Coronet Theatre

Thanks Tis.

1986 nice marquee,someone actually cared about the getting the marquee right,thanks for the picture.

Interior Coronet photos here:

http://www.silverscreens.com/main.html

Click on the San Fran section and scroll down.

From 1993 a night time view of the Coronet Theater in San Francisco showing “Demolition Man”.

Don…

Here is another 1986 photo.

A couple more shots of the late Coronet – from 1996 & 1997:
View link
View link

Here is the Coronet when it was still standing.

The saddest thing about this theatre is San Francisco sat idly by and let this happen. Baghdad by the Bay has been replaced by commercialism by the bay. As far as a sense of history San Francisco officially sucks.

Believe it or not, the Coronet had an EVEN BIGGER screen at the time of the FIRST THREE 70 mm Todd-AO films, The Miracle of Todd-AO, Oklahoma!, and Around the World in 80 Days. I saw them all at the Coronet, 80 Days Repeatedly. For those three films, the deeply curved screen filled the ENTIRE AREA behind the curved curtains, with no masks on the sides, top, or bottom (the usual black masks, when fully open, were hidden behind the very small trimmer curtains). The image on the film running through the projector was 2.2:1, but it became more like 2:1 on the screen, when viewed from head-on, because the curve took up some of the width, as intended. It was only for these three films that the film ran at 30 frames per second (instead of the usual 24 fps), to smooth out the action, and allow for extraordinarily bright (“Sparkling,” one critic said) image without the flicker that bright projection sometimes causes (the Critical Flicker Frequency —the frequency in frames per second at which persistence of vision fails — is a function of brightness). They actually used two Todd-AO cameras simultaneously to shoot these films, one running at 30 fps and one at 24 fps for the inevitably disappointing 35 mm print downs for lesser theaters. In the 70 mm versions, all of the factors that increase arousal in the cerebral cortex were maximized — brightness, largeness, loudness and complexity of the sound (6 channel stereo, with great dynamics, and, in the case of 80 Days, a 114 piece orchestra). Consequently, the audience was “up.” It was near hypnotic! 80 Days ran well into its second year at the Coronet, forcing the chain to equip the inferior Alexandria down the street for 70 mm for South Pacific. At the Coronet, 80 Days began with a small 35 mm image of Edward R. Murrow introducing the film then the curtains, black masks, and image dramatically widened out to the full Todd-AO size, with the black masks disappearing behind the trimmer curtains.

When other 70 mm processes that didn’t use Todd-AO’s optical correction for the deeply curved screen started to be used, the Coronet tore down its big curved screen, and installed a more nearly flat, and smaller, one behind the same large curved curtains. Although it was still larger than most screens (at least from the front set of rows that extended right down to the screen, because there was no orchestra pit, and no stage to get in the way, it lacked the sense of total, engulfing involvement that the earlier screen provided. Had the owners of the newly arriving 70 mm processes (Super Technirama 70, Panavision 70, Camera 65, etc.) been able to get together on sharing an optical correction, the Coronet might have been able to hang on to the big screen, making everything from Ben-Hur to Star Wars more spectacular but this was a competition as misguided as HDDVD vs. BlueRay. or Beta vs VHS, or SACD vs. DVD-A …. everyone lost.

Now the Coronet is rubble. When we heard this, my friends and I sank momentarily into misanthropy.

Thanks for taking – and posting – those photos, Jim; devastating but representative of a necessary document…

I was saddened to see in one of the preceeding slideshows, one of the kingly figures from the auditorium walls still in the theatre, damaged. This would indicate to me that these figures were not cared for, and during the oh-so-necessary-nowadays process of asbestos removal before demolition of the Coronet’s shell, they were probably all peeled of and discarded, except for this one battered figure. I hope I am wrong. I have a hunch the asbestos people cared as much for these figures as the guys gutting the Coliseum Theatre did about the eight huge chandeliers in that theatre. My friend offered them good money for them, but they were allowed to crash to the floor anyway, except one, which my friend got because he was on the site that instant. It wound-up in an antique gallery on Melrose in L.A., selling for beaucoup bucks.

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back here & post some pictures. The link below will take you to a series of pictures of what was left of the interior of The Coronet in April 2007, just before major interior demolition began. I had 2 day access to the theater to take pictures & salvage what I could for use at another location. There was NO electricity so we had to go around wearing LED “miner’s head-lamps” and carrying big flashights. These are probably the last pictures of the inerior before the building came down. I’ll try & post demolition pictures later this week.

Here’s the link:
http://www.flickr.com/gp/13826823@N08/BCCw69