Oaks Theatre

Gene, your grandfather was a gentlemen and a showman. E-mail me at and I will respond.

Here is part of an LA Times article dated 3/24/76:

PASADENA-An obscenity case against a theater owner here was declared a mistrial after a jury of four men and eight women reported they were deadlocked after three days of deliberation. The jury foreman said the jury had voted 10 to 2 to acquit Harold Eugene Wenzler, owner of the Oaks Theater, 85 N, Fair Oaks Avenue, charged with showing an obscene film there last August.

The jury viewed the film confiscated by vice officers when Wenzler was arrested. It contained four silent bland and white and color sequences all showing nude or semi-nude women. Much of the testimony in the trial centered on the last black and white sequence, in which a nude woman moved erotically on a bed.

During Wenzler’s latest trial, vice officers arrested Ross H. Raines, 50, projectionist at the Oaks Theater, and charged him with showing an obscene film. Raines is scheduled to enter a plea Wednesday at 9 a.m.

Here is an April 1966 ad from the Pasadena Independent:
http://tinyurl.com/bf73vf

unbelievable the projectionist Ross was my gandfather and although i now remember him working there i dont remember the arrest

In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s my family often drove by the Oaks on the way to church every Sunday. Titles like “Nudie Cuties” bookmarked our Sunday mass transits. There was an attempt to “save” the Oaks from sin in 1961 with the projection of “St. Francis of Assisi” which many of us school kids were brought in to attend. Sad to say, the “Oaks” was not saved – one way or the other.