Advertised as early as 1912 in the Indianapolis Star, assuming B.F. Keith’s is the same theater. A 1970 story states the Keith had been renovated and was being used for offices at that time. I don’t see a later reference to the actual demolition of the theater, but if I do I will pass it along.
Here are the six suspects arrested for the bombing on 4/7/28:
Joe Million, business agent of the Hammond Motion Picture Operators Union
William Kleihege, lessee of the State when it was bombed
Harry L. Ames, business agent of the Hammond Hod Carriers' Union
(that’s what it says, don’t ask me what a hod carrier is)
James Tuto, business agent of the Hammond Finishers' Union
Marwood Williams, trustee of the Hod Carriers' Union
Dean Melloy, Chicago hoodlum
The Los Angeles Times reported a downtown fire in Philadelphia on 1/22/47 that routed the 1200 patrons at the nearby Keith Theater. The theater sustained some smoke damage but was otherwise unmarred.
Here is an LA Times article dated 2/14/89 describing a fire at the Broadway:
A predawn fire that burned for more than three hours gutted the vacant Broadway Theater in downtown Santa Ana early today.
About 100 firefighters battled the blaze, including crews from the Orange County Fire Department, Santa Ana fire spokeswoman Sharon Frank said.
A police officer on patrol reported the fire about 2:40 a.m., Frank said. Firefighters were able to keep the blaze from spreading to adjoining buildings, and it was extinguished about 6 a.m., she said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation. Fire officials said the building is probably a total loss, but they will not know until the end of the week whether the three-story structure’s walls can be preserved, Deputy City Manager Jan Perkins said.
The theater, thought to be more than 50 years old, was purchased by the city for $900,000 in 1987 as part of Centerpointe, a major downtown redevelopment project that was to have included a hotel and and office complex.
Value Almost `Nil'
Perkins said the purchase price represented the value of the land, because the dilapidated building’s worth was “practically nil.”
Developers of the project backed out last year after marketing studies showed that a large downtown hotel was not viable. The city has not yet contracted with another developer to build on the site, which extends east from the theater’s location on Broadway between Fourth and Fifth streets to Ross Street.
The theater was once part of the Fox Theater chain, Frank said. A fire in the 1950s destroyed much of the building. In the years before its purchase by the city, the theater was leased to a company that showed Spanish-language films.
City Real Estate Manager Bob Hoffman said the theater’s ultimate fate would have been left up to the developers who buy the site. “Our plan was not to demolish it until we had a developer on the site on the chance that he would incorporate it into a larger development, either as a theater or just preserving the walls.”
Hoffman said, however, that the chances that a developer would preserve the building as a theater were slim. “Large theaters in downtown are considered white elephants today.”
Here is an August 18, 2000 LA Times article about a fire at the Mayfair:
A historic Art Deco theater in downtown Ventura that entrepreneurs hoped to revive as a swing dance hall was severely damaged Thursday in an early-morning fire.
The blaze gutted the long-shuttered Mayfair Theater, leaving only the building’s thick outside walls, ticket office and elaborate neon marquee.
Witnesses said flames erupted about 1 a.m., and firefighters arrived to find a man and a woman standing on the roof of the marquee. The pair were taken down by ladder, treated for smoke inhalation at Ventura County Memorial Hospital and later released, officials said.
The man and woman, squatters at the Mayfair Theater, had set up a living area in a room on the second floor and were sleeping there when fire started, city fire officials said. They crawled from their room onto the roof of the marquee, where they were rescued.
Loss of the theater is a setback to the city’s plans of restoring historic buildings and turning an aging downtown into an arts and tourism district.
Ventura residents and twin sisters Tammy Finocchiaro and Terri Moore, 35, were trying to purchase the theater for their Flyin' Lindy Hoppers swing dance group, which performs nationally and holds classes and dance events.
On Thursday they stood on their front porch, directly across Ash Street from the theater, and watched firefighters battle the blaze.
“Do we give up? Not necessarily, but to get the smoke out and rebuild is a lot more industrious project than we had before,” a weary Moore said.
The sisters had just cleared a major hurdle Tuesday, when the Planning Commission unanimously approved a permit to allow them to turn the theater into a dance hall.
After hearing about the loss Thursday, Curt Stiles, 62, a commission member, said he had looked forward to the theater’s proposed renovation and recalled watching movies there as a child.
“That’s a part of my history going down the tubes,” he said. “Every kid in town went there.”
Firefighters searched the interior of the building, known as a haven for transients, and determined that no other people were inside, said Rod Smith, commander for the Ventura Fire Department.
Within an hour the fire destroyed most of the interior, including the 59-year-old theater’s original chairs, Art Deco chandeliers, and the building’s vaulted redwood roof.
Ten fire engines and three trucks fought the flames.
The cause of the blaze is under investigation, but officials are looking into the possibility that transients might have started it, said Bill Rigg, assistant fire chief, although he said an aging wiring system might also be to blame.
There is no property loss estimate yet, Rigg said.
Stephen Sisca, who manages the property for the theater’s Los Angeles-based owner, S.D.H. Properties, said the land and building are valued at about $675,000.
Built in 1941 by S. Charles Lee, a prominent Art Deco theater architect, the building started life as the Mayfair Theater and showed first-run films for decades.
But it fell on hard times and in the 1970s was painted pink and reincarnated as a venue for X-rated movies. In the 1990s local entrepreneurs painted it sky blue and ran it as a coffeehouse that showed art movies. But that effort failed.
The building sat empty for years, attracting transients, with only its marquee and gold light fixtures a reminder of its former glory.
The Strand was open on a seasonal basis. I have a picture of my mother and me standing in front of the theater in the winter of 1973. “A Touch of Class” was still on the marquee, but the theater was closed until Memorial Day. It was across from the Steel Pier. There used to be a Taylor’s Pork Roll stand next door. I think the Taj Mahal is there now.
This 5/30/85 story in the LA Times states (no pun intended) that the State will be torn down in July 1985 and will be replaced by a luxury hotel. It’s still a big hole in the ground. Condos are supposed to be built there but nothing has gotten started:
By fate so fortunate he still blesses his Irish luck, 69-year-old Harold Fahey grew up a stage brat in the main theater of a young city brimming with oil and ambition.
His haunt was the State Theater, a major-league vaudeville and movie house his father opened within the new Jergins Trust Building on Ocean Boulevard in 1920.
During a 15-year period, ending in 1935, Hal Fahey spent every possible hour behind the State’s large stage, hanging out in the “green room,” where performers gathered before a show.
As a 12-year-old, he danced the Charleston with Babe Ruth and dreamed of being a ventriloquist at the knee of Edgar Bergen.
At age 17, he watched as fallen heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, devoid of theatrical talent, brought overflow crowds to their feet with his simple presence. And, also as a teen-ager, he secretly fell in love with a fresh-faced starlet named Ginger Rogers.
“I had seen a lot of actors and actresses by that time,” said Fahey, “but I liked her because she was such a sweet person, like a schoolgirl. We took her to the Pacific Coast Club one Friday night and really knocked the natives dead.”
In recent weeks, Fahey, a retired designer of bank buildings, has returned to the old theater several times, touring it and the 10-story Jergins Building with an architect’s eye toward restoration. The Jergins, with one of the city’s best locations at Ocean Boulevard and Pine Avenue, is scheduled to be razed in July and replaced by a luxury hotel.
“I am very sentimental about this theater,” said Fahey last week from inside the old State.
He was dapper in a cream-colored suit and florid tie, but the theater was a mess. The stage had been hacked in half and curtains were torn. Gone were the theater’s 1,800 seats, its bronze chandeliers and brocaded draperies. The angels with harps that had graced its ceiling dome were covered with gray paint. So few lights worked that it was difficult to see even the destruction that remained.
“I was against it being torn down,” said Fahey. “but now I realize that architecturally and in an engineering sense, it is not feasible to make it a safe and modern structure.”
