4-Star Theatre

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.

Noveember 2009 photo of the 4 Stara Theatre courtesy James Herman.

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Here is an undated photo:
http://tinyurl.com/oy672o

This is another photo of the 4-Star Theater.

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.

Someday you might actually find a photo of a whole theater. I find thousands of marquee photos and don’t post them. I think I’ll start posting them now.

Here is a more recent night view of the 4 Star Theater.

This is a 2007 close-up view of the 4 Star Theater.

Excellent news! The Lees have won the fight to keep the theater! Acoording to today’s SF Chronicle, the church who owned the building agreed in mediation back in July to sell the property to the owners of the 4-Star, Frank & Lida Lee. They had 150 days to assemble the financing for the $1.45 million purchase price. On Wednedsay, Frank Lee said that they had beaten that deadline by a week and that the deal has cleared escrow & was finalized on Monday. Lee does plan to do some “long-planned renovations”. According to the attorney for the church (previous building owner), “With all the adverse publicity & politics, it would have been an uphill battle to build their church, so they bit the bullet & sold it, at an overall loss, to the Lees.” The article did mention that the Lees had enlisted the help of the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation.

Again, according to Lee, the 4-Star seats a total of 249 people (not 365 as stated above, though that may have indeed been its seating capacity as a single-screen). Hate to nitpick like this but…

Here is a photo of the La Bonita in 1919:

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Photos & history at this link:
http://www.outsidelands.org/fourstar.html

The 4 Star is a twin with a very large original size screen and seats 200. The smaller screen seats 49 people. They are curently negotiating a new lease that extends past May 2005. The theatre has been profitable since it was twined in 1996.