Crest Theatre

Photos of the Crest Theatre.
View link
View link
View link
View link
View link
View link
View link
View link
View link
View link
\

The present CREST marquee/neon work was part of the Skouras remodel done in very early 50’s. This was a Fox West Coast Theatre/National General Theatre.

The Crest Theatre Fresno is the same as the Crest Sacramento CA. Must have had the same Fox West Coast people do the remodel in Sacramento.

Oh, I hope there is a planet named Theatre somewhere in this omniverse. We will find all of our favorites, preserved…..

Here is a night picture my grandfather took of the Crest Theater neon sign in all its glory back in the theater’s heyday.

http://www.krcenterprises.com/Fresno/

My grandfather owned Kaden Neon and Plastic Sign Company back in the 30’s through the late 60’s and designed and built the neon signs and marquees for many of the famous theaters in Fresno including the Warnors, Tower, Wilson and Crest. He also designed and built many other famous neon signs in the Fresno area. My uncle designed the old Manchester center sign. I even got to work in my grandfather’s shop in the early 60’s and he allowed me to design and build a motel drive sign. I think the motel is now a hooker hangout! In the summers that I worked for him, I got to watch my grandfather design the signs from scratch. Then I watched Howard build the metal housings. Then Joe would paint them. Then I watched Woody do the masterful bending and filling of the glass tubes and watched them come to life on his work table. I remember playing with the mercury that he used. It formed a ball in my hand and when I dropped it on the floor, it broke into hundreds of tiny ball bearings as it danced across the floor. It was very expensive and Woody got mad at me when I did it. Of course now we know how toxic Mercury is! Then I got to go and help Al and Lee put the signs up with their 80 foot cranes. Very scary indeed! My grandfather was a master craftsman and as honest as they came back then. He was very respected in Fresno during Fresno’s greatest period in my book…the 40’s through the 60’s.

2007 photo of the Crest Theatre courtesy of Tom Spaulding.
View link

A 2009 photo is here.

Here is a 1982 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/cb96nm

Looks like a beautiful theatre!!

About 10 years ago I drove through Fresno, specifically to check out any William Saroyan sites, but drove up and down the streets near downtown and saw some movie theaters that resonated with me as my home town is farther up the San Joaquin Valley, Stockton. The street I most remember in Fresno was beyond the center of downtown (might have been east, but I am not sure), and was up a hill a bit; it was a “High” street and may have been developed as a suburb up-end neighborhood street in the ‘30s and '40s. It was a block or two of architectural treasures, a fair amount of it art moderne in style with many shops renovated, vital coffee houses and tratorrias, foot traffic to some extent, and I noted some art moderne movie theaters (I thought). This may not be where the Crest is sited; but the style of the Crest was, if I remember, the vernacular of the movie houses on that street. It was so reminiscent of my hometown and what I have seen in California of an architectural style of movie house of a period.

I was looking for some sense of the streets of Saroyan’s youthful hometown. Many of his stories/-screenplays were set in Fresno-like towns of the central valley. I had read most of what was published and available of his literary work. Because of Saroyan’s influence (born 1908) for this town and California, and time period, and American literary history of that time period, I would humbly beseech any renovator to consider working on a way to utilize what William Saroyan evoked in his time, which presaged and paralleled development of a theater like the Crest, to use as a cornerstone in any renovation of a genuine article San Joaquin Valley movie house in Fresno. If there was ever a place that should be screening Saroyan’s “The Human Comedy” with some regularity – and especially in 2008 – it is a Fresno movie house, and that is a film that should be shown now. In fact, I am thinking of producing some readings of his work where I live, just because I believe with a sense of urgency it is so important to do now. Saroyan had a lot to say about “Young Man” going off to war; he was a peacenik before his time, and a conscientious objector in WWII, and that thinking figures in much of his work. This is his centenary.

My thought was that through respect, not exploitation, if a tribute place to William Saroyan was developed, for the people (whether locals know him well now or not), Fresno would do itself a world of good by traversing one path being the continuity from him in further identifying its future in restoring its past pedestals of architecture, literature, and motion pictures.

I know there is sculpture devoted to the “child” in his stories in Fresno, but a movie theater probably offers much more potential, the material is available, and Saroyan was a native son. His generic protagonist was often named “Young Man,” a youth of central California who loved movies, and recognized his impulses and raw feelings as he voiced his thoughts of becoming the future American. But who was that future American? Perhaps all the motion pictures since tell us what happened to that youth (Young America) from the end of WWII.

At one time Saroyan was a foremost American/California writer. He wrote plays and screenplays. He depicted movie theaters in screenplays and explored what they were about; i.e. blogging. I searched for a bookstore that catered to Saroyan readers, or a section in a chain bookstore focusing on him. Nothing. Okay. I just wondered when Fresno was going to recognize properly this resource, as what else is a writer?

Evidently this theater may still have some options? I would want to plant a seed here, and maybe others might nurture it. I believe if such a site was developed for him, it would draw for screenings a much wider audience from farther horizons.

Here is an article from the Fresno Bee dated 1/16/49:
http://tinyurl.com/25f9ta

Here is another photo of the marquee:
http://tinyurl.com/26ncaj