That comment will not make him popular with local cultural preservation groups, of which he is a member, Fahey said. Preservationists have worked for more than a year to find a buyer to restore the Jergins but have been unsuccessful. Current owners have estimated that restoration would cost between $15 million and $20 million and that, in the end, the building would lose money.
Standing or not, the State Theater will continue to evoke the best of Fahey’s memories, he said. They are captured in old photos of home run kings, singing cowboys and movie stars. More than once, a small circus with lions, tigers and clowns was featured on its stage.
From the Orpheum in New York and the Pantages in Hollywood, the stars came to perform at the State by the hundreds.
Babe Ruth even slept in the Faheys' large First Street home while doing a week of appearances at the theater in the winter of 1927, the year he hit 60 home runs. “Every morning when I got up, he’d be there,” recalled Fahey, still slightly in awe. “I was going to an academy, and before they’d come to pick me up, we’d have breakfast together. He ate a ton. He was rotund and we had to bring in a heavier chair for him.”
Fahey’s father, William, who “made a million dollars” off the State and a few million more from investments in other theaters and movie productions, talked baseball with Ruth. And one evening young Hal danced for the slugger on stage.
“They’d have a simulated baseball stadium as a backdrop and Babe Ruth would be on stage in his uniform and with a bat. He’d just point laughingly and select 10 to 15 youngsters from the audience, and he’d ask them, `What do you do best?‘ ”
Some would sing. A little boy, with Ruth as his pitcher, walloped a ball, hitting the drummer in the theater’s 15-person orchestra. And Fahey, chosen by prearrangement with the stage manager, did a 10-minute Charleston. His father was furious, Fahey recalled with a smile, explaining that the old man had tried unsuccessfully to keep him out of the performers' way.
Ruth, who was paid $5,000 for his week of 45-minute shows, was “a womanizer and a liver-upper, but we never knew it,” said Fahey. “His driver would have him home by 10 o'clock.”
`Extremely Wholesome'
Of all who appeared, Ginger Rogers, promoting her earliest films, probably drew the largest crowd, Fahey said. “I can tell you exactly what she looked like without makeup. It’s as if she’s standing right here. She was freckle-faced and had pretty, bright eyes. She had red hair, though not naturally. She was sweet and clean and jolly, extremely wholesome. I was impressed.”
But Hal’s favorite was Bergen. “He came maybe eight times over 10 years. One time in the green room, he let me hold Charlie McCarthy on my lap and tried to teach me to be a ventriloquist. He loved children.”
But by 1935, motion pictures had raised stars' wages beyond the means of the senior Fahey, and the State’s six-act, 75-cent afternoons of vaudeville and movies were becoming a thing of the past.
The State eventually became a theater for movies only. Fahey, hooked by the entertainment business, worked with his father until the old man sold his theaters in 1950. Films were shown at the State by its various owners until it was closed in 1977.
Now, Fahey lives on Ocean Boulevard, near the house of his birth and a short bike ride from the family’s First Street home.
“I still ride by and think about it all,” he said. “There are so many memories.”
This story in the LA Times concerned the possible demolition of the El Rey after the Whittier quake in 1987. Date of the article is 10/8/87:
Plywood covered the hole where plate-glass windows had shattered, there were deep cracks in the walls, and the city Building Department had taped a sign on the door warning the public against entering the Alhambra Shade and Linoleum Co.
But inside, Helen McCann, the 80-year-old owner, was still at work this week, making window shades and fussing about the business she was losing while her customers were locked out because of earthquake damage.
Her store on Main Street should have been inspected and reopened by now, she said Tuesday, but her landlord had not given the city an engineering report on structural damage. In the meantime, McCann said, if she allowed customers in the store, “I’d be scared to death that somebody might get hurt.”
John Jomehri, whose Lovebirds Cafe is a few doors away in the same building, dropped by to commiserate with McCann over lost business and expensive repair bills.
Jomehri said he has had to throw away food, damage to his cafe’s wood and glass amounts to $3,000 and he is losing the revenue he usually gets from 300 customers a day.
Both McCann and Jomehri had hoped to reopen Wednesday, but city building inspectors said they want to take a closer look at the building, which has a deep crack on its east side as a result of Sunday’s aftershock. Jomehri said he was told that he might not be able to reopen until structural repairs were made and that the building might even be demolished.
“If they have to condemn the building, I’ll lose $70,000 to $80,000,” Jomehri said Wednesday. “I’m getting nervous.”
The cafe and linoleum store are just two of dozens of businesses along Main Street that have been closed by the quake and its aftershocks. The city estimated Wednesday that 50 to 80 businesses are shut down either voluntarily or at the direction of the city.
Officials said they do not have accurate figures for the number of residents forced out of their homes, but about 250 residential and commercial buildings and more than 1,000 chimneys were damaged. The total property loss to public and private structures is estimated at more than $20 million.
City Manager Kevin Murphy said most of the commercial damage has occurred to the 600 business and apartment buildings along Main Street and adjoining side streets that were constructed of unreinforced masonry before 1933. Murphy said the city policy has been to require demolition or structural improvements to such buildings only when their use changes in a way that would bring more people into the buildings. He said that in light of the earthquake damage, this policy will be re-evaluated.
Two of the commercial buildings that may face demolition because of quake damage are the El Rey and Alhambra Cinema theaters, both part of the Edwards Theaters chain.
The Alhambra Cinema consists of two theaters joined by a lobby. The larger, 900-seat theater has been partially demolished, and engineers are trying to determine whether they can save the second theater, which is part of a building that has apartments on the second floor and a long-closed bowling alley in the basement.
James Edwards, the 80-year-old founder and chairman of Edwards Theaters, said the Alhambra Cinema was constructed in 1922. He acquired it in 1930, making it the second theater in his chain, which now has 140 screens.
Edwards said such entertainers as Bing Crosby and the Marx Brothers appeared on the stage when the Alhambra theater was part of what was called “the coffee-and-doughnuts circuit, meaning that about all you would get there was coffee and doughnuts and maybe a $10 bill.” He said important vaudeville acts would play outlying theaters such as the Alhambra while they were in between more lucrative engagements in larger cities.
In the 1930s, Edwards said, he staged shows that featured five acts of vaudeville and a movie. In 1937, he said, the Alhambra Cinema became a forerunner to today’s multiplex theaters when it added a second screen.
Edwards, whose office is in Newport Beach, inspected the damage to the theater Saturday. “My wife and I felt like we’ve lost a member of the family,” Edwards said, “It was part of the beginning of our circuit.”
If the Alhambra Cinema is torn down and the El Rey, another former vaudeville house, is demolished, Edwards said they will become the second and third theaters he has lost in Alhambra to earthquakes. The Capri Theater was razed after the Sylmar earthquake in 1971.
In addition to widespread damage to commercial buildings, Alhambra sustained more than $5 million in damage to residences, according to city spokeswoman Judy Feuer. At least one house collapsed, she said, and another sustained heavy damage when a chimney fell through a roof.
Two of the city’s four fire stations have been closed since Thursday’s earthquake, and the city’s headquarters station, although open, suffered some damage. Murphy said one of the fire stations may have to be demolished.
The damage to city property is estimated at $1.5 million.
Other badly damaged structures include five apartment buildings, an auto repair shop and a small hotel.
Here is an article about the closing from the LA Times dated 8/18/98:
Carol Selva wasn’t exactly teary over the imminent shuttering of the Port Theatre, but she did have a distant look that said something about the power of nostalgia.
Selva, a 48-year-old mother of two from Newport Beach, has been a fan of the Corona del Mar movie house for more than two decades. She grew accustomed to the worn seats when her first husband was wooing her in the ‘70s, and soon became a regular.
On Friday, Selva got her ticket for Manuel Poirier’s “Western,” the Port’s final film before it closes Thursday, and gulped.
“I read in the papers about it closing and I’m not happy,” she said. “You always know these things are going to happen, because there’s change. That’s really OK in a way… . Progress can be good. But I’ll really miss it… . I bet a lot of people will.”
True enough. Most of those who attended shows over the Port’s final weekend stressed that it was more than just a place to see pictures.
