Yes, I think I remember you! (KIDDING!!!) But I wouldn’t have confiscated your teapot, even if I had seen it! How wonderfully civilized of you! I used to go to the Ken Cinema (and still do on rare occasion), and would invariably order a large cup of Orange Spice tea for sipping in the theatre. There’s nothing like a double-feature with hot tea on a winter’s afternoon/evening. :–)
I remember going to the Grossmont to see “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” in 1970, probably for my birthday since it ran in March, and my birthday is on the 10th! But more memorably, in 1981 I went to a late night showing with my dad of a film I had heard was a lot of fun, but which hadn’t quite caught on yet. We were two of about a dozen people in the thousand-seat theater. But from the moment the film started we knew we were in for something memorable and special. When I had first heard the name of the film I thought it was an archeological documentary. It wasn’t. It was “Raiders of the Lost Ark”! I’ll never forget seeing that with my dad! Thanks, Cinema Grossmont!
I saw Star Wars in this cinema, and it my first taste of a Hollywood “blockbuster.” I remember the lines around the theater, the excitement, the chatter and high spirits, and I had NEVER heard an audience react like that in front of a movie-screen. I thought I was at a football game, sometimes for all the cheering. The theater itself was relatively nondescript, but the memories are not!
I remember going to the Strand Twice. Once an older friend took me to see “Emanuelle: The Joys of a Woman” as a way of introducing me to the concept of the birds and the bees although, if the truth be told, I really didn’t need the introduction. I pretty much had the idea anyway. Later another friend and I went there to see a double bill of the original 1954 television production of “Casino Royale” starring Barry Nelson, along with the 1967 film starring David Niven, Woody Allen, Orson Welles et al. I never forgot certain bits of Emanuelle, but on the whole I really would have rather seen it by myself.
I saw the first theatrical re-release of “The Manchurian Candidate” at the Park, which at the time featured both an external and internal rectangularist decoration scheme in the mode of the modern artist Piet Mondrian. Very ‘50’s modern.
Actually the interior decoration and color scheme of the Fox (Symphony Hall) is exactly the same as it was when it first opened. The company that painted it in 1929 was still in existence in 1985, and they were rehired to come back in and re-install their original color scheme. The restoration of the auditorium was meticulous, and nothing has been removed. It is a magnificent theater, which has hosted San Francisco Opera on tour during the 1950’s, and has its original Robert Morton theater organ fully operational. In fact, the organ was removed from the Balboa when in converted to sound in ‘29, but the builder of the Fox insisted on having an organ in his movie palace. Thank heaven. I assisted organ builder and technician Wendell Shoberg in getting the organ “buzzed out” for the first Nickelodeon Series concert after a cable had been accidentally cut during the installation of dressing-rooms under the stage. That first showing in 1986 was “Robin Hood” with Douglas Fairbanks, featuring Dennis James at the organ, with about 30 members of the San Diego Symphony playing the original score for orchestra and organ. It was a magnificent evening, which has led to many more. Long live the lovely Fox Theater/Copley-Jacobs Symphony. One of the finest theaters I know of in which to both hear, and SEE a concert!
So, apparently the “Davenport’s Supper-Club” idea to save the theater hasn’t happened. The building is as derelict as it has ever been, and that is a great shame. The California is not a “great” theater of the golden age, but it is nevertheless a useful period theater with a fully rigged stage-house, and could make a wonder quartet with the Spreckels, Balboa, and Fox (now Copley Symphony Hall/Jacob’s Music Center) as a district of historic theaters. Perhaps there’s one more miracle left in the bag for San Diego’s great theaters.
In the early years of the Mainly Mozart Festival, I remember going to hear the Beethoven Triple-Concerto played in the Spreckels. What a lovely experience that was, too. Also, in the mid-1980’s, when AIDS was first coming to prominence, I as a young singer took part in the only concert the San DIego Opera Chorus has ever given, which was in support of AIDS research. It was a splendid evening, thanks in no small part, to the lovely ambiance provided by the Spreckels THeater itself.
