Beverly Canon Theatre

The Beverly Canon Theatre is located at 205 N. Canon Dr.
During the late 60's the Canon was operated by Walter Reade Theatres.

Sadly, this delightful, funky, architecturally prosaic, old entertainment space, operating since 1976 as a playhouse instead of a cinema, is slated to be demolished April 2004. A hotel will rise in its place on "the block that Gucci owns."

Please refer to the LA Times article entitled "Canon's Final Act, by Don Shirley, March 26, 2004.

Damon Schwartz
Asst. Business Mgr. (1976-77)
Solari Theatre Ensemble (Beverly Canon Cinema)
dms2000@quiknet.com

According to reports, demolition is imminent and will begin on 22nd August 2005.

When was this theater known as the Hitching Post? There was a Hitching Post Theater on Hollywood Blvd. but the only one I know of.

The newspaper article on the impending demolition of this and the Beverly Theatre states this was called the the Hitching Post. Article is on the Beverly Theatre page http://cinematreasures.org/theater/494/

I know of the Hitching Post Theatre in Hollywood (now demolished) and there was a Hitching Post Theatre in Santa Monica located at 1448 4th Streeet.

Thanks, Ken. Does anyone have any more info of this theater when it was the Hitching Post? Did the theater open with that name?

It's not often that two historic theaters are simultaneously razed in any town, let alone Beverly Hills. The Canon Theatre was demolished last week, along with the Beverly Theater. I took some photos which can be seen here: http://barryphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/794486

Minutes after I took the Canon shot, the crane extended its arm over the top of the facade, shifted into reverse, and pulled it down. I worked on Canon Dr. for 40 years and attended many performances there. Very sad moment.

Two of the photos were used in last week's Beverly Hills Weekly. They accompanied a story about the futile last ditch legal efforts to save them.

This was known as the Solari Theatre as of February 5, 1980.

Aloha Everyone,

I saw lots of film noir at the Beverly Canon during the early 1970's. I particularly remember seeing 'The Big Sleep', 'The Maltese Falcon', and several other Bogart films here.

The recent documentary Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (available on DVD) briefly mentions and shows the Beverly Canon theatre. Jerry Harvey, the subject of this documentary, programmed the Beverly Canon before moving on to program first SelecTV and then the Z Channel.

At the Beverly Canon, Harvey was responsible for, among other things, showing an uncut version of [i]The Wild Bunch[i].

Here is a December 1972 ad from the LA Times:
http://tinyurl.com/2xhoh5

Here is a 1958 photo from the Los Angeles Public Library:
http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics48/00073794.jpg

Kon-Tiki was released in April of 1951 in NYC.

The November 2, 1946, issue of Boxoffice said that the opening of the Hitching Post Theatre in Beverly Hills had been postponed from November 8 to November 22. The building was apparently new, as the item gave its cost as a quarter of a million dollars.

This being Beverly Hills, the grand opening didn't lack for celebrities. Among those attending were Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and Trigger, as well as lesser luminaries such as Glenn Ford and Eleanor Powell. Trigger's hoof-prints were immortalized in cement as part of the festivities. There are photos in the December 7, 1943 issue of Boxoffice.

The January 25, 1947, issue of Boxoffice said that the Hitching Post Theatre in Beverly Hills was adopting a newsreel policy to be in effect Mondays through Thursdays, but would continue to show western movies on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. It would be the first newsreel operation in the Los Angeles area outside downtown and Hollywood.

The owners of the house, ABC Theatres (which I was a local partnership consisting of Buddy Adler, Horace Boos, and Gregory Carter, and was not related to the later nation-wide ABC circuit) renamed the house the Beverly Canon Theatre and switched its policy to single features and short subjects with newsreels in 1947, according to Boxoffice of April 19 that year. For a time, the theater continued to run two daytime shows of westerns for the local moppets on Saturdays and Sundays. Later Boxoffice items reveal that the Beverly Canon had gone to an art house policy by 1949.

ABC converted their Hitching Post in Hollywood into the art film Paris Theatre in late 1949. Their Santa Monica Hitching Post continued to run westerns for only a few months after the last of its companion theaters went highbrow on it, then after a brief closure was reopened as the Riviera Theatre, another art house.