To them, a movie multiplex in a mall—the one with the screens numbering in the teens and foamy stadium-seating climbing up the walls—is just a place to see pictures. The Port, they agreed, was more: It was a landmark—stylish, funky and a little ruined, all at the same time.
Mark L. Jackson and his wife, Anne, trekked from Balboa Island, something they’ve been doing for years. Mark Jackson, 39, said he was first brought to the theater by his dad in the early 1960s. It seemed different then.
“I was a kid {so} it looked huge in that way everything seems big and great to you when you’re young,” he recalled. “I wouldn’t exactly call it majestic, but it always impressed me. I grew up with the Port, so it’s like I’m losing something that belongs to me.”
Agreed Anne Jackson: “It has character, like all old things do.”
Character wasn’t enough in the end.
In recent years, the Port frequently changed its playbill to build a more diverse following, but the plan never took. Except for the loyalists, attendance has been slipping, and Landmark Theatre Corp., which has run the single-screen, 930-seat institution since 1989, decided to let its lease expire at the end of the month.
The Port’s manager, Mike Peterson, lamented the move.
“We showed a huge variety of films, and I loved working here,” he said. “The customers were always extra friendly, and a lot of people said it was their favorite theater.”
It clearly was for Dennis Leslie, who managed the Port from 1974 to 1987. A fixture to patrons, he chatted with them about the movies and their lives. Leslie noted that the theater frequently staged tributes to stars who settled in Orange County, including John Wayne, Ruby Keeler and animator Chuck Jones.
The Port was built in 1951 by Ted and Peggy Jones of the Western Amusement Co. of Los Angeles. Major Hollywood movies were offered for a quarter century, then the Port turned to foreign imports in 1976 when it screened Bernard Tavernier’s moody French release “The Clockmaker.”
“With the final curtain coming down, it brings to a close the last bastion of single-screen movie houses that, at one time, dotted every neighborhood in Orange County,” Leslie said. “Its passing will leave a void in movie memories.”
The void for Audrey Ko, 59, of Seal Beach will be the arty and sometimes idiosyncratic flicks she’s come to expect. During the last 30 years, Ko has seen the works of Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa—all the masters of cinema—at the Port, where she went Friday for a last visit.
So have lots of others. Michael Morgan, who was working the box office Saturday, reported that business has been up as people have come to pay their last respects, with attendance averaging about 100 people per show.
“It’s been pretty busy, more busy than usual, and people are curious about what’s going to be in its place,” Morgan said. “People seem pretty upset; you can tell they are feeling nostalgic.”
Ko can still watch imports closer to her home, in Seal Beach’s Bay Theatre, one of the last antique theaters around. But it won’t be the same.
“The Bay is very nice, and I go there a lot, {but} the Port is my favorite,” she said. “The range of movies and the selection, {it’s} just always the best for me. I never even really minded it when it was so hot in summer you had to fan yourself.”
While Ko sighed, Anthony Reyes just grinned, puzzled by the concern. Reyes, a 20-year-old surfer from Huntington Beach, dropped in Thursday evening with his girlfriend, Pati Dunn, 19, also of Huntington Beach, to see a wave-rider double-bill of “Big Wednesday” and “The Endless Summer II.”
A cool place, nice looks, being so quaint and all, but why the hand-wringing?
“I like it {because} they have movies like this, surfing movies,” Reyes said. “Anyway, there are other places for that. They’re always tearing down ancient things, {so} you can’t get too down.”
His girlfriend, however, worried that such film fare won’t be shown anywhere else: “It’s just bad when things people like aren’t there anymore,” Dunn said.
The Rev. Travis Smith bellows from the pulpit of the 3-month-old First Church of Deliverance:
You can’t live today successfully holding on to yesterday!
Smith has built his congregation on those words. His church is a lesson in how a community can let go of a sordid past.
The Gardena building that the church calls home was for 24 years known as the Little Fox Theater, an X-rated movie house where screenings of films were accompanied by lewd acts both inside and outside the building.
It stood on the corner of Vermont Avenue and 140th Street until residents and officers from the LAPD Southeast Division decided a few years ago to unite in their efforts to close it down. Under pressure, the theater gave up its lease.
Now, in place of the movie screen is the altar where Smith gives his sermons. In place of the dark seats on which patrons once engaged in sexual activity are clean burgundy chairs. In the building where prostitutes once strolled for customers, worshipers rise to yell out, “Thank you, Lord!” What used to be an adult bookstore is now the entrance for the congregation. The back room that clients once used for sex will one day be a dining room.
For two decades, residents were galled that children from 135th Street Elementary School, only a few blocks away, frequently walked by the Little Fox to buy candy at a neighboring grocery store. Activists passed out petitions and talked to police officers with little success.
“A lot of the residents had given up hope,” said B.J. Mynatt, president of the 135th Street Neighborhood Watch Committee. “But we just kept going. We feel that God helped us.”
The theater shut down in February. And then, last summer, with the theater out of business and the building owner in need of a new tenant, Smith appeared, pledging to turn the mostly residential neighborhood around by erasing from people’s minds the nefarious image that once consumed the corner and the entire neighborhood.
“It’s amazing what God does, that a place such as this was could be developed and transformed into a place of worship,” Smith said. “I’m going to work with the community to transform the community into an oasis of love and compassion.”
On his ambitious agenda is the creation of a Christian Men’s Fellowship and a Christian Women’s Fellowship that would have older members of the congregation act as mentors to adolescents to teach them how to respect themselves and each other. He also wants to convert an empty lot across the street—which used to be the site of a crack house—into a playing area to distract kids from dangerous street activities. Other projects include establishing a day care center, a Christian school and a substance abuse program.
From July until September, Smith, building owner Michael Coleman and a handful of volunteers and contractors refurbished the old theater.
With no money and few resources, Smith convinced Coleman to accept a postdated check for the first payment of the three-year lease.
Coleman, who inherited the building from his father, Harry, in 1991, was in a charitable mood. He said his father had long wanted to oust the theater, but found that there was no way to break the lease renewal clause. Michael Coleman was instantly attracted to Smith and his church. “So I cut him some slack.”
Once the theater closed, Michael Coleman advertised the space in church newsletters and local newspapers. He got responses from people looking to open up nightclubs and bars, and rejected them.
“I wanted to better the community,” he said. “I didn’t want that environment because that wasn’t a wholesome environment.”
Around that time, Smith was looking for a place to plant his Methodist ministry. He began the congregation two years ago, borrowing space from the Brookings Community AME Church in Southwest Los Angeles. A friend told him about the building on Vermont Avenue. The price was right, Smith said, and the building’s past didn’t deter him.
“The sin is not within the confines of the building,” Smith said. “It’s within the people who do the deviant acts in the building.”
Southeast Division Officer Al Labrada, who spent more than a year helping residents push the theater out of business, still has a poster board with snapshots of various spots within the building before it got its face-lift.
Labrada and several officers made arrests at the theater. They sent undercover police officers. They attended hearings that the city conducted to try to revoke the business' permit.
Residents took bus trips downtown to monitor the hearings and circulated petitions. “We fought that thing tooth and nail,” said Donna Lyons, 81, who has lived in the neighborhood for 50 years.
Lynn Magnandonovan, a deputy city attorney who handled lawsuits against the theater alleging public sex acts, calls the renaissance of the building “a cosmic vote of confidence for the community.”
Smith is trying to see it that way. It wasn’t until two weeks ago that the 89 members of his congregation finally raised enough money to buy a sign for the orange brick building. Even now, it hardly resembles a church. There is no cross on the roof and no windows to shine light on the altar.
At the end of one joyous and song-filled Sunday service, Smith made a request.
“Today is rent day,” he told his congregation. He reminded them that each month they had to raise $1,950 for rent, $304 for the chairs that were bought on credit and $3,000 for maintenance.
Showing first run films when I drove by last week.
LA Times reports in 1998 that the Little Fox theater in Gardena was converted to a church after 24 years of showing adult films. Address given as 140th and Vermont. Anybody heard of this theater?
