Rosemont Theatre

On January 11, 1917, the Los Angeles Times reported manager Slagel of the Rosemont moving picture theater had petitioned the city with 620 signatures to open on Sundays. This prompted a local debate with the churches being against the proposal and other citizens for it. The city attorney was instructed to draft a referendum to be submitted to the electorate but apparently the Times published no follow-up.

The Rosemont Theatre was listed on Sanborn Maps of 1916 at 132 S. Pacific Boulevard and was probably the Rex Theatre listed in the American Motion Picture Directory 1914-1915.

As early as November 1909 the Los Angeles city counsel decided that the matter of Sunday closing or Blue Laws for theatres would not be brought before the electorate. Outlying towns such as Glendale, Glendora, and Pomona where actor Douglas Fairbanks joined a 1921 pro rally, were having their own debates.

In 1921 Exhibitor’s Herald published an endorsement of Sunday openings by a Huntington Park pastor. Add this to a public relations move by movie studios and theater owners who were contributing to “The Little Church on the Corner" fund, which was building small churches in Los Angeles. D.B. Vanderlip of Huntington Park was mentioned in Exhibitors Herald as among 200 owners contributing one day’s receipts to the campaign. In May 1921, by a vote of 665 to 527, Huntington Park eliminated blue laws.

The aforementioned Mr. Vanderlip later managed the Granada Theatre and Inglewood Theatre, both in Inglewood and the Hawthorne Theatre. He was also associated with the Venice Investment Company, a developmental arm of West Coast Theatres.

The Rosemont Theatre, according to Moving Picture World in 1917, was remodeled and increased in size and when it reopened on December 25, 1917 it was referred to as the Huntington Theatre. It probably closed around the time the newer Huntington Theatre opened about two blocks north in 1921 as the 1924 maps shows the former Rosemont occupied by a hardware store.

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