The theater in this ca. 1954 postcard must be the Roxy. Part of the name is covered by a banner of some sort, and the scan is a bit blurry, but the trapezoidal marquee fits the description by Gary Parks. I don’t recall ever seeing the place myself.
The Home Theatre was mentioned in the L.A. Times in 1925, and in Motion Picture Herald in 1932, according to cards in the California Index.
Is there any evidence other than photo captions by Flickr users that this place ever operated under the name Davis Theatre? As the name Davis belongs to the furniture company now using the building it seems most likely that, when a theater, it was always called the Overton, and the furniture store’s owners just painted their name over the original name on the vertical sign when they took over the building.
Cinematour’s page for this theater has information about it provided by Overtonite (Overtonian?) Charles Creekmur, and he says nothing about the theatre ever having had any name other than Overton. The page also links to a 1967 playbill for the Overton Theatre, so it was still using that name at that time.
The L.A. County assessor’s office gives an original construction date of 1933 for the main building on this lot, with an effective construction date of 1947. A smaller adjacent building was built in 1971. Live Search bird’s eye view indicates that the newer building is east of the theater building. The whole parcel is given the address of 4665 Melrose.
The theater building is only 5,060 sq. ft., and it has a corner of the back cut out, so I’m guessing the auditorium was only about 40' wide and no more than 100' deep. It was just a small neighborhood house, probably with no more than 300-400 seats.
The small theater near 5th on Broadway in that 1917 photo has an eagle (which looks to be covered in light bulbs) above the entrance, which would certainly fit with the name American Theatre. I have no doubt that it is the American Theatre, as it’s definitely in the building I cited in my comment of Sep 27, 2007, above.
The URL of the picture has changed, but pasting the call number CHS-9694 into the Digital Archive’s search box still brings it up.
The Cozy Corner was visited by the restaurant inspectors of the L.A. County Department of Public Health on February 1, 2008, and received a grade of 91 according to the very handy EveryBlock website. 91 is an “A” so I guess the place is (or was then) safe enough to eat at. Its address is listed as 3232-½ N. Figueroa. Thus far, the restaurant doesn’t appear to have been reviewed on any of the websites that do that sort of thing, so its probably nothing special.
The name Cozy Corner doesn’t suggest a very large restaurant, so I’d guess that it occupies only the front part of the building. The auditorium is probably still being used as a warehouse, with its entrance on the back street. As the street along the back of the building is called Arroyo Seco Avenue, I think the business using the auditorium might be Complete Brake Supply, listed at 3248 Arroyo Seco Avenue, though that might be in the building next door on the corner of Cypress Avenue.
I’m glad to hear that the building still exists, in any case.
David: I’m relying on the information accompanying the photo at the website of the San Francisco Public Library. The library identifies the photo as follows: “Dan McLean standing in doorway of the El Capitan with an unidentified woman and man.” It gives the date as 1932, which was the year “The Wet Parade” was released.
This is not one of two entries for the Jewel Theater, but one of three. Both this page and the one linked in Lost Memory’s comment at top can be deleted. The first (and mostly accurate) Cinema Treasures entry for the Jewel Theater is this one, posted at least as long ago as 2002. That’s the one that should be kept, though the theater’s opening date as noted in the info section should be moved back from 1930s to 1921, and the status changed from “closed/demolished” to “closed”.
Here are puzzling tidbits from the L.A. Library’s California Index: Pacific Coast Architect, issue of July, 1928 reported that architect Frederick S. Harrison, of either Oakland or Sacramento (there are two cards, each giving a different location- maybe he had offices in both cities) was designing a $45,000 theater to be built in Corning for W.F. Rogers. Another card cites Motion Picture Herald, issue of June 8, 1935, as saying: “D. and F. Rogers have purchased a half interest in the Corning Theatre.” I have no idea if W.F. Rogers was related to D. and/or F. Rogers.
