The county assessor’s office lists three structures on two lots at this address: A 6000 sq.ft. building erected in 1912; a 3600 sq.ft. building erected in 1914; and a 4320 sq.ft. building erected in 1957. TerraServer’s satellite view shows that the building just west of the one abutting the alley (see ken mc’s photos linked above) has a section behind it with a different style of roof than the street-front section.
The alley-side brick wall in Ken’s photo looks too old for 1957 so is probably from the 1910s. That building also looks a bit narrow for a theatre. The City’s ZIMAS site gives the addresses of the two lots as 1896 and 1898 W. Adams, so it seems likely that the theatre was in the building farther from the alley.
The question is, which section of the building next to the alley-side building is of 1910s vintage. From above, the back section of the western building looks more like it would have held an auditorium, but it also looks more like it might be newer construction. I wonder if the theatre’s auditorium was there, and replaced in 1957, or if the former front section of the theatre building was replaced then?
If the front of the theatre had originally been divided into lobby, foyer, and a couple of storefronts, with load-bearing walls separating them, then it would have made sense for someone converting the property for another use to demo and replace that part of the building, and keep the auditorium section with its clear span. In any case, it seems likely that at least part of the Adams Theatre has been demolished.
The 1939 L.A. City Directory has the Allena Theatre listed at 120 E. Santa Barbara Avenue. The 1942 directory has it at 126 E. Santa Barbara. In the 1956 directory, Kapp’s market is listed at 120 E. Santa Barbara, and the Allena Theatre is not listed at all. According to the L.A. County assessor’s office, the building currently on that lot, now numbered 120 E. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, was built in 1982.
Thanks, Laurie. I’ve checked Google Maps street view and the parcel viewer at the L.A. County Assessor’s website, and I see a building at 712 Whittier Boulevard that looks vaguely familiar to me. Could you take a look at this photo at Flickr and tell me if the building now housing Salon Maxx, and having an angled projection punctured by three round holes, is the building which housed the Vogue? As I said in my earlier comment, I only saw the place a few times, and that was ages ago, so my memory is pretty dim. But I do now have a vague recollection of that architectural feature with the three holes in it, and another vague memory that there was a parking lot just a little way east of the Vogue (and there is one just a bit east of this building), but I’m not at all positive about any of this.
Patsy and William: I don’t think the reference in Karol’s book could be to the El Capitan on Vine. From the early 1940s until 1949, the El Capitan on Vine Street was the venue of Ken Murray’s Blackouts, an extraordinarily popular stage review which ran for 3,844 performances, so I doubt the theatre would have been available for any other purpose.
Desi Arnaz was the bandleader on Bob Hope’s weekly (Tuesday night) radio show in 1946 and 1947, but I’m pretty sure the show originated from the NBC studios at Sunset and Vine, and the band would probably have been in the studio, as a rule.
It’s possible that the book is correct about the venue, though. Maybe Arnaz and the band did play at the Paramount Theatre at least once during 1947. Paramount’s production and exhibition arms were still united in 1947, and Bob Hope’s movies were released through Paramount. Any or all of his 1947 films (he made three that year) are likely to have had runs at the Hollywood Paramount. If so, then a remote broadcast of the radio show from the theatre (with Arnaz leading the orchestra as usual), to promote a Bob Hope movie, would not have been out of the question.
I’m just speculating about this, of course, but such an event at the Paramount seems more likely than an appearance by the Arnaz orchestra at the El Capitan on Vine in that year.
The various thumbnail pages for photos of the New Sequoia/Fox Theatre at the historical photos website usually include the information that the original Sequoia Theatre was located at 2114 Broadway and operated from 1917 to 1929. I can’t find any photos on that site showing a close view of the original Sequoia Theatre. However, in this 1947 aerial view in which you can see the New Sequoia dominating the center of the picture, note that in the next block closer, and on the right side of Broadway, there’s a dark building with a slope-roofed rear section, which I surmise is at, or very near, the old Sequoia’s address.
In satellite views fetched by searches on 2114 Broadway, Redwood City, at Google Maps and TerraServer, it looks as though this building still exists. Could this be the original Sequoia Theatre? The building was already there in this 1925 aerial photo, seen from the west side, just above and to the left of the Courthouse dome. The building could date from 1917, the original Sequoia’s opening year.
Citysearch gives the current address of Anderson’s TV in Redwood City as 901 El Camino Real. Searching on Google Maps with Street View, you get a decent view of the building by using the address 929 El Camino Real (Google Maps will then tell you you’re looking at 928 El Camino, I guess because Google maps is probably confused by Redwood City’s unorthodox practice of putting even numbers on the west sides of streets.) I don’t like using Google Maps Street View feature, because it takes forever for the pages to load. It’s like being back on a dial-up Internet connection. But with lots of patience you can get a look at the building that now squats where the Redwood Theatre once stood.
To get the Fox Skyline’s location to map properly on Google Maps, it will be necessary to change the address to Skyline Blvd. & Sharp Park Rd.. The shopping center had to have been at the southwest corner of the intersection, and Westborough Boulevard runs only east from Skyline. Also, the location given for the theatre on an official inaugural program displayed at Larry Goldsmith’s Fox Skyline Collection is Sharp Park Road and Skyline Boulevard.
Incidentally, this theatre’s location was just about directly on top of the San Andreas Fault. It would have been a great place to see “Earthquake!”
