Great Western 4 Theatres
1227 E. Los Angeles Avenue,
Simi Valley,
CA
93065
1227 E. Los Angeles Avenue,
Simi Valley,
CA
93065
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Great Western Theaters this theater as the Great Western 4 on May 25, 1987. Though there were discussions that Pacific would assume operations the never appear to materialize. The theater was torn down to make way for the Mountain Gate 7.
Two screens on May 25th, 1973 and renamed Great Western with 4 screens on December 16th, 1983.
Grand opening ad:
Larwin theatre opening 27 Oct 1965, Wed Simi Valley Star (Simi Valley, California) Newspapers.com
1975 print ad as Larwin Square Twin Theatres added courtesy Chach Hernandez‎.
This opened on November 6th, 1965 with an kid’s preview.
Metropolitan Larwin theatre in Simi Valley Sun, Mar 21, 1965 – 134 · The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California) · Newspapers.com
I saw so many great films there when it opened. They had a Saturday matinee for kids with a DJ/host fellow who gave away free stuff for our lucky ticket stub.
The matinee would show about four hours of ancient, b/w films like “The Bowery Boys in Africa” and often I’d remember that the film would tear and or catch fire.
Of course, the A films were shown on Thursday-Saturdays for…what, .35 cents or something?
I remember seeing the Beatles “A Hard Days Night” there about a year after it was officially released. And they also showed a now extremely rare Stones documentary called “Charlie is my Darling”.
I have quite a long list of films I saw there like The Long Ships Crack in the World Dr. Strangelove Atlantis, the Lost Continent
… and many more.
Originally built for Metropolitan Theatres, the Larwin opened as a single screen house in late 1965, two years after the same circuit had opened the Simi Drive-In. The Larwin was the company’s first shopping center theater.
Plans to convert the Larwin into a twin were announced in the April 16, 1973, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. Work was to begin shortly, and Metropolitan’s head, Bruce Corwin, said the project was expected to be completed by mid-June. The conversion would give the Larwin auditoriums with 500 and 300 seats. The house had originally seated 850.
Oh yea, the drive in was a good two miles down the road from the Larwin theater, on Los Angeles ave.
The Larwin theatre had only one screen when it opened in the 1960’s. They added a second screen in the mid 1970’s. I worked there as an usher in 1973, but was fired for letting friends sneak in for free through the back door. Thrifty mart was the grocery store, and Thrifty drug had 5 cent ice cream cones. The dept. store was Grants, with a small restaurant called the Bradford room. Builders emporium opened later, and a favorite for the kids was “Ron’s” toy store. This was the second shopping center in simi, the first was on tapo st. with a Von’s grocery store. At the time both Larwin, and the simi drive in were owned by Pacific theaters.
1) For sure either 1979 or 1980, I am unsure the exact years as I was too young to even realize what the movie really was about and only found out later after we moved.
2) Sorry, I moved out of the area around 1988 so it would have been after that.
3) Sorry, not something I’d remember, but definitely on the west side of town, not quite as far as the drive-in. Based on the newspaper ad linked above by “ken mc”, it would be here: View link
I also seem to recall this shopping center held a Montgomery Wards department store if that helps track it down. :–)
Hey, rtm242; got some questions for you.
What year(s) did Rocky Horror play at this theater?
When was this theater closed/torn down?
Can you remember the (exact) address?
Some facts from my first-hand knowledge:
Larwin theater was located at the Larwin Shopping Center which was an outdoor mall
Started with two screens… Everybody called it the “Larwin Twin”. There was a two walking aisles width large screen, and a narrower single walking aisle screen.
Had awesome movie collage wallpaper with scenes from all the big 60s/70s blockbusters (Jaws, Star Wars, James Bond, etc)
They added a stage at the front below the bigger screen for special events, in particular Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings.
I remember getting to see free films there for taking part in marketing survey movies for kids where we had to fill out detailed questionairres. (but hey, free movie and sneak peek at future toys!)
In the mid 80s, somebody decided to expand the theatre to four screens… without remodeling! This meant they emptied out two storage rooms (one of them held perhaps twenty people at most!), and installed surplus seats and equipment, but still charged full price. I’ll never forget my first trip to screen #4. You went past screen number 2, and then thorough a very darkly lit twisting hallway to #3 and then through an unfinished hallway to screen #4 and without fail people died laughing once they opened the door and saw how small it was. If you have seen the 80s film Bachelor Party (was filmed at the not-yet-opened Mann 6 theater in Simi Valley), they made some jokes about this remodeling, with one scene of a single person in a broom closet watching a movie on a TV. Classic!
Sometime after this they remodeled the interior, and scrapped the vintage wallpaper. I think this was the same time as they decided to put a roof on the Larwin Shopping Center and make it a “mall”.
Sometime after that (late 80s?), the theater was gutted and they put in 6 actual screens, but greatly sacrificed the size of the main screen to do it.
Here is a June 1974 ad from the Valley News. The Larwin had two screens at a minimum:
http://tinyurl.com/3d6y6k
Here is an article from the Simi News about the opening of the Larwin in 1965:
http://tinyurl.com/2zwc2f
http://tinyurl.com/2jshvg