Numerous newspaper articles had repeated the erroneous story that the theater’s origins went back to 1947. Fortunately, the growth of the Internet and the online proliferation of newspaper databases, and old movie magazines, (not to mention that the SBHRF had managed to obtain copies of the Post & Waves from the 1940s) allowed researchers to determine that the theater was began construction in April1945 and opened for business that November, on Thanksgiving Day 1945.
The theater’s beginnings actually go back to July 1944. W.C. Woodruff, who built the Belmont Theater on Second Street in Belmont Shore, had made a down payment for two lots at 208 Main Street, across from the old post office where he would construct a 700-seat theater. As the nation was still on a wartime basis, the main obstacle would be getting permission to build the structure from the War Priorities Board. It turned out that Woodruff was a front for Oscar C. Johnson, a “Los Angeles County theater operator” who also had interest in theaters in Huntington Beach and Santa Ana. In October. Johnson announced he had completed a deal to purchase the building at 208 Main Street from Mrs. H. Melchior. It would be for a movie theater “and work will get underway soon.”
Johnson was no doubt aware of the Navy’s early 1944 acquisition of Anaheim Landing for its new Net and Weapons Depot. This would not only bring over a thousand enlisted sailors to the town, but also an equal number of civilians workers and hundreds more who would occupy service jobs (banks, groceries, lawyers, merchants, etc). Many of these newcomers also brought their families. All were potential customers for the new theater. Before this, Seal Beach folks had to go to the Surf Theater in Huntington Beach, the Belmont Theatre in Naples or to theaters in downtown Long Beach.
The town’s weekly newspaper, the Post & Wave, noted the town’s increased business activity. A syndicate of San Bernadino men wanted land to build a new hotel on 101 (as PCH was called then). A group of builders, who said they had access to building materials, sought vainly for oceanfront property on which to build. Phillip C. Norton, the Los Angeles realtor who had bought all the vacant unsold former Bayside Land Company properties in 1938 had sold many of the properties in 1943 for just over $3,000. After the Navy announcement he couldn’t buy them back for over $6,000. The town was growing and new merchants and businessmen wanted in on the action.
But a war was still happening and building materials were still hard to come by unless one had received a priority rating from the government. When Johnson got his in October1944 he excitedly passed on the word to the Seal Beach Council that once he completed his purchase he would begin construction,. He had already arranged for architect Francis H. Gentry to prepare plans to extend the building at 208 Main to the end of the lot which would provide room for 700 seats. Johnson said he would get movies only 30 days after their main release, which would be comparable to the average Long Beach release.
One hitch remained. The Belmont Van and Storage Company had 18 months remaining on lease of the building and had no plans to relinquish it. But then the City informed the company they were violating code –Main Street, then as now, was reserved for retail operations only; storage was a no-no. Johnson hoped a resolution could be worked out quickly as his priority approval from the War Productions Board was only good through March. But then suddenly in February 1944 Glide’er Inn owner Jimmy Arnerich announced he had purchased the building from Johnson, and ran an ad saying he would be entertaining offers from multiple theater owners and a bowling alley. As he had in the past, Arnerich was no doubt acting as a front for Post & Wave’s new owner, William L. Robertson who would gain notoriety as the last of Seal Beach’s Gambling Czars. After a couple months Robertson would move his Post & Wave office from 221 Main to 208 Main where it would stay for the next 20 years, until he would lease it out to Bank of America.
Johnson sold the 208 Main parcel because he had a better option. The 208 Main location would require additional money to buy out the remaining lease and add size to the existing building. He was approached by former Mayor W.D. Gauntner, who had very recently resigned as a Mayor and Councilmember (saying in his final meeting, “It’s been swell, boys. I’ll see you around.”) He told Johnson he could buy a vacant lot on the 300 block and start building immediately. Gaunter himself was already in plans to build a block of stores on the Northeast corner of Main and Electric (now Bistro St. Germaine, the Abbey and Dance Around the Clock), and thought a theater just to the North would help his businesses. He arranged for realtor Phillip C. Norton (who had optioned most of the vacant Bayside Land Company properties in 1938) to sell Johnson two vacant lots just north of Gauntner’s properties. They must have met the March deadline, because Johnson’s group broke dirt on April 24, 1945, even though the city said they hadn’t pulled a permit.