I’ve been picturing the Redwood Theatre being on the northwest corner of the intersection, but if it was on the southwest corner (which it would have to have been if the trees in the background were to the west, across El Camino), then the shops with the addresses of 44 and 46 on them must have been on California Street, too. The theatre would probably have been at 42 California Street, then.
I wonder what was in that building in the background with the fancy cornice? The lower part of that sign on its side looks like an old Pontiac emblem, but it’s too small to tell for sure. There was once a Balestra Pontiac at 1039 South El Camino, which is just below James Avenue. It seems possible that the building behind the Redwood was their location in the 1940s, and they later expanded into the next block, eventually moving their entire operation there. (Not relevant to the theatre, of course, but perhaps interesting to people from Redwood City.)
I’m still trying to track down information about the Vogue, Montebello’s other movie house, which is not yet listed at CT.
The L.A. Public Library has two old photos of Whittier Boulevard looking toward 5th Street, ca.1920 and ca.1935, and in each there is a building with a big arch making up most of the facade. In the 1935 photo, it looks as though this building has display cases form movie posters in its entryway. In the first photo the area is just sort of a muddle. The building might have been converted to a theatre at some date after this photo was taken, or it’s possible it was being remodeled at the time of the photograph.
Montebello was a good-sized town by 1920, and it seems likely that it would have had a move theatre then. The building is a bit narrow,and I’m wondering if maybe this was the elusive Vogue Theatre in an early incarnation. I went there maybe three or four times at most, back in the 1950s, all I remember of it was that it was on the north side of Whittler Boulevard and was very narrow, and the back couple of rows of seats were on risers so you had to go up a step or two from the aisle to reach them (each row had its own steps, so it wasn’t like stadium seating.)
I can’t remember exactly where on Whitter Boulevard the Vogue was, but I’ve always had the impression it was only a few blocks west of Bluff Road, and the block between 5th and 6th Streets would be about right. Does anybody in Montebello have the exact address of the Vogue? I’ve checked the L.A. County Assessor’s parcel viewer on the Internet and the buildings on the west end of that block in the second photo above are apparently still there.
The most likely candidate for the arched building is 520 W. Whittier, Montebello being one of the towns that puts even numbers on the north sides of streets. The building at that address has a construction date of 1915, and an effective construction date (major remodeling) of 1933, which would be about right for the fairly modern style of the Vogue as I remember it. If somebody could dig up the address of the Vogue, we’ll know whether or not this was it’s location.
I can’t find any listing for the Carson Twin (or any theatres at all in Carson) in my February 10, 1971, copy of the L.A. Times. In the August 24, 1986 issue, it’s listed in the Independent Theatres section as the Carson #1, which was showing “Friday the 13th pt.6” and “Reanimators” (perhaps 1985’s “Re-Animator”,unless there was a crappy sequel I’ve never heard of) and Carson #2, showing “Back to School” and “Seeking Susan” (or Desperately Seeking a Shorter Title for Our Diminutive Attraction Board.) A small building I presume is the theatre shows up on the aerial photo of 5/31/1994 at TerraServer.
South Bay Six Drive-in also shows up in the August 1986 listings, but not in February 1971. It, too, most likely opened in the early 1970s.
Gary: If the theatre-like building you saw is at 2114 Broadway, that’s the location of the original Sequoia Theatre from 1917 to 1929, according to the Bits of History website. Unfortunately, with all the photos of the New Sequoia/Fox Theatre, the website apparently doesn’t have a single shot of the original Sequoia.
I did find another photo of the Redwood, though, running movies released in 1944 and 1945. It shows the addresses of two shops on Montgomery/Winklebleck Street. Looking at the configuration of the theatre’s doors I’m now wondering if maybe it, too, didn’t have a Montgomery Street address?
One unique feature of Telenews Theatres was that the managers of each house in the chain would edit the newsreels provided by the major studios, adding in locally produced footage about local events. One brief bit of film that was probably produced by the San Francisco Telenews Theatre’s manager has survived in the Prelinger Archives, and is available at the Internet Archive. It’s called Dead Fair, and consists of scenes of the Golden Gate International Exposition’s grounds and buildings after the fair had closed in 1940. (Adobe Flash Player 7.0 or above required, and Javascript must be enabled)
San Mateo County Library provides this photo of the Redwood Theatre at the time of its opening in 1933. The feature presentation is Eddie Cantor’s “Whoopee” which had been released in 1930. The parked automobiles are definitely later than 1930, though, and I have a suspicion that at least some of the people posing for this picture were cast members of the big stage show advertised in the marquee banner. The library gives the theatre’s years of operation as 1933-1955.
A 1933 opening date for the Redwood makes it very likely that this was indeed the theatre in Redwood City that S. Charles Lee had been hired to design, announced in the January 17th, 1933, issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor.
The Google Map feature won’t work with the address currently posted for this location. As near as I can puzzle it out, the theatre was on the northwest corner of California Street and what is now Winklebleck Street, which would put it at the south end of the 0 block. I can’t determine what the actual address of the theatre was, but Google Maps will point to the correct intersection with a search for 99 California Street, Redwood City. But if Redwood City has even numbers on the west sides of streets, then 98 California Street would be the best compromise address.
First, a CORRECTION: I wrote in my comment just above that Asher Hamburger owned the site of Clune’s Broadway Theatre, but I confused my names. It was Tally’s Broadway Theatre that was on land the Hamburger Trust owned, next door to Hamburger’s store on South Broadway.
