Fox Concord Theatre
1505 Willow Pass Road,
Concord,
CA
94520
1505 Willow Pass Road,
Concord,
CA
94520
3 people
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Previously operated by: National General Theatres
Functions: Gymnasium
Nearby Theaters
The Fox Concord Theatre opened on December 20, 1968. Its first feature was “Bullitt” starring Steve McQueen.
The theatre closed on or around November 15, 1978. The last feature listed as playing at the Fox Concord Theatre was “Death on the Nile”.
At present time the building is occupied by an athletic center.
The Fox Concord Theatre was my favorite movie theatre as a young boy growing up in Walnut Creek, CA. I can still remember the many features (both single and double) my brother and I watched in the mid-1970’s. “Skyjacked” doubled with “Kelly’s Heroes” (August 1972) and “Swashbuckler” doubled with “Rooster Cogburn” (July 1976) to name a couple.
Aside from how large the theatre was (at least from a 13 year old’s perspective), the two other things I remember most were the small set of steps outside the theatre one had to go up in order to enter and, more importantly, the Ghirardelli chocolate candy wafers “Flicks” that the refreshment stand always had in stock.
Contributed by
Robert Merk
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Recent comments (view all 9 comments)
The Fox Concord was twinned in the mid-1970s, not long before it was closed and became an office building. The Fox was located practically underneath the Highway 680 overpass at Willow Pass Rd.; as such, the parking lot access was an awkward affair controlled by street lights. The single-screen auditorium was impressive for its time.
One of the last long time managers at the Fox was William McKintire.His nearly 30 year career ended with National General Theatres while he was there for refusing to do a Polygraph test at a district meeting.I became interim manager until a permanent one could be found. He was an outstanding man. Nobody knew theatre exhibition like he did. Strictly old school.
I don’t blame him for telling them to screw off.I was only managing for about 10 years,but had they pulled that out on me i would have walked.I hear Regal checks your credit report now.Glad I got out in 1983.My hat off to Mr.Mckentire!
The district meeting held in Oakland, where this occured, had every manager in the district attending, from San Jose, San Francisco, all the way to Sacto. There were a lot. Nobody liked submitting to the Polygraph, but knew that if they did'nt comply they would lose their job. It was a totally different time then. Large companies did things like that, and as an employee, you had no recourse but to go along with it. Nowdays, it would not fly. I still miss working for that company. It never got out of the bloodstream!
Larry it never will get out of your blood if you loved it as much as i did and a few other guys I have met on CT.We had problems every once in awhile with stealing,be it a concessionstand girl or a doorman and B.O. reselling tickets.Only knew of one manager in our Circuit PLITT that was reselling cups,but you are going to get caught.I guess the most i ever did was damage a drink cup when i wanted a coke or pepsi at GCC.Use the cup and mark it damaged for inventory.I think most all of us have done that.Biggest thing was before plastic wrapping the girls would eat one or two Jordan Almonds out of the box.That seem to go on no matter where i was at; before you knew it you had nine almonds LEFT!I hope Mr.McKintire was able to get on somewhere else and surprized GCC never pulled the Polygraph test on us. Come to think of it I would have been Nailed for the Drink cup incident.
The last feature I attended at the Fox Concord Theatre was ISLANDS IN THE STREAM with George C. Scott in May of 1977. At that point the theatre was still a single screen.
Dec 20, 1968 grand opening ad posted.
The one and only movie I ever saw there was “Death on the Nile,” so I guess I closed the place down! Too bad, I really like those big screen auditoriums.
Grand opening ad:
Fox Theatre Concord opening 19 Dec 1968, Thu Concord Transcript (Concord, California) Newspapers.com