Back in November of 2005, there was a discussion about the 1950s era remodeling of the U.A. to accommodate 70mm projection. I’ve finally come across this picture on the Internet showing the position of the new projection booth and the remains of the mezzanine section, which was closed off by a curtain.
It looks as though the mezzanine remained intact, though the decorative detailing along its front was been removed. My guess would be that the mezzanine seating was abandoned not because of the space needed for the projection booth, but because the new screen was taller than the earlier one and its upper area would not have been visible to patrons seated in the mezzanine.
Incidentally, some time ago I saw one of those 1950s teen exploitation movies consisting of a threadbare plot and loads of music performances by early rock'n'roll artists (it may have been the 1956 release Rock, Rock, Rock, though I can’t swear to it), and I’m pretty sure the inevitable “Big Rock Show” scene was filmed in the U.A., probably just before the remodeling was done. There were only a couple of shots showing the auditorium, but that C. Howard Crane Gothic style was recognizable, and it was used in only a few theatres. The L.A. theatre would have been the most likely to show up in this movie, with the Detroit U.A. a close second.
In keeping with Cinema Treasures' standard policy, this page should be renamed to the last name under which the theatre operated, which was Capri Cinema.
Bruce Risher, author of a book on the history of the City of Alhambra, has given me some additional information about this theatre. It was the second movie theatre in Alhambra and it opened as the Alhambra Theatre (the second of three houses in the city to use that name) and was later renamed the Plaza Theatre (probably in 1924, when the third Alhambra Theatre opened), and then the Granada Theatre, the Coronet Theatre, and finally the Capri Cinema, about 1963 or 1964.
I’ve tracked down the location of the first Alhambra Theatre and will add it to the database. I now know that the Granada/Capri was the theatre mentioned in the 1916 Builder & Contractor issue cited in my previous comment. It opened in 1917, and was designed by architect Harley S. Bradley.
OK, I just checked the page for the Sunshine Brooks Theater and was reminded that it was apparently the project Floyd Stanbery designed for an existing building in 1936.
Correction: Clifford Balch’s partner’s surname is spelled “Stanbery” (an “e” but only one “r”) in 20 California Index cards, including the one to which I linked above. Stanbury, with a “u”, is a close second, appearing in 16 cards. Southwest Builder & Contractor uses both spellings in different articles. Another periodical called West Coast Builder uses only Stanbury. The Index contains two citations from Los Angeles Times articles, and both of these use Stanbery. I think the wisest course would probably be to go with the L.A. Times. The usually reliable ArchitectDB uses Stanbery as well.
Incidentally, none of the cards in the Index use the double-r spelling Stanberry, which Cinema Treasures currently uses. We should probably get rid of that.
Contemporary sources quoted in the California Index mention two proposed theatres in Oceanside in 1936, involving two operating companies. Fred Siegel’s Palomar Operating Company hired Clifford Balch to design a theatre to be erected on Hill Street (now Coast Highway) between Topeka and Michigan Streets (Southwest Builder & Contractor, 1/17/36).) As 314 N. Coast Highway is about three blocks north of that location, unless the street numbers have been changed I don’t see how that proposed theatre could be the Palomar.
I can’t find any numbered streets on a current map of Oceanside, but the second 1936 theatre project in that city was supposed to have been at Hill and 3rd Streets. It was a project for the Inter-Counties Investment Company, of Anaheim, and called for the remodeling of an existing building. Plans were to be by Cliff Balch’s usual partner, engineer Floyd Stanbury, apparently working alone, as he did on a few occasions (Southwest Builder & Contractor, 3/17/36 and Southwest Builder & Contractor, 6/19/36.) Given that the address of the Palomar today is 314, it seems possible that Pier View Way was once called 3rd Street, and this possibility is probably what led to the surmise that the Palomar was this 1936 project.
As the Palomar dates from 1924 (as this article in Sign On San Diego indicates), then neither Balch nor Stanbury had anything to do with this particular theatre, unless one of them designed the mid-1930s renovation mentioned in that article.