Almost all of the Los Angeles area theatres listed thus far at Cinema Treasures were built later than 1913, and many of the listed theatres existing at that time didn’t begin showing movies on a regular basis until later. The best place to look for information about what was showing in late 1913 would be the newspaper ads and theatre listings of the era. I don’t have access to any newspaper archives of the time myself.
By 1913 a lot of movie theatres were operating in L.A.. Among the larger downtown theatres of the time that were built specifically to show movies were the Optic (a few doors down from the Gaiety), Clune’s Broadway (later the Cameo), Tally’s Broadway Theatre, which was actually built later than Tally’s New Broadway Theatre (later the Garnett), and the Hyman Theatre (later renamed the Garrick.)
There were also a few good-sized theatres which had been built for stage productions but converted to full or part-time movie houses by 1913. Among these were the Mozart Theatre on Grand Avenue, which underwent many name changes but was the Mozart in 1913, and the Grand Theatre on Main Street- at that time still one of the city’s largest venues- which had opened as the Grand Opera House and had been the first Los Angeles house to become part of the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit.
Any of these theatres would have provided a capacious hall for the opening run of a popular movie, though there were certainly others. I don’t think Marcus Loew had opened a theatre in Los Angeles yet in 1913 (Loew’s State opened in 1921), but if the movie was showing in vaudeville houses such as Loew’s in the east, then it might have been shown in a vaudeville house in Los Angeles as well, so such theatres as the Pantages (later the Arcade) and the third Orpheum now the Palace) were also possible venues.
The earliest references to the College Theatre in the California Index cite mentions in The Rounder, a weekly magazine. The September 17, 1910 issue features the theatre on its cover and on page 16 (my guess would be that this was on the occasion of the theatre’s opening), and the October 15 issue that year announces the appearance at the College Theatre of the Lillian May Lancaster Orchestra. Sounds as though it was not yet a movie house.
The only reference I can find on the Internet to a Lillian May Lancaster is one naming her the composer, lyricist and performer of a song called “Laura” published in 1907, and giving her the aka Maude Leota Byrd. Well, now she’ll have a reference at Cinema Treasures, too. Hey, Lilly May fans!
Apparently, the Edison Theatre seen in the movie “Madigan” is the former Edison Theatre at 2700 Broadway in Manhattan, listed here as the Columbia Cinema. Some of the movie’s scenes were indeed filmed in downtown Los Angeles, but this scene was not among them.
Re-reading the comments from the last few years (especially those by vokoban on Jul 26, 2006), I see that the shows presented at the People’s Theatre in its early years indicate no particularly socialist bent. The Ethel Tucker Stock Company appearing in September, 1906, was a well-known travelling troupe of the era, and the show presented in February, 1908, by the Great Don-Fer appears to have been some sort of minstrelsy.
So, the People’s Theatre appears to have presented pretty much the same sort of popular entertainments as the other theatres in Los Angeles at the time. We’ve got no firm date at which this theatre first showed movies, though. As it was built as a playhouse in 1906, it’s very unlikely that it had a projection booth as part of its original design, and its use as a movie house would have been limited by that until one was installed.
Despite the building having been built by H.J. Woollacott, I wonder if the house was then actually operated under lease by, or for, Asher Hamburger, owner of A. Hamburger’s Department Store, later The May Company Los Angeles and earlier The People’s Store? He apparently had some connection with the earlier People’s Theatre on North Main Street, and he owned the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. He was one of the partners who built the fourth Los Angeles Orpheum. He also owned the land on which Clune’s Broadway Theatre stood, and may have financed its construction, and for a while he actually operated a movie house inside his department store after it moved from the Phillips Block to the big building on 8th, Broadway, and Hill.
In any case, it seems unlikely that the name People’s Theatre was, in this case at least, a reference to socialism. Also, IMDb reveals that “From Dusk to Dawn” was distributed in the U.S. by States Rights Independent Exchanges, which was a highly successful company operating from 1912 to 1962 (though at a considerably slower pace after 1939.) This company distributed such enormously popular early movies as Jame’s O'Neill’s version of “The Count of Monte Cristo”, the early Cecil B. DeMille production, “The Squaw Man”, and numerous others. It seems unlikely that the company would have had any trouble getting regular movie theatres to show Wolfe’s film, despite its socialist theme. That means the movie might have been shown at many theatres around the city.
The Rio in that video wasn’t the Rio on Manchester, which was a large, modern, freestanding building. I did notice many L.A. area neighborhood theatres in the video, though, including the Clinton, Kim Sing, Eagle, Imperial, Beverly, Vagabond, Pasadena’s State, Tosca, Unique, Vista, Ebony Showcase, and a nice shot of the Garfield in Alhambra about three and a half minutes in.
andita: The sign on the building near the subway terminal was for The Peoples National Bank, which occupied the premises at 409 S. Hill from 1924 to 1929. Note, just beyond the subway building, the white skyscraper which was still under construction at the time this photo was taken (you can see that the sidewalk is displaced by a wooden bypass of the sort used during construction.) That skyscraper was to be the new home of the bank, which changed its name to National Bank of Commerce when it moved there in 1929.
The 1907 photo ken mc posted which no longer opens is probably this one (USC digital archive changed all its url’s). It shows Main Street from above, with this building (Gaiety Theatre) at lower right sporting a “People’s Theatre” sign.
