Roosevelt Theatre

The Roosevelt Theatre is listed in the Film Daily Yearbook's 1941 and 1943 as having 800 seats and closed.

By the 1950 and 1952 editions of the F.D.Y. it is listed as open and having 340 seats.

The site where the theatre stood now has civic buildings built on it.

This may be the Roosevelt in 1936:
http://tinyurl.com/zwah2

In 1923, the Roosevelt was operating under the name Electric Theatre.

The theatre in the picture to which ken mc linked above is definitely the Roosevelt. Another photograph from the USC archive shows the intersection of Main and Market Streets in 1935. The marquee of the theatre can be recognized at the far left. The address of the U.S. Hotel at the corner of Main and Market is given as 170 N.Main, so the address of the theatre in the next block can be reasonably assumed to be 212 N Main.

Eventually, all the buildings in these photos were demolished as part of the expansion of the civic center. The site of the Roosevelt Theatre is now the location of the eastward extension of Temple Street which was built in 1960.

The proprietor of the buffet lunch at the US Hotel was Max Vogel. Any connection, Joe?

No relation as far as I know, though the extended family was quite large, so there were a lot of Vogels around L.A. by the late 19th century who were fairly close relatives of my great grandfather. But then it's also a fairly common surname, so there were also quite a few Vogels to whom I'd probably not be related. I don't know if I'm related to the owners of the Vogel Block which stood at the southwest corner of 7th and Broadway until it was demolished to make way for Loew's State Theatre, either.

The 1939 LA city directory lists the Electric at 212 N. Main. The Roosevelt (or a Roosevelt, I suppose) was listed at 842 S. Main.

ken mc: 842 S. Main was (according to a 1914 newspaper article quoted by vokoban in a December 22, 2005 comment on the Optic Theatre page) the location of Miller's Theatre, about midway between the California Theatre and 9th Street. (Miller's still hasn't been added to Cinema Treasures.) It seems possible that the operators of the Roosevelt at 212 N. Main lost their lease and moved their operation to the old Miller's location. It would have been easy for the N. Main building to revert to its earlier name of the Electric Theatre, as the marquee only had the generic word "Theatre" (or is that "Theater"... the photo I linked to last October is a bit blurry) on it.

In 1925, the LA Times advertised another Roosevelt theater. This one was at 8th and Vermont.

The Roosevelt Theatre at 8th and Vermont, renamed Chotiner's Parisian Theatre in the 1930s, is listed here as the Fox Parisian.

The 1942 City Directory lists a Roosevelt at 216 N. Main. I wonder if its a misprint.

Something is strange here....doesn't the electric theater have its own page? 212 N. Main is listed as Electric Theater in the City Directory for these years: 1915, 1916, 1920, 1923 LAT, 1930, 1936

This article seems to say that there were two different theaters:
(Nov. 27, 1938)
Glamorous Vilma Vidal, featured in the 12-reel production, "Refugiados en Madrid," currently showing at the California, Electric and Roosevelt theaters, has been voted in both the Argentine and in Mexico as the "actress with the perfect diction."

From 1938-1949, the California, Mason, and Roosevelt all seem to show the same movie at the same time, mostly Mexican movies.

(Aug. 3, 1942)
Today the American premiere of a Mexican feature, "Prodigal Barber," with Fernando Soler, starts at Frank Fouce's California and Roosevelt theaters.

There are numerous ads in the above time span with all three or a combination of two of the three theaters showing one movie.

By 1939, the name Roosevelt Theatre had migrated to the former Miller's Theatre at 842 S. Main. Both the California and Miller's were originally under the same ownership and, since they both came to be operated by Frank Fouce in the 1930s, my guess is that Fouce had been running this theatre at 212 N. Main and then closed it when he acquired Miller's and moved the name Roosevelt there.

USC having changed the URLs for its photos, my link from October 5, 2006, above no longer works. I can't find the 1935 photo I linked to, but here's a 1936 shot which shows the Electric/Roosevelt Theatre in the background. Only the generic name "Theatre" is displayed on the marquee, and the names of the movies appear to be in Spanish.

In the 1942 city directory, a Roosevelt is listed at 216 N. Main....strange.

