Visalia Fox Theater
308 West Main Street,
Visalia,
CA
93279
308 West Main Street,
Visalia,
CA
93279
7 people
favorited this theater
Built at the beginning of the Great Depression, the Fox Theater in Visalia was a smaller version of its more grandiose cousins in cities like Los Angeles. In an attempt to increase traffic to the theater, the Fox Theatre was triplexed in 1976. The Fox Theater continued to show movies for the next 20 years but with the 1996 opening of a twelve-screen megaplex at a nearby mall, the beleaguered Visalia Fox Theater shut its doors after sixty six magical years.
Soon after, The Friends of the Fox took over the theater and have renovated the theater and raised money for its rebirth as a community and performing arts center.
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Recent comments (view all 26 comments)
Here is an undated photo of the Fox:
http://tinyurl.com/2p5oex
Are there others?
In the ‘60s, everyone from Mt. Whitney High School went to the Sequoia Drive-In east of town. The Mooney Drive-In wasn’t considered to be as “cool” as the Sequoia.
Visalia Fox Theater photo
Some photos of the Visalia Fox
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cakeight/2312164908/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cakeight/3588274430/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cakeight/3588274234/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cakeight/3587463621/
Belated reply to Tom DeLay’s question of Aug 8, 2007: The L.A. Library’s California Index contains a card quoting an item in a 1912 edition of The Rounder, which says that motion pictures were doing splendid business at the Bell Theatre in Visalia.
The Index also has a few cards citing 1910s and 1920s articles about plans for construction of theaters in Visalia, but names are not given for any of them, and its not clear which, if any, of these projects were actually completed.
Also, the June 26, 1943, issue of Boxoffice Magazine mentions a Bijou Theatre then operating in Visalia.
An interesting item in the October 7, 1946, issue of Boxoffice is a brief obituary of Okanosake Nakamichi, who it said had operated a theater in Visalia from 1911 until he was relocated to a prison camp in 1942. The name of the theater was not given, but given the prevailing attitude among Californians of that period I would imagine it served only Asian patrons.
1982 Photo
This is a nice 2009 photo.
2009 night photos of the Fox Theatre.
View link
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Here’s a recent photo:
http://www.thewholeearthisfilledwithhisglory.com/theaters/117a.html