If the Socialist Movie Theatre was actually on 5th Street, it might have been a simple storefront conversion. The majority of early movie thetres were storefront conversions, and they came and went like mayflies. Few purpose-built theatres were ever erected on 5th Street. There was one theatre called the Metropolitan (not to be confused with the later Grauman Metropolitan on 6th and Hill), which is not listed at Cinema Treasures because we don’t know if it ever ran movies or not. The Metropolitan was on 5th at the northwest corner of either Wall or San Pedro.
Other than that, there were only Clune’s Theatre on Main at the corner of 5th (also not yet listed here, as nobody’s gotten around to it), and the Auditorium, owned by Temple Baptist Church, and also operated by Billy Clune during its movie house days (ca.1914-1920.)
Here’s a photo of the Jefferson’s facade taken in the late 1990s, plus two cropped close views, all viewable in very large sizes, posted by Flickr user amg2000.
This gets more interesting. Apparently there have been three Golden Bough Theatres, and the first two were both destroyed by fire. The original was built on Ocean Avenue in 1924 by Edward G. Kuster, a lawyer and cellist who designed the theatre himself. It was destroyed by fire on May 19, 1935. Kuster had purchased the old Arts & Crafts Theatre in 1929, and when the Golden Bough was destroyed he moved the play then in production there to the Arts & Crafts Theatre. At some date the Arts & Crafts/Abalone/Carmel Playhouse/Filmarte Theatre was given the name Golden Bough. This was the building which burned in 1949, and the Current Golden Bough Theatre was erected on its site in 1951.
Now here’s what I’ve found so far about the second Golden Bough when it was a movie house called the Filmarte. It was operated by a partnership of Dick Bare and Bob Edgren. They had to have been operating it after 1933 as there are references to the Filmarte having shown the Hedy Lamarr movie “Ecstasy” which was made in 1933. This is referenced on this page, which says that Dick Bare filmed a movie called “Famous Places” in Monterey in 1937.
I also found a reference to Dick Bare in an obituary of a fellow named Wayland Fink who grew up in the Stanislaus County town of Patterson, where his parents had bought the local movie house from Dick Bare (this was probably sometime around 1930.) Other that that, results from Googling “Dick Bare” are mostly unspeakable (just try Googling that name with “safe search” off!)
There are more (and more savory) results Googling the name his partner Bob Edgren, because Bob Edgren was apparently the son of a well-known cartoonist, Robert Edgren, (unless Bare’s partner was the elder Edgren, but he died in 1939, and the only obituary I’ve found for him says nothing about him owning any theatres.) Lots of Google hits about the elder Edgren’s newspaper career aren’t useful when hunting down information about theatres, though.
But it seems most likely that Architect & Engineer got the story a bit garbled and that what actually happened was that Dick Bare and Bob Edgren were renting the theatre they operated as the Filmarte from Edward Kuster, and they had to give it up in 1935 when the original Golden Bough burned and Kuster took over the Filmarte as a new location for his stage productions.
And then the Carmel Theatre was built in 1936 not to replace the burned theatre, but to replace the theatre which had been lost as a movie house because a different theatre had burned. However, the Carmel was built for the Monterey Theatres Company, and that company’s representative was, according to the reference in the California Index, E.H. Emmick who, according to other references in the Index, was once president of T&D Jr. Enterprises (1924) and was later head of Golden State Theatres (1940.) What business relationship there might have been between him and Bare and Edgren in 1935 remains a mystery to me. Maybe Emmick was just being an opportunist, taking advantage of Bare and Edgren’s misfortune.
According to an article in the Salinas Californian of December 24, 2005 (.pdf), The Golden Bough fire took place in 1949, and destroyed a theatre which had been opened in 1924 as a playhouse called the Arts & Crafts Theatre and was subsequently known as the Abalone Theatre, Carmel Playhouse, and Filmarte before becoming the Golden Bough Theatre. The current Golden Bough Playhouse dates from 1951. The 1935 fire must have destroyed a different theatre.
The Pacific Culver Stadium 12 opened in 2003. It was designed by the San Diego architectural firm Benson & Bohl (who also designed the Pacific Gaslamp 15 in San Diego) in an Art Deco-influenced Neo-Vintage style. Prior to the start of the Culver Stadium’s construction, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported that the proposed multiplex, which had initially been projected as a 10 screen house with 1600 seats, would be upgraded to a 12 screen house with 1852 seats.
Hollywood Reporter said in a 2003 article that the interior of the theatre was designed by a firm called Tanazaki & Associates, but I’ve been unable to find a firm with that name (or the variant spelling Google suggests, Tanizaki) on the Internet.
The Culver Plaza was originally operated by Mann Theatres, and was sold by them in May of 2007. It was previously known as the Mann Culver Plaza 6. CinemaTour gives the seating capacity as 1470.
I wondered why the website of the City of Culver City had nothing about this theatre when the site has multiple mentions of the Pacific Theatres multiplex nearby. Then I remembered that some of the lots along Washington Boulevard are actually within the corporate limits of the City of Los Angeles. I checked a map and, sure enough, the Culver Plaza Theatres complex is on the Los Angeles side of the city boundary.
Neither the L.A. County Assessor’s website nor the city’s ZIMAS program will yield information about this address. Some sort of assembly of several parcels appears to be in progress on this block, suggesting that the Culver Plaza may succumb to some large project not to far in the future.