My uncle, who is now 97 years old, remembers going to see serials at the Lyric in Yuma. But a family friend who is also a Yuma native, recalled that – presumably in later years – going to the Lyric was scandalous. I think that by the early ‘70’s it had become an X-rated theater. I asked, “Was it a burlesque house?” She answered, “No, but what went on in the audience was! If you got caught going to the Lyric, you were in TROUBLE!” It was definitely a B-movie house in its best days, but later I think it fell on hard times. So to speak!
Just today, 3/11/14, I toured the Yuma Theater and Arts Center, and was fairly dazzled by the wonderfully useful and adaptable spaces with which this wonderful art-deco cinema is now surrounded. The Arts Center provides usable space on both sides of the theater, with classrooms, pottery studios and a theatrical dressing room in the adjoining south building, which being half the length of the theatre also features a patio/reception area to the rear. The Arts Center on the north side of the building also features three spaces, one small space near the street, the 2 ½ story main salle in the middle, and a lower ceilinged space to the rear, above which are the spacious art center offices. The theater is accessible from all sides of the building, and the upper interior walkway features an exposed section of the butressed former northern exterior brick wall of the theater, converted into an interior architectural feature. As the reader might guess, I was very impressed by this excellent restoration, conversion, and repurposement. The theater boasts an active winter schedule, and I was told that many performances sell out every year.
As a special note, the Yuma theater features a lower level projection booth located directly under the lip of the balcony at the back of the stalls seats, which – although it boasts a thoroughly modern digital cinematic projector located between the projectors – is a perfect time-capsule of a projection room of the 1940’s or 50’s. Both carbon arc projectors are in situ, and while not working, only lack one piece of equipment to make both projectors functional. There is no plan to use them, but the room also retains its film racks, with some film still on reels, cutting and splicing equipment, rewinding reels, fire-door, and would make a tourist attraction in itself for cinema junkies.
The Yuma theater now has a functional stage with a 25' depth. While there is no fly-space, or wings to speak of, there is a grand piano if needed, and best of all, is possessed of excellent acoustics. I mean it doesn’t sound either as dead as a door-nail, or as flat as a phone-booth. I recommend this theater for plays, recitation, chamber-music, concert or recital, and probably for anything you care to use it for. I can’t imagine an unpleasant theatrical experience in the Yuma Theater!
According to the owners, there really isn’t much of an interior at the moment, due to damage caused by the roof leaking. It will require a total make-over inside to be useful again, but if they’ve gone that far, I think they’ll get there eventually. This is a real asset to the town.
Ironically, when I posted this photograph on 2 March 2014, I was aware that the “link to a recent picture” posted by LostMemory showed the theatre and street in almost exactly the same condition twenty-five years after I took this. I was UNaware, however, that less than a year before, the theater had begun its renovation process, and I hadn’t thought to look to hard for newspaper articles, because the view from the Google car on Google-Maps was predated the restoration! We need to get Google-car to revisit Kosciusko!! Things are looking up!
Personally, I have no problem with this, as it will render the building fit for a variety of theatrical uses more appropriate to the foreseeable future. Who know…I might even be able to appear there one of these days!
Well, well, well. Just when you thought the final curtain had come down, here’s the latest on the first phase of the restoration of the Strand Theatre in Kosciusko Mississippi, a potential cinema gem for the central portion of the state.
My father heard the pianist Artur Rubenstein in concert in the Moore Theatre in 1946. We still have the program. Dad was in Seattle with the Coast Guard just prior to his discharge, and sat in the upper-balcony, lower right hand side. He says it was one of the most memorable concerts he ever heard, and he can still see it in front of him when he closes his eyes.
It should be pointed out that, whatever their segregational function in the United States, in traditional and standard theatre design up until the 1930’s, balconies usually had a separate entrance from the main part of the theatre and loge. Even the opera house at Covent Garden in London had a side entrance for the balcony (i.e. “cheap-seats”) up until the renovation in the late ‘90’s. Balcony entrances kept the hoi polloi away from the wealthier patrons, not just blacks away from whites.
The Cinema 21 was also notably flooded during the epic rains of 1983. The normally minuscule San Diego River put the whole floor of Mission Valley under water, and I believe the water nearest the screen was upwards of six feet deep. It survived the flood, but not the video revolution.