It is a great building. Rent DOA (the original) or Blade Runner for a look at the inside, or just go there if you’re in LA. Sometimes they charge to get in and walk around, sometimes they don’t. It depends on the current administration.
I would argue for closed status as it no longer shows films. I’m not sure if that’s what you referring to immediately above. My understanding is closed would pertain to an auditorium that once showed films but is now exclusively used for live theater or music.
A 1981 story in the LA Times profiles owners Howard and Florence Linn. Anyone know their current status since last mentioned in 2004? Do they still own the theater?
Here is a story about the demise of the Cinedome from the LA Times, dated 2/14/99:
Once upon a time, when Orange County was more about orange groves and less about urban sprawl, there was an oasis of culture and futuristic architecture out near “the Big A” (that reference alone to the former Anaheim Stadium should date me). Housed in twin, light-festooned domes were the coolest movie theaters anywhere outside Hollywood.
The Century Cinedome, adjacent to another forgotten landmark—the Orange Drive-In—was a creature from the ‘60s. When first built and opened, people traveled from all corners of the county to sit in big, comfortable seats, stare at huge projection screens and listen to the most advanced stereophonic sound system of the time.
Now it’s going the way of the wrecking ball.
Back in the ‘80s, before I became a county expatriate, I used to drive up the Santa Ana Freeway and wonder how long it would be before they’d tear the old place down. Now that they’ve boarded it up, I find myself mourning a bit for a place that was more than just a movie theater. It was a place where images—on the screens and on the theater grounds—were forever seared into my brain, leaving memories that will stay long after the buildings are demolished.
I think, in many ways, the life of the theater complex mirrored the growth and changes that have taken place in Orange County during the last three decades—more so than Anaheim Stadium/Edison International Field, Disneyland or any other man-made landmark in the area.
When the complex first opened in the ‘60s, Orange County was booming. While the region has never stopped, that decade was a heady time to be living in a semirural county. The aerospace industry was king. John F. Kennedy’s promise of man landing on the moon before the end of the decade was still fresh in our minds, and we all knew it was only a matter of time before space travel was going to be commonplace.
The domes, unlike the prefabricated boxes popping up across the plains and hills of Orange County, had a wild, “way-out,” spacey look to them. When you drove by, northbound on the freeway, the outrageous designs of “The Jetsons” didn’t seem so outrageous. For me, there could have been no other theater in which to first experience “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
During the ‘70s, the theater took on a new look. The county, with its ever-expanding population, was more than just a series of bedroom communities serving masters in Los Angeles. Orange County was becoming a place to be reckoned with in every sense, in particular economically. With all that came the malls, the entertainment centers and the many ways denizens could spend their leisure-time dollars. In an effort to capture some portion of the windfall, the folks who owned the Cinedome expanded their theaters. It was like the burgeoning city of Irvine: There was a limited amount of land, but by God they’d pack as many people into it as humanly possible.
As the ‘70s ended and the '80s rolled in, the Cinedome remained a cultural and societal landmark in Orange County. Everyone knew where the then-California Angels played baseball. Everyone knew where South Coast Plaza and the Orange Mall were located. And everyone, even if they hadn’t seen a movie there, at least knew where the domes were. Places like the Santa Ana Clubhouse and Skate Ranch, longtime havens for teenagers looking to meet others of the opposite sex or enjoy a cheap date, were already dead or dying.
The Cinedome, which seemed to offer an endless number of theaters under one roof, was also a great place to head to with friends. On any given (dateless) Friday or Saturday night, groups of friends would look for every which way to sneak in. For as many theaters as there were in the complex, there were twice as many backdoors. And if all else failed and you actually paid for a ticket, you were sure to catch at least two more movies (for free) showing elsewhere at what many came to call “Sneak-a-Dome.”
Now, 30 years after it opened its doors, the Cinedome is the victim of change. Its owners, the Century Theatre chain, built another complex nearby that has all the bells and whistles movie audiences expect these days. The Cinedome, which really began showing its age 20 years ago, is now in its death spiral. It’s going the way the orange groves have, the way the Orange County International Raceway did and the way the Tustin and El Toro Marine bases will.
I suspect when the company charged with demolishing the Cinedome finally trucks away the rubble, there won’t be a lot of wailing from most people—even those who have a special place in their heart for the once ultramodern-looking marvel. Like the Cinedome, the flame of Orange County’s existence has been fueled by change.
Here is an LA Times story about post-quake renovations dated 1/19/96:
Two years to the day after it closed, workers Wednesday began the long-awaited renovation of Fillmore’s landmark Towne Theater, which was badly damaged in the Northridge earthquake. Councilwoman Linda Brewster said she hopes to see the theater’s lone screen illuminated by the end of August with a Kirk Douglas movie.
“He has been so supportive of the theater,” Brewster said. The veteran actor has donated $5,000 in cash and thousands of dollars worth of movie memorabilia to raise money for the renovation project.
The theater’s rear wall and roof collapsed in the quake. But thanks to a $475,000 state grant and more than $15,000 in private donations, work to repair the theater got underway Wednesday. “It’s a focal point in the community,” Brewster said of the theater, which opened in 1916. “It’s been here as long as we can remember.”
Aside from the new roof and wall, the theater will get a fresh coat of paint along with new seats and carpet. Meanwhile, members of the Save the Towne Theater committee said they hope to raise another $250,000 to build a live stage in the theater. “It was originally a vaudeville theater,” committee member Lori Hofferber said. “A live stage will make it a really nice theater.”
Here is a story about the demise of the drive-in from the LA Times, dated 9/6/96:
In its heyday four decades ago, the Anaheim Drive-In Theatre on Lemon Street drew couples on dates, friends out for an evening of fun and families with pajama-clad children who parents hoped would watch the cartoon, then snooze through the feature film. The outdoor theater next to the Riverside Freeway stopped showing movies in 1990 because attendance had become so sparse. The main attraction since then has been weekend swap meets. Now, the drive-in is being razed to make way for a 25-screen cinema complex. The old marquee fronting Lemon will remain for now to announce the opening of the cineplex, to be completed by May.
“There’s a building boom among all the movie theater chains right now, and we are pleased that Anaheim is getting its share of new projects,” Mayor Tom Daly said. “Central Anaheim needs movie theaters, and we’re hoping that this will fill the bill."For several weeks, workers have been breaking up the pavement where moviegoers once parked their cars on the 22-acre site, owned by Los Angeles-based Pacific Theatres. To mark the beginning of construction for the cineplex, company officials will host a "screen dropping” ceremony at noon today. The public may watch the demolition of the drive-in’s original 122-foot-wide, 96-foot-tall screen, the only structure left on the site.
Pacific’s other Orange County drive-ins, in La Habra and Buena Park, have also closed in recent years. In La Habra, a Super Kmart store was built on the site, and in Buena Park there are plans for 220 houses at the former drive-in. The county’s few remaining drive-ins will disappear soon too. A retail project is being proposed at the Highway 39 Drive-In location in Westminster, Pacific officials said. Pacific’s Orange Drive-In is still open as a swap meet only.
The Stadium Drive-In on Katella Avenue in Orange is scheduled for conversion to a multiscreen cineplex by Century Theatres Inc. and Syufy Enterprises, both of San Francisco. Chan Wood, Pacific Theatres' executive vice president, said moviegoers' tastes have changed over the years, bringing an end to the drive-in era. “They want better sound, presentation and amenities,” Wood said, which drive-ins can’t offer.
The new Anaheim complex will have a total of 5,500 stadium-style seats, a lobby with three snack bars and 2,000 parking spaces, Wood said. Three restaurants, a food court and a fun center with games are also planned. Wood said drive-ins are also disappearing because they are on large, valuable commercial parcels. “Most of our properties are at prime locations,” he said.
They were showing the Paris Hilton porn film as a feature? I didn’t know they could do that.
Interesting. It really fits the bill of a small town theater.
Advertised as early as 1912 in the Indianapolis Star, assuming B.F. Keith’s is the same theater. A 1970 story states the Keith had been renovated and was being used for offices at that time. I don’t see a later reference to the actual demolition of the theater, but if I do I will pass it along.