The county assessor’s office lists three structures on two lots at this address: A 6000 sq.ft. building erected in 1912; a 3600 sq.ft. building erected in 1914; and a 4320 sq.ft. building erected in 1957. TerraServer’s satellite view shows that the building just west of the one abutting the alley (see ken mc’s photos linked above) has a section behind it with a different style of roof than the street-front section.
The alley-side brick wall in Ken’s photo looks too old for 1957 so is probably from the 1910s. That building also looks a bit narrow for a theatre. The City’s ZIMAS site gives the addresses of the two lots as 1896 and 1898 W. Adams, so it seems likely that the theatre was in the building farther from the alley.
The question is, which section of the building next to the alley-side building is of 1910s vintage. From above, the back section of the western building looks more like it would have held an auditorium, but it also looks more like it might be newer construction. I wonder if the theatre’s auditorium was there, and replaced in 1957, or if the former front section of the theatre building was replaced then?
If the front of the theatre had originally been divided into lobby, foyer, and a couple of storefronts, with load-bearing walls separating them, then it would have made sense for someone converting the property for another use to demo and replace that part of the building, and keep the auditorium section with its clear span. In any case, it seems likely that at least part of the Adams Theatre has been demolished.
The 1939 L.A. City Directory has the Allena Theatre listed at 120 E. Santa Barbara Avenue. The 1942 directory has it at 126 E. Santa Barbara. In the 1956 directory, Kapp’s market is listed at 120 E. Santa Barbara, and the Allena Theatre is not listed at all. According to the L.A. County assessor’s office, the building currently on that lot, now numbered 120 E. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, was built in 1982.
Thanks, Laurie. I’ve checked Google Maps street view and the parcel viewer at the L.A. County Assessor’s website, and I see a building at 712 Whittier Boulevard that looks vaguely familiar to me. Could you take a look at this photo at Flickr and tell me if the building now housing Salon Maxx, and having an angled projection punctured by three round holes, is the building which housed the Vogue? As I said in my earlier comment, I only saw the place a few times, and that was ages ago, so my memory is pretty dim. But I do now have a vague recollection of that architectural feature with the three holes in it, and another vague memory that there was a parking lot just a little way east of the Vogue (and there is one just a bit east of this building), but I’m not at all positive about any of this.
Patsy and William: I don’t think the reference in Karol’s book could be to the El Capitan on Vine. From the early 1940s until 1949, the El Capitan on Vine Street was the venue of Ken Murray’s Blackouts, an extraordinarily popular stage review which ran for 3,844 performances, so I doubt the theatre would have been available for any other purpose.
Desi Arnaz was the bandleader on Bob Hope’s weekly (Tuesday night) radio show in 1946 and 1947, but I’m pretty sure the show originated from the NBC studios at Sunset and Vine, and the band would probably have been in the studio, as a rule.
It’s possible that the book is correct about the venue, though. Maybe Arnaz and the band did play at the Paramount Theatre at least once during 1947. Paramount’s production and exhibition arms were still united in 1947, and Bob Hope’s movies were released through Paramount. Any or all of his 1947 films (he made three that year) are likely to have had runs at the Hollywood Paramount. If so, then a remote broadcast of the radio show from the theatre (with Arnaz leading the orchestra as usual), to promote a Bob Hope movie, would not have been out of the question.
I’m just speculating about this, of course, but such an event at the Paramount seems more likely than an appearance by the Arnaz orchestra at the El Capitan on Vine in that year.
The various thumbnail pages for photos of the New Sequoia/Fox Theatre at the historical photos website usually include the information that the original Sequoia Theatre was located at 2114 Broadway and operated from 1917 to 1929. I can’t find any photos on that site showing a close view of the original Sequoia Theatre. However, in this 1947 aerial view in which you can see the New Sequoia dominating the center of the picture, note that in the next block closer, and on the right side of Broadway, there’s a dark building with a slope-roofed rear section, which I surmise is at, or very near, the old Sequoia’s address.
In satellite views fetched by searches on 2114 Broadway, Redwood City, at Google Maps and TerraServer, it looks as though this building still exists. Could this be the original Sequoia Theatre? The building was already there in this 1925 aerial photo, seen from the west side, just above and to the left of the Courthouse dome. The building could date from 1917, the original Sequoia’s opening year.
Citysearch gives the current address of Anderson’s TV in Redwood City as 901 El Camino Real. Searching on Google Maps with Street View, you get a decent view of the building by using the address 929 El Camino Real (Google Maps will then tell you you’re looking at 928 El Camino, I guess because Google maps is probably confused by Redwood City’s unorthodox practice of putting even numbers on the west sides of streets.) I don’t like using Google Maps Street View feature, because it takes forever for the pages to load. It’s like being back on a dial-up Internet connection. But with lots of patience you can get a look at the building that now squats where the Redwood Theatre once stood.
To get the Fox Skyline’s location to map properly on Google Maps, it will be necessary to change the address to Skyline Blvd. & Sharp Park Rd.. The shopping center had to have been at the southwest corner of the intersection, and Westborough Boulevard runs only east from Skyline. Also, the location given for the theatre on an official inaugural program displayed at Larry Goldsmith’s Fox Skyline Collection is Sharp Park Road and Skyline Boulevard.
Incidentally, this theatre’s location was just about directly on top of the San Andreas Fault. It would have been a great place to see “Earthquake!”
I’ve been picturing the Redwood Theatre being on the northwest corner of the intersection, but if it was on the southwest corner (which it would have to have been if the trees in the background were to the west, across El Camino), then the shops with the addresses of 44 and 46 on them must have been on California Street, too. The theatre would probably have been at 42 California Street, then.