That apparently happened soon after as the Post & Wave dutifully reported that construction was moving swiftly and by early July it became the first three story in Seal Beach.[1]
The theater’s ground-breaking and start of construction, combined with the surrender of Germany in late May, ignited or signaled a flurry of business activity in the town. Within weeks, new projects were announced on vacant lots; owners of occupied lots announced improvements. Business owners announced expansion. In early November, the city announced that after a two year battle, they would receive over $500,000 from the Navy as compensation for the Anaheim Bay condemnation, and would use it to retire city debt and commence a number of street repairs and upgrades.[2]
Larry Sheehan held a grand opening of his new service station at 13th and Coast Highway. The Chamber of Commerce, which like most Chambers had suspended operations during the first three years of the war, was reorganizing and already planning a new brochure and postcards promoting the town’s growth. The Lions Club announced plans for their very first Fish Fry to be held Wednesday, August 15 from 6pm to 7pm in the Sunroom by the Pier, with food prepared by the chefs at Sam’s Sea Food. A week later the Lions announced the event would now be on August 22 and the hours increased from 6pm to 7:30pm. Before that date arrived, the war officially ended with the Japanese surrender on August 17, and the time restrictions on public events like the Fish Fry were lifted.
In early September ex-mayor Gauntner formally pulled the building permits for his new business block which would host a new drug store run by Jerry Brockman, a post office, a shoe store and more. A special census showed the city’s population had doubled from 1553 in 1940 to 3200 in early 1945. (It would reach 3600 by late summer.) Larry Sheehan announced plans to add a restaurant adjacent to his gas station. A few weeks later his new restaurant building would also be home to a new appliance shop which open by November18.
By October 1, Johnson announced the theater would open the first of November. Seal Van Sickle was busy painting murals with marine motifs on the interior walls. Due to illness, Van Sickle progressed slower than wished, but a few weeks later Johnson noted construction was moving along swiftly and the theater would not only be open by mid-November, but Johnson also promised that late release movies would be secured and changed three times a week.
As the theater neared completion, Gauntner’s new tenants rushed to be ready to open at the same time. Jerry Brockman already had signs up for his new Brock’s Drugs at Main and Electric and was rushing to stock shelves before its December 12 grand opening. William Stiller’s new shoe store would open Dec 15 at 304 Main (where the Abbey is located). Next to the alley at 308 Main, was the new Post Office which had twice the space of its previous location. Gauntner himself would operate the new Seal Beach Appliance Shop, and he also had purchased land just north of the theater to be occupied by a new “super-market.” [3]
Gauntner had also hired long time local contractor Frank Curtis to construct a new building at 117 Main (now Thai on Main) which would be occupied by the B&B malt-Burger Shop. They would be in direct competition with the Park View Burger Shop a8 829 Ocean which had just completed two months of repairs and sprucing up. , Art Lescher and Myrt Stockton secured the franchise to run a fishing concession at the end of the pier. Rumors were awash that the town would soon get a bank and a stoplight. More concrete were the reports that longtime pharmacist Leo Benno and his son-in-law John Johnson had purchased the parcels at the southeast corner of Main and central and would open a supermarket. (This would become John’s Market). Across the street, local realtor Fred Gump announced he would tear down his current office at 135 Main to construct a new office that would be four times the size of his current one. [4]
Also opening up across the street from the theater at 327 Main was the brand-new Seal Billiard Parlor operated by Fred Thomas, only two weeks released from the Army Air Cops after three years duty, most recently in England.[5]
But the lead story in almost every Post & Wave was the latest on the theater construction. In mid-November Johnson announced that plush red seats from Haywood-Wakefield had arrived and been installed, as had the Western Electric Microphonic Sound System. The decoration of the interior marine murals would be finished by opening day which Johnson now announced would be Thanksgiving Day, with a matinee beginning at 1 p.m. In anticipation, the city allowed Johnson to remove a light pole directly in front of the theater, and also announced that banners of flags would be strung across the streets. The Lions announced they paid for a bike rack to be located in front of the theatre.
