there for sure, but I get my restaurants confused. With movies I can usually remember pretty well what I saw and where, or even what my parents saw and where, but meals I’m not so good at.
What was great in the Riviera Village was a small book store where in the early seventies they had rows and rows of Agatha Christie paperbacks. Also they sold large books edited by a man named Richard J. Anobile, which were like comic books but made up of pictures taken from frames of classic movies, with the dialogue written out beneath the pictures. Some of the titles were STAGECOACH, THE MALTESE FALCON, DR. JECKYLL AND MR. HYDE (the Rouben Mamoulian version), NINOTCHKA, CASABLANCA, and PSYCHO. When those movies played on television I made audio cassettes of them, leaving out the commercials, and played them back while looking through the pictures in the books. But PSYCHO was always heavily cut for TV (ABC used to show it with nearly the whole first third missing, so you barely knew why Janet Leigh had checked into the motel!) so I sneaked my tape recorder into a revival theater and got my PSYCHO soundtrack that way, with real screams on it. That was all in the days before VCRs.
Favorite spot in the Fox: I think it was the left-side balcony entrance facing the screen—I stood there against the wall at the end of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD with a lot of other people who were scared out of their seats, including a very pretty girl with long black hair and bangs who had seen the movie before. I’ve never forgotten the distinct way the floor felt under my feet. Favorite sense-memory also.
My great gandmother and great uncle lived across the street from the Biltmore, and their two small houses are still there, according to my mother. The Biltmore was a big deal in my mother’s childhood, and she remembers going with my grandmother to hear Ethel Waters speak there. I looked for pictures of the Biltmore at the sites that had the Fox pictures, but didn’t find any.
BrucieB, I sure wish I could remember that Cole Porter music but it slips my mind completely. The music I DO remember is the stuff they played at the Torrance Drive-In, the same six or eight songs over and over, all instrumental and swoony like the soundtrack for ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST.
A favorite trailer I saw at the Fox was the one for TROG, where a little girl in a park goes down a slide and Trog is waiting at the bottom. Trog was kind of scrawny but he scared me.
Hi, Sally! I knew it was a long shot—I guess you and my mom didn’t know each other. My mom remembers the Del Mar Hotel, though, and a friend she had who lived there for a while named Jack Paar (not the Tonight Show host). My mom’s favorite movie that she saw at the Fox was ON THE TOWN (which I also think is one of the best musicals ever).
One of the best times in my life was in the late seventies when I was just learning to drive and on weeknights I’d go to the Marinas where admission was only one dollar. The theaters were always nearly empty, and if I didn’t like the movie I’d stay in the lobby and talk to the guy who sold the tickets and popcorn. I remember he was heavyset and had yellow hair, but I don’t think I ever learned his name. Some of the movies I saw during that time were EYEBALL, AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, and THE TOOLBOX MURDERS starring Pamelyn Ferdin.
I remember going one summer day to see a double feature of THE EXORCIST and THE SHINING. The woman sitting behind me wanted everyone to know that she had read the book, THE SHINING. When her kid asked her how long the family would be in the hotel, she said, “A year.” That woman is still on my nerves.
Toward the mid-eighties I got a job working for Peter Bogdanovich, and one of the guys I worked with had a second job as a projectionist at one of the Marinas. Peter fired him and I’ve always wondered how he took it. If he should ever read this, I’d like him to know that in the coming weeks Peter fired all his staff, except for his maid and an assistant to whom he owed money. At least we all got to go home. The dogs he got sick of were left in a cage in the backyard where they could barely move around without bumping into each other.
My favorite movies that I saw at the Marinas are all from the early seventies: They were IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (the well-paced, unrestored version—at Marina 1), STRAW DOGS (at Marina 2), and THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (at the Surf).
Thanks, Redondo Theater. I’ve passed the news about Dan on to my Dad; he always thought highly of the Ashcrafts.
Wow! That’s a beauty!
Thanks, B. Greene, that picture’s just beautiful.
Thanks, ken mc! I hope Marl Protasel will visit this site someday. That DRACULA HAS RISEN…/FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED double feature was my first time seeing a horror movie in a theater. DRACULA HAS RISEN… was rated G for some reason, so my Dad took me to see it on a weekend afternoon. We only saw about eight minutes before I got too scared and we had to leave the theater. I’ve seen the scene that scared me since, and Dracula’s being seductive in it and this barmaid he’s about to bite is much aroused, but to me as a kid she seemed to be smiling from fright. Absolutely one of my top Fox Theater memories. Later I tried the double feature again, with my sister and a friend of hers, and when Dracula died at the end we were all teary-eyed with horror and compassion. FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED seemed kind of dull at the time, but I think it’s the better movie now.
