El Rey Theatre

Cinema22 on August 22, 2017 at 4:44 pm

I saw “Skateboard” at the El Rey in 1978!

Joe Vogel on October 4, 2014 at 8:58 pm

Andrew: I don’t recall having seen an organ console in the El Rey when I attended movies there at least a dozen times in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But then I don’t think I ever attended the El Rey prior to the installation of the CinemaScope screen in 1954. The screen was quite wide, and if the organ hadn’t been removed earlier it was probably taken out when the screen was installed.

The only old house in the San Gabriel Valley that I know for certain still had an organ in the 1960s was the Rialto in South Pasadena. I believe it’s still there, but it hasn’t been used since being damaged in a fire in the 1970s.

davt on March 28, 2013 at 3:46 pm

the El Rey wasn’t demolished until around 1990 if memory serves me correct. I remember the owner exhausted every avenue to try to keep it. Demolishing it was the last resort. I remember they used to have dollar Wednesdays and double Features.

Joe Vogel on August 25, 2010 at 5:36 pm

The marquee Mike and tlsloews admire was installed in the early 1960s, after the Edwards circuit took over operation from Fox West Coast, who had at that time operated the house for well over a decade. Edwards had operated the El Rey for a while earlier, too, under an arrangement with leaseholder Fox.

The 1951 USC photo ken mc linked to above has been moved and is now here. It gives only a glimpse of the side of the older marquee, a boxy, neon affair probably installed in the 1930s. The original, triple-arched entrance of the Temple Theatre, seen in the photo at the top of this page, was long gone by the time I first saw the place.

The architects of the Temple were Walker & Eisen, by the way, as noted in Southwest Builder & Contractor of June 4, 1921. The Temple opened in December, 1921.

TLSLOEWS on August 25, 2010 at 11:46 am

Nice looking Marquee at the ElRay.

kencmcintyre on April 23, 2009 at 8:51 am

Here are photos from 1982 and 1983:
http://tinyurl.com/deulf6
http://tinyurl.com/cjcogg

kencmcintyre on June 26, 2007 at 5:29 pm

This story in the LA Times concerned the possible demolition of the El Rey after the Whittier quake in 1987. Date of the article is 10/8/87:

Plywood covered the hole where plate-glass windows had shattered, there were deep cracks in the walls, and the city Building Department had taped a sign on the door warning the public against entering the Alhambra Shade and Linoleum Co.

But inside, Helen McCann, the 80-year-old owner, was still at work this week, making window shades and fussing about the business she was losing while her customers were locked out because of earthquake damage.

Her store on Main Street should have been inspected and reopened by now, she said Tuesday, but her landlord had not given the city an engineering report on structural damage. In the meantime, McCann said, if she allowed customers in the store, “I’d be scared to death that somebody might get hurt.”

John Jomehri, whose Lovebirds Cafe is a few doors away in the same building, dropped by to commiserate with McCann over lost business and expensive repair bills.

Jomehri said he has had to throw away food, damage to his cafe’s wood and glass amounts to $3,000 and he is losing the revenue he usually gets from 300 customers a day.

Both McCann and Jomehri had hoped to reopen Wednesday, but city building inspectors said they want to take a closer look at the building, which has a deep crack on its east side as a result of Sunday’s aftershock. Jomehri said he was told that he might not be able to reopen until structural repairs were made and that the building might even be demolished.

“If they have to condemn the building, I’ll lose $70,000 to $80,000,” Jomehri said Wednesday. “I’m getting nervous.”

The cafe and linoleum store are just two of dozens of businesses along Main Street that have been closed by the quake and its aftershocks. The city estimated Wednesday that 50 to 80 businesses are shut down either voluntarily or at the direction of the city.

Officials said they do not have accurate figures for the number of residents forced out of their homes, but about 250 residential and commercial buildings and more than 1,000 chimneys were damaged. The total property loss to public and private structures is estimated at more than $20 million.

City Manager Kevin Murphy said most of the commercial damage has occurred to the 600 business and apartment buildings along Main Street and adjoining side streets that were constructed of unreinforced masonry before 1933. Murphy said the city policy has been to require demolition or structural improvements to such buildings only when their use changes in a way that would bring more people into the buildings. He said that in light of the earthquake damage, this policy will be re-evaluated.

Two of the commercial buildings that may face demolition because of quake damage are the El Rey and Alhambra Cinema theaters, both part of the Edwards Theaters chain.

The Alhambra Cinema consists of two theaters joined by a lobby. The larger, 900-seat theater has been partially demolished, and engineers are trying to determine whether they can save the second theater, which is part of a building that has apartments on the second floor and a long-closed bowling alley in the basement.

James Edwards, the 80-year-old founder and chairman of Edwards Theaters, said the Alhambra Cinema was constructed in 1922. He acquired it in 1930, making it the second theater in his chain, which now has 140 screens.

Edwards said such entertainers as Bing Crosby and the Marx Brothers appeared on the stage when the Alhambra theater was part of what was called “the coffee-and-doughnuts circuit, meaning that about all you would get there was coffee and doughnuts and maybe a $10 bill.” He said important vaudeville acts would play outlying theaters such as the Alhambra while they were in between more lucrative engagements in larger cities.