Here are the six suspects arrested for the bombing on 4/7/28:
Joe Million, business agent of the Hammond Motion Picture Operators Union
William Kleihege, lessee of the State when it was bombed
Harry L. Ames, business agent of the Hammond Hod Carriers' Union
(that’s what it says, don’t ask me what a hod carrier is)
James Tuto, business agent of the Hammond Finishers' Union
Marwood Williams, trustee of the Hod Carriers' Union
Dean Melloy, Chicago hoodlum
The Los Angeles Times reported a downtown fire in Philadelphia on 1/22/47 that routed the 1200 patrons at the nearby Keith Theater. The theater sustained some smoke damage but was otherwise unmarred.
Was that the Subway Terminal at 3rd and Hill?
What did we change? Did I have it listed as demolished before?
Here is an LA Times article dated 2/14/89 describing a fire at the Broadway:
A predawn fire that burned for more than three hours gutted the vacant Broadway Theater in downtown Santa Ana early today.
About 100 firefighters battled the blaze, including crews from the Orange County Fire Department, Santa Ana fire spokeswoman Sharon Frank said.
A police officer on patrol reported the fire about 2:40 a.m., Frank said. Firefighters were able to keep the blaze from spreading to adjoining buildings, and it was extinguished about 6 a.m., she said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation. Fire officials said the building is probably a total loss, but they will not know until the end of the week whether the three-story structure’s walls can be preserved, Deputy City Manager Jan Perkins said.
The theater, thought to be more than 50 years old, was purchased by the city for $900,000 in 1987 as part of Centerpointe, a major downtown redevelopment project that was to have included a hotel and and office complex.
Value Almost `Nil'
Perkins said the purchase price represented the value of the land, because the dilapidated building’s worth was “practically nil.”
Developers of the project backed out last year after marketing studies showed that a large downtown hotel was not viable. The city has not yet contracted with another developer to build on the site, which extends east from the theater’s location on Broadway between Fourth and Fifth streets to Ross Street.
The theater was once part of the Fox Theater chain, Frank said. A fire in the 1950s destroyed much of the building. In the years before its purchase by the city, the theater was leased to a company that showed Spanish-language films.
City Real Estate Manager Bob Hoffman said the theater’s ultimate fate would have been left up to the developers who buy the site. “Our plan was not to demolish it until we had a developer on the site on the chance that he would incorporate it into a larger development, either as a theater or just preserving the walls.”
Hoffman said, however, that the chances that a developer would preserve the building as a theater were slim. “Large theaters in downtown are considered white elephants today.”
Here is an August 18, 2000 LA Times article about a fire at the Mayfair:
A historic Art Deco theater in downtown Ventura that entrepreneurs hoped to revive as a swing dance hall was severely damaged Thursday in an early-morning fire.
The blaze gutted the long-shuttered Mayfair Theater, leaving only the building’s thick outside walls, ticket office and elaborate neon marquee.
Witnesses said flames erupted about 1 a.m., and firefighters arrived to find a man and a woman standing on the roof of the marquee. The pair were taken down by ladder, treated for smoke inhalation at Ventura County Memorial Hospital and later released, officials said.
The man and woman, squatters at the Mayfair Theater, had set up a living area in a room on the second floor and were sleeping there when fire started, city fire officials said. They crawled from their room onto the roof of the marquee, where they were rescued.
Loss of the theater is a setback to the city’s plans of restoring historic buildings and turning an aging downtown into an arts and tourism district.
Ventura residents and twin sisters Tammy Finocchiaro and Terri Moore, 35, were trying to purchase the theater for their Flyin' Lindy Hoppers swing dance group, which performs nationally and holds classes and dance events.
On Thursday they stood on their front porch, directly across Ash Street from the theater, and watched firefighters battle the blaze.
“Do we give up? Not necessarily, but to get the smoke out and rebuild is a lot more industrious project than we had before,” a weary Moore said.
The sisters had just cleared a major hurdle Tuesday, when the Planning Commission unanimously approved a permit to allow them to turn the theater into a dance hall.
After hearing about the loss Thursday, Curt Stiles, 62, a commission member, said he had looked forward to the theater’s proposed renovation and recalled watching movies there as a child.
“That’s a part of my history going down the tubes,” he said. “Every kid in town went there.”
Firefighters searched the interior of the building, known as a haven for transients, and determined that no other people were inside, said Rod Smith, commander for the Ventura Fire Department.
Within an hour the fire destroyed most of the interior, including the 59-year-old theater’s original chairs, Art Deco chandeliers, and the building’s vaulted redwood roof.
Ten fire engines and three trucks fought the flames.
The cause of the blaze is under investigation, but officials are looking into the possibility that transients might have started it, said Bill Rigg, assistant fire chief, although he said an aging wiring system might also be to blame.
There is no property loss estimate yet, Rigg said.
Stephen Sisca, who manages the property for the theater’s Los Angeles-based owner, S.D.H. Properties, said the land and building are valued at about $675,000.
Built in 1941 by S. Charles Lee, a prominent Art Deco theater architect, the building started life as the Mayfair Theater and showed first-run films for decades.
But it fell on hard times and in the 1970s was painted pink and reincarnated as a venue for X-rated movies. In the 1990s local entrepreneurs painted it sky blue and ran it as a coffeehouse that showed art movies. But that effort failed.
The building sat empty for years, attracting transients, with only its marquee and gold light fixtures a reminder of its former glory.
The Strand was open on a seasonal basis. I have a picture of my mother and me standing in front of the theater in the winter of 1973. “A Touch of Class” was still on the marquee, but the theater was closed until Memorial Day. It was across from the Steel Pier. There used to be a Taylor’s Pork Roll stand next door. I think the Taj Mahal is there now.
A movie theater in my hometown. I never thought I would see the day.
This 5/30/85 story in the LA Times states (no pun intended) that the State will be torn down in July 1985 and will be replaced by a luxury hotel. It’s still a big hole in the ground. Condos are supposed to be built there but nothing has gotten started:
By fate so fortunate he still blesses his Irish luck, 69-year-old Harold Fahey grew up a stage brat in the main theater of a young city brimming with oil and ambition.
His haunt was the State Theater, a major-league vaudeville and movie house his father opened within the new Jergins Trust Building on Ocean Boulevard in 1920.
During a 15-year period, ending in 1935, Hal Fahey spent every possible hour behind the State’s large stage, hanging out in the “green room,” where performers gathered before a show.
As a 12-year-old, he danced the Charleston with Babe Ruth and dreamed of being a ventriloquist at the knee of Edgar Bergen.
At age 17, he watched as fallen heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, devoid of theatrical talent, brought overflow crowds to their feet with his simple presence. And, also as a teen-ager, he secretly fell in love with a fresh-faced starlet named Ginger Rogers.
“I had seen a lot of actors and actresses by that time,” said Fahey, “but I liked her because she was such a sweet person, like a schoolgirl. We took her to the Pacific Coast Club one Friday night and really knocked the natives dead.”
In recent weeks, Fahey, a retired designer of bank buildings, has returned to the old theater several times, touring it and the 10-story Jergins Building with an architect’s eye toward restoration. The Jergins, with one of the city’s best locations at Ocean Boulevard and Pine Avenue, is scheduled to be razed in July and replaced by a luxury hotel.
“I am very sentimental about this theater,” said Fahey last week from inside the old State.
He was dapper in a cream-colored suit and florid tie, but the theater was a mess. The stage had been hacked in half and curtains were torn. Gone were the theater’s 1,800 seats, its bronze chandeliers and brocaded draperies. The angels with harps that had graced its ceiling dome were covered with gray paint. So few lights worked that it was difficult to see even the destruction that remained.
“I was against it being torn down,” said Fahey. “but now I realize that architecturally and in an engineering sense, it is not feasible to make it a safe and modern structure.”