The Post & Wave, normally an 8-page newspaper that published every Friday, expanded to 16 pages and came out on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with a two—page double truck of congratulatory ads from the businesses and town leaders. . “Varicolored bunting has flown across Main Street all week.” The town council approved removal of a light pole in front of the theater and a red no parking zone. Johnson noted that not everything would be finished. A marquee would not arrive and be installed for a few weeks. But there were still plenty of neon lights to light up the surrounding area.
Ticket prices were 50 cents for adults, juniors (12-16) and servicemen would be charged 35 cents, and “kiddies up to 12 years old” only 14 cents. All prices included tax.”
The opening films were a double bill: Out of this World starring Eddie Bracken, Veronica Lake and Diana Lynn and “The Phantom of 42nd Street” with Kay Aldridge, Alan Mowbray and Frank Jenks.
By all accounts the opening weekend went well. And it signaled the beginning of a slew of local milestones. The base celebrated its first birthday of its official opening, Jerry Brockman’s opened his new Brock’s Drugs, the Post Office to its new location by Brocks at 308 Main, and on Dec. 6, the City Council announced that with the Navy now allowing use of the pier, it had granted the pier concession to Art Lescher and C.M. Stockton.
Perhaps biggest of all, was the news that the state would approve the city’s first traffic signal – to be placed at the intersection of the Coast Highway and Main.
The Bay continued to rotate its films three times a week, bicycling films with other independent theatres in the area. But after a Wednesday, May 29 double-bill of “1001 Nights” (a year old film starring Evelyn Keyes, Cornel Wilde, and Phil Silvers) and “The Men in Her Life” (a 1941 re-release starring Loretta Young), questions began to arise. Advertising in all newspapers stopped. The Bay stayed open, but two weeks later the city released its default tax list for fiscal 1945-46, and it was learned that Johnson had not paid his taxes and four of his lots, including those with The Bay, would be taken by the the city if the taxes were not paid. Johnson ran his last film on June 19, and announced he had sold the theater to the giant Fox West Coast Theatres chain.[6]
Fox West Coast theaters was technically owned by National Theaters and run by Charles Skouras. Charles and his brothers, Spyros, and George, had emigrated to America from Greece in 1910. Starting in St. Louis, they built up a chain of theaters but went bankrupt in the Depression. George became an executive with Paramount, but Spyros and Charles engineered the merger of the struggling 20th Century Productions and the Fox Theaters circuit to form 20th-Century Fox Pictures. Spyros oversaw the studio operations and Charles oversaw the growing theater chain. In 1946 he would be the highest paid executive in America.
Fox immediately shut down the theater on June 20 for modifications and upgrades on the theater’s equipment, fixtures and amenities, many in the company’s trademark art moderne style.
and reopened it 27 days later on Wednesday, July 17, with new curtains, new flooring, upgraded projectors, a new RCA sound system, a new ticket booth, and new and better fixtures and upgraded paint job, much of it using the art moderne style often used by Fox West Coast. The first double bill under the new management was “Sentimental Journey” starring John Payne, Maureen O’Hara, and Miss Susie Slagles with Sonny Tufts and Veronica Lake. Both films had only ben released a couple months before. But the ticket prices remained the same. Tickets were 50 cents for adults, 35 cents for juniors and servicemen, and children paid 14 cents. All prices included taxes. Two days later they ran the Hope-Crosby “Road to Utopia” and for the kids they offered “The Belle of Rosarita” starring Roy Rogers and Trigger (honest, the horse got a billing over Dale Evans and Gabby Hayes.)
For the next decade the theatre continued the booking policy of three double bills a week, but they added special Saturday matinees for kids, beginning with a Hop Harrigan serial. But the growth of television in he 1950s cut into the attendance, especially during the weekdays. In 1957, as the area’s population grew, manager Ken Cobb started booking foreign and arthouse showings on Tuesday thru Thursday, presenting them under a very popular “Curtain at 8” brand. Cobb’s programming featured an eclectic mix of art, British comedies, silent movies, overlooked Hollywood classics, and foreign language films from Fellini, Truffaut, Kurosawa and new wave filmmakers from France, Italy and Japan. The theater even rented the facility out as a four-wall operation for independent surfing and skiing films and even live televised events on a big screen like boxing or Broadway shows like “Give ‘em Hell Harry” and its mailing list numbered in the thousands of film biffs across Southern California.