There’s not enough information there to determine if any or all of these cards refer to the Rodgers Theater, but Corning has always been a small town and it seems unlikely to have ever supported two theaters. Also, I don’t know if “Rogers” in both of those magazines was simply a misspelling of “Rodgers” though the current owners of the theatre might know. If somebody could check the Tehama County Assessor’s office, they could find the original construction date of this building. If it was 1928 or 1929, it’s almost certainly the one originally designed by Harrison.
RobertR: As much as I like seeing the photos on the page myself (now that I’m no longer on slow dial-up and don’t have to deal with the page taking forever to load), I have to point out that embedding images in a Cinema Treasures comment violates the site’s comment policy (bullet point four of the first section.)
Also, if you click the link (mentioned by ken mc in the previous comment) to this same photo at UCLA’s website, you’ll see that your embedded image is cut off on one side. Apparently, CT has updated its code to prevent its pages from getting stretched out by wide images or long bare links. A wider embedded image than this one would thus lose even more of its content. It’s better to stick to direct links.
haines: While it’s easy enough for those who know markup code to embed an image in a Cinema Treasures page, it violates the site’s comment policy (fourth bullet point in section one.) As I don’t run the site, I don’t know the reason for the policy- though I surmise it may have something to do with the potential for copyright violations which could lead to legal problems for the site and, to a lesser extent, the problem of overly wide images stretching the pages horizontally, which would lead to a lot of work for the webmasters, removing those comments to restore the damaged pages.
There were plans underway for a new movie theatre in Rodeo in 1936, when the October 17 issue of Motion Picture Herald said that Alexander A. Cantin was designing it. As the Rio was not opened until 1940, I don’t know if Cantin’s plans for the long-delayed project were used for the final building or not, but the clean style of the facade, with the strong vertical sign dominating, does resemble (on a smaller scale) a number of other Northern California theatres designed by the firm of Cantin & Cantin during the period, such as the State in Red Bluff, the Orinda in Orinda, and the Uptown in Napa.
The photo to which Clara linked on July 25 clearly depicts the same building in the L.A. Library photo to which I linked on May 13. The distinctively-shaped attic vents above the arched windows to the sides are a dead giveaway.
The work on the Lynn Theatre in the 1930s appears not to have been a simple remodeling, but major reconstruction. According to a card in the Los Angeles Public Library’s California Index, Southwest Builder and Contractor issue of September 26, 1930, announced that Los Angeles architects W.J. Saunders & Son were completing the working plans for the theatre for Fred Aufdenkamp. The estimated cost of the project was $50,000.
Another card in the Index cites a Los Angeles Times article of October 19, 1930, saying that Walter J. Saunders was preparing plans for the Lynn Theatre at Laguna Beach.
The only other reference in the California Index to Walter J. Saunders in connection with a theatre notes his 1912 plans for remodeling the 1882 San Bernardino Opera House.
I don’t know if this was the final closure of the Maynard Theatre or not, but Boxoffice magazine’s issue of May 6, 1950, carried a brief item saying that Harry Vinnicof had shuttered the Maynard Theatre due to poor business conditions.
Harry Vinicoff was a long-time exhibitor in the Los Angeles area. The earliest reference to him I’ve found is from 1937, when Vinnicof bought the Eagle Theatre in the Eagle Rock district of Los Angeles. At various times, Vinnicof also operated the Congress Theatre and the Temple Theatre, both on south Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles.
There’s also a brief item in the May 6, 1950, issue of Boxoffice magazine saying that Harry Vinnicof had shuttered his Maynard Theatre in Los Angeles due to poor business conditions. The Maynard Theatre was on Washington Boulevard at Arlington.
In the 1950s, the Vinnicof circuit owned a half interest (Edwards Theatres owned the other half) in the Garfield Theatre in Alhambra. After the Grove opened, the Garfield sometimes used tickets printed with the Grove Theatre name on them.
Built in former retail space in an outlet mall, Prime 11 Cinemas opened on May 5, 2006. It was the first movie theatre to operate in Anderson since the closing of the Gateway Theater in 1996. I recall reading somewhere online that it had a total of only around 1000 seats in its 11 auditoriums, but I’ve been unable to track down the source.
There was also an even earlier movie house in Anderson called the Valley Theatre, which was closed sometime before I first saw it around 1970.