That comment will not make him popular with local cultural preservation groups, of which he is a member, Fahey said. Preservationists have worked for more than a year to find a buyer to restore the Jergins but have been unsuccessful. Current owners have estimated that restoration would cost between $15 million and $20 million and that, in the end, the building would lose money.
Standing or not, the State Theater will continue to evoke the best of Fahey’s memories, he said. They are captured in old photos of home run kings, singing cowboys and movie stars. More than once, a small circus with lions, tigers and clowns was featured on its stage.
From the Orpheum in New York and the Pantages in Hollywood, the stars came to perform at the State by the hundreds.
Babe Ruth even slept in the Faheys' large First Street home while doing a week of appearances at the theater in the winter of 1927, the year he hit 60 home runs. “Every morning when I got up, he’d be there,” recalled Fahey, still slightly in awe. “I was going to an academy, and before they’d come to pick me up, we’d have breakfast together. He ate a ton. He was rotund and we had to bring in a heavier chair for him.”
Fahey’s father, William, who “made a million dollars” off the State and a few million more from investments in other theaters and movie productions, talked baseball with Ruth. And one evening young Hal danced for the slugger on stage.
“They’d have a simulated baseball stadium as a backdrop and Babe Ruth would be on stage in his uniform and with a bat. He’d just point laughingly and select 10 to 15 youngsters from the audience, and he’d ask them, `What do you do best?‘ ”
Some would sing. A little boy, with Ruth as his pitcher, walloped a ball, hitting the drummer in the theater’s 15-person orchestra. And Fahey, chosen by prearrangement with the stage manager, did a 10-minute Charleston. His father was furious, Fahey recalled with a smile, explaining that the old man had tried unsuccessfully to keep him out of the performers' way.
Ruth, who was paid $5,000 for his week of 45-minute shows, was “a womanizer and a liver-upper, but we never knew it,” said Fahey. “His driver would have him home by 10 o'clock.”
`Extremely Wholesome'
Of all who appeared, Ginger Rogers, promoting her earliest films, probably drew the largest crowd, Fahey said. “I can tell you exactly what she looked like without makeup. It’s as if she’s standing right here. She was freckle-faced and had pretty, bright eyes. She had red hair, though not naturally. She was sweet and clean and jolly, extremely wholesome. I was impressed.”
But Hal’s favorite was Bergen. “He came maybe eight times over 10 years. One time in the green room, he let me hold Charlie McCarthy on my lap and tried to teach me to be a ventriloquist. He loved children.”
But by 1935, motion pictures had raised stars' wages beyond the means of the senior Fahey, and the State’s six-act, 75-cent afternoons of vaudeville and movies were becoming a thing of the past.
The State eventually became a theater for movies only. Fahey, hooked by the entertainment business, worked with his father until the old man sold his theaters in 1950. Films were shown at the State by its various owners until it was closed in 1977.
Now, Fahey lives on Ocean Boulevard, near the house of his birth and a short bike ride from the family’s First Street home.
“I still ride by and think about it all,” he said. “There are so many memories.”
This story in the LA Times concerned the possible demolition of the El Rey after the Whittier quake in 1987. Date of the article is 10/8/87:
Plywood covered the hole where plate-glass windows had shattered, there were deep cracks in the walls, and the city Building Department had taped a sign on the door warning the public against entering the Alhambra Shade and Linoleum Co.
But inside, Helen McCann, the 80-year-old owner, was still at work this week, making window shades and fussing about the business she was losing while her customers were locked out because of earthquake damage.
Her store on Main Street should have been inspected and reopened by now, she said Tuesday, but her landlord had not given the city an engineering report on structural damage. In the meantime, McCann said, if she allowed customers in the store, “I’d be scared to death that somebody might get hurt.”
John Jomehri, whose Lovebirds Cafe is a few doors away in the same building, dropped by to commiserate with McCann over lost business and expensive repair bills.
Jomehri said he has had to throw away food, damage to his cafe’s wood and glass amounts to $3,000 and he is losing the revenue he usually gets from 300 customers a day.
Both McCann and Jomehri had hoped to reopen Wednesday, but city building inspectors said they want to take a closer look at the building, which has a deep crack on its east side as a result of Sunday’s aftershock. Jomehri said he was told that he might not be able to reopen until structural repairs were made and that the building might even be demolished.
“If they have to condemn the building, I’ll lose $70,000 to $80,000,” Jomehri said Wednesday. “I’m getting nervous.”
The cafe and linoleum store are just two of dozens of businesses along Main Street that have been closed by the quake and its aftershocks. The city estimated Wednesday that 50 to 80 businesses are shut down either voluntarily or at the direction of the city.
Officials said they do not have accurate figures for the number of residents forced out of their homes, but about 250 residential and commercial buildings and more than 1,000 chimneys were damaged. The total property loss to public and private structures is estimated at more than $20 million.
City Manager Kevin Murphy said most of the commercial damage has occurred to the 600 business and apartment buildings along Main Street and adjoining side streets that were constructed of unreinforced masonry before 1933. Murphy said the city policy has been to require demolition or structural improvements to such buildings only when their use changes in a way that would bring more people into the buildings. He said that in light of the earthquake damage, this policy will be re-evaluated.
Two of the commercial buildings that may face demolition because of quake damage are the El Rey and Alhambra Cinema theaters, both part of the Edwards Theaters chain.
The Alhambra Cinema consists of two theaters joined by a lobby. The larger, 900-seat theater has been partially demolished, and engineers are trying to determine whether they can save the second theater, which is part of a building that has apartments on the second floor and a long-closed bowling alley in the basement.
James Edwards, the 80-year-old founder and chairman of Edwards Theaters, said the Alhambra Cinema was constructed in 1922. He acquired it in 1930, making it the second theater in his chain, which now has 140 screens.
Edwards said such entertainers as Bing Crosby and the Marx Brothers appeared on the stage when the Alhambra theater was part of what was called “the coffee-and-doughnuts circuit, meaning that about all you would get there was coffee and doughnuts and maybe a $10 bill.” He said important vaudeville acts would play outlying theaters such as the Alhambra while they were in between more lucrative engagements in larger cities.
In the 1930s, Edwards said, he staged shows that featured five acts of vaudeville and a movie. In 1937, he said, the Alhambra Cinema became a forerunner to today’s multiplex theaters when it added a second screen.
Edwards, whose office is in Newport Beach, inspected the damage to the theater Saturday. “My wife and I felt like we’ve lost a member of the family,” Edwards said, “It was part of the beginning of our circuit.”
If the Alhambra Cinema is torn down and the El Rey, another former vaudeville house, is demolished, Edwards said they will become the second and third theaters he has lost in Alhambra to earthquakes. The Capri Theater was razed after the Sylmar earthquake in 1971.
In addition to widespread damage to commercial buildings, Alhambra sustained more than $5 million in damage to residences, according to city spokeswoman Judy Feuer. At least one house collapsed, she said, and another sustained heavy damage when a chimney fell through a roof.
Two of the city’s four fire stations have been closed since Thursday’s earthquake, and the city’s headquarters station, although open, suffered some damage. Murphy said one of the fire stations may have to be demolished.
The damage to city property is estimated at $1.5 million.
Other badly damaged structures include five apartment buildings, an auto repair shop and a small hotel.
Here is an article about the closing from the LA Times dated 8/18/98:
Carol Selva wasn’t exactly teary over the imminent shuttering of the Port Theatre, but she did have a distant look that said something about the power of nostalgia.
Selva, a 48-year-old mother of two from Newport Beach, has been a fan of the Corona del Mar movie house for more than two decades. She grew accustomed to the worn seats when her first husband was wooing her in the ‘70s, and soon became a regular.
On Friday, Selva got her ticket for Manuel Poirier’s “Western,” the Port’s final film before it closes Thursday, and gulped.
“I read in the papers about it closing and I’m not happy,” she said. “You always know these things are going to happen, because there’s change. That’s really OK in a way… . Progress can be good. But I’ll really miss it… . I bet a lot of people will.”
True enough. Most of those who attended shows over the Port’s final weekend stressed that it was more than just a place to see pictures.
