Park Theatre
1936 High Street,
Selma,
CA
93662
1936 High Street,
Selma,
CA
93662
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The original Park Theatre in Selma opened August 19, 1938 with “Start Cheering.” After the War, Panero Theatres Circuit unveiled a larger and new-build Park Theatre with the Raney plans. It launched October 21, 1948. It appears to have closed March 23, 1983 for renovations. During that project, it burned down.
Boxoffice of May 29, 1948, said that the Park Theatre in Selma was being razed to make way for a new theater that would be Selma’s “A” house, so the Vincent Raney-designed Park Theatre that burned in 1984 was the second of the name at this location.
I’m not sure how old the first Park’s building was. On August 17, 1940, Boxoffice said that Sam Levin had opened his new house, the Park in Selma, on August 9. I’ve found no details about it, but I doubt an eight-year-old building would have been demolished for the 1948 rebuild, so the first Park must have been either an old theater renamed, or an existing old building converted into a theater.
Sam Levin had bought an interest in the Selma Theatre in 1937, and both that house and the original Park were taken over by the Blumenfeld circuit in 1941, as reported in the September 6 issue of Boxoffice that year. The new Park of 1948 was built for the Panero circuit.
Here is the April 2, 1949, Boxoffice article about the new Park, which includes Raney’s clever floor plan.
The Park Theatre was the subject of a brief article in the April 2, 1949, issue of Boxoffice. The compact house featured a stadium seating section to maximize capacity on a small lot. The Park was built for the Panero Theatre Company and was designed by architect Vincent G. Raney.