UA Santa Ana

This theater was in the Hoehner Plaza shopping center. On September 1, 1975, UA showed its last features there: "The Apple Dumpling Gang" & "Swiss Family Robinson"(Disney films)--On, September 3rd, the theater was now operated by Jim & Artie Mitchell(the Mitchell Brothers) and opened as a porn theater, their first film exhibited there was "Sodom & Gomorrah", an expensive($700,000) porn film that was also a financial flop. This also started a war between Charles Keating (who owned a Lincoln Savings & Loan across the street & was a fervent anti-porn crusader), the Mitchells, and the City of Santa Ana that lasted for over a decade. Obscenity charges were filed every time the program changed, undercover cops were going into the theater(& taping the films for evidence), and the Mitchells kept getting hauled into court. (Two of the obscenity charges even went to the CA Supreme Court) The Mitchells eventually won the cases and the resulting attempts at shutting down the theater as a public nuisance cost the city of Santa Ana over $11 million> At one point, this theater (as a porn house)grossed over $1 million annually. In 1990, the owner of the shopping center would not renew the Mitchell Bros' lease, and so the theater was shut down. How ironic.

The UA Santa Ana Theatre opened on July 14th, 1965 with "In Harms Way" in 70MM, it seated just over 1000 seats.

Here is a 1983 photo of a Mitchell Brother's Santa Ana theater.

The City of Santa Ana's efforts to close this theatre, via legal means, were such that, for 11 years, a former LAPD vice officer was paid $30 an hour to attended every movie shown at the theater; watching the films, audiotaping dialogue, and taking notes, so a judge could review the films for the 47 obscenity cases filed during that period.

In 1987, after Santa Ana finally gave up on trying to close the theatre, the city paid the Mitchell Brothers $120,000 to remove the theatre's marquee.

United Artists Communications maintained the master lease on the theatre throughout the Mitchell Brothers occupancy; subletting to the Mitchells for fifteen years and ultimately declining to renew with them, in 1990.

The theatre closed on June 30, 1990, with "The First Time," "Hot Lips" and "The Devil in Miss Jones IV."