Formerly known as Riverside Plaza Cinemas. It was acquired by Prime Cinemas in May, 2008, and re-opened under its new name after a week-long $500,000 renovation. It is the third house in the Prime Cinemas chain.
Plans for the Enean Theatre, by architect F. Frederic Amandes, were announced in the March, 1936, issue of Architect & Engineer magazine.
That same year, Amandes was the architect for remodelings of the Strand Theatre in Alameda, the Egyptian Theatre on San Francisco’s Market Street (listed at CT as the Guild Theatre), and the former T&D Theatre in Richmond, which became the Fox Theatre and then the United Artists Theatre.
Another photo showing a bit of the Strand has surfaced: This postcard view from the 1940s. It shows just a bit of the marquee at far right, but it’s only the second photo I’ve ever seen that includes even a part of this theatre.
Thanks, Ken. I like the look of the building, being a fan of some (though certainly not all) midcentury modern design, and South America has some of the most interesting buildings in the style. This one I like especially, as it appears to fit into the streetscape, unlike many from the era.
Laurie M: The comment by CT member BarrySGoodkin on Dec 11, 2001, says that the Fox Phoenix opened on January 5, 1929. This date is corroborated by the websites Silent Sundays and Ron Heberlee’s Orpheum Theatre Phoenix page.
As for your Grandfather’s plaster work, I’m not sure if any of the interior photos of the Orpheum at Ron Heberlee’s page show the original work, or some sort of modern recreations. In any case, it was common in building theatres in that era for the architects to order many of the big plaster decorations pre-made from a company specializing in decorative plasterwork, and then a local contractor would install them, making sure they fit together seamlessly, and doing all the plain plasterwork such as wall surfaces (which were often not all that plain, since many styles of architecture required finish coats of special textures.)
So, many or all of the big pieces of ornamental plaster (almost all the decorative pieces in such a theatre would probably have been plaster, though in some buildings quite a bit of interior terra cotta was used) in the Orpheum might have been made by your Grandfather’s company, or some of them might have been ordered from another company. Someone would have to see the contracts or work orders from the time of construction to be sure. Maybe that’s where Mr. Driggs got his information. Maybe you could track him down.
ylyly: If you have commented on any particular page at Cinema Treasures and have ever checked the “Notify me when someone replies to my comment?” box at the bottom of a comment form, you will receive a notification e-mail every time any new comment is added to that page, regardless of the content of that comment (i.e. whether or not it is a response specifically replying to your own earlier comment.) Cinema Treasures does not post replies to specific comments on any page other than the one on which that specific comment was posted, so if you don’t see a comment specifically replying to your earlier comment here, there are none.
You will continue to receive Cinema Treasures notifications for a page on which you’ve commented until you click on the “To remove yourself from receiving further notifications from this thread, click here:” link at the bottom of the e-mail itself, which will un-subscribe you from that page (though you might also stop receiving Cinema Treasures comment notifications- as I have- if your e-mail service simply decides not to deliver them. I haven’t gotten any notifications for almost three months, due to my ISP e-mail service, the mediocre AT&T-Yahoo, having put Cinema Treasures mail on its “no delivery” list.)
Here’s the official website for Cinerama El Pacifico</a> and its two sister cinemas. Click on the “Nuestras Cines” link to see a couple of interior photos- though there are no captions to identify which of the three are depicted.
Here is a website featuring a more recent exterior photo of El Pacifico, and a longish text in Spanish which appears to be (at least in part) a review of the theatre. From what I can puzzle out with my very limited Spanish, it seems that El Pacifico was a large, single-screen house with balcony, which has been remodeled more than once to become the 12-screen multiplex it now is (I’d appreciate an English translation or paraphrase of those parts which are about the theatre itself.) Judging from its architectural style in the photo above, the place most likely dates from around the 1950s.
The Lewiston Flagship Cinemas multiplex is located at the end of Promenade Mall which was once occupied by Bradlees Discount Department Store (they discounted everything- including apostrophes, apparently.) Here’s a recent photo at Flickr.