Thanks, ken mc! 1970 is my favorite Fox Redondo year. But when I go to the page, I get a message that says “Page not found.” Any idea what’s wrong?
Thanks, ken mc! http://jpg2.lapl.org/theater3/0015693.jpg is the best picture I’ve seen so far of those two guys on the wall.
That’s a great item, ken mc! Does the paper show what was playing that night?
And before that it was known as the Surf.
Wow, I haven’t seen those guys in color since I was 12! Thanks, ken mc.
Thanks for the great pictures, ken mc!
Thanks for the new picture, ken mc. It’s a beauty!
I ran out of things to say about the Fox a while back, but I still visit this site now and then, and I was just thinking about the Fox this evening while I listened to my soundtrack CD of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (a movie I never actually saw at the Fox but which must have been great there).
Still hoping to see the lobby again someday.
I’m still using a Fox interior shot for my computer screen. Thanks again for another photo for the collection! Scott S.
Was that Pussycat Theater down the block and across the street from Torrance Community Theater?
My favorite shot in JACKIE BROWN is when Pam Grier leaves the mall and there’s a point-of-view shot through a doorway with the Union Bank Building across the street.
My favorite Del Amo 6 memory is of one foggy afternoon that I crossed the street from the Union Bank Building, where I was working, to see an early showing of Herzog’s NOSFERARTU, THE VAMPYRE, because I’d liked the poster. I was expecting a lot of gore, and what I saw instead put me to sleep—but that’s a perfect movie to doze off to, and it’s become one of my favorites because it always takes me back to that afternoon.
BrucieB: I was sort of kidding about the bookmarks anyway. The one poster you might have that I might be interested in is the one for DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE. Also—the night I saw NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD there was no poster outside, just some stills, and I saw the one where Duane Jones is helping Judith O'Day to put on her shoes. I thought they were in a shoe store and he was waiting on her. All through the movie I was thinking the people trapped in the house would get out eventually, because there was a scene coming up in a shoe store—and I remember the awful moment it dawned on me that they really weren’t getting out at all … So that’s a still I might be interested in later on. In the meantime I am enjoying your comments and only wish they could be gathered together in a book with lots of photographs. I told a friend a while back that if I could have two lives I would want one of them to be yours. I’d rather have grown up around a hotel and at the Fox than almost anywhere else.
I will trade authentic old Either/Or Bookstore bookmarks for posters or any other memorabilia people may have from the Fox.
She went to Hillcrest Junior High for certain, and she might also have gone to Redondo High. I think there may have been two daughters but Lisa’s the one I remember. And Fallbrook is somewhere near San Diego. My dad calls it “Avocado Country.”
My dad remembers Dan Ashcraft as one of the most level-headed officers he ever worked with. Dan retired about twenty years ago and moved to Fallbrook. His daughter Lisa was about the prettiest girl in my school.
Vaguest Fox Memory (for Manwithnoname): HAVE ROCKET WILL TRAVEL played at the Fox, too, I think, sometime in the early sixties. I was sitting toward the front with my sister.
Movie I Would Most Like to Have Seen at the Fox in the Late 1950’s: THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN. (I’ve read that Richard Matheson got the inspiration for his novel while sitting in a movie theater in Redondo Beach. I like to think the theater was the Fox and the movie was LITTLE WOMEN …)
I remember beatnicks! I thought they were all pretty dangerous until my cousin became one, then they were dangerous but family.
I went to school with a kid named Robbie who may have been the son or nephew of Fred and Alice.
Remember the plastic whales and stuff you got at Marineland? You could just about eat them. Thick soft plastic and my whale was blue.
Favorite movie promotional item: Little white plastic Angeliques they gave out when NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS premiered. (Also I’d love to have got a barf bag, but I didn’t get to see THE CORPSE GRINDERS, etc.)
Worst Marineland memory: I’m playing on our front lawn in Redondo and my dad drives up in his new sports car and says jump in. So I jump in and we head up through Palos Verdes and the whole way he’s shouting, Guess where we’re going! guess! guess! and I have no idea, until finally Marineland comes into view and I say, Marineland? Is it Marineland? and he says, Yep! Marineland! and we turn around and head home. The ride was the thing, he really loved that car.