To them, a movie multiplex in a mall—the one with the screens numbering in the teens and foamy stadium-seating climbing up the walls—is just a place to see pictures. The Port, they agreed, was more: It was a landmark—stylish, funky and a little ruined, all at the same time.
Mark L. Jackson and his wife, Anne, trekked from Balboa Island, something they’ve been doing for years. Mark Jackson, 39, said he was first brought to the theater by his dad in the early 1960s. It seemed different then.
“I was a kid {so} it looked huge in that way everything seems big and great to you when you’re young,” he recalled. “I wouldn’t exactly call it majestic, but it always impressed me. I grew up with the Port, so it’s like I’m losing something that belongs to me.”
Agreed Anne Jackson: “It has character, like all old things do.”
Character wasn’t enough in the end.
In recent years, the Port frequently changed its playbill to build a more diverse following, but the plan never took. Except for the loyalists, attendance has been slipping, and Landmark Theatre Corp., which has run the single-screen, 930-seat institution since 1989, decided to let its lease expire at the end of the month.
The Port’s manager, Mike Peterson, lamented the move.
“We showed a huge variety of films, and I loved working here,” he said. “The customers were always extra friendly, and a lot of people said it was their favorite theater.”
It clearly was for Dennis Leslie, who managed the Port from 1974 to 1987. A fixture to patrons, he chatted with them about the movies and their lives. Leslie noted that the theater frequently staged tributes to stars who settled in Orange County, including John Wayne, Ruby Keeler and animator Chuck Jones.
The Port was built in 1951 by Ted and Peggy Jones of the Western Amusement Co. of Los Angeles. Major Hollywood movies were offered for a quarter century, then the Port turned to foreign imports in 1976 when it screened Bernard Tavernier’s moody French release “The Clockmaker.”
“With the final curtain coming down, it brings to a close the last bastion of single-screen movie houses that, at one time, dotted every neighborhood in Orange County,” Leslie said. “Its passing will leave a void in movie memories.”
The void for Audrey Ko, 59, of Seal Beach will be the arty and sometimes idiosyncratic flicks she’s come to expect. During the last 30 years, Ko has seen the works of Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa—all the masters of cinema—at the Port, where she went Friday for a last visit.
So have lots of others. Michael Morgan, who was working the box office Saturday, reported that business has been up as people have come to pay their last respects, with attendance averaging about 100 people per show.
“It’s been pretty busy, more busy than usual, and people are curious about what’s going to be in its place,” Morgan said. “People seem pretty upset; you can tell they are feeling nostalgic.”
Ko can still watch imports closer to her home, in Seal Beach’s Bay Theatre, one of the last antique theaters around. But it won’t be the same.
“The Bay is very nice, and I go there a lot, {but} the Port is my favorite,” she said. “The range of movies and the selection, {it’s} just always the best for me. I never even really minded it when it was so hot in summer you had to fan yourself.”
While Ko sighed, Anthony Reyes just grinned, puzzled by the concern. Reyes, a 20-year-old surfer from Huntington Beach, dropped in Thursday evening with his girlfriend, Pati Dunn, 19, also of Huntington Beach, to see a wave-rider double-bill of “Big Wednesday” and “The Endless Summer II.”
A cool place, nice looks, being so quaint and all, but why the hand-wringing?
“I like it {because} they have movies like this, surfing movies,” Reyes said. “Anyway, there are other places for that. They’re always tearing down ancient things, {so} you can’t get too down.”
His girlfriend, however, worried that such film fare won’t be shown anywhere else: “It’s just bad when things people like aren’t there anymore,” Dunn said.
Here is the 12/27/98 story from the LA Times:
The Rev. Travis Smith bellows from the pulpit of the 3-month-old First Church of Deliverance:
You can’t live today successfully holding on to yesterday!
Smith has built his congregation on those words. His church is a lesson in how a community can let go of a sordid past.
The Gardena building that the church calls home was for 24 years known as the Little Fox Theater, an X-rated movie house where screenings of films were accompanied by lewd acts both inside and outside the building.
It stood on the corner of Vermont Avenue and 140th Street until residents and officers from the LAPD Southeast Division decided a few years ago to unite in their efforts to close it down. Under pressure, the theater gave up its lease.
Now, in place of the movie screen is the altar where Smith gives his sermons. In place of the dark seats on which patrons once engaged in sexual activity are clean burgundy chairs. In the building where prostitutes once strolled for customers, worshipers rise to yell out, “Thank you, Lord!” What used to be an adult bookstore is now the entrance for the congregation. The back room that clients once used for sex will one day be a dining room.
For two decades, residents were galled that children from 135th Street Elementary School, only a few blocks away, frequently walked by the Little Fox to buy candy at a neighboring grocery store. Activists passed out petitions and talked to police officers with little success.
“A lot of the residents had given up hope,” said B.J. Mynatt, president of the 135th Street Neighborhood Watch Committee. “But we just kept going. We feel that God helped us.”
The theater shut down in February. And then, last summer, with the theater out of business and the building owner in need of a new tenant, Smith appeared, pledging to turn the mostly residential neighborhood around by erasing from people’s minds the nefarious image that once consumed the corner and the entire neighborhood.
“It’s amazing what God does, that a place such as this was could be developed and transformed into a place of worship,” Smith said. “I’m going to work with the community to transform the community into an oasis of love and compassion.”
On his ambitious agenda is the creation of a Christian Men’s Fellowship and a Christian Women’s Fellowship that would have older members of the congregation act as mentors to adolescents to teach them how to respect themselves and each other. He also wants to convert an empty lot across the street—which used to be the site of a crack house—into a playing area to distract kids from dangerous street activities. Other projects include establishing a day care center, a Christian school and a substance abuse program.
From July until September, Smith, building owner Michael Coleman and a handful of volunteers and contractors refurbished the old theater.
With no money and few resources, Smith convinced Coleman to accept a postdated check for the first payment of the three-year lease.
Coleman, who inherited the building from his father, Harry, in 1991, was in a charitable mood. He said his father had long wanted to oust the theater, but found that there was no way to break the lease renewal clause. Michael Coleman was instantly attracted to Smith and his church. “So I cut him some slack.”
Once the theater closed, Michael Coleman advertised the space in church newsletters and local newspapers. He got responses from people looking to open up nightclubs and bars, and rejected them.
“I wanted to better the community,” he said. “I didn’t want that environment because that wasn’t a wholesome environment.”
Around that time, Smith was looking for a place to plant his Methodist ministry. He began the congregation two years ago, borrowing space from the Brookings Community AME Church in Southwest Los Angeles. A friend told him about the building on Vermont Avenue. The price was right, Smith said, and the building’s past didn’t deter him.
“The sin is not within the confines of the building,” Smith said. “It’s within the people who do the deviant acts in the building.”
Southeast Division Officer Al Labrada, who spent more than a year helping residents push the theater out of business, still has a poster board with snapshots of various spots within the building before it got its face-lift.
Labrada and several officers made arrests at the theater. They sent undercover police officers. They attended hearings that the city conducted to try to revoke the business' permit.
Residents took bus trips downtown to monitor the hearings and circulated petitions. “We fought that thing tooth and nail,” said Donna Lyons, 81, who has lived in the neighborhood for 50 years.
Lynn Magnandonovan, a deputy city attorney who handled lawsuits against the theater alleging public sex acts, calls the renaissance of the building “a cosmic vote of confidence for the community.”
Smith is trying to see it that way. It wasn’t until two weeks ago that the 89 members of his congregation finally raised enough money to buy a sign for the orange brick building. Even now, it hardly resembles a church. There is no cross on the roof and no windows to shine light on the altar.
At the end of one joyous and song-filled Sunday service, Smith made a request.
“Today is rent day,” he told his congregation. He reminded them that each month they had to raise $1,950 for rent, $304 for the chairs that were bought on credit and $3,000 for maintenance.
“We have a responsibility to this building.”
I don’t think it’s on CT – no aka in the system. I’m going to add it. I don’t think it showed porno films for the entire 24 years.
Showing first run films when I drove by last week.