The theater in this ca. 1954 postcard must be the Roxy. Part of the name is covered by a banner of some sort, and the scan is a bit blurry, but the trapezoidal marquee fits the description by Gary Parks. I don’t recall ever seeing the place myself.
The Home Theatre was mentioned in the L.A. Times in 1925, and in Motion Picture Herald in 1932, according to cards in the California Index.
Is there any evidence other than photo captions by Flickr users that this place ever operated under the name Davis Theatre? As the name Davis belongs to the furniture company now using the building it seems most likely that, when a theater, it was always called the Overton, and the furniture store’s owners just painted their name over the original name on the vertical sign when they took over the building.
Cinematour’s page for this theater has information about it provided by Overtonite (Overtonian?) Charles Creekmur, and he says nothing about the theatre ever having had any name other than Overton. The page also links to a 1967 playbill for the Overton Theatre, so it was still using that name at that time.
The L.A. County assessor’s office gives an original construction date of 1933 for the main building on this lot, with an effective construction date of 1947. A smaller adjacent building was built in 1971. Live Search bird’s eye view indicates that the newer building is east of the theater building. The whole parcel is given the address of 4665 Melrose.
The theater building is only 5,060 sq. ft., and it has a corner of the back cut out, so I’m guessing the auditorium was only about 40' wide and no more than 100' deep. It was just a small neighborhood house, probably with no more than 300-400 seats.
The small theater near 5th on Broadway in that 1917 photo has an eagle (which looks to be covered in light bulbs) above the entrance, which would certainly fit with the name American Theatre. I have no doubt that it is the American Theatre, as it’s definitely in the building I cited in my comment of Sep 27, 2007, above.
The URL of the picture has changed, but pasting the call number CHS-9694 into the Digital Archive’s search box still brings it up.
The Cozy Corner was visited by the restaurant inspectors of the L.A. County Department of Public Health on February 1, 2008, and received a grade of 91 according to the very handy EveryBlock website. 91 is an “A” so I guess the place is (or was then) safe enough to eat at. Its address is listed as 3232-½ N. Figueroa. Thus far, the restaurant doesn’t appear to have been reviewed on any of the websites that do that sort of thing, so its probably nothing special.
The name Cozy Corner doesn’t suggest a very large restaurant, so I’d guess that it occupies only the front part of the building. The auditorium is probably still being used as a warehouse, with its entrance on the back street. As the street along the back of the building is called Arroyo Seco Avenue, I think the business using the auditorium might be Complete Brake Supply, listed at 3248 Arroyo Seco Avenue, though that might be in the building next door on the corner of Cypress Avenue.
I’m glad to hear that the building still exists, in any case.
David: I’m relying on the information accompanying the photo at the website of the San Francisco Public Library. The library identifies the photo as follows: “Dan McLean standing in doorway of the El Capitan with an unidentified woman and man.” It gives the date as 1932, which was the year “The Wet Parade” was released.
This is not one of two entries for the Jewel Theater, but one of three. Both this page and the one linked in Lost Memory’s comment at top can be deleted. The first (and mostly accurate) Cinema Treasures entry for the Jewel Theater is this one, posted at least as long ago as 2002. That’s the one that should be kept, though the theater’s opening date as noted in the info section should be moved back from 1930s to 1921, and the status changed from “closed/demolished” to “closed”.
Here are puzzling tidbits from the L.A. Library’s California Index: Pacific Coast Architect, issue of July, 1928 reported that architect Frederick S. Harrison, of either Oakland or Sacramento (there are two cards, each giving a different location- maybe he had offices in both cities) was designing a $45,000 theater to be built in Corning for W.F. Rogers. Another card cites Motion Picture Herald, issue of June 8, 1935, as saying: “D. and F. Rogers have purchased a half interest in the Corning Theatre.” I have no idea if W.F. Rogers was related to D. and/or F. Rogers.
There’s not enough information there to determine if any or all of these cards refer to the Rodgers Theater, but Corning has always been a small town and it seems unlikely to have ever supported two theaters. Also, I don’t know if “Rogers” in both of those magazines was simply a misspelling of “Rodgers” though the current owners of the theatre might know. If somebody could check the Tehama County Assessor’s office, they could find the original construction date of this building. If it was 1928 or 1929, it’s almost certainly the one originally designed by Harrison.