This was my favorite theater growing up. I knew that it wasn’t in the same class as the glorious Roxy in New York, but the fact that it shared the name, had some small hint of art deco decoration in the architecture, made it something special, something that someone had taken just a little trouble to dignify. I remember seeing the last theatrical release of “Song of the South” there, also Steve McQueen’s moto-cross film “On Any Sunday,” and – coming into my own at the tender age of about 14 or 15, I remember seeing a double bill of “Casablanca” and “To Have and Have Not” one foggy autumn evening. The fact that my mum dropped me off and picked me up in the family station wagon made me feel no less Bogey-ish, love-injured and world weary. Even at that tender age. I was a young-fogey even then.
The Fine Arts outlasted the Roxy (on Cass St.) by several years, and to this day, Pacific Beach has no cinema at all. It was a simple hall of a theater, but who would have thought at the time that it would have constituted such a loss for our community.
I liked the Ken best during its days as a repertory cinema, with a new double-feature on the bill every day of the week! I remember going in for a film, getting a large cup of Celestial Seasonings orange-spice tea, and settling in. I suppose you still can…but whether the tea is the same or not, I couldn’t say! Great theatre. Also, back in about 1981 or 82, on many Saturday nights a trip to see “Dance Craze” the ska concert-film was the same as going to a concert. The theatre was packed, and everyone was in their seat, then when the music started, the whole place was on their feet and bouncing off the walls. What a great time! I left many molecules off the soles of my Penny-Loafers on the floors and carpets of the Ken!
The WONDERFUL, MAGNIFICENT Balboa! Back in the ‘70’s I remember going to see a double bill there with my dad, of “Blue Max” and “Dirty Dingus McGee.” And just before it closed, I went to see “Purple Rain” there just to have the chance to go into the theatre. I remember looking up at the balcony, which was closed to the public, and seeing these enormous, tall, standing sound baffles, which looked like Easter Island statues looming silently over the auditorium. I could never have guessed that twenty years later I would be standing on that stage singing the role of Valens in Georg Frederick Handel’s oratorio/opera “Theodora” with the Bach Collegium San Diego under the baton of Richard Egar. The Balboa Theatre is one of the finest concert halls on the west coast, and a GREAT SAVE for the people of San Diego. Thanks primarily to Jan Manos, who forced the recalcitrant City’s hand. Well done, Jan, and thank you.
In 1979 I went to see “1941” at the Loma, but my crowning experience in that theater was working as an usher (see my profile picture) during the Summer ‘82 initial release of “E.T.” It was an old fashioned blockbuster situation, with an audience inside watching the film, an audience already lined up outside the theater about four or five abreast and curving around the theater, and a third audience forming up at the bottom the parking-lot. As the patrons roasted and sweated in the summer sunshine, we sold cokes and drinks to them up and down the line from trays that hung around our necks like the cigarette-girls of the old days. Speeches had to be made from the front to get people to move in towards the center, so that we could seat late-comers on the sides, showing them to their seats with our flashlights. Between shows we had to do a quick cleanup, during which one would find the most outrageous things, such as dirty diapers, and once I found a Visa Gold Card. It was a lesson in public management and crowds, plus by repeated watchings I learned where all the continuity flaws are in E.T.! I still can’t believe that I actually wore an Usher uniform for Mann Theaters. It seems like another age! I guess it really was.
My mother was born on a farm just south of Kosciusko down the Old Natchez Trace, and used to pop into (and out of) the Strand to see parts of the Westerns on Saturday afternoons when her folks went to town. She and her cousin Nina Sanders, or friend Elouise McClellan, would run in, stay for a few minutes, then run out and circle the square, get a side-by-side ice-cream at Morgan and Lindsey’s soda counter or Boyd’s Drug Store, then go back in and look at some more movies! She thinks that the ticket-taker knew they were so hyper that there was no need to sell them a ticket…they weren’t going to stay in long enough, anyway!
