4-Star Theatre
2200 Clement Street,
San Francisco,
CA
94121
2200 Clement Street,
San Francisco,
CA
94121
9 people
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The former La Bonita Theatre has been close to closing many times since its birth in 1912. Although any of its architectural character was long clapboarded over, the theatre has retained a simple Moderne marquee and vertical sign. Chinese characters have also been painted on the facade.
The theatre was the site of an eleven month run of “La Cage aux Folles” in 1979. Now twinned and showing mostly arthouse and foreign films, the 4-Star Theatre continues to struggle, but it is a survivor.
Contributed by
Juan-Miguel Gallegos
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Recent comments (view all 26 comments)
I like marquees. It’s subjective.
Subjective or ridiculous? There are a number of theater photos already here that include the marquee. I could understand if it was a vintage photo.
Here is the 4-Star Theater website.
This is another photo of the 4-Star Theater.
Here are some 1986 photos:
Photo1
Photo2
Photo3
Photo4
Here is an undated photo:
http://tinyurl.com/oy672o
This is a June 2009 photo.
Noveember 2009 photo of the 4 Stara Theatre courtesy James Herman.
View link
A 2010 photo can be seen here.
I visited this theater yesterday and was a little disappointed. I was in the larger cinema, which is largely intact from its single-screen days. It was quite dark in there before the show. There was no curtain, or else it was open. There was some interesting decoration around the procenium, but with lack of stage lights, you could hardly see it. If a theater has no curtain, at least they could flood the screen with colored light to make the place more attractive.