RobertR: As much as I like seeing the photos on the page myself (now that I’m no longer on slow dial-up and don’t have to deal with the page taking forever to load), I have to point out that embedding images in a Cinema Treasures comment violates the site’s comment policy (bullet point four of the first section.)
Also, if you click the link (mentioned by ken mc in the previous comment) to this same photo at UCLA’s website, you’ll see that your embedded image is cut off on one side. Apparently, CT has updated its code to prevent its pages from getting stretched out by wide images or long bare links. A wider embedded image than this one would thus lose even more of its content. It’s better to stick to direct links.
haines: While it’s easy enough for those who know markup code to embed an image in a Cinema Treasures page, it violates the site’s comment policy (fourth bullet point in section one.) As I don’t run the site, I don’t know the reason for the policy- though I surmise it may have something to do with the potential for copyright violations which could lead to legal problems for the site and, to a lesser extent, the problem of overly wide images stretching the pages horizontally, which would lead to a lot of work for the webmasters, removing those comments to restore the damaged pages.
There were plans underway for a new movie theatre in Rodeo in 1936, when the October 17 issue of Motion Picture Herald said that Alexander A. Cantin was designing it. As the Rio was not opened until 1940, I don’t know if Cantin’s plans for the long-delayed project were used for the final building or not, but the clean style of the facade, with the strong vertical sign dominating, does resemble (on a smaller scale) a number of other Northern California theatres designed by the firm of Cantin & Cantin during the period, such as the State in Red Bluff, the Orinda in Orinda, and the Uptown in Napa.
The photo to which Clara linked on July 25 clearly depicts the same building in the L.A. Library photo to which I linked on May 13. The distinctively-shaped attic vents above the arched windows to the sides are a dead giveaway.
The work on the Lynn Theatre in the 1930s appears not to have been a simple remodeling, but major reconstruction. According to a card in the Los Angeles Public Library’s California Index, Southwest Builder and Contractor issue of September 26, 1930, announced that Los Angeles architects W.J. Saunders & Son were completing the working plans for the theatre for Fred Aufdenkamp. The estimated cost of the project was $50,000.
Another card in the Index cites a Los Angeles Times article of October 19, 1930, saying that Walter J. Saunders was preparing plans for the Lynn Theatre at Laguna Beach.
The only other reference in the California Index to Walter J. Saunders in connection with a theatre notes his 1912 plans for remodeling the 1882 San Bernardino Opera House.
I don’t know if this was the final closure of the Maynard Theatre or not, but Boxoffice magazine’s issue of May 6, 1950, carried a brief item saying that Harry Vinnicof had shuttered the Maynard Theatre due to poor business conditions.
The first instance of the name Vinnicof in my comment above is misspelled. It’s supposed to be two n’s and one f.
Harry Vinicoff was a long-time exhibitor in the Los Angeles area. The earliest reference to him I’ve found is from 1937, when Vinnicof bought the Eagle Theatre in the Eagle Rock district of Los Angeles. At various times, Vinnicof also operated the Congress Theatre and the Temple Theatre, both on south Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles.
There’s also a brief item in the May 6, 1950, issue of Boxoffice magazine saying that Harry Vinnicof had shuttered his Maynard Theatre in Los Angeles due to poor business conditions. The Maynard Theatre was on Washington Boulevard at Arlington.
In the 1950s, the Vinnicof circuit owned a half interest (Edwards Theatres owned the other half) in the Garfield Theatre in Alhambra. After the Grove opened, the Garfield sometimes used tickets printed with the Grove Theatre name on them.
Built in former retail space in an outlet mall, Prime 11 Cinemas opened on May 5, 2006. It was the first movie theatre to operate in Anderson since the closing of the Gateway Theater in 1996. I recall reading somewhere online that it had a total of only around 1000 seats in its 11 auditoriums, but I’ve been unable to track down the source.
