Pasadena Photoplay Theatre
28 E. Colorado Boulevard,
Pasadena,
CA
91101
28 E. Colorado Boulevard,
Pasadena,
CA
91101
2 people
favorited this theater
Showing 5 comments
Andrew, the Fox Pasadena Theatre opened around 1910 as Clune’s Pasadena Theatre. It was called simply the Pasadena Theatre during the 1920s. William Fox didn’t take over the West Coast Theatres circuit until the very late 1920s. That was probably the house in which the organ was installed.
“The Encyclopedia of the American Theatre Organ” by David L. Junchen, page 628, lists a “Pasadena Theatre” in Pasadena, California, as having a three manual Smith theatre pipe organ.
No other details, such as # of ranks or installation date, are given.
I could not find a “Pasadena Theatre” listed on this site right now (April 2014) but this has a fairly close name. However, according to Lost Memory, this “Pasadena Photoplay Theatre” apparently had only about 350 seats, and most three-manual theatre organs had at least ten ranks.
The largest known Smith organs were both 4 manuals and 16 ranks, so that this organ in question was probably between 10 and 14 ranks, or so.
This is quite large for a little 350-seat theatre, since most theatres of this size either had a photoplayer (such as those made by American Photo Player Co, or Wurlitzer) or simply a person playing the piano, or, if an organ, nothing larger than about six or seven ranks (and thus, two manuals). Thus, I think it is unlikely this is the same theatre mentioned in the book.
Does anybody know more about this instrument, or a larger “Pasadena Theatre?” in Pasadena?
Thanks!
Here is a photo of Warner’s Photoplay Theatre. The correct opening year was 1914, not 1915 as I wrote in the introduction.
An LA Times article on 1/12/27 noted an explosion and fire at the Pasadena Photoplay. The explosion blew the theater’s metal front doors off of their hinges.
Henry Warner’s later and larger Pasadena house, the Warner Egyptian Theatre, is listed at Cinema Treasures under the name it had been using for decades by the time it showed its last movie in 1986, the Uptown Theatre.