I wonder what was in that building in the background with the fancy cornice? The lower part of that sign on its side looks like an old Pontiac emblem, but it’s too small to tell for sure. There was once a Balestra Pontiac at 1039 South El Camino, which is just below James Avenue. It seems possible that the building behind the Redwood was their location in the 1940s, and they later expanded into the next block, eventually moving their entire operation there. (Not relevant to the theatre, of course, but perhaps interesting to people from Redwood City.)
I’m still trying to track down information about the Vogue, Montebello’s other movie house, which is not yet listed at CT.
The L.A. Public Library has two old photos of Whittier Boulevard looking toward 5th Street, ca.1920 and ca.1935, and in each there is a building with a big arch making up most of the facade. In the 1935 photo, it looks as though this building has display cases form movie posters in its entryway. In the first photo the area is just sort of a muddle. The building might have been converted to a theatre at some date after this photo was taken, or it’s possible it was being remodeled at the time of the photograph.
Montebello was a good-sized town by 1920, and it seems likely that it would have had a move theatre then. The building is a bit narrow,and I’m wondering if maybe this was the elusive Vogue Theatre in an early incarnation. I went there maybe three or four times at most, back in the 1950s, all I remember of it was that it was on the north side of Whittler Boulevard and was very narrow, and the back couple of rows of seats were on risers so you had to go up a step or two from the aisle to reach them (each row had its own steps, so it wasn’t like stadium seating.)
I can’t remember exactly where on Whitter Boulevard the Vogue was, but I’ve always had the impression it was only a few blocks west of Bluff Road, and the block between 5th and 6th Streets would be about right. Does anybody in Montebello have the exact address of the Vogue? I’ve checked the L.A. County Assessor’s parcel viewer on the Internet and the buildings on the west end of that block in the second photo above are apparently still there.
The most likely candidate for the arched building is 520 W. Whittier, Montebello being one of the towns that puts even numbers on the north sides of streets. The building at that address has a construction date of 1915, and an effective construction date (major remodeling) of 1933, which would be about right for the fairly modern style of the Vogue as I remember it. If somebody could dig up the address of the Vogue, we’ll know whether or not this was it’s location.
I can’t find any listing for the Carson Twin (or any theatres at all in Carson) in my February 10, 1971, copy of the L.A. Times. In the August 24, 1986 issue, it’s listed in the Independent Theatres section as the Carson #1, which was showing “Friday the 13th pt.6” and “Reanimators” (perhaps 1985’s “Re-Animator”,unless there was a crappy sequel I’ve never heard of) and Carson #2, showing “Back to School” and “Seeking Susan” (or Desperately Seeking a Shorter Title for Our Diminutive Attraction Board.) A small building I presume is the theatre shows up on the aerial photo of 5/31/1994 at TerraServer.
South Bay Six Drive-in also shows up in the August 1986 listings, but not in February 1971. It, too, most likely opened in the early 1970s.
Gary: If the theatre-like building you saw is at 2114 Broadway, that’s the location of the original Sequoia Theatre from 1917 to 1929, according to the Bits of History website. Unfortunately, with all the photos of the New Sequoia/Fox Theatre, the website apparently doesn’t have a single shot of the original Sequoia.
I did find another photo of the Redwood, though, running movies released in 1944 and 1945. It shows the addresses of two shops on Montgomery/Winklebleck Street. Looking at the configuration of the theatre’s doors I’m now wondering if maybe it, too, didn’t have a Montgomery Street address?
One unique feature of Telenews Theatres was that the managers of each house in the chain would edit the newsreels provided by the major studios, adding in locally produced footage about local events. One brief bit of film that was probably produced by the San Francisco Telenews Theatre’s manager has survived in the Prelinger Archives, and is available at the Internet Archive. It’s called Dead Fair, and consists of scenes of the Golden Gate International Exposition’s grounds and buildings after the fair had closed in 1940. (Adobe Flash Player 7.0 or above required, and Javascript must be enabled)
From the San Mateo County Historical Photos website:
On June 22, 1950, the plaster ceiling above the balcony of the Sequoia Theatre collapsed during the show, injuring 30 people.
The theatre was repaired and reopened as the Fox Theatre on September 15, 1950.
Several other photos of the Fox can be seen in the Redwood City Library section of the website.
San Mateo County Library provides this photo of the Redwood Theatre at the time of its opening in 1933. The feature presentation is Eddie Cantor’s “Whoopee” which had been released in 1930. The parked automobiles are definitely later than 1930, though, and I have a suspicion that at least some of the people posing for this picture were cast members of the big stage show advertised in the marquee banner. The library gives the theatre’s years of operation as 1933-1955.
A 1933 opening date for the Redwood makes it very likely that this was indeed the theatre in Redwood City that S. Charles Lee had been hired to design, announced in the January 17th, 1933, issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor.
The Google Map feature won’t work with the address currently posted for this location. As near as I can puzzle it out, the theatre was on the northwest corner of California Street and what is now Winklebleck Street, which would put it at the south end of the 0 block. I can’t determine what the actual address of the theatre was, but Google Maps will point to the correct intersection with a search for 99 California Street, Redwood City. But if Redwood City has even numbers on the west sides of streets, then 98 California Street would be the best compromise address.
First, a CORRECTION: I wrote in my comment just above that Asher Hamburger owned the site of Clune’s Broadway Theatre, but I confused my names. It was Tally’s Broadway Theatre that was on land the Hamburger Trust owned, next door to Hamburger’s store on South Broadway.
