Flick Theater

This is now a grocery store.

I don’t remember the Flick ever being anything but a storefront porn house. However, there were at least two small storefront theatres operating in Hollywood during the 1960s that were not porn houses. I remember seeing a revival of the 1930s era film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a small storefront theatre on the south side of Hollywood Boulevard, somewhere west of Western Avenue, I think. This place had regular theatre seats, with the back rows on built-up risers, and a decent width screen (as good as the early AMC shoe boxes), and I think it may have become a porn house later.

Then there was another storefront conversion on the west side of a side street just north of Hollywood Boulevard. I’m not positive but I think it might have been Normandie. This was in a high-ceilinged shop which had a mezzanine above the front entrance and show windows, and I think it was either a coffee house or an art gallery (or maybe a bit of both) at the time of its conversion into a movie theatre. The projection room was installed on the mezzanine (I think it must have been 16mm) and the screen about two thirds of the way to the back of the room. The place had small tables and bentwood chairs like a typical coffee house of the era, and a couple of old couches. I only went there once and don’t remember any of the indie movie shorts that made up the program that night.

The LA Times had advertisements for a television/radio shop at 1082 N. Western for years, through the fifties and sixties. The first ad for the Flick was in March 1969. In 1977, the theater was called “Le Sex Shoppe” and was owned by Henry Glassman. There are no more references after September 1977.