The Bay Theater’s offerings played a big part in earning Seal Beach a reputation as an artist’s colony, along with the Seal Beach Artists’ league and the popular coffee shops, Rouge et nois which later became Cosmos. The Bay’s programming became very popular with movie buffs, and students from Long Beach State, including future director Steven Spielberg who referred to it as one of his favorite theaters.
Unfortunately about this time, the US Government was completing its efforts to break up the distribution monopoly of the large Hollywood studios. Commonly called the Paramount Consent Decree because that studio was the biggest in 1938 when the government first filed suit, it ultimately took 13 years to complete, but by 1951 the large studios had agreed to break up their operations. At that time, Fox West Coast owned 551 theaters. Six years later they would be reduced by half, separated from Twentieth Century-Fox productions, and the new company m renamed National Theaters and Television. In addition, Charles Skouras had passed away, leading to a series of leaders, some uninspired, others completely awful.
In 1960 and on the brink of bankruptcy, National General was taken over by an investor, Eugene Klein, a car dealership owner and the future owner of the San Diego Chargers. Klein returned the company to profitability, but mainly through diversification in cable TV, casualty insurance, and saving and loans institutions. In 1972 National General, now containing just containing 240 theaters, was taken over by American Financial Corporation which within a year divested the movie chain to Ted Mann and his Mann Theatres for $6.75 million.
Although gaining notoriety for “modernizing” many of National General’s classic cinemas, Mann’s business moves turned a formerly dying chain into a viable competitor of multiplexes within a few years. But the Bay’s location was not conducive to a multiplex operation, so in 1975 Mann sold the Bay to Richard Loderhose, a successful New York businessman in his family’s adhesives and packaging business. The company’s success gave him the funds for his avocation – theater organs, including a Wurlitzer organ that once graced the New York Paramount Theatre Recording Studio near Times Square. Loderhose acquired it in the early 1960s and installed it in his home studio in Jamaica Estates, N.Y. In 1987 Loderhose had the organ shipped across the country and installed at the Bay Theater. Unfortunately, to make room for the huge Wurlitzer, many of the Bay’s seats had to be removed, trimming capacity from the Bay’s original 683 to 425.
The rise of videotapes, and old movies on cable TV, had diluted the audience for both mainstream and art film markets, so the next twenty years were overall unremarkable. But Loderhose didn’t care. He had a wonderful location for his beloved Wurlitzer. Not onloy was it used during silent movies, Loderhose himself occasionally performed organ concerts.
In 2007, shortly before her father’s death, Loderhose’s daughter, Rena Firestone, announced that “after a year of searching and negotiating,” the family was gifting the organ to the Beatitudes Campus, a 700-resident retirement village in Phoenix, Arizona, sponsored by the United Church of Christ. The Wurlitzer would be played for church services, and dinner music for the dining room, Sunday Tea Dances, and silent films. Before it was packed away and shipped, the Loderhose family hosted a “Farewell to the Bay Theatre Wurlitzer” Concert on June 23rd, 2007.
Upon Loderhose’s death in 2008, his heirs put the theater up for sale but it sat without a buyer for years and formally closed in 2012.
For the next three years it sat unused. Some city officials assumed the property was too expensive for such limited use as a movie theater. “I suppose whoever buys it will end up tearing it down and building retail stores,” said Charles Antos, a former Mayor and planning commissioner. Aghast at this possibility a grass roots effort, the Bay Theater Foundation, was started by a local barista, and it got a lot of attention and public support but primarily of the verbal, not financial, variety.
But then Paul Dunlap entered the picture in 2016. He heard about the theater on February 7, came down to look at it, and was in escrow by May with a $2.2 million purchase price in 2016.
At first glance, it would seem Dunlap had little roots or connections with old Seal Beach. He grew up in Bakersfield, before his family moved to la Mirada. His career in real estate began in 1976 in the North Orange area, and he grew from selling homes to eventually managing a portfolio of well-over 10,000, and building up a portfolio of investors who invested in him when he formed Dunlap Properties in 1991.