There was also an even earlier movie house in Anderson called the Valley Theatre, which was closed sometime before I first saw it around 1970.
Formerly known as Riverside Plaza Cinemas. It was acquired by Prime Cinemas in May, 2008, and re-opened under its new name after a week-long $500,000 renovation. It is the third house in the Prime Cinemas chain.
Plans for the Enean Theatre, by architect F. Frederic Amandes, were announced in the March, 1936, issue of Architect & Engineer magazine.
That same year, Amandes was the architect for remodelings of the Strand Theatre in Alameda, the Egyptian Theatre on San Francisco’s Market Street (listed at CT as the Guild Theatre), and the former T&D Theatre in Richmond, which became the Fox Theatre and then the United Artists Theatre.
Another photo showing a bit of the Strand has surfaced: This postcard view from the 1940s. It shows just a bit of the marquee at far right, but it’s only the second photo I’ve ever seen that includes even a part of this theatre.
Thanks, Ken. I like the look of the building, being a fan of some (though certainly not all) midcentury modern design, and South America has some of the most interesting buildings in the style. This one I like especially, as it appears to fit into the streetscape, unlike many from the era.
Laurie M: The comment by CT member BarrySGoodkin on Dec 11, 2001, says that the Fox Phoenix opened on January 5, 1929. This date is corroborated by the websites Silent Sundays and Ron Heberlee’s Orpheum Theatre Phoenix page.
As for your Grandfather’s plaster work, I’m not sure if any of the interior photos of the Orpheum at Ron Heberlee’s page show the original work, or some sort of modern recreations. In any case, it was common in building theatres in that era for the architects to order many of the big plaster decorations pre-made from a company specializing in decorative plasterwork, and then a local contractor would install them, making sure they fit together seamlessly, and doing all the plain plasterwork such as wall surfaces (which were often not all that plain, since many styles of architecture required finish coats of special textures.)
So, many or all of the big pieces of ornamental plaster (almost all the decorative pieces in such a theatre would probably have been plaster, though in some buildings quite a bit of interior terra cotta was used) in the Orpheum might have been made by your Grandfather’s company, or some of them might have been ordered from another company. Someone would have to see the contracts or work orders from the time of construction to be sure. Maybe that’s where Mr. Driggs got his information. Maybe you could track him down.
ylyly: If you have commented on any particular page at Cinema Treasures and have ever checked the “Notify me when someone replies to my comment?” box at the bottom of a comment form, you will receive a notification e-mail every time any new comment is added to that page, regardless of the content of that comment (i.e. whether or not it is a response specifically replying to your own earlier comment.) Cinema Treasures does not post replies to specific comments on any page other than the one on which that specific comment was posted, so if you don’t see a comment specifically replying to your earlier comment here, there are none.
You will continue to receive Cinema Treasures notifications for a page on which you’ve commented until you click on the “To remove yourself from receiving further notifications from this thread, click here:” link at the bottom of the e-mail itself, which will un-subscribe you from that page (though you might also stop receiving Cinema Treasures comment notifications- as I have- if your e-mail service simply decides not to deliver them. I haven’t gotten any notifications for almost three months, due to my ISP e-mail service, the mediocre AT&T-Yahoo, having put Cinema Treasures mail on its “no delivery” list.)
Here’s the official website for Cinerama El Pacifico</a> and its two sister cinemas. Click on the “Nuestras Cines” link to see a couple of interior photos- though there are no captions to identify which of the three are depicted.
Here is a website featuring a more recent exterior photo of El Pacifico, and a longish text in Spanish which appears to be (at least in part) a review of the theatre. From what I can puzzle out with my very limited Spanish, it seems that El Pacifico was a large, single-screen house with balcony, which has been remodeled more than once to become the 12-screen multiplex it now is (I’d appreciate an English translation or paraphrase of those parts which are about the theatre itself.) Judging from its architectural style in the photo above, the place most likely dates from around the 1950s.
The Lewiston Flagship Cinemas multiplex is located at the end of Promenade Mall which was once occupied by Bradlees Discount Department Store (they discounted everything- including apostrophes, apparently.) Here’s a recent photo at Flickr.