Opened in 1925 with 1,500 seats and designed by California-based architects Lindley & Selkirk, it was operated by Fox West Coast Theatres. Lindley & Selkirk were best known for designing churches, but two other theatres can be attributed to them. They designed the original Egyptian-style design for the Alexander Theatre in Glendale, and they were the architects of the Glendale Masonic Temple, which includes the Temple Theatre.

The theatre is one of some two hundred that was remodelled in “Skouras style,” a phenomenon that occurred in the late 1930s through the 1950s on the west coast of the United States. It was in recognition of the oversight of the Skouras brothers in their management of several cinema chains. They employed a designer by the name of Carl G. Moeller to render their cinemas in a new style best described as ‘Art Moderne meets Streamlined.’ The new availability of aluminium sheeting at low cost was the principal material difference to this style allowing for sweeping, 3- dimensional shapes of scrolls to adorn walls and facades in an expression that would have been much more expensive and not at all the same in plaster. With the use of hand tinted and etched aluminium forms, the designers could make ornaments in mass production that allowed much greater economies of scale.

California Theater was divided into three screens in 1976. It closed in 2006 and the ground floor was divided into several retail spaces as the upper floor went unused.


Editions available:

95 x 120 cm, edition of 9 plus 2APs
#1/9 available

150 x 190 cm, edition of 6 plus 2 APs
#1/6 available