Yes, I think I remember you! (KIDDING!!!) But I wouldn’t have confiscated your teapot, even if I had seen it! How wonderfully civilized of you! I used to go to the Ken Cinema (and still do on rare occasion), and would invariably order a large cup of Orange Spice tea for sipping in the theatre. There’s nothing like a double-feature with hot tea on a winter’s afternoon/evening. :–)
I remember going to the Grossmont to see “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” in 1970, probably for my birthday since it ran in March, and my birthday is on the 10th! But more memorably, in 1981 I went to a late night showing with my dad of a film I had heard was a lot of fun, but which hadn’t quite caught on yet. We were two of about a dozen people in the thousand-seat theater. But from the moment the film started we knew we were in for something memorable and special. When I had first heard the name of the film I thought it was an archeological documentary. It wasn’t. It was “Raiders of the Lost Ark”! I’ll never forget seeing that with my dad! Thanks, Cinema Grossmont!
I saw Star Wars in this cinema, and it my first taste of a Hollywood “blockbuster.” I remember the lines around the theater, the excitement, the chatter and high spirits, and I had NEVER heard an audience react like that in front of a movie-screen. I thought I was at a football game, sometimes for all the cheering. The theater itself was relatively nondescript, but the memories are not!
I remember going to the Strand Twice. Once an older friend took me to see “Emanuelle: The Joys of a Woman” as a way of introducing me to the concept of the birds and the bees although, if the truth be told, I really didn’t need the introduction. I pretty much had the idea anyway. Later another friend and I went there to see a double bill of the original 1954 television production of “Casino Royale” starring Barry Nelson, along with the 1967 film starring David Niven, Woody Allen, Orson Welles et al. I never forgot certain bits of Emanuelle, but on the whole I really would have rather seen it by myself.
I saw the first theatrical re-release of “The Manchurian Candidate” at the Park, which at the time featured both an external and internal rectangularist decoration scheme in the mode of the modern artist Piet Mondrian. Very ‘50’s modern.
I remember seeing “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover” at the balcony of the Guild. It was a charming cinema. Much missed!
Actually the interior decoration and color scheme of the Fox (Symphony Hall) is exactly the same as it was when it first opened. The company that painted it in 1929 was still in existence in 1985, and they were rehired to come back in and re-install their original color scheme. The restoration of the auditorium was meticulous, and nothing has been removed. It is a magnificent theater, which has hosted San Francisco Opera on tour during the 1950’s, and has its original Robert Morton theater organ fully operational. In fact, the organ was removed from the Balboa when in converted to sound in ‘29, but the builder of the Fox insisted on having an organ in his movie palace. Thank heaven. I assisted organ builder and technician Wendell Shoberg in getting the organ “buzzed out” for the first Nickelodeon Series concert after a cable had been accidentally cut during the installation of dressing-rooms under the stage. That first showing in 1986 was “Robin Hood” with Douglas Fairbanks, featuring Dennis James at the organ, with about 30 members of the San Diego Symphony playing the original score for orchestra and organ. It was a magnificent evening, which has led to many more. Long live the lovely Fox Theater/Copley-Jacobs Symphony. One of the finest theaters I know of in which to both hear, and SEE a concert!
So, apparently the “Davenport’s Supper-Club” idea to save the theater hasn’t happened. The building is as derelict as it has ever been, and that is a great shame. The California is not a “great” theater of the golden age, but it is nevertheless a useful period theater with a fully rigged stage-house, and could make a wonder quartet with the Spreckels, Balboa, and Fox (now Copley Symphony Hall/Jacob’s Music Center) as a district of historic theaters. Perhaps there’s one more miracle left in the bag for San Diego’s great theaters.
The neon blade-sign and marquee have recently been completely restored. It’s a sight to behold on Broadway after dark!
In the early years of the Mainly Mozart Festival, I remember going to hear the Beethoven Triple-Concerto played in the Spreckels. What a lovely experience that was, too. Also, in the mid-1980’s, when AIDS was first coming to prominence, I as a young singer took part in the only concert the San DIego Opera Chorus has ever given, which was in support of AIDS research. It was a splendid evening, thanks in no small part, to the lovely ambiance provided by the Spreckels THeater itself.