I have found no information on whether or not either of the two 1936 theatre projects mentioned in Southwest Builder & Contractor were ever carried out.
According to the Old Theatres of Fitchburg website, this theatre opened as Whitney’s Opera House in 1880. In 1904 it became the second home of the Bijou, a vaudeville house which also showed some movies before closing in 1916.
This page features a small (unreadable, alas) scan of a 1961 newspaper article about the Bijou, headlined “Old Opera House at Fitchburg is Deserted Ruin”, including an interior photo that appears to date from that time. The place had apparently sat empty for 45 years.
Currently, the block on which the Bijou’s entrance was located (on Prichard Street just north of Main Street) has one and two digit street numbers. Searching on Google Maps, the address 5 Prichard Street will fetch that corner. From the satellite view, it looks like the building still stands. There’s no Google street view, unfortunately.
Makalapua Stadium Cinemas was designed by WPH Architecture, a firm which has offices in Las Vegas and Portland, and has designed over forty multiplex cinema projects.
Goldstream 16 Cinemas was designed by WPH Architecture, a firm which has offices in Las Vegas and Portland, and has designed over forty multiplex cinema projects.
Regal Pioneer Place Stadium 6 was designed by WPH Architecture, a firm which has offices in Las Vegas and Portland, and has designed over forty multiplex cinema projects.
The direct link to the Fehlman LaBarre’s theatre projects above no longer works. Use the link to their home page in this comment and from there, click on “projects”, and then on “entertainment complexes” to fetch links to photos and descriptions of nine of their designs.
The screen is actually “sized just short of a football field” built for gnomes. It’s a fact little known outside Baltimore that, in that city, football is played exclusively by gnomes- thus there’s some confusion among Baltimoreans about the relative sizes of football fields and movie screens.
According to Daily Variety, 11/7/1939, before having the Mayfair Theatre built, owner Mrs. Jenne Dodge operated a theatre in Ventura called the Mission.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of 11/3/1939 gives the name of the owner of the Mayfair as James Dodge.
I haven’t found any further information about the Mission Theatre in Ventura.
I don’t know who designed the actual theatre that’s been inserted into the old I. Magnin building, but the architect of the Magnin building itself was Myron Hunt, of Hunt & Chambers.
The only Hunt-designed theatres originally built as theatres that I know of were the Vine Street Playhouse (now the Ricardo Montalban Theatre) in Hollywood, and the Ambassador Theatre, inside the Ambassador Hotel.
EJHouston: The Ambassador was never called the Mirror. The Mirror Theatre discussed in my comment of Dec. 31, 2004, above was the playhouse in Hollywood originally called the Vine Street Theater and now known as the Ricardo Montalban Theatre. The Montalban was called the Mirror from 1931 to 1936.
The 1955 episode of I Love Lucy you saw was filmed in a studio, and the backdrop outside the rooms at the fictional “Beverly Palms Hotel” was a photograph. It would not be surprising if the Montalban Theatre, during its Mirror period, was in that photo. Using an old photo from the 1930s as the backdrop would have saved the cost of making a new one.
Google Maps Street View provides this photo of the Vogue’s building as it appears in 2008 (be patient while the picture loads- Google Maps' street view feature can be very slow at times.) The Los Angeles County Assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1929 for the building, which contains 4800 square feet, so completely covering its lot, which has dimensions of 40x120 feet.
The L.A. Public Library misidentifies this 1928 photo as being of the California Theatre in Bakersfield. Given the Moorish detailing, suitable for a theatre called the Granada, I wonder if perhaps it actually depict this house. The size and shape of the facade is a good match for that of the Granada, which can be seen on this page as it looked long after its 1950 remodeling.
I wonder if the 1928 photo ken mc posted on September 26, 2007, which the L.A. Library misidentifies as the California Theatre, could actually depict the Granada Theatre, which opened about that time? The theatre in the photo does have some Moorish design elements, suitable for a theatre of that name, and its facade is about the same size as the Granada’s, seen on this page some years after its 1950 remodeling.