Almost all of the Los Angeles area theatres listed thus far at Cinema Treasures were built later than 1913, and many of the listed theatres existing at that time didn’t begin showing movies on a regular basis until later. The best place to look for information about what was showing in late 1913 would be the newspaper ads and theatre listings of the era. I don’t have access to any newspaper archives of the time myself.
By 1913 a lot of movie theatres were operating in L.A.. Among the larger downtown theatres of the time that were built specifically to show movies were the Optic (a few doors down from the Gaiety), Clune’s Broadway (later the Cameo), Tally’s Broadway Theatre, which was actually built later than Tally’s New Broadway Theatre (later the Garnett), and the Hyman Theatre (later renamed the Garrick.)
There were also a few good-sized theatres which had been built for stage productions but converted to full or part-time movie houses by 1913. Among these were the Mozart Theatre on Grand Avenue, which underwent many name changes but was the Mozart in 1913, and the Grand Theatre on Main Street- at that time still one of the city’s largest venues- which had opened as the Grand Opera House and had been the first Los Angeles house to become part of the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit.
Any of these theatres would have provided a capacious hall for the opening run of a popular movie, though there were certainly others. I don’t think Marcus Loew had opened a theatre in Los Angeles yet in 1913 (Loew’s State opened in 1921), but if the movie was showing in vaudeville houses such as Loew’s in the east, then it might have been shown in a vaudeville house in Los Angeles as well, so such theatres as the Pantages (later the Arcade) and the third Orpheum now the Palace) were also possible venues.
The earliest references to the College Theatre in the California Index cite mentions in The Rounder, a weekly magazine. The September 17, 1910 issue features the theatre on its cover and on page 16 (my guess would be that this was on the occasion of the theatre’s opening), and the October 15 issue that year announces the appearance at the College Theatre of the Lillian May Lancaster Orchestra. Sounds as though it was not yet a movie house.
The only reference I can find on the Internet to a Lillian May Lancaster is one naming her the composer, lyricist and performer of a song called “Laura” published in 1907, and giving her the aka Maude Leota Byrd. Well, now she’ll have a reference at Cinema Treasures, too. Hey, Lilly May fans!
Apparently, the Edison Theatre seen in the movie “Madigan” is the former Edison Theatre at 2700 Broadway in Manhattan, listed here as the Columbia Cinema. Some of the movie’s scenes were indeed filmed in downtown Los Angeles, but this scene was not among them.
Re-reading the comments from the last few years (especially those by vokoban on Jul 26, 2006), I see that the shows presented at the People’s Theatre in its early years indicate no particularly socialist bent. The Ethel Tucker Stock Company appearing in September, 1906, was a well-known travelling troupe of the era, and the show presented in February, 1908, by the Great Don-Fer appears to have been some sort of minstrelsy.
So, the People’s Theatre appears to have presented pretty much the same sort of popular entertainments as the other theatres in Los Angeles at the time. We’ve got no firm date at which this theatre first showed movies, though. As it was built as a playhouse in 1906, it’s very unlikely that it had a projection booth as part of its original design, and its use as a movie house would have been limited by that until one was installed.
Despite the building having been built by H.J. Woollacott, I wonder if the house was then actually operated under lease by, or for, Asher Hamburger, owner of A. Hamburger’s Department Store, later The May Company Los Angeles and earlier The People’s Store? He apparently had some connection with the earlier People’s Theatre on North Main Street, and he owned the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. He was one of the partners who built the fourth Los Angeles Orpheum. He also owned the land on which Clune’s Broadway Theatre stood, and may have financed its construction, and for a while he actually operated a movie house inside his department store after it moved from the Phillips Block to the big building on 8th, Broadway, and Hill.
In any case, it seems unlikely that the name People’s Theatre was, in this case at least, a reference to socialism. Also, IMDb reveals that “From Dusk to Dawn” was distributed in the U.S. by States Rights Independent Exchanges, which was a highly successful company operating from 1912 to 1962 (though at a considerably slower pace after 1939.) This company distributed such enormously popular early movies as Jame’s O'Neill’s version of “The Count of Monte Cristo”, the early Cecil B. DeMille production, “The Squaw Man”, and numerous others. It seems unlikely that the company would have had any trouble getting regular movie theatres to show Wolfe’s film, despite its socialist theme. That means the movie might have been shown at many theatres around the city.
The Rio in that video wasn’t the Rio on Manchester, which was a large, modern, freestanding building. I did notice many L.A. area neighborhood theatres in the video, though, including the Clinton, Kim Sing, Eagle, Imperial, Beverly, Vagabond, Pasadena’s State, Tosca, Unique, Vista, Ebony Showcase, and a nice shot of the Garfield in Alhambra about three and a half minutes in.
andita: The sign on the building near the subway terminal was for The Peoples National Bank, which occupied the premises at 409 S. Hill from 1924 to 1929. Note, just beyond the subway building, the white skyscraper which was still under construction at the time this photo was taken (you can see that the sidewalk is displaced by a wooden bypass of the sort used during construction.) That skyscraper was to be the new home of the bank, which changed its name to National Bank of Commerce when it moved there in 1929.
The 1907 photo ken mc posted which no longer opens is probably this one (USC digital archive changed all its url’s). It shows Main Street from above, with this building (Gaiety Theatre) at lower right sporting a “People’s Theatre” sign.
