Embassy Theatre
1125 Market Street,
San Francisco,
CA
94103
1125 Market Street,
San Francisco,
CA
94103
7 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 35 comments
I’m sad to say that my mother, Mary Olivares, the evening box office cashier at the Embassy for many years, passed away at our home in Fairfield, California this week. She was 87.
I finally have had the time to locate and scan the slides I took in August 1976 of Dan McLean on stage spinning the Ten O Win wheel and posted them in the photo section.
Have uploaded photo of account of Rivoli Opera House opening, October 1, 1922. Overview page should be changed to reflect this. Thanks!
Have uploaded photo of account of Rialto opening, May 6, 1916. Overview page should be changed to reflect this.
Embassy again on August 31st, 1933. Another ad posted.
Became Warner Bros. on February 7th, 1931. Another ad posted.
Reopened as Embassy on November 3rd, 1927. Grand opening ad in the photo section.
Grand opening ad as American in the photo section.
I recently bought a scanner and have started going through 55+ years (got my first camera at age 8) of slides and negatives to digitalize. Was surprised to come across several B&W photos I took of the Embassy’s front entrance in March 1977 and have posted 2 of them in the Photos section. Maybe someone knows the lady in the box office? I believe that the ticket taker is manager Dan McLean (who also would spin the 10-0-Win wheel at evening shows).
rds3000: The ticket stub might have been stuck in someone’s pocket for months before being pulled out and dropped into the unfinished wall. It’s an interesting mystery, and a person might make up any number of stories about how the ticket stub got there.
But I doubt that anyone spending $70,000 to remodel a theater would have been so thrifty as to store for several months a few rolls of tickets with the old name on them just to save a few dollars.
We just found a 10 cent ticket stub from the American Theater inside the walls of my house that I’m remodeling in the outer Sunset in SF. The house was build in 1917, so I wonder if they used the old American tickets for a while after it became the Rialto, or what?
Here is an item about renovations from the March 25, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
An article about San Francisco’s movie theaters in the July 15 issue of the same publication had a slightly longer item about the Rialto:From the mid 1940s a photo of the Embassy and Strand Theatres in San Francisco.
I worked at the Embassy Theatre back in 1980-1982 before I moved to Seattle. I was an 18 year old kid living in the streets and the owner took me under his wing and gave me a job. I pretty much took care of everything except ticket sales and projection booth at nights there. I hated leaving but I didn’t like the way San Francisco was changing and I moved to a better city. We played lots of old classics there.Brings back many memories. R.I.P. Embassy Theatre…Mike From Seattle…
No doubt something could be done, but, sadly I doubt if anything will. Much as I dearly love San Francisco, there seems to so little interest in or resources made available there for the preservation of their classic theaters. The City essentially signed the death warrant for the St. Francis theaters last week. It was not that long ago that the Coronet bit the dust. The Clay is on life support. Various projects are threatening the New Mission and the Divisadero. It is really a depressing situation there.
The last two photos are fabulous. Whenever I pass The Strand now, in its delapidated state, it angers me that an icon of the city has been left in this manner… Can nothing be done to resurrect it?
Poor place was doomed from the very start, to bad I’ll bet she was a beauty.
I watched the men tear down this beautiful old theater. It was Evans Brothers Wrecking Company, and they did it with a crane with a clamshell bucket. I also watched as the excavator operator wrapped a cable around the seats in the balcony and pulled the cable and the seats came tumbling down. It was cool to watch. (His name is Mark and he is very cute and delicious to watch him work in the cab of his CAT excavator.)
I also saw the spinning wheel in the pile of debris at the site.
I also remember seeing a beautiful art deco light fixture that hung in the center of the theather. I asked the crane operator Bill if he could save that, and he just looked at me, smiled and said, nah, too tough to get down. One day I went by and that light fixture was gone, probably smashed into the pile of rubble. That was so sad.
In the mid-1980s I was a regular at the Embassy, Strand and St. Francis. There were lots of weirdos every day, which meant the entertainment was both on the screen and in the audience. I consider these three cinema closures to represent the end of an era.
There is a 1979 photo of the Embassy on this site, as well as information about the status of other SF theaters:
http://tinyurl.com/hvod9
I spent a lot of time in the 60s and 70s in here and next door at the Strand.
I never won or came close to winning the Ten-O-Win but can still remember the cries of “Main Floor” as the uniformed girls/women ran down the center aisle to pay people for their winning tickets.
The place was always packed and showed 3 movies for an incredibly cheap price.
George Senda
Concord, Ca
The place was run down, the employees could be a bit crabby & homeless people scattered about sleeping. I wouldn’t have traded it, I remember paying $1 before 11am to see a triple feature & the shorts they played were funny such as the nude sking. :)
Here are two photos from 1929:
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A better view of the theaters on Market Street, from the SF Public Library:
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This photo shows the Embassy on the right and the Fox on the left. If you have good eyes, you may be able to spot the Paramount, the Orpheum and the United Artists theaters as well:
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