In the 1930s, Edwards said, he staged shows that featured five acts of vaudeville and a movie. In 1937, he said, the Alhambra Cinema became a forerunner to today’s multiplex theaters when it added a second screen.

Edwards, whose office is in Newport Beach, inspected the damage to the theater Saturday. “My wife and I felt like we’ve lost a member of the family,” Edwards said, “It was part of the beginning of our circuit.”

If the Alhambra Cinema is torn down and the El Rey, another former vaudeville house, is demolished, Edwards said they will become the second and third theaters he has lost in Alhambra to earthquakes. The Capri Theater was razed after the Sylmar earthquake in 1971.

In addition to widespread damage to commercial buildings, Alhambra sustained more than $5 million in damage to residences, according to city spokeswoman Judy Feuer. At least one house collapsed, she said, and another sustained heavy damage when a chimney fell through a roof.

Two of the city’s four fire stations have been closed since Thursday’s earthquake, and the city’s headquarters station, although open, suffered some damage. Murphy said one of the fire stations may have to be demolished.

The damage to city property is estimated at $1.5 million.

Other badly damaged structures include five apartment buildings, an auto repair shop and a small hotel.

Joe Vogel on April 27, 2006 at 7:52 pm

Dennis, Cinema Treasures didn’t send me an e-mail notification of your last comment, so I didn’t find out it was here until tonight. I’ve been refreshing my memory of the entries for Alhambra’s theatres so I can ask questions about them of the members of classmates.com’s Alhambra High School contingent (Classmates recently re-opened their message boards to posting by non-paying members of the site.) Although I went to Mark Keppel High School, members can use the boards for any of the schools on the site.

Since my last post, I’ve found a couple of old pictures of Alhambra on the web, and one of them shows the corner of Garfield and Main in the 1920’s. It turns out that the Owl drug store was in the three story building on the northeast corner of Garfield and Main, so the Thrifty must have been in the one story building on the northwest corner. I think I was momentarily confused about their relative positions because the Owl Drug Store at the corner of Fair Oaks and Colorado in Pasadena was on the northwest corner of that intersection.

Also, re-reading my comments above, I don’t think I answered your question about where I lived in those days. It was in the south end of South San Gabriel, almost into Potrero Heights. When the wind was in the south, we could smell the oil wells in the Montebello Hills.

Joe Vogel on January 12, 2006 at 7:26 pm

Dennis, I do recall that the El Rey was the first theatre in Alhambra to get a CinemaScope screen. The very first CinemaScope movie ever released was “The Robe” which was released on September 16th, 1953, but I don’t think the El Rey’s screen was installed early enough to have shown that movie on its initial release. It actually took a couple of years for CinemaScope screens to make their way into a majority of theatres, partly because it took a while for the studios to demonstrate that there would be enough movies in the format to induce theatre owners to make the substantial investment to install new screens and projection equipment.

In the meantime, many movies (including The Robe itself) were released in both CinemaScope and in standard 35mm versions. For a couple of years, theatres which had installed the new system would often find themselves short of new CinemaScope product, and, to fill the gap, would show either non-CinemaScope movies, or earlier CinemaScope releases which the studios kept available especially for that purpose.

Finding out when specific theatres installed CinemaScope would require a bit of research- probably looking through their ads in local newspapers, as a theatre which had installed it would always advertise the fact. For the first couple of years, most theatres with newly-installed CinemaScope systems would inaugurate them by showing “The Robe” for one week. My fuzzy memory of when the El Rey got CinemaScope is complicated by the fact that I think the first wide-screen movie I saw at that particular theatre was the 1960 version of “Cimarron” (being a Fox-West Coast house, the El Rey had highest ticket prices in Alhambra, so we didn’t go there often.)

The reason I think that the El Rey might not have gotten CinemaScope until 1955 is that I believe that the one time we went there before the new screen was installed was to see a re-release of “Gone with the Wind”, and according to the GwtW release dates page at IMDB, that re-release had to have been the one in December of 1954.

I do remember being in the El Rey and seeing the screen surrounded by the framework which was going to be used in the demolition of the proscenium to make room for the new screen. If that happened before the December, 1954 screening of GwtW that we saw there, then I must have gone to the El Rey once before then, but I have no memory of having done so.

Joe Vogel on January 11, 2006 at 2:10 pm

Dennis, I think that the fact that the organ was still in use at the theatre you attended in the 1940’s is interesting. By the time I began attending the theatres in the area, the Rialto in South Pasadena was the only one that still had a working organ, and I never got to hear that one. My first visit to the Rialto wasn’t until a couple of years after a fire on the stage had destroyed the organ console, in the early 1970’s.

It’s possible that the Granada still had an operating organ until it was remodeled and renamed the Coronet, but I’m not sure what year that happened- it was most likely in the mid-late 1940’s, as the remodeling took place before I ever saw the place.

I only went to the El Rey once before it was given a CinemaScope screen, and I don’t remember seeing an organ console at that time. If the organ was still there when CinemaScope was installed (1955, I think), it certainly would have been removed to make way for the wider screen.