If the Socialist Movie Theatre was actually on 5th Street, it might have been a simple storefront conversion. The majority of early movie thetres were storefront conversions, and they came and went like mayflies. Few purpose-built theatres were ever erected on 5th Street. There was one theatre called the Metropolitan (not to be confused with the later Grauman Metropolitan on 6th and Hill), which is not listed at Cinema Treasures because we don’t know if it ever ran movies or not. The Metropolitan was on 5th at the northwest corner of either Wall or San Pedro.
Other than that, there were only Clune’s Theatre on Main at the corner of 5th (also not yet listed here, as nobody’s gotten around to it), and the Auditorium, owned by Temple Baptist Church, and also operated by Billy Clune during its movie house days (ca.1914-1920.)
Here’s a photo of the Jefferson’s facade taken in the late 1990s, plus two cropped close views, all viewable in very large sizes, posted by Flickr user amg2000.
This gets more interesting. Apparently there have been three Golden Bough Theatres, and the first two were both destroyed by fire. The original was built on Ocean Avenue in 1924 by Edward G. Kuster, a lawyer and cellist who designed the theatre himself. It was destroyed by fire on May 19, 1935. Kuster had purchased the old Arts & Crafts Theatre in 1929, and when the Golden Bough was destroyed he moved the play then in production there to the Arts & Crafts Theatre. At some date the Arts & Crafts/Abalone/Carmel Playhouse/Filmarte Theatre was given the name Golden Bough. This was the building which burned in 1949, and the Current Golden Bough Theatre was erected on its site in 1951.
Now here’s what I’ve found so far about the second Golden Bough when it was a movie house called the Filmarte. It was operated by a partnership of Dick Bare and Bob Edgren. They had to have been operating it after 1933 as there are references to the Filmarte having shown the Hedy Lamarr movie “Ecstasy” which was made in 1933. This is referenced on this page, which says that Dick Bare filmed a movie called “Famous Places” in Monterey in 1937.
I also found a reference to Dick Bare in an obituary of a fellow named Wayland Fink who grew up in the Stanislaus County town of Patterson, where his parents had bought the local movie house from Dick Bare (this was probably sometime around 1930.) Other that that, results from Googling “Dick Bare” are mostly unspeakable (just try Googling that name with “safe search” off!)
There are more (and more savory) results Googling the name his partner Bob Edgren, because Bob Edgren was apparently the son of a well-known cartoonist, Robert Edgren, (unless Bare’s partner was the elder Edgren, but he died in 1939, and the only obituary I’ve found for him says nothing about him owning any theatres.) Lots of Google hits about the elder Edgren’s newspaper career aren’t useful when hunting down information about theatres, though.
But it seems most likely that Architect & Engineer got the story a bit garbled and that what actually happened was that Dick Bare and Bob Edgren were renting the theatre they operated as the Filmarte from Edward Kuster, and they had to give it up in 1935 when the original Golden Bough burned and Kuster took over the Filmarte as a new location for his stage productions.
And then the Carmel Theatre was built in 1936 not to replace the burned theatre, but to replace the theatre which had been lost as a movie house because a different theatre had burned. However, the Carmel was built for the Monterey Theatres Company, and that company’s representative was, according to the reference in the California Index, E.H. Emmick who, according to other references in the Index, was once president of T&D Jr. Enterprises (1924) and was later head of Golden State Theatres (1940.) What business relationship there might have been between him and Bare and Edgren in 1935 remains a mystery to me. Maybe Emmick was just being an opportunist, taking advantage of Bare and Edgren’s misfortune.
In any case, puzzles to unravel.
According to an article in the Salinas Californian of December 24, 2005 (.pdf), The Golden Bough fire took place in 1949, and destroyed a theatre which had been opened in 1924 as a playhouse called the Arts & Crafts Theatre and was subsequently known as the Abalone Theatre, Carmel Playhouse, and Filmarte before becoming the Golden Bough Theatre. The current Golden Bough Playhouse dates from 1951. The 1935 fire must have destroyed a different theatre.
The Pacific Culver Stadium 12 opened in 2003. It was designed by the San Diego architectural firm Benson & Bohl (who also designed the Pacific Gaslamp 15 in San Diego) in an Art Deco-influenced Neo-Vintage style. Prior to the start of the Culver Stadium’s construction, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported that the proposed multiplex, which had initially been projected as a 10 screen house with 1600 seats, would be upgraded to a 12 screen house with 1852 seats.
Hollywood Reporter said in a 2003 article that the interior of the theatre was designed by a firm called Tanazaki & Associates, but I’ve been unable to find a firm with that name (or the variant spelling Google suggests, Tanizaki) on the Internet.
The Culver Plaza was originally operated by Mann Theatres, and was sold by them in May of 2007. It was previously known as the Mann Culver Plaza 6. CinemaTour gives the seating capacity as 1470.
I wondered why the website of the City of Culver City had nothing about this theatre when the site has multiple mentions of the Pacific Theatres multiplex nearby. Then I remembered that some of the lots along Washington Boulevard are actually within the corporate limits of the City of Los Angeles. I checked a map and, sure enough, the Culver Plaza Theatres complex is on the Los Angeles side of the city boundary.
Neither the L.A. County Assessor’s website nor the city’s ZIMAS program will yield information about this address. Some sort of assembly of several parcels appears to be in progress on this block, suggesting that the Culver Plaza may succumb to some large project not to far in the future.