Arvin Theatre
Arvin,
CA
93203
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By the time the Rancho Theatre was being built in 1949, the Arvin Theatre was operated by James Banducci, according to an item in Boxoffice of January 15, 1949. At that time the new house that opened later in 1949 as the Rancho Theatre was to be called the Arvin, and the Boxoffice item about the proposed $175,000 house said that Banducci was “…owner of the River Theatre in Bakersfield and the present Arvin Theatre.”
The second paragraph of the current description is thus erroneous. The rebuilt Arvin opened in late 1939 or early 1940, as noted in the Boxoffice item cited by Michael Kilgore in the previous comment. The attribution to the architects is probably wrong also, as sources indicate that Clifford Balch was responsible for the original 1937 design and the 1939 rebuilding of the Arvin Theatre. William Balch and Louis Bryan did design the Rancho Theatre, opened in 1949.
Boxoffice, Jan. 6, 1940: “Dick Lemucchi has opened the Arvin, a 650-seat house, on the site of a theatre burned to the ground some time ago.”
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