The best thing about going to the Fox with my dad was that he was a cop, so we got in free and I felt more important than the average moviegoer.
Here’s a great Dad-memory to make up for the last one: He figured out ahead of time what Soylent Green was, so we left the movie and went for a ride in a police boat. Man, it went fast! Pretty scary and pretty fun! (Picture me in the boat and the Fox somewhere over my shoulder …)
I ate there for sure, but I get my restaurants confused. With movies I can usually remember pretty well what I saw and where, or even what my parents saw and where, but meals I’m not so good at.
What was great in the Riviera Village was a small book store where in the early seventies they had rows and rows of Agatha Christie paperbacks. Also they sold large books edited by a man named Richard J. Anobile, which were like comic books but made up of pictures taken from frames of classic movies, with the dialogue written out beneath the pictures. Some of the titles were STAGECOACH, THE MALTESE FALCON, DR. JECKYLL AND MR. HYDE (the Rouben Mamoulian version), NINOTCHKA, CASABLANCA, and PSYCHO. When those movies played on television I made audio cassettes of them, leaving out the commercials, and played them back while looking through the pictures in the books. But PSYCHO was always heavily cut for TV (ABC used to show it with nearly the whole first third missing, so you barely knew why Janet Leigh had checked into the motel!) so I sneaked my tape recorder into a revival theater and got my PSYCHO soundtrack that way, with real screams on it. That was all in the days before VCRs.
Favorite spot in the Fox: I think it was the left-side balcony entrance facing the screen—I stood there against the wall at the end of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD with a lot of other people who were scared out of their seats, including a very pretty girl with long black hair and bangs who had seen the movie before. I’ve never forgotten the distinct way the floor felt under my feet. Favorite sense-memory also.
Did it have bright red bricks on the outside?
My great gandmother and great uncle lived across the street from the Biltmore, and their two small houses are still there, according to my mother. The Biltmore was a big deal in my mother’s childhood, and she remembers going with my grandmother to hear Ethel Waters speak there. I looked for pictures of the Biltmore at the sites that had the Fox pictures, but didn’t find any.
BrucieB, I sure wish I could remember that Cole Porter music but it slips my mind completely. The music I DO remember is the stuff they played at the Torrance Drive-In, the same six or eight songs over and over, all instrumental and swoony like the soundtrack for ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST.
A favorite trailer I saw at the Fox was the one for TROG, where a little girl in a park goes down a slide and Trog is waiting at the bottom. Trog was kind of scrawny but he scared me.
Hi, Sally! I knew it was a long shot—I guess you and my mom didn’t know each other. My mom remembers the Del Mar Hotel, though, and a friend she had who lived there for a while named Jack Paar (not the Tonight Show host). My mom’s favorite movie that she saw at the Fox was ON THE TOWN (which I also think is one of the best musicals ever).
This was the perfect theater to see DAWN OF THE DEAD in.
One of the best times in my life was in the late seventies when I was just learning to drive and on weeknights I’d go to the Marinas where admission was only one dollar. The theaters were always nearly empty, and if I didn’t like the movie I’d stay in the lobby and talk to the guy who sold the tickets and popcorn. I remember he was heavyset and had yellow hair, but I don’t think I ever learned his name. Some of the movies I saw during that time were EYEBALL, AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, and THE TOOLBOX MURDERS starring Pamelyn Ferdin.
I remember going one summer day to see a double feature of THE EXORCIST and THE SHINING. The woman sitting behind me wanted everyone to know that she had read the book, THE SHINING. When her kid asked her how long the family would be in the hotel, she said, “A year.” That woman is still on my nerves.
Toward the mid-eighties I got a job working for Peter Bogdanovich, and one of the guys I worked with had a second job as a projectionist at one of the Marinas. Peter fired him and I’ve always wondered how he took it. If he should ever read this, I’d like him to know that in the coming weeks Peter fired all his staff, except for his maid and an assistant to whom he owed money. At least we all got to go home. The dogs he got sick of were left in a cage in the backyard where they could barely move around without bumping into each other.
My favorite movies that I saw at the Marinas are all from the early seventies: They were IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (the well-paced, unrestored version—at Marina 1), STRAW DOGS (at Marina 2), and THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (at the Surf).