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Also known as Lesser Nickelodeon, Grauman's, Maio Biograph, Circle, New Circle, News
Crazy Horse
San Francisco, CA
980 Market Street , San Francisco, CA, United States
( map)
The Crazy Horse opened in 1909 as the Lesser Nickelodeon. Today, it's the Crazy Horse, a "Gentleman's Club" featuring live lap dancers.
So what happened in between? First of all, around 1910, a young man by the name of Sid Grauman took it over and renamed it Grauman's. Two years later, Sid opened up the much bigger and better Imperial up the street, and his former haunts became known as the Maio Biograph.
In 1922 the magnificent Warfield (q.v.) was built next door, and after a couple years, it was time for another name change, this time to the Circle.
On October 12, 1932, for some reason or other, it was renamed New Circle; on December 14, 1939, another name change, this one for a reason: the Newsreel. The Telenews had just opened down the street that September, and was doing very well. The war had already broken out in Europe, there was plenty of news to go around, so why not give it a whirl!
By the end of World War II, the Newsreel game had dried up, but the name stayed on, at least for a while. Then, in 1949, Fox West Coast took it over and renamed it the Cinema, ostensibly as a moveover house to provide a little longer Market Street run for their first run features that could no longer sustain the high overhead of their larger theaters.
This simply didn't work out, and soon it was back to the same old grind. On July 23, 1958, the name was officially changed to the Crest, and the policy was no more nor less than about a half dozen other theaters up and down Market Street, three features for fifty cents.
New management took over on June 28, 1978 and renamed it the Egyptian, and then on November 18, 1981 the Electric.
In February 1994, the Electric closed its doors for the last time and it seemed to be all over. But there was life, a lot of life, in the old girl yet. On July 26, 1994 the lights went on again in a big way as it returned to life as the Crazy Horse Strip Club, aka Crazy Horse Theatre, featuring live lap dancers!
As we write (2002) it's still going strong. That's show biz, but only in San Francisco!
Contributed by tillmany
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Also, when it was the Electric, it primarily showed triple bills, mostly of the horror/sleaze variety. Towards the end of its run as a theater, the Electric showed hard porn.