"For three days only, coming next week..."

Flipping through trade mags, for a movie theater buff, is like a dream come true. Aside from all of the daily gossip between productions, full color trade ads and exhibitor reviews, there are countless photos of new theaters and theater displays. Even as interesting are the "before and after" theater shots that lined articles such as BoxOffice's "The Modern Theater" section, which promoted you, the Exhibitor, change your gaudy, 1920s-style movie palace into a streamlined, art deco masterpiece.

Within these pages are hundreds of ads of popcorn dealers, air conditioning installers, Filmack ads, and general proprietors of theatrical paraphernalia. While flipping through an April, 1949 issue of BoxOffice, this ad caught my eye, and thus, this week's article was born...


Now, I'm an admitted neon freak, and I love theaters, and obviously their marquees, so you can imagine my reaction when seeing this ad for the Wagner Sign Service. It was fantastic-- not only was THIS an ad placed by a major manufacturer of neon marquees, they were showing some samples of their best work!

What killed me, however, was the fact that they didn't list what each of the theaters were. With clues, names and photos in hand, and armed with omnipresent Internet tools such as Google and Cinema Treasures, I went on my quest. Here is what I discovered in a night's worth of research...

Excuse the poor quality images to follow... you'll have to click on these, of course, to get the full picture.

This one was simple enough. A quick search on Cinema Treasures turned this one up quite quickly. The El Monte Drive-In, located at 9700 Lower Azusa Road, El Monte, CA, on the intersection of Lower Azusa and Ellis Lane, was a creation of one S. Charles Lee, who was responsible for some of the nicer theaters in California, including the now-derelict Fox Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.

One source says the drive-in was built in 1948, when the photograph in the ad (and seemingly, all of the photos in the ad) was taken.

As seen to the right, courtesy of UCLA's photo archive, the seating capacity was 791 cars, a fairly decent amount for a down-town drive-in. It seems to have been fairly prosperous in the '50s through the '70s, and made several movie appearances, starting in 1958's ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN. During the '70s, it went to an all-Spanish format, which I imagine in Southern California was a good business choice, based on demographics. Apparently, in 1995, Fred Olen Ray made use of it in his film, BIKINI DRIVE-IN. Interestingly, this short film may have been the last time it was captured in a film. Just a few years later, in 1999, the El Monte was no more, torn down to make way for a Home Depot.

The next photograph was a little bit trickier. I had the name of the theater, but "The Imperial" certainly doesn't say where it's located, and is a somewhat regular name for theaters. It is not, as common a name as the Central, however, and therefore was easy to trace quickly.

This marquee seen belongs to The Imperial Theatre in Cincinnati, OH. Built in 1913, it first served local audiences with family programming. By the 1960s, however, it was turning to more adult fare, ending in 1978 as the Imperial Follies Theatre, running X-rated material, with live burlesque acts in between. The building is now gutted, but the marquee, complete with its neon crown, which made it easy for me to track down, and exterior still remain.


There are hundreds of Rialto theaters in the world-- the name caught on like a wildfire after the New York Rialto first opened its doors. This, my search for this Rialto, seen to the right, was next to impossible, but it was done.

At first, I thought it could have been a Rialto in Texas because of the booth and similar positioning of the one-sheet frames in the front, but the marquee was all wrong.

One by one, I clicked on each listing on Cinema Treasures 150-something results. Fate was kind to me, and I found it early in the list-- the Rialto Theater, located on 2616 S. Calhoun Street in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The 700 seat theater opened its doors in 1924. The theater was augmented by another 300 seats through the addition of a balcony during the 1940s. It was probably around this time that this new marquee was added. The theater saw its good and bad days-- in the early '80s, it was a Spanish movie theater, followed a few years later as a triple-X rated house. It was labeled as a historic landmark in the early '90s, and in 2003, it was taken over by a group called The Reclamation Project, who are apparently in the midst of a restoration of the building. According to them, the original installation organ is still intact, and will be used as part of the theater's revival as a performing arts/urban ministry center.

The Olympic Theater was hard to find, because the listing on CT is of it's recent incarnation, The Washington Center for the Performing Arts. Despite the heavy remodeling the facade has gotten, I'm 75% sure this is the same theater. It opened in 1948, and for sure, this theater is having its grand opening with a 1948 film. If it is the WCPA, the look of the theater has been drastically changed. And, like the previous incarnation as a movie house (which their website doesn't acknowledge, like most PACs), I wonder if the comedies are guaranteed or our laughs refunded.

Does anyone know any more about this one? It would be nice if someone who used to go to this theater could drop me a line and confirm whether or not I'm right or wrong.

Ok, kiddies, here's the mystery photo. No marquee, but from 1948 again, as seen by the re-issue paper for BUCK PRIVATES, and the feature, TEXAS, BROOKLYN AND HEAVEN:

Anyone know?