UA Tanforan 4 Cinemas

For a 10 year old, the best part about this theater was entering the mall and taking the escalator down to the lobby. I loved looking down into the lobby from the mall. I remember seeing “Time After Time”, “Rocky II”, and “Flash Gordon”. I remember my brother leaving his brand new jacket in one of the theaters and he didn’t tell anyone until we got home. My dad was pretty mad, we had to drive all the way back from the Sunset. I will never forget the image of theater worker lifting the jacket from the lost and found bin. Everyone was relieved.

The entrance to the Edward’s Westminster Mall Cinemas in Westminster, CA looked similar to the box office/entrance area of Tanforan. Both built by UA, but the only two I’ve seen that looked so similar.

You can see a little of the big green number 4 in this picture: http://www.cinematour.com/picview.php?db=us&id=59800

I am 99% sure this theatre opened in 1975. I recall shopping at Tanforan during Christmas 1974 and looking down from the mezzanine above at the partially completed theater and thinking it looked abandoned. Several years later when it was closed – it looked more beat up, but also looked abandoned, and then it was removed. I saw a lot of movies in this place before it closed.

The UA Tanforan 4 Cinemas opened at the Tanforan Park Mall in San Bruno, California circa 1970. During the 70s and early 80s, the theatre was often United Artists' highest grossing venue in Northern California. The cinemas consisted of 4 auditoriums on the lower level of the mall, accessed by escalators behind the box office on the main level of the mall adjacent to the west parking lot entrance. The lobby of the theatre was open to the upper level and mall skylight. The largest of the 4 auditoriums (#3) featured approximately 600 seats and was utilized for the larger blockbuster releases. Above the door of each auditorium was a reader board with the film title and a large, colored, plastic numeral denoting the auditorium number. The booth had Christie projectors and utilized a platter system. For its time, it was a spacious, modern and comfortable cinema with decent sound and projection, though only auditorium #3 featured stereo sound. The space formerly occupied by the cinemas is today the lower level of the Barnes and Noble book store.

It did not always book first run; in its last years, it was known as the Tanforan Discount Cinemas, and I think it became an independent.