My uncle, who is now 97 years old, remembers going to see serials at the Lyric in Yuma. But a family friend who is also a Yuma native, recalled that – presumably in later years – going to the Lyric was scandalous. I think that by the early ‘70’s it had become an X-rated theater. I asked, “Was it a burlesque house?” She answered, “No, but what went on in the audience was! If you got caught going to the Lyric, you were in TROUBLE!” It was definitely a B-movie house in its best days, but later I think it fell on hard times. So to speak!
Just today, 3/11/14, I toured the Yuma Theater and Arts Center, and was fairly dazzled by the wonderfully useful and adaptable spaces with which this wonderful art-deco cinema is now surrounded. The Arts Center provides usable space on both sides of the theater, with classrooms, pottery studios and a theatrical dressing room in the adjoining south building, which being half the length of the theatre also features a patio/reception area to the rear. The Arts Center on the north side of the building also features three spaces, one small space near the street, the 2 ½ story main salle in the middle, and a lower ceilinged space to the rear, above which are the spacious art center offices. The theater is accessible from all sides of the building, and the upper interior walkway features an exposed section of the butressed former northern exterior brick wall of the theater, converted into an interior architectural feature. As the reader might guess, I was very impressed by this excellent restoration, conversion, and repurposement. The theater boasts an active winter schedule, and I was told that many performances sell out every year.
As a special note, the Yuma theater features a lower level projection booth located directly under the lip of the balcony at the back of the stalls seats, which – although it boasts a thoroughly modern digital cinematic projector located between the projectors – is a perfect time-capsule of a projection room of the 1940’s or 50’s. Both carbon arc projectors are in situ, and while not working, only lack one piece of equipment to make both projectors functional. There is no plan to use them, but the room also retains its film racks, with some film still on reels, cutting and splicing equipment, rewinding reels, fire-door, and would make a tourist attraction in itself for cinema junkies.
The Yuma theater now has a functional stage with a 25' depth. While there is no fly-space, or wings to speak of, there is a grand piano if needed, and best of all, is possessed of excellent acoustics. I mean it doesn’t sound either as dead as a door-nail, or as flat as a phone-booth. I recommend this theater for plays, recitation, chamber-music, concert or recital, and probably for anything you care to use it for. I can’t imagine an unpleasant theatrical experience in the Yuma Theater!
According to the owners, there really isn’t much of an interior at the moment, due to damage caused by the roof leaking. It will require a total make-over inside to be useful again, but if they’ve gone that far, I think they’ll get there eventually. This is a real asset to the town.
Ironically, when I posted this photograph on 2 March 2014, I was aware that the “link to a recent picture” posted by LostMemory showed the theatre and street in almost exactly the same condition twenty-five years after I took this. I was UNaware, however, that less than a year before, the theater had begun its renovation process, and I hadn’t thought to look to hard for newspaper articles, because the view from the Google car on Google-Maps was predated the restoration! We need to get Google-car to revisit Kosciusko!! Things are looking up!
Here is a link to an architectural proposal, which shows the interior reconfigured for live music, dinner theater, or cinema.
http://belindastewartarchitects.com/culture/strand-theater/
Personally, I have no problem with this, as it will render the building fit for a variety of theatrical uses more appropriate to the foreseeable future. Who know…I might even be able to appear there one of these days!
Well, well, well. Just when you thought the final curtain had come down, here’s the latest on the first phase of the restoration of the Strand Theatre in Kosciusko Mississippi, a potential cinema gem for the central portion of the state.
http://www.newsms.fm/historic-theater-celebrates-restoration-milestone/
The first curtain since its closing has yet to be drawn back, but it’s a step in the right direction! Unexpectedly good news for the Strand!
My father heard the pianist Artur Rubenstein in concert in the Moore Theatre in 1946. We still have the program. Dad was in Seattle with the Coast Guard just prior to his discharge, and sat in the upper-balcony, lower right hand side. He says it was one of the most memorable concerts he ever heard, and he can still see it in front of him when he closes his eyes.
It should be pointed out that, whatever their segregational function in the United States, in traditional and standard theatre design up until the 1930’s, balconies usually had a separate entrance from the main part of the theatre and loge. Even the opera house at Covent Garden in London had a side entrance for the balcony (i.e. “cheap-seats”) up until the renovation in the late ‘90’s. Balcony entrances kept the hoi polloi away from the wealthier patrons, not just blacks away from whites.
