California Theatre

This theatre was a pre-Twenties house which was later drastically remodeled under Fox operation in the Skouras style. There were swirling neon-lit coves on the ceiling and phoenix-like birds flying across the walls toward the screen.
I am told by a former resident of the area that the building still stands, in use as a bank.

This theatre is one of some 200 that could be described as "Skouras-ized For Showmanship" which is the title of the ANNUAL of 1987 of the Theatre Historical Soc. of America. In the late 1930s through the 1950s, there occurred on the west coast of the United States a phenomenon known as the 'Skouras style' in recognition of the oversight of the Skouras brothers in their management of several cinema chains. They employed a designer by the name of Carl G. Moeller to render their cinemas/theatres in a new style best described as 'Art Moderne meets Streamlined.' The then new availability of aluminum sheeting at low cost was the principal material difference to this style allowing for sweeping, 3-dimensional shapes of scrolls to adorn walls and facades in an expression that would have been much more expensive and not at all the same in plaster. With the use of hand tinted and etched aluminum forms, the designers could make ornaments in mass production that allowed much greater economies of scale. The ANNUAL also show in its 44 pages how some 20 theatres were good examples of this combining of aluminum forms with sweeping draperies heavily hung with large tassels, and with box offices and facades richly treated with neon within the aluminum forms. Few of these examples survive today, but it was a glorious era while it lasted, and this collection of crisp b/w photos is a fitting epitaph by the late Preston Kaufmann.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE:
To obtain any available Back Issue of either "Marquee" or of its ANNUALS, simply go to the web site of the THEATRE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA at:
www.HistoricTheatres.org
and notice on their first page the link "PUBLICATIONS: Back Issues List" and click on that and you will be taken to their listing where they also give ordering details. The "Marquee" magazine is 8-1/2x11 inches tall ('portrait') format, and the ANNUALS are also soft cover in the same size, but in the long ('landscape') format, and are anywhere from 26 to 44 pages. Should they indicate that a publication is Out Of Print, then it may still be possible to view it via Inter-Library Loan where you go to the librarian at any public or school library and ask them to locate which library has the item by using the Union List of Serials, and your library can then ask the other library to lend it to them for you to read or photocopy. [Photocopies of most THSA publications are available from University Microforms International (UMI), but their prices are exorbitant.]

Note: Most any photo in any of their publications may be had in large size by purchase; see their ARCHIVE link. You should realize that there was no color still photography in the 1920s, so few theatres were seen in color at that time except by means of hand tinted renderings or post cards, thus all the antique photos from the Society will be in black and white, but it is quite possible that the Society has later color images available; it is best to inquire of them.

Should you not be able to contact them via their web site, you may also contact their Executive Director via E-mail at: execdir@historictheatres.org
Or you may reach them via phone or snail mail at:
Theatre Historical Soc. of America
152 N. York, 2nd Floor York Theatre Bldg.
Elmhurst, ILL. 60126-2806 (they are about 15 miles west of Chicago)

Phone: 630-782-1800 or via FAX at: 630-782-1802 (Monday through Friday, 9AM--4PM, CT)

The California Theatre in Bakersfield was Skouras-ized in 1945. Before this remodeling by Fox West Coast Theatres the California was an atmospheric theatre, much like the Arlington in Santa Barbara. The side walls were like a small sleepy town.

Here is a 1928 photo from the LAPL:
http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics41/00070070.jpg

A Wurlitzer theater organ opus 396 style 210 was installed in the California Theater in Bakersfield on 2/28/1921.

This website has some photos of the California Theater in Bakersfield. Its a cached page. The building in these photos looks nothing like the building in the photo that ken mc posted on Sep 26, 2007. And there should be an aka name of Fox California Theater.

The California was not an atmospheric. It was a rather plain, early '20s theatre. The theatre with the "sleepy town" on its walls was the Bakersfield Fox which got the Skouras treatment after the big quake of 1952. The shell of the massively remodeled California still resides on Chester Ave. The 2/9 Wurlitzer organ from the Bakersfield Fox was transplanted by Louis A. Maas, added to (English Horn and couplers)and installed in the late Fox Theatre in Phoenix.

I wonder if the 1928 photo ken mc posted on September 26, 2007, which the L.A. Library misidentifies as the California Theatre, could actually depict the Granada Theatre, which opened about that time? The theatre in the photo does have some Moorish design elements, suitable for a theatre of that name, and its facade is about the same size as the Granada's, seen on this page some years after its 1950 remodeling.

Looking at the Granada Theatre as it appears today, and comparing it with the historic photo of the Moorish facade, I would say, based on proportion, window location, and height of the building to the left that these are one and the same theater.

In Lost Memory's post which links to the Lost Treasures site page of the California Theatre, now a bank--that is most definitely the California that got the Skouras treatment, as it appears in Preston Kaufman's Skouras annual from Theatre Historical Society, and the facade and sidewall configuration of the theater are the same, although the Skouras treatment removed most, though not all, of the facade's basic neo-classic facade elements, and then added a neon marquee which bears some resemblance to that still extant on the California Theatre in Berkeley.

Here's an image of the theatre from the Kern COunty Museum: http://www.kcmuseum.org/stories/storyReader$1247