Fox Adams Theatre

Al Lyons, who was musical director at the Los Angeles Orpheum in the 1940s and who earlier had been an emcee for the stage shows at the Fox in St. Louis said in an interview published in St. Louis in 1931: “There was a small theater, the West Adams, which was so conservative that it didn’t even have music with its pictures. I induced the owner to permit me to rent a piano and become his sole orchestra—for $12 a week. Those were happy—and busy—days. Worked from noon until midnight, playing to the pictures. I rumbled the bass when thunder pealed. I pounded the sides of the piano to simulate the hoof beats of galloping horses. I played songs about moonlight and daisies and purling brooks. I was in truth, delivering all the sound effects the action on the screen demanded.

My father was manger of the Bards from around 1951 till the early 60’s. We moved there when I was 7 and lived over the house in apts.It was fun living there as I rode my bike up and down the aisles.Seating around 1100 it took a while to get up and down. There was a pit at one time and also chandeleirs which needed to be removed to show more modern films. Dressing rooms were below but always cold and damp. The house was huge and beautiful and sometimes scary when I was young. We had many live shows, including Ice Capades, Roy Rogers, and the Three Stooges. Saturdays were always full of serials and horror movies were a lot of fun. In latter years memories were mixed as I had my first experiences with race issues. As the area was in a white flight. But it gave me a better understanding of feelings on both sides. I never had any problems and the kids on Saturdays never seemed to mind what color they were. They just came to have fun. Movies seemed so much bigger then and so were the trips to Hollywood for opening night. We cooked our own popcorn in those days and I worked there for many years.

This is from Boxoffice magazine, August 1962:

LOS ANGELES-Allied Theaters, operated by Bob Helm, Phillip Hoffman and Sam Decker, has taken a 20 year lease on the Bard Theater, 1,200-seat neighborhood house, which they have renamed the Adams West and switched to a first-run policy. The Bard had been closed for the past five years.

from what i can gather aretha franklin once owned the theatre,it was managed by her brother and she mentions it in her book.as for the remodel change,it wasnt a “plane jane” up until maybe 8 to 10 yrs ago.

Here are some photos from June 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/yrase2
http://tinyurl.com/2z6m5t
http://tinyurl.com/23k7lt
http://tinyurl.com/yudwgm

The Adams was one of four theatres with Egyptian style interiors (none had Egyptian exteriors) designed for the Bard Theatre Circuit by architect Lewis Smith in the 1920s. The Vista Theatre in East Hollywood was the smallest, and the only one of the four still largely intact.

The Garfield Theatre in Alhambra was about the same size as the Adams, having a large auditorium with no balcony. A successful suburban theatre operated for many years by the Edwards circuit, and remodeled more than once, it’s Egyptian decor was gone by the late 1950’s. The Garfield’s auditorium was demolished only a few years ago, but the commercial and apartment block in front of it remains standing.

The largest of the four was Bard’s Pasadena, still in operation but virtually unrecognizable as the Academy Theatre, a six-screen art house opened in the mid ‘80s. The Academy had retained its Egyptian style until the mid 1950s when it underwent an extensive remodeling inside and out which gave it an Art Moderne look. It continued to operate as a single-screen theatre until about 1984, by which time it was getting pretty run down.

The Bard circuit had a fifth Egyptian style theatre, Bard’s Glendale, later operated by Fox-West Coast as the Glen Theatre, but that one was designed by Pasadena architect Kenneth A. Gordon rather than Smith. The Glen closed in the 1950s and was converted into a bowling alley. The building still stands, but none of the original interior decoration remains.

The Bard’s Adams Street theatre interior auditorium was mostly intact until the late 90’s in original condition. Archeologist Lou Bard commissioned his flagship theatre which was influenced by his trips to Egypt. It was a full stage house, fully equipped with dressing rooms, prop cables, lighting systems, and all you would expect to find in a house of this nature.

William is right in that the Vista was the baby sister to the Adams Street Theatre.

The facades on both buildings were similar if not matched: The interior spaces were closely matched. The remodeling history was was not too extensive. The exterior, the facade, the marquee and outer lobby were streamlined – most likely in the late 40’s. The lobby, too, saw a similar streamlining. The restrooms had more of a late 30’s art deco feel to them. The only changes to the auditoruim was the addition of sound deadening blocks applied to the walls at some point. (I would say the early 30’s.) By the early 80’s the chandeliers had been removed but the auditorium was intact. The projection equipment was in the building – minus the heads. In the 60’s a large cinemascope screen was installed covering the proscenium, which eliminated the orchestra pit, and thereby reducing the seating. As I recall the original seating was 1325 – with no balcony.

By the early 80’s, the building was in disrepair: The roof leaked badly over the front offices, which destroyed the apartments/offices at the front of the building. The dressing rooms and plumbing were not really functional. The staircase to the orhestra pit was covered over and all organ equipment was gone. All seats had been long removed and a large raised platform was at the rear of the auditorium.

In the summer of 1981 there were a series of Punk Rock concerts staged in the building and it was called Bard’s Apollo. The owners had no operational permits whatsoever and the venue was closed after just half of a summer. Wielding their batons, the LAPD ended the final concert. Subsequently, a riot ensued which damaged neighboring shops.

One of the last times I saw her – in the late 90’s – she was empty and vandalised. Shortly thereafter the building was sold. The new owners gutted the interior and removed all decorative plaster and forever destroyed the magnificent interior, leaving no trace of its former movie palace glory.

It is difficult to understand a connection between the West Adams Theatre, which is today a Hispanic church, and the elegant Vista Theater in East Hollywood. The Vista, which retains it’s beautiful Spanish-style architecture, is easily the handsomest remaining movie theater in Los Angeles. The former Bard’s West Adams is a plain, flat-faced former theater, with it’s marquee luckily still intact. All I can imagine is that somewhere during it’s long history, the West Adams was “modernized”, and thus stripped of it’s original identity. But the West Adams is still standing, a former theater that appears to be as enormous in size as, say, the Pantages and the FoxWilshire.

When this theatre opened it was known as the Bard’s West Adams Theatre. Then the Fox Adams during its Fox West Coast years. After World War II it became the Kabuki Theatre, Japanese language house. And most recently as the Apollo West, a Black cabaret theatre. Other theatres part of the Bard’s chain were the Vista, Academy, Glen, Garfield, Town, College and the Olympic.