OK, having reread vokoban's comments of Aug 21 (and Ken Roe's remarks at the beginning of the comment thread), it looks as though the name Roosevelt must have been given to the former Miller's Theatre on South Main first, and then moved to the Electric Theatre on North Main sometime after 1939. I can't account for the 1942 directory address of 216 N. Main for the Roosevelt Theatre, unless the buildings on the block were renumbered. The 1936 photo shows the theatre entrance at the very north end of its building, so it doesn't seem likely that the door could have been moved northward.

I found the 1935 photo from the USC archives. It shows the intersection of Main and Market Streets and, at the far end of the two-story building beyond the turreted U.S. Hotel on the corner, the marquee of the theatre can be seen. The address of the U.S. Hotel was 170 N. Main, and it was the last building in.the 100 block even though it was north of Market Street. The numbers changed at Temple Street, which then ended at Main Street and is out of camera range at left.

This offers a possible explanation of the theatre's migratory address. If, sometime after 1940, the numbers on the east side of Main were adjusted to make Market Street instead of Temple Street the dividing line, then the numbers in the 200 block would have had to have been adjusted upward a bit to accommodate a 200 block address for the U.S. Hotel's lot. Thus there would have been a change from 212 to 216 for the theatre.

Here's a side by side comparison of the 1906 and what is supposed to be an updated 1950 sanborn map. The maps are very confusing when it comes to dates, so I'm not sure how accurate the 1950 is. You can see that by the later map on the right that the addresses jump from 212 to 220.

http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1213917917&size=l

On the 1906 map the US Hotel takes up 168, 170, and 172 and then the addresses start at 200 on the turreted building after Market. The 200's end at 240 with the US Natl. Bank and then start on the other side of Commercial with the 300's. All the 100's N. Start at first and the 300's on the West side of Main start at Temple (Downey Block 301-325) where it ends at Main.

From looking at those side by sides, I think the 1942 city guide was a misprint. The building at 220 N. Main that says Bank also says 1926, so that's probably what you can see in Joe's picture from the 30's. I don't think a 216 N. Main even existed by 1942.

Here's a screen shot of a movie called Crime Wave from 1954 that shows a Roosevelt Theater in the background.

http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1243775432&size=o

It looks like the same building that was in the 1936 USC photo. You can see more detail in the 1954 photo, though. We were speculating that this block was razed during expansion of the Civic Center.

In the movie they pan over a little to the south and you can see the building with the turrets on the corner that shows up on the Sanborn comparison above. Wouldn't this be where City Hall East now sits?

Here is a 1938 ad from the LA Times:
http://tinyurl.com/6z59km

This 1925 LA city directory shows a Gay Theater at 224 N. Main:
http://tinyurl.com/5e2qoe

I'm sure I made some mistakes on here, but on this map I have the Gay, Plaza at 224 N. Main and the Roosevelt a few doors south at 216.

http://flickr.com/photos/vokoban/2722189545/sizes/o/in/set-72157606483869414/

Thanks. I wasn't sure if these were the same.

Here is an item from Boxoffice magazine, May 1950:

Lou Goldstein, former film salesman connected at various times with several of the independent exchanges here, has leased the Roosevelt Theater on North Main Street from Max Gardens and will book Chinese language films into the house.

The Electric Theatre was already listed at 212 N. Main Street in the 1915 L.A. City Directory. Since the building is gone I have no way of finding out how old it was at that time.

The urls of the photos from the USC Archive have been changed yet again since the last time I linked to them. The L.A. Library may misidentify more of its photos than USC does, but at least the library's urls are stable. I wish they'd both get Flickr accounts.

Here's the ca.1935 photo with the theater in the distance.

Here is the 1936 photo with a fairly decent view of the marquee.

There's a photo dated 1930 at the State Library showing part of the theater at right, and there was no marquee yet. The marquee was probably added when it became the Roosevelt.

There is a brief scene at the end of the 1954 release Crime Wave, with Sterling Hayden, in which the theatre exterior is clearly visible.

Here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vokoban/1243775432/

The theater is about mid block on the right in this late 30s photo from the USC archive:
http://tinyurl.com/cv2xyd

The building the Roosevelt would later occupy part of was already there in 1882, if the L.A. Library has this photo dated properly.

Wait, not that one. This one, which is a drawing of the block, undated, but from the 19th century.