LA Times reports in 1998 that the Little Fox theater in Gardena was converted to a church after 24 years of showing adult films. Address given as 140th and Vermont. Anybody heard of this theater?
Please note status change above. Thanks.
Fair enough. I wasn’t sure of the exact criteria.
It is a great building. Rent DOA (the original) or Blade Runner for a look at the inside, or just go there if you’re in LA. Sometimes they charge to get in and walk around, sometimes they don’t. It depends on the current administration.
I would argue for closed status as it no longer shows films. I’m not sure if that’s what you referring to immediately above. My understanding is closed would pertain to an auditorium that once showed films but is now exclusively used for live theater or music.
A 1981 story in the LA Times profiles owners Howard and Florence Linn. Anyone know their current status since last mentioned in 2004? Do they still own the theater?
Here is a story about the demise of the Cinedome from the LA Times, dated 2/14/99:
Once upon a time, when Orange County was more about orange groves and less about urban sprawl, there was an oasis of culture and futuristic architecture out near “the Big A” (that reference alone to the former Anaheim Stadium should date me). Housed in twin, light-festooned domes were the coolest movie theaters anywhere outside Hollywood.
The Century Cinedome, adjacent to another forgotten landmark—the Orange Drive-In—was a creature from the ‘60s. When first built and opened, people traveled from all corners of the county to sit in big, comfortable seats, stare at huge projection screens and listen to the most advanced stereophonic sound system of the time.
Now it’s going the way of the wrecking ball.
Back in the ‘80s, before I became a county expatriate, I used to drive up the Santa Ana Freeway and wonder how long it would be before they’d tear the old place down. Now that they’ve boarded it up, I find myself mourning a bit for a place that was more than just a movie theater. It was a place where images—on the screens and on the theater grounds—were forever seared into my brain, leaving memories that will stay long after the buildings are demolished.
I think, in many ways, the life of the theater complex mirrored the growth and changes that have taken place in Orange County during the last three decades—more so than Anaheim Stadium/Edison International Field, Disneyland or any other man-made landmark in the area.
When the complex first opened in the ‘60s, Orange County was booming. While the region has never stopped, that decade was a heady time to be living in a semirural county. The aerospace industry was king. John F. Kennedy’s promise of man landing on the moon before the end of the decade was still fresh in our minds, and we all knew it was only a matter of time before space travel was going to be commonplace.
The domes, unlike the prefabricated boxes popping up across the plains and hills of Orange County, had a wild, “way-out,” spacey look to them. When you drove by, northbound on the freeway, the outrageous designs of “The Jetsons” didn’t seem so outrageous. For me, there could have been no other theater in which to first experience “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
During the ‘70s, the theater took on a new look. The county, with its ever-expanding population, was more than just a series of bedroom communities serving masters in Los Angeles. Orange County was becoming a place to be reckoned with in every sense, in particular economically. With all that came the malls, the entertainment centers and the many ways denizens could spend their leisure-time dollars. In an effort to capture some portion of the windfall, the folks who owned the Cinedome expanded their theaters. It was like the burgeoning city of Irvine: There was a limited amount of land, but by God they’d pack as many people into it as humanly possible.
As the ‘70s ended and the '80s rolled in, the Cinedome remained a cultural and societal landmark in Orange County. Everyone knew where the then-California Angels played baseball. Everyone knew where South Coast Plaza and the Orange Mall were located. And everyone, even if they hadn’t seen a movie there, at least knew where the domes were. Places like the Santa Ana Clubhouse and Skate Ranch, longtime havens for teenagers looking to meet others of the opposite sex or enjoy a cheap date, were already dead or dying.
The Cinedome, which seemed to offer an endless number of theaters under one roof, was also a great place to head to with friends. On any given (dateless) Friday or Saturday night, groups of friends would look for every which way to sneak in. For as many theaters as there were in the complex, there were twice as many backdoors. And if all else failed and you actually paid for a ticket, you were sure to catch at least two more movies (for free) showing elsewhere at what many came to call “Sneak-a-Dome.”
Now, 30 years after it opened its doors, the Cinedome is the victim of change. Its owners, the Century Theatre chain, built another complex nearby that has all the bells and whistles movie audiences expect these days. The Cinedome, which really began showing its age 20 years ago, is now in its death spiral. It’s going the way the orange groves have, the way the Orange County International Raceway did and the way the Tustin and El Toro Marine bases will.
I suspect when the company charged with demolishing the Cinedome finally trucks away the rubble, there won’t be a lot of wailing from most people—even those who have a special place in their heart for the once ultramodern-looking marvel. Like the Cinedome, the flame of Orange County’s existence has been fueled by change.
Here is an LA Times story about post-quake renovations dated 1/19/96:
Two years to the day after it closed, workers Wednesday began the long-awaited renovation of Fillmore’s landmark Towne Theater, which was badly damaged in the Northridge earthquake. Councilwoman Linda Brewster said she hopes to see the theater’s lone screen illuminated by the end of August with a Kirk Douglas movie.
“He has been so supportive of the theater,” Brewster said. The veteran actor has donated $5,000 in cash and thousands of dollars worth of movie memorabilia to raise money for the renovation project.
The theater’s rear wall and roof collapsed in the quake. But thanks to a $475,000 state grant and more than $15,000 in private donations, work to repair the theater got underway Wednesday. “It’s a focal point in the community,” Brewster said of the theater, which opened in 1916. “It’s been here as long as we can remember.”
Aside from the new roof and wall, the theater will get a fresh coat of paint along with new seats and carpet. Meanwhile, members of the Save the Towne Theater committee said they hope to raise another $250,000 to build a live stage in the theater. “It was originally a vaudeville theater,” committee member Lori Hofferber said. “A live stage will make it a really nice theater.”
Here is a story about the demise of the drive-in from the LA Times, dated 9/6/96:
In its heyday four decades ago, the Anaheim Drive-In Theatre on Lemon Street drew couples on dates, friends out for an evening of fun and families with pajama-clad children who parents hoped would watch the cartoon, then snooze through the feature film. The outdoor theater next to the Riverside Freeway stopped showing movies in 1990 because attendance had become so sparse. The main attraction since then has been weekend swap meets. Now, the drive-in is being razed to make way for a 25-screen cinema complex. The old marquee fronting Lemon will remain for now to announce the opening of the cineplex, to be completed by May.
“There’s a building boom among all the movie theater chains right now, and we are pleased that Anaheim is getting its share of new projects,” Mayor Tom Daly said. “Central Anaheim needs movie theaters, and we’re hoping that this will fill the bill."For several weeks, workers have been breaking up the pavement where moviegoers once parked their cars on the 22-acre site, owned by Los Angeles-based Pacific Theatres. To mark the beginning of construction for the cineplex, company officials will host a "screen dropping” ceremony at noon today. The public may watch the demolition of the drive-in’s original 122-foot-wide, 96-foot-tall screen, the only structure left on the site.
Pacific’s other Orange County drive-ins, in La Habra and Buena Park, have also closed in recent years. In La Habra, a Super Kmart store was built on the site, and in Buena Park there are plans for 220 houses at the former drive-in. The county’s few remaining drive-ins will disappear soon too. A retail project is being proposed at the Highway 39 Drive-In location in Westminster, Pacific officials said. Pacific’s Orange Drive-In is still open as a swap meet only.
The Stadium Drive-In on Katella Avenue in Orange is scheduled for conversion to a multiscreen cineplex by Century Theatres Inc. and Syufy Enterprises, both of San Francisco. Chan Wood, Pacific Theatres' executive vice president, said moviegoers' tastes have changed over the years, bringing an end to the drive-in era. “They want better sound, presentation and amenities,” Wood said, which drive-ins can’t offer.
The new Anaheim complex will have a total of 5,500 stadium-style seats, a lobby with three snack bars and 2,000 parking spaces, Wood said. Three restaurants, a food court and a fun center with games are also planned. Wood said drive-ins are also disappearing because they are on large, valuable commercial parcels. “Most of our properties are at prime locations,” he said.