Fox San Bernardino Theatre

The Fox San Bernardino Theatre is located at 376 Court Street.

The Fox San Bernardino Theatre was one of the most beautiful of all the Fox Theatres, and truly the most spectacular theatre ever built in the city of San Bernardino. Opened in September of 1929, the Fox contained two entrances, a beautiful courtyard entrance off of "D" Street and its main entrance at 374 Court Street. The Fox was the San Bernardino home of MGM, 20th Century-Fox and Paramount and RKO films . A favorite preview house, the Fox was visited by Hollywood stars, such as Dorothy Lamour who often performed on the Fox stage. In 1949, Bob Hope and Doris Day peroformed on the Fox Stage in a performance broadcast live by the then local radio station, KFXM.

Sadly, the Fox was converted into a newsprint warehouse by the Sun Telegram newspaper in July, of 1955. The entire stage, orchestra pit and orchestra floor were covered over. The once lavish lobby, with fountain and fish pond was converted to less than spectacular office space. The outside marquee with its beatiful neon, was removed as were all other vistiges of the building ever being a theatre.

Oddly enough, one can still walk through the warehouse portion of the building, which stores huge, ceiling high rolls of newsprint and capture a feeling of the auditorium's beauty. The proscenium is still intact, with the huge gold suburst at its apex and the medallions of the Spanish Dons which decorate the entire prosecenium which is flanked by Spanish style Opera boxes. The loss of the Fox was truly a sad loss for the city of San Bernarddino.

Fortunately, for the arts and for San Bernardino, the beautiful California Theatre was saved, preserved, renovated and is alive and well as a performing arts center.

The architects of the Fox Theatre were Balch and Stanberry.

It became the home of the Franchon and Marco "Idea's" shows on its 42ft deep stage. Those shows had previously played at the Califonia Theater which had opened a year earlier.

My Dad and Grandpa did the stage lighting for the San Bernardino theaters, including the Fox. I do have old publicity photos of Dad's, including some of the Franchon 'girls' at the theater as well as the grand opening of Lazar Cadillac in San Bernardino.

If you are familiar with San Bernardino history, you may recall the family names: Chester and Irvan 'Stumpy' Stumph (who was also a musician with swing era bands). Their business, Chester Stumph and Son Stage Lighting and Searchlights, operated for 75 years in southern California.

If you are interested in copies of the pictures, you may write to ax2usn@yahoo.com

Fortunately, the Theartre was not destroyed, only covered over. Now that the Sun has left, new owners (including the nephew of the original Mr. Fox) is restoring the Theatre and adding a Foodcourt in the old (and supposedly very haunted) Bordello next door!

This website has a vintage and a modern photo of the Fox Theater.

The San Bernardino Sun used the space as storage after they gutted it out. A Korean businessman (no relationship to the original Mr. Fox unlike mentioned above) has purchased the property and have been restoring the theatre as part of his big project, American Sports University.

I am his assistant and if anybody have some high-res pictures available which we can enlarge, we'd be willing to pay some money for it. We want to frame it and hang it on the wall.

As Grey mentioned above, we are also making a 6 vendor food court right next to the theatre.

If anybody has questions, they can contact me at (909) 889-5555 or email me at andy@americansportsuniversity.com I'd really appreciate it if anybody that has some more information on this theatre email me or contact me.

The theatre is approximately 90% completed and I'll see if I can upload some pics once it's finished.

Here are five photos from the CA state library:
http://helios.library.ca.gov/soca/mott-merge/2006/1992-2079.jpg
http://helios.library.ca.gov/soca/mott-merge/2006/1992-2080.jpg
http://helios.library.ca.gov/soca/mott-merge/2006/1992-2081.jpg
http://helios.library.ca.gov/soca/mott-merge/2006/1992-2082.jpg
http://helios.library.ca.gov/soca/mott-merge/2006/1992-2083.jpg

Wow, I looked all over for some pictures but couldn't come about any. How did you find them? Do you know if I can get some high-res pictures from the CA state library?

Type "CA state library reagh" in Google, you will get the site.

Thanks

By the way, if anybody's interested, please check out

http://www.asufox.com

The new website of what used to be the Fox Theatre in San Bernardino, CA.

1983 Photo

June 20, 2009: http://www.flickr.com/photos/achangeinscenerymovies/3649072240/

An unexpected use of the theatre:

http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_12984945