The only photo I’ve found showing the Rialto is this ca.1940s shot of Baker Street, with the theatre at some distance in the center. A vertical sign for the Granada Theatre (presumably around the corner) can be seen at right.
Here’s an interesting bit of advertising history touching on this theater. In the late 1920’s, the Kellogg company used Hal Roach’s “Our Gang” to promote its new cereal, Kellogg’s Pep. On this page there’s a letter sent from the Pathe Exchange to the Classic Theatre in Watertown, Wisconsin, “suggesting” to the theater’s operator a course of action by which the house could secure “…additional and earlier bookings on OUR GANG comedies….” The already somewhat overbearing tone of the letter was given a sinister note by the “SEES ALL – KNOWS ALL” watermark which appeared on Pathe’s stationery.
Whether S. Charles Lee did any work for the final design of the Carmel Theatre or not, there is information about his relationship to it in Box 1, Folder 22 of his collected papers, according to the online finding aid for the collection at UCLA. If somebody with access to the collection itself comes across this page, I hope they’ll take a look at what’s in that folder and report back to us about it. If there are photos or drawings of it, they probably haven’t been digitized or they’d probably be on the Lee website.
Laurie, you have a sharper eye than I do. I hadn’t noticed the lettering on that building. It must be the building on the southwest corner 5th, right across Whittier from the Security Bank building. The county assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1926 for the building on that lot now, so it must be the same one in the photo. Unfortunately the library doesn’t have any closer photos of it, except one showing one end of the 5th street side of it (at far right in this photo.) I’d be interested to know what your neighbor might remember about the building with the arched front, too.
Also, I checked the finding aid for the S. Charles Lee papers at UCLA, and it does list Alfred Olander as the owner of the Garmar Theatre.
Back in November of 2005, there was a discussion about the 1950s era remodeling of the U.A. to accommodate 70mm projection. I’ve finally come across this picture on the Internet showing the position of the new projection booth and the remains of the mezzanine section, which was closed off by a curtain.
It looks as though the mezzanine remained intact, though the decorative detailing along its front was been removed. My guess would be that the mezzanine seating was abandoned not because of the space needed for the projection booth, but because the new screen was taller than the earlier one and its upper area would not have been visible to patrons seated in the mezzanine.
The photo is among many to be seen at this Los Angeles Movie Palaces page.
Incidentally, some time ago I saw one of those 1950s teen exploitation movies consisting of a threadbare plot and loads of music performances by early rock'n'roll artists (it may have been the 1956 release Rock, Rock, Rock, though I can’t swear to it), and I’m pretty sure the inevitable “Big Rock Show” scene was filmed in the U.A., probably just before the remodeling was done. There were only a couple of shots showing the auditorium, but that C. Howard Crane Gothic style was recognizable, and it was used in only a few theatres. The L.A. theatre would have been the most likely to show up in this movie, with the Detroit U.A. a close second.
In keeping with Cinema Treasures' standard policy, this page should be renamed to the last name under which the theatre operated, which was Capri Cinema.
Bruce Risher, author of a book on the history of the City of Alhambra, has given me some additional information about this theatre. It was the second movie theatre in Alhambra and it opened as the Alhambra Theatre (the second of three houses in the city to use that name) and was later renamed the Plaza Theatre (probably in 1924, when the third Alhambra Theatre opened), and then the Granada Theatre, the Coronet Theatre, and finally the Capri Cinema, about 1963 or 1964.
I’ve tracked down the location of the first Alhambra Theatre and will add it to the database. I now know that the Granada/Capri was the theatre mentioned in the 1916 Builder & Contractor issue cited in my previous comment. It opened in 1917, and was designed by architect Harley S. Bradley.
OK, I just checked the page for the Sunshine Brooks Theater and was reminded that it was apparently the project Floyd Stanbery designed for an existing building in 1936.
