Starlight Lakewood Center
5200 Faculty Avenue,
Lakewood,
CA
90712
5200 Faculty Avenue,
Lakewood,
CA
90712
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1st movie i saw at Pacific Lakewood was Oliver & Company 1st PG movie i saw there was Star Trek V The Final Frontier 1st PG-13 movie I saw there was Batman 1st R Rated movie i saw there was Dead Presidents When it re-opened as Stadium 16 in 1999 the 1st i saw was Ravenous Last movie i saw there in Jan 2020 was Bad Boys For Life 2 MONTHS BEFORE THE PANDEMIC
Signage for the new operator is already up.
This theater will be reopening in Summer 2023 as the Starlight Lakewood Center (Starlight Cinemas).
Lakewood, CA: Starlight Lakewood Center Opening Soon, Now Hiring [Jun 27, 2023]
A chronology of the Gateway Cities’ 70mm presentation history has recently been published. Lakewood Center is mentioned numerous times.
The original 1200-seat screen remains one of the best movie screens in Southern California. And 4 of the “newly” added stadium-style screens are very nice as well. It’s the smaller screens they added that are completely abysmal. Who at the dawn of the 21st century builds a movie screen with an aisle down the center of the theatre?!?! Ridiculous. That said, if you can ever see a film on the original huge screen, it’s soooo worth it. Hopefully someone will rescue this location from its permanent closure.
An exact copy of this theatre opened in Tacoma, Washington on May 16th, 1968.
Had the world’s largest refreshment center per this grand opening ad below:
Lakewood Center was among just eleven theaters in the United States that installed the then-new Dolby Digital sound system for their engagement of “Batman Returns” which opened twenty-five years ago today. And here’s the link to a retrospective article that commemorates the occasion.
Grew up going to this theater..moved away from Long beach and came back and saw a movie there in late 1990’s early 2000 and was sad to see the main huge theater changed.It was so deep and large originally you could throw a football around in it..saw many of great films there..Star Trek Wrath of Khan,Back To Future 2 and 3,Star Trek 5,Indiana Jones Last Crusade,Creepshow 2,Batman,Honey I shrunk the Kids,Who Framed Roger Rabbit and many others.
1968, 1974 and 1999 grand opening ad as well as a fake DJI Phantom aerial (Google Earth used) in the photo section.
“The Rocketeer” was presented at Pacific’s Lakewood Center in 35mm Dolby Stereo beginning on Friday June 21, 1991.
The original theater #1 had to be the best movie theater in the Lakewood/Long Beach area.
The major expansion of the Lakewood Center Theatres into the current 16-screen megaplex was the work of theater designer Dave Tanizaki, with GFBA Architects. The same team designed at least one other theater project, the Edwards Metro Pointe Stadium 12 in Costa Mesa, California, opened in 1996. This page at GFBA’s web site features a couple of exterior of the redesigned building.
It was tobe a Cinerama house in the early days of planning. But the Roadshow and Cinerama days were about to end. So it became just a regular Pacific plex. Well the film “Battle of the Bulge” was produced by William Forman of the Pacific and Cinerama companies.
Yes, the original house was equipped for 70mm, but I don’t believe they played anything in 70 until their 1977-78 booking of “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.”
Only believe half of what you read in Wikipedia. It’s based on people’s personal factoids and not true facts. Nearly every post on there contradicts itself since it just compliles info from different sources.
About the theatre: 2 of the auditoriums at Lakewood Center have retained their original non-stadium, sloped floor configuration – the original “main auditorium” on the left hand side, and the 2nd large auditorium on the right. Both have had their seating decreased (to make room for the additions) but are still relatively decent in my book.
I attended a test screening of “Last Action Hero” in Lakewood and can, therefore, attest to it having taken place. If, in fact, a screening took place in Pasadena, as you are recalling, then we can conclude there must have been at least two screenings.
In the spring of ‘93, the Lakewood Center hosted the infamous sneak-preview test screening of “Last Action Hero” that prompted additional photography and-re-editing.
By the way, the Dallas sneak of “Jaws” (mentiond in the post above) was held at the Medallion, not the UA Cine 150.
On a Saturday night, in the spring of 1975, Steven Spielberg and Universal choose the Lakewood Center for the second sneak preview of JAWS for an audience. The first being the UA Cine 150 in Dallas the night before. The 1200 seat theatre was full long before the picture started at 8PM. I know because I was there. In all my years of going to sneak previews, I had never witnessed a audience reaction like what I saw that night. I had read the novel, so I was prepared, but the audience certainly wasn’t. It scared the hell out of everyone. People were jumping out of their seats and screaming in fear. But they loved it. A night to remember.
While a couple of earlier items in Boxoffice attribute the design of the Lakewood Center Theatre only to architect George T. Nowak, an illustrated, multi-page article about the house in the May 20, 1968, issue of the magazine names both Nowak (George T. Nowak & Associates) and architect Mel Glatz of Mel C. Glatz & Associates as the architects of the theater. The article also says that the decoration of the house was handled by the Heinsbergen studio.
When Pacific Theatre operated this theatre as a quad, the seating capacities were 1197, 742, 399, 371.
The only movie I specifically remember seeing in the big house at the original Lakewood Center Theatre was Rocky III. I don’t know why that’s the only one that stands out, as I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the film, but it is what it is. Memory is a funny thing. I remember walking in to that auditorium and being astounded by how massive it was. Growing up in Long Beach in the 70s and 80s, we had lost most of the classic single screen houses downtown, and the Belmont had already been turned in to a racquetball club, so the big houses at the UA Marketplace 6, which sat maybe 500, were what was big to me at the time. So that #1 house at the Lakewood Center Theatre was just mindblowing.
I did end up going back to the Lakewood Center 16 one in the late 1990s after its grand reopening. Pushing Tin was playing in one of the smaller, newer houses, but I peeked in to that big house. It was still pretty big, but it just didn’t have the same charm as before. Changes done in the name of progress rarely improve what was already a good thing.
I have to say this theater was way cooler before the renovation: it was lots of gaudy gold drapes and carpeting, and crystal chandeliers, almost reminiscent of a poor man’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. When I went here it was a 4 plex (although I have been there once as a 16 plex and swore never to go again), and the theater to be in was the main auditorium to your left, directly behind the snack bar.
Everything about this theater was big, from the screen and sound, to the restrooms the size of Montana. The main auditorium had four entrances, one per aisle, and the screen was rounded; I also seem to remember pre-show Muzak. I saw a ton of 70’s and 80’s films here: Alien, Back to the Future, Goonies, Purple Rain (?), Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist 2, Flashdance, Footloose, Superman III, Out of Africa, Color Purple, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The renovation completely neutered the character of this place.
Nevermind, i read the other article. So the 3 plex was to the east of the buffums store and then 6 screens added at the buffums.
Where was the 1,2,3 located at originally. I know the 9 plex opened when the old Buffums store closed and that was converted to the 9 plex.