Avalon Theatre

One of the first theaters acoustically designed for sound was the Colfax theater in South Bend, In. which opened August 4th, 1928.

I’ll go with the Avalon being one of the first theatres designed for talkies (which is what the Catalina Island Co. claim on their website), but it’s absolutely not “the first in the world” as quoted, without source, in the L.A. Times article.

One doesn’t need to look too far in order to find other theatres which opened before the Avalon and were built for the talkies. For instance the Observatory Park Theatre in San Diego was promoted by Fox West Coast as “the first San Diego playhouse to be specifically designed and constructed, from the ground up, for the exhibiting of sound, synchronized, and talking pictures” (San Diego Union, 17th January 1929 – same day the theatre opened to the public).

LA Times article about the 2019 closing.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-01/avalon-theater-catalina-island-hollywood

Please come see this beautiful theatre at the annual Santa Catalina Film Festival held every May. This year there are a lot of amazing guests lined up to come.

Go To: www.CatalinaFF.org for more information.

Hey, does anyone have any further info on the “Silent Movie Festival” mentioned above??

Have only been there once…but loved it. Especially since during the tour, we were privileged with a screening of a Buster Keaton short….definitely the true genius of the Silent Film era.

A couple links:

Casino Ballroom: avalonball.com

Avalon Theater: View link

I sat in the seats last weekend and they are very comfortable and new feeling. I’m sure they replaced the original seats with these at some point and put fewer than original to accommodate the continuously expanding exteriors of the American public. They did a really nice job because the sides of the seats look original, at least on the aisle.

Isn’t that the address listed?

Here’s an article about the opening of this theater from the LA Times:

(Feb. 24, 1929)
DANCE HALL NEARS COMPLETION
Grand Opening of Amusement Center Set for June 1
AVALON (Catalina Island) Feb. 23.-The $1,000,000 theater and dance palace under construction by William Wrigley, Jr., scheduled to open June 1, has so increased in cost that it now has passed the $2,000,000 mark. Steam shovels this week are making the immense building visible from the sea by leveling a cliff which now hides it. The granite composing the cliff is being hauled out to a submerged reef several hundred yards distant.
The Catalina theater building is of circular typed of enormous size. A total of 10,000 sacks of cement was required for the concrete work; 1500 tons of structural steel for 28,222 separate pieces for braces; 422 tons of reinforcing steel and 25,000 yards of sand and rock for the foundations. The roof requires 105,000 Catalina red curved tile.
The theater auditorium, on the main floor, is 115 feet in diameter. The full dome ceiling is forty-five feet high and the theater will seat 2500 persons.
The ballroom on the floor above is said to be the largest in America. It is 18,000 square feet in area and large enough to accommodate 5000 persons. The floor is laid on floating cork and felt. There are o supporting pillars on either the dance floor or theater auditorium, for the building is braced horizontally and vertically, involving new engineering principles. An indirect lighting system will be used.
Gabriel Beckman, mural artist, is in charge of decorating nine panels depicting a sequence of submarine scenes.
Webber & Spaulding, Los Angeles architects, designed the building. Tom White, lessee, will operate the theater. He has charge of the opening, June. 1.

I agree. If you’re spending the fifty bucks to go to the island, you probably aren’t going to spend the afternoon inside watching Spiderman 8.

Amazing to see a huge auditorium like that still intact in 2008. Everywhere I’ve worked, that would have been carved up into 4 or 6 screens by now. Truly a gem.

And I consider it wonderful that the U.S. still has a theater as well run as this within its boundaries. For in the age America has entered into now it is a true rarity. So by all means, cherish it for all it’s worth, and don’t take it for granted.

Oh there’s no doubt the folks of Catalina Island are good people. It’s just that so much of the rest of the U.S. has forgotten that it’s supposed to be great, too. Right now it’s all turned inside out from what it’s supposed to be. But then again, what do I mean by “right now”? For it’s been that way since the 1970s. Too much emphasis on people while everyone’s forgotten that the land’s supposed to be the ultimate star. Next, the buildings and other infrastructure built in homage to that land. And then maybe, maybe, some of the people if they’re truly worthy. But right now we’ve got so much land across the U.S. that once was beautiful but is no more, nonstop urban sprawl in place of once great architecture and other wise planning, and people seated atop that hideous, man-created crown in me! me! me! fashion who we’re praising when we should be cursing, people now heading towards their cushy retirements as if they actually deserve them. It’s what I call the “You blew it” generation in need of a serious makeover of becoming the “give it all back” generation. If nature had her ultimate say I wonder what kind of retirement she would give them? The finale of the 1950s movie “War of the Worlds” comes to mind…