Correction: Clifford Balch’s partner’s surname is spelled “Stanbery” (an “e” but only one “r”) in 20 California Index cards, including the one to which I linked above. Stanbury, with a “u”, is a close second, appearing in 16 cards. Southwest Builder & Contractor uses both spellings in different articles. Another periodical called West Coast Builder uses only Stanbury. The Index contains two citations from Los Angeles Times articles, and both of these use Stanbery. I think the wisest course would probably be to go with the L.A. Times. The usually reliable ArchitectDB uses Stanbery as well.
Incidentally, none of the cards in the Index use the double-r spelling Stanberry, which Cinema Treasures currently uses. We should probably get rid of that.
Contemporary sources quoted in the California Index mention two proposed theatres in Oceanside in 1936, involving two operating companies. Fred Siegel’s Palomar Operating Company hired Clifford Balch to design a theatre to be erected on Hill Street (now Coast Highway) between Topeka and Michigan Streets (Southwest Builder & Contractor, 1/17/36).) As 314 N. Coast Highway is about three blocks north of that location, unless the street numbers have been changed I don’t see how that proposed theatre could be the Palomar.
I can’t find any numbered streets on a current map of Oceanside, but the second 1936 theatre project in that city was supposed to have been at Hill and 3rd Streets. It was a project for the Inter-Counties Investment Company, of Anaheim, and called for the remodeling of an existing building. Plans were to be by Cliff Balch’s usual partner, engineer Floyd Stanbury, apparently working alone, as he did on a few occasions (Southwest Builder & Contractor, 3/17/36 and Southwest Builder & Contractor, 6/19/36.) Given that the address of the Palomar today is 314, it seems possible that Pier View Way was once called 3rd Street, and this possibility is probably what led to the surmise that the Palomar was this 1936 project.
As the Palomar dates from 1924 (as this article in Sign On San Diego indicates), then neither Balch nor Stanbury had anything to do with this particular theatre, unless one of them designed the mid-1930s renovation mentioned in that article.
I have found no information on whether or not either of the two 1936 theatre projects mentioned in Southwest Builder & Contractor were ever carried out.
According to the Old Theatres of Fitchburg website, this theatre opened as Whitney’s Opera House in 1880. In 1904 it became the second home of the Bijou, a vaudeville house which also showed some movies before closing in 1916.
This page features a small (unreadable, alas) scan of a 1961 newspaper article about the Bijou, headlined “Old Opera House at Fitchburg is Deserted Ruin”, including an interior photo that appears to date from that time. The place had apparently sat empty for 45 years.
Currently, the block on which the Bijou’s entrance was located (on Prichard Street just north of Main Street) has one and two digit street numbers. Searching on Google Maps, the address 5 Prichard Street will fetch that corner. From the satellite view, it looks like the building still stands. There’s no Google street view, unfortunately.
Makalapua Stadium Cinemas was designed by WPH Architecture, a firm which has offices in Las Vegas and Portland, and has designed over forty multiplex cinema projects.
Goldstream 16 Cinemas was designed by WPH Architecture, a firm which has offices in Las Vegas and Portland, and has designed over forty multiplex cinema projects.
Regal Pioneer Place Stadium 6 was designed by WPH Architecture, a firm which has offices in Las Vegas and Portland, and has designed over forty multiplex cinema projects.
The direct link to the Fehlman LaBarre’s theatre projects above no longer works. Use the link to their home page in this comment and from there, click on “projects”, and then on “entertainment complexes” to fetch links to photos and descriptions of nine of their designs.
http://www.fehlmanlabarre.com/#home
I don’t think anything remains from the 1942 renovation.
The screen is actually “sized just short of a football field” built for gnomes. It’s a fact little known outside Baltimore that, in that city, football is played exclusively by gnomes- thus there’s some confusion among Baltimoreans about the relative sizes of football fields and movie screens.
Here’s a 1945 photo of the El Rey Theatre in Paradise, from the Eastman’s Originals Collection at U.C. Davis.
According to Daily Variety, 11/7/1939, before having the Mayfair Theatre built, owner Mrs. Jenne Dodge operated a theatre in Ventura called the Mission.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of 11/3/1939 gives the name of the owner of the Mayfair as James Dodge.