There was a three story building on the northeast corner of Garfield and Main. The ground floor of that building was for a long time the location of the Thrifty Drug Store. The building on the northwest corner, with the Owl Rexall store in it, was when I first saw it in the late 1940’s only one story tall. After Owl moved out, it was the location of Lucky Auto Supply for a long time. Both of these buildings have since been demolished. The top two floors of the one on the northeast corner were removed after being damaged by the 1971 earthquake. The remainder was demolished, along with the old Kress building next door to it, just a couple of years ago to make way for an new Edwards multiplex theatre (which is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.)

I don’t recall a stamp shop on Garfield. By the mid 1950’s, the only stamp shop I knew of was on the south side of Main just west of Second, in the same block as Pedrini’s music store. I don’t remember the name of it. Then next nearest stamp store that I knew of was Royal Stamp Supply on Raymond Avenue in Pasadena.

I don’t have a clear memory of the decor in the Bun ‘n’ Burger. We only went there a couple of times, and that was probably after 1955. My dad grew up mostly in Manhattan Beach, and that’s where his favorite hamburger joint was. When he wanted a hamburger, we’d usually hop in the car and drive the twenty or so miles to the beach (on surface streets all the way) to get one. We always lived in South San Gabriel, either near Garvey and San Gabriel Boulevard, or in the hills near Potrero Heights. My frequent jaunts to Alhambra were facilitated by the fact that we always lived within a couple of blocks of one of the local bus lines operated by Foster Transportation. Alhambra was our downtown, and from the earliest times I remember, we went there at least once a week.

Joe Vogel on January 11, 2006 at 1:12 am

Dennis, you saw the theatres in Alhambra before I did. The first time I went to a movie on Main Street was probably about 1953. I lived in the area until 1986, and attended all the theatres you mention except the Ritz.

The Ritz was not in Alhambra, but on Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena, a block north of Mission Street. The Ritz was the first theatre in the area to be closed and demolished. I’m not sure exactly when, but it must have been before 1961 or 1962.

The Rialto was also in South Pasadena, three blocks south of the Ritz, on the other side of the street, at the Corner of Oxley. The Rialto is still there, still open, and still operating as a single screen theatre. It is the only intact survivor among the old theatres in the western San Gabriel Valley.

The El Rey Was the theatre across Main Street from the old main building of Alhambra High School. It was operated by Fox-West Coast in the 1950’s, while the other two theatres on Main Street were both operated by Edwards Theatre Circuit.

The Alhambra Theatre (which is listed at Cinema Treasures under its final name, Alhambra Twin Cinemas) was at the southeast corner of Atlantic Boulevard and Main Street. If you attended it in the early 1940’s, you must have been there at the time The Annex (built in adjacent retail space in 1941) was operating. I don’t remember seeing The Annex in use until it was re-opened as the Gold Cinema sometime about 1970.

The Granada, was the original name of the third theatre on Main Street (and it was probably the oldest), but its name was changed to The Coronet some time before the early 1950’s, and then changed again in the early 1960’s to The Capri. This might be the theatre you’re thinking of, but it was not east of Garfield. It was located in the building on the southeast corner of Second and Main, catty-corner from the old Alhambra City Hall. If I remember correctly, the corner retail space in the building was, when I first saw it, the location of a music store, and then there was a stairway up to the second floor where there was a dance studio, then a small lunch room next to that, and then a tiny jewelery store next to the theatre entrance. I don’t remember what was in the tiny shop on the other side of the theatre entrance. This was the first Main Street theatre to be demolished, after it was badly damaged in the Sylmar earthquake of 1971.

As far back as I can remember, there were no theatres on Main Street east of Garfield. My earliest memories of Main Street go back to about 1948 or 1949, but they only involve the shopping district, not the theatres. I remember, very vaguely, when the Owl Drug Store was on the northwest corner of Garfield and Main. I remember, very clearly, when J.C. Penney moved from its small store where Downer’s was later located to its big new building east of Chapel Avenue. I even recall going in the old J.J. Newberry store, and then seeing it demolished and replaced by W.T. Grant’s new building. But at that time, there were no theatres east of Garfield. It was nothing but shops and a few lunch rooms and, a bit later, a couple of banks.

I do remember the Bun and Burger. In fact, it is one of the places that is listed at L.A. Time Machines, a web site devoted to surviving bars and restaurants (and a few other businesses) which are largely unchanged from decades ago.

Joe Vogel on November 21, 2004 at 4:49 pm

The opening of this theater was announced in the Los Angeles Times issue of 12/25/1921, under the headline “Mr. Temple’s new theater opens in Alhambra.” This was Walter Paul Temple, local landowner and developer, who would later develop Temple City. The paper also announced that the new theater would be leased by a Mr. O.H. Schleusener, who was already the manager of another movie house in Alhambra.

Southwest Builder and Contractor of 6/3/1921 says that architects Walker (Albert Raymond) and Eisen (Percy Augustus) were preparing the plans for the theater. The building was to be 60' by 150' and would have a seating capacity of 800. The estimated cost was $50,000.