He also found time to pursue his passion for restoring old buildings. In 1994 he led a syndicate which purchased the old California Hotel in Fullerton. The hotel had been a legendary North Orange County fixture from 1924 to 1955, when it was sold to Joseph Eichenbaum and Ben Weingart.[7] The pair partnered on many projects, best known being the Lakewood Shopping center, the world’s biggest when opened in 1951. When the Cal’s hotel business slowed in 1964, the pair partnered with architect Howard Eichen to convert the three-story hotel into a center of small shops, restaurants and offices. It was successful at first, but when Weingart developed health issues, and the property was sold off. The new owners allowed the property to fall into disrepair and then bankruptcy . This was when Dunlap and his syndicate stepped in and restored the old property to its former glory. He was also part of the effort in Fullerton to save the historic 1925 Fox Theatre.
“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and clearly it’s taking longer than we anticipated,” he said. “But when it’s done, it will be a little jewel box that I think the town and community will really appreciate.”
Dunlap was unaware that his Fullerton work had a Seal Beach connection. Weingart’s Lakewood Park company (with Mark Taper and Lou Boyar) which had built 17,000 homes on over 3,000 acres in Lakewood and East Long Beach from 1950-1954. Soon after that the company bought 178 acres from the Hellman Ranch Company which they subdivided into “The Hill” (Marina Shores, Marina Bay, and the Seal Beach Center). To protect his new Seal Beach investment, Weingart also funded Rear Admiral John McKinney’s newspaper, the Coast Pilot, and his campaign to get rid of gambling on Seal Beach.
To preserve the Bay, Dunlap consulted with the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and found old documents on the re-construction of the Beach/Bay. He also became friends with ____ Skouras, the daughter of Fox West Coat’s Charles Skouras.
Dunlap exalted when he found original pictures of sconces and water fountains, and they did everything they could to make the current furnishings look original.
If nothing else,, Dunlap had to be adaptable. “We had to accommodate modern ADA rules, provide wheelchair access and such, but a result of this was that the front of the theater in effect had to be had to go back to the original look of the Beach – sans ticket booth.
Dunlap’s crew also had to construct a larger stage to accommodate the live music acts he hoped to book, including larger school arts groups. This also entailed a more modern and robust sound system. But this gave more room for the snack bar
Dunlap also purchased a house on 10th Street, just across the back alley, to be used as a Green Room for waiting performers. The house’s strange configuration had him wondering if it had once been one of the many gambling rooms that could be found on and around Main Street. Alas, a quick batch of research showed that the house had been built in the mid 1940s by a man who ran a cabinet shop down below and had a residence upstairs, but it had no connection to Seal Beach’s rowdy gambling past other than that the house’s owner, had once been endorsed for City Council by the town’s Gambling Czar William L. Robertson.
For Dunlap, restoration of The Bay has been a long journey, but when locals get a chance to see the refurbished venue, they will no doubt agree that it has been worth it.
been built numerous newspaper When I was writing
It’s been a much longer journey for Dunlap who purchased the Bay in 1916.
When he was first introduced to the town he was working with a woman who would act as his manager and booker, but that relationship didnlt last long. “We turned out to have different visions over what the theater would be and offer.”
The two Paramount buildings housed sister identical 21-rank organ with two four-manual consoles: a double-bolster main console, and a four-manual skeleton slave console. It’s outstanding acoustics were heard on many radio broadcasts of the 1930s and 1940s.
Eichenbaum was a recently retired Chicago chain store olwner and had just moved to California in 1948, when he met Weingart at the wedding of Eichenbaum’s daughter to the son of another longtime Weingart partner, Louis H. Boyar. Weingart was still putting arranging the financing together the deal, but brought Eichenbaum in to manage asked Weingart to
Eichen A self-proclaimed history buff, Dunlap has restored many historic buildings in Orange County—he revamped the 1920s Villa Del Sol in Fullerton—but a mid-century theater is a first.
[1] “Seal Beach Theater rapidly growing”; Seal Beach Post & Wave, July 13, 1945, p1.
[2] “City Attorney Tells How Seal Bdeach Got Land Fund”; Press-Telegram