I haven’t found any further information about the Mission Theatre in Ventura.
I don’t know who designed the actual theatre that’s been inserted into the old I. Magnin building, but the architect of the Magnin building itself was Myron Hunt, of Hunt & Chambers.
The only Hunt-designed theatres originally built as theatres that I know of were the Vine Street Playhouse (now the Ricardo Montalban Theatre) in Hollywood, and the Ambassador Theatre, inside the Ambassador Hotel.
EJHouston: The Ambassador was never called the Mirror. The Mirror Theatre discussed in my comment of Dec. 31, 2004, above was the playhouse in Hollywood originally called the Vine Street Theater and now known as the Ricardo Montalban Theatre. The Montalban was called the Mirror from 1931 to 1936.
The 1955 episode of I Love Lucy you saw was filmed in a studio, and the backdrop outside the rooms at the fictional “Beverly Palms Hotel” was a photograph. It would not be surprising if the Montalban Theatre, during its Mirror period, was in that photo. Using an old photo from the 1930s as the backdrop would have saved the cost of making a new one.
Google Maps Street View provides this photo of the Vogue’s building as it appears in 2008 (be patient while the picture loads- Google Maps' street view feature can be very slow at times.) The Los Angeles County Assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1929 for the building, which contains 4800 square feet, so completely covering its lot, which has dimensions of 40x120 feet.
There is now a Cinema Treasures page for the Vogue Theatre.
The L.A. Public Library misidentifies this 1928 photo as being of the California Theatre in Bakersfield. Given the Moorish detailing, suitable for a theatre called the Granada, I wonder if perhaps it actually depict this house. The size and shape of the facade is a good match for that of the Granada, which can be seen on this page as it looked long after its 1950 remodeling.
I wonder if the 1928 photo ken mc posted on September 26, 2007, which the L.A. Library misidentifies as the California Theatre, could actually depict the Granada Theatre, which opened about that time? The theatre in the photo does have some Moorish design elements, suitable for a theatre of that name, and its facade is about the same size as the Granada’s, seen on this page some years after its 1950 remodeling.
The only photo I’ve found showing the Rialto is this ca.1940s shot of Baker Street, with the theatre at some distance in the center. A vertical sign for the Granada Theatre (presumably around the corner) can be seen at right.
Here’s an interesting bit of advertising history touching on this theater. In the late 1920’s, the Kellogg company used Hal Roach’s “Our Gang” to promote its new cereal, Kellogg’s Pep. On this page there’s a letter sent from the Pathe Exchange to the Classic Theatre in Watertown, Wisconsin, “suggesting” to the theater’s operator a course of action by which the house could secure “…additional and earlier bookings on OUR GANG comedies….” The already somewhat overbearing tone of the letter was given a sinister note by the “SEES ALL – KNOWS ALL” watermark which appeared on Pathe’s stationery.
Whether S. Charles Lee did any work for the final design of the Carmel Theatre or not, there is information about his relationship to it in Box 1, Folder 22 of his collected papers, according to the online finding aid for the collection at UCLA. If somebody with access to the collection itself comes across this page, I hope they’ll take a look at what’s in that folder and report back to us about it. If there are photos or drawings of it, they probably haven’t been digitized or they’d probably be on the Lee website.
Laurie, you have a sharper eye than I do. I hadn’t noticed the lettering on that building. It must be the building on the southwest corner 5th, right across Whittier from the Security Bank building. The county assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1926 for the building on that lot now, so it must be the same one in the photo. Unfortunately the library doesn’t have any closer photos of it, except one showing one end of the 5th street side of it (at far right in this photo.) I’d be interested to know what your neighbor might remember about the building with the arched front, too.
Also, I checked the finding aid for the S. Charles Lee papers at UCLA, and it does list Alfred Olander as the owner of the Garmar Theatre.
Correction to my previous comment: The bowling alley I mentioned was southeast of Garfield and Pomona Boulevard, not southwest.