Northside Theatre
1828 Euclid Avenue,
Berkeley,
CA
94709
1828 Euclid Avenue,
Berkeley,
CA
94709
2 people
favorited this theater
This narrow, funky duplex, previously known as the Art Theatre, was legendary for its showings of foreign and independent films.
It had at least several operators over the years, among them Premiere, Renaissance Rialto, and Silver Screen Amusements.
Though it continued on for many years, eventually the Northside too fell victim to the trends and closed. It has subsequently been converted to a health food store.
Contributed by
Garrett Murphy
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Recent comments (view all 19 comments)
I have an early childhood memory of my mother dragging my sister and I to the Northside to see Three Coins in a Fountain. I remember spending a lot of time outside playing with my army men in a fountain in the patio. Those were more innocent days.
Later during my college years the Northside was also the only theater where I actually saw a cockroach climbing up the wall. Needless to say I sat in the aisle after that.
i also remember northside fondly: northside theater, northside books, rather ripped records, etc. (i worked at the rialto!) was trying to remember the names of some of the other businesses right there at that time. just remembered that divali’s, the clothing store that was on telegraph for ages, had a teensy branch on euclid…. what was the name of the (great!) coffee house on hearst just west of rather ripped? what was the chinese restaurant in the back of the northside and laval’s courtyard? it’s funny—i don’t ever remember going on the other side of the street!
Again, Jeff Frantzen’s recollection of the Northside jibes completely with my experience of seeing several films there in the mid-70s. Cramped, narrow theaters, with a very thrown-together feel. God forbid there had ever been a fire. So small, they were always sold out when I went. I remember one day, maybe summer of 1977, catching an early afternoon double-bill of MEAN STREETS and TAXI DRIVER at the Strand on Market Street in San Francisco and then taking the F bus back to Berkeley (where I lived) to catch a double feature of THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER Part II. I was 14 then and could do stuff like that. Cherished, lasting moviegoing memories.
What a great little oasis. The Northside, pizza, burritos, and the Cheshire Cat, and Rather Ripped Records right down the street. I used to see flicks at the University Theater in Seattle & got to talking with the owner there in the 80’s, & when he mentioned he’d had a theater in Berkely, I mentioned the Northside, & he said he’d owned that until his son or someone had gotten thumped in the overflow of an antiwar protest in Berkeley, and he bailed for Seattle. My friend Joan from Bainbridge Island worked at one of the places on Euclid, & the first time I went there, I fell in love with the building.
It’s fun to read these as I managed this place for Renaissance Rialto from summer 1983 to fall 1984. It had seen better days by then, I’m afraid. I remember its distinct smell (especially theatre 2), the leak from the bathroom in the apartment above theatre 1, the torn carpet in the lobby, the student louts in the beer garden at the La Val’s next door, but it was a fun audience anyway.
Hi Jim! RIP Josef Lubliner. The Spiro T. Agnew Memorial Garlic Bread that hung on the wall in the projection booth was the crowning touch of ambiance. What larks! Working there warped my mind in a very positive direction. Apologies to our customers for the many times I had the wrong lens on when changing reels.
The Northside is now a restaurant/bar known as the PhoBar.
hey, berkeleyboy, bigwc and others with memories of the Northside, a/k/a Fine Arts. In 1959 or so Bill DeNault leased the dual closets to Raymond Rohauer, film aficionado/distributor and notorious cheat according to several accounts of his activities.
I can speak first hand to that because Rohauer hired me to run the Fine Arts during my senior year. The average field hand in the Central Valley earned more per hour than I did since the “part time” job ran up to 40 hours a week but the pay was a flat $ amount per week regardless. But I had a title.
I knew Rohauer’s successful West LA theatre, the Coronet, and his interesting programming from my days at UCLA . When he leased it from your dad he changed the name to the Fine Arts Theatre. He decided to run his eclectric collection of art films, captured German newsreels, 3rd run feature films and the like.
I knew not of his questionable record on getting control of Buster Keaton;s entire library but I was a fast learner. Part of my education included his renting The Man Who Knew Too Much, the remake of the original, this one starring Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day. It was a Cinemascope production but there was too little money in the kitty to rent the Cinemascope projection lenses as we’d done before so Rohauer ordered me to make an announcement and run the film without the special lenses! That made people 10' tall and 6" wide on the screen. Most of the skimpy audience demanded a refund but a few actually stayed to watch the entire film!
Another tactic of Rohauer’s was undercut Pauline Kael who, with her then-husband, created the Studio Guild boutique dual theatres on Telegraph Ave. a block or two from the Sather Gate entrance to Berkeley. For months they had advertised the coming exhibition of Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will,” having gotten permission from the U S State Dept. to screen the one authorized copy which had been seized at the end of WWII. This showing was eagerly awaited by studens and the public alike.
Rohauer got his mitts on a bootleg copy, illegal to possess and probably through thoroughly questionable means. A week or 2 prior to Kael’s widely advertised showing he had me put large and expensive display ads in the Daily Californian, the student campus newspaper. The ads made no mention of the Studio Guild, only built upon the long-awaited showing of Triumph, and we starting showing it the next day, for a several day run. He stole the cherry and the whipped cream from Kael’s sundae for sure.
She screamed at me as if I had anything to do with obtaining the bootleg copy. Things like filing a report with the State Dept., suing in all manner of ways, etc., knowing full well that Rohauer was the lessee of the Fine Arts and I was just a hired hand, but I was available and Rohauer wasn’t returning her calls.
And yes, I remember the old carbon-arc projectors, having to change the carbon rods as they burned down to nubbins, hopefully between showings. Constant changing of reels, the occasional splice while the audience waited, dealing with a dishonest owner, all added to the great education I got at UCB.
And La Val’s pizza was pretty good, as I recall the last taste of it I had, around 50 years ago.
I worked for my father at the Northside from 1956 to 1965. I was the older brother of Berkeley Boy. One thing that hasn’t been mentioned here is that this is the first of the multiple cinema movie theaters, which dominate nowadays. People often give credit to Ed Landberg and Pauline Kael for building the first twin cinema across the campus at the Cinema Guild and Studio. But Bill DeNault did it a year before they did! For that he gets some extra credit (even though he’s now dead at 94). He was also responsible for getting LaVal’s Pizza in the courtyard, trying to make a destination for the courtyard.
Raymond Rohauer got in after I left in 1965. He made a deal with Bill DeNault that he never delivered on, and Bill took it back before it finally got sold to Renaissance Rialto(?). I was much amused by “gobears” stories about Raymond Rohauer, although I named it the “Northside Theater” about 1960 when someone with a warped sense humor insisted on taking “Fine Arts” off the marquee and making in “Ine Farts,” and then calling about his “humor,” over and over…
Roger, I enjoyed your comments, particularly about La Vals.
On one specific point I must respectfully disagree: I was a senior @ UC in 1959 and that’s when I was hired by Rohauer to run the Fine Arts. In January, 1960 I had been hired by GE for my first real (non-reel) job so the 1965 date you mentioned is off a bit.
I did have some direct dealings with your Dad, principally why the rent hadn’t been paid. Rohauer was not only ethically challenged but a genuine cheapskate as well, requiring that the Fine Arts pay its own way, so he refused to put out any money from his own pocket.
While distasteful at the time Raymond Rohauer provided some interesting life’s lessons which were useful later as time went by.