Beverly Center 13 Cinemas

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Cineplex Beverly Center 14 (July 16th), I devoted a full episode of my podcast to the life and death of the theatre. Includes a discussion with Cinema Treasures co-founder Ross Melnick on the importance of the Cineplex Beverly Center 14 on the exhibition industry. I hope you’ll listen.

https://the80smoviepodcast.com/episode-082-the-cineplex-beverly-center/

Sounds similar to the Route 4 tenplex in Paramus. Theater 1 was the big one while theater 10 was small.

Mary Lynn Raskjub used to work at this theater before she started acting. Her first music video was for Beck, “The New Pollution”. 1987 was when Cineplex Odeon opened its largest theater in the nation at Universal CityWalk in LA.

The mall in which the theater was in was featured in Volcano from 1997 in which the entire building gets destroyed by lava.

For the first time in about 2 years.. I visited the Beverly center. I walked into the Forever 21 and looked around at what was the theater. A new escalator was installed from the mall into the area that once was aud 11-12. The shape of the theater can be seen as the store curves down the original hall. A second set of escalators takes you from the original lobby to the upstairs lobby. The elevator was moved. Upstairs is the stunner, the small narrow old lobby opens up into what were the two balcony theaters. High ceiling but way low compared to what it was before. The stairs were removed from the lower level to the upper, and the theaters flattened to one level in line with the mall, no longer raised up. It’s depressing to see it this way.

Those pictures made me cringe. I recognize theater 1 and the hallway leading from the stairs, the area where the old second stand used to be, and I think one is the lobby hall over by theaters 5-6-7 and that area where the booth came around the tall ceiling. I want to go just check out the store to see how much of the cinema still remains..

Yes, the theaters were boxes, but I saw E.T., A Nightmare on Elm Street 1, The Breakfast Club, Boyz N' The Hood, and many other great movies at the BC Cineplex. Wouldn’t trade those experiences for the world. And god, the BC used to be SUCH a great place to meet women in the 80’s, especially if you were a teenager. There were more gorgeous women in BH/West L.A. in the 80’s than any decade. I once saw Sharon Stone walking there in about 1986-7, drooled over her but was too shy about talking to such a cool older female (I was 16-17), and then recognized her onscreen (not at the Cineplex) when I saw her in Total Recall! Crazy L.A.! Plus, there is something inherently fun about seeing a movie in a mall – you can hang out before and/or after it. End of an era, I guess. Onward!

Rooms 1 and 2 were big, but rooms 3 to 13 were rather small. I still loved the place despite it all, I guess I’m just sentimental. I will especially miss the large lobby area adjacent to the two big rooms, and the rarely used second concession stand, which was actually walled up by the time I made my final trip there.

the theatre is not going to reopen the space is being turned into a forever 21

I wish to complement Jeff Arellano on the excellent photography of the Beverly Center 13 that has been uploaded onto Cinema Tour. There are approximately 225 images on the site and I think that this a very polite reminder to all of us that we Do need to document theatres through the medium of photography. There is a calling here fellow cinema fans that we need to make a concentrated effort to document all aspects of a theatre, the booth included for preservation sake. We cannot control corporate Americas decisions to keep theatres open, however we can photograph them and utilizing sites such as this one and Cinema Tour preserve their existence! WIth showmanship a dying art and computer designed megaplexes insulting our intelligence we need to take the time and ask permission and then go to work. Again hats off to Jeff Arellano!

Anyone who is interested, I have uploaded 25 of the 225 pictures I took on Thursday night to the Cinematour page on Facebook. Other pictures will be posted on Cinematour in the future.

I went last night for the final showing of “The Runaways.” There were about 10 of us milling about afterward as an employee put up “Theater Closed” on the marquee outside. No cake, unfortunately, unlike the night I helped close down the Orpheum in downtown L.A. Anyway, the place was much better run in these latter days than most people remember it. I wish someone had made it into a cinema bistro or done some other radical rethinking, but maybe nothing could have prevented it becoming a retail space. Anyway, I concur with what many are saying: absolutely no reason to ever enter the Beverly Center again.

Will always remember this place as the theater where I saw “This is Spinal Tap” in 1984. Memorable if for that, but the theaters left much to be desired.