The Cinema 21 was also notably flooded during the epic rains of 1983. The normally minuscule San Diego River put the whole floor of Mission Valley under water, and I believe the water nearest the screen was upwards of six feet deep. It survived the flood, but not the video revolution.
This was my favorite theater growing up. I knew that it wasn’t in the same class as the glorious Roxy in New York, but the fact that it shared the name, had some small hint of art deco decoration in the architecture, made it something special, something that someone had taken just a little trouble to dignify. I remember seeing the last theatrical release of “Song of the South” there, also Steve McQueen’s moto-cross film “On Any Sunday,” and – coming into my own at the tender age of about 14 or 15, I remember seeing a double bill of “Casablanca” and “To Have and Have Not” one foggy autumn evening. The fact that my mum dropped me off and picked me up in the family station wagon made me feel no less Bogey-ish, love-injured and world weary. Even at that tender age. I was a young-fogey even then.
The Fine Arts outlasted the Roxy (on Cass St.) by several years, and to this day, Pacific Beach has no cinema at all. It was a simple hall of a theater, but who would have thought at the time that it would have constituted such a loss for our community.
I liked the Ken best during its days as a repertory cinema, with a new double-feature on the bill every day of the week! I remember going in for a film, getting a large cup of Celestial Seasonings orange-spice tea, and settling in. I suppose you still can…but whether the tea is the same or not, I couldn’t say! Great theatre. Also, back in about 1981 or 82, on many Saturday nights a trip to see “Dance Craze” the ska concert-film was the same as going to a concert. The theatre was packed, and everyone was in their seat, then when the music started, the whole place was on their feet and bouncing off the walls. What a great time! I left many molecules off the soles of my Penny-Loafers on the floors and carpets of the Ken!
The WONDERFUL, MAGNIFICENT Balboa! Back in the ‘70’s I remember going to see a double bill there with my dad, of “Blue Max” and “Dirty Dingus McGee.” And just before it closed, I went to see “Purple Rain” there just to have the chance to go into the theatre. I remember looking up at the balcony, which was closed to the public, and seeing these enormous, tall, standing sound baffles, which looked like Easter Island statues looming silently over the auditorium. I could never have guessed that twenty years later I would be standing on that stage singing the role of Valens in Georg Frederick Handel’s oratorio/opera “Theodora” with the Bach Collegium San Diego under the baton of Richard Egar. The Balboa Theatre is one of the finest concert halls on the west coast, and a GREAT SAVE for the people of San Diego. Thanks primarily to Jan Manos, who forced the recalcitrant City’s hand. Well done, Jan, and thank you.
In 1979 I went to see “1941” at the Loma, but my crowning experience in that theater was working as an usher (see my profile picture) during the Summer ‘82 initial release of “E.T.” It was an old fashioned blockbuster situation, with an audience inside watching the film, an audience already lined up outside the theater about four or five abreast and curving around the theater, and a third audience forming up at the bottom the parking-lot. As the patrons roasted and sweated in the summer sunshine, we sold cokes and drinks to them up and down the line from trays that hung around our necks like the cigarette-girls of the old days. Speeches had to be made from the front to get people to move in towards the center, so that we could seat late-comers on the sides, showing them to their seats with our flashlights. Between shows we had to do a quick cleanup, during which one would find the most outrageous things, such as dirty diapers, and once I found a Visa Gold Card. It was a lesson in public management and crowds, plus by repeated watchings I learned where all the continuity flaws are in E.T.! I still can’t believe that I actually wore an Usher uniform for Mann Theaters. It seems like another age! I guess it really was.
My mother was born on a farm just south of Kosciusko down the Old Natchez Trace, and used to pop into (and out of) the Strand to see parts of the Westerns on Saturday afternoons when her folks went to town. She and her cousin Nina Sanders, or friend Elouise McClellan, would run in, stay for a few minutes, then run out and circle the square, get a side-by-side ice-cream at Morgan and Lindsey’s soda counter or Boyd’s Drug Store, then go back in and look at some more movies! She thinks that the ticket-taker knew they were so hyper that there was no need to sell them a ticket…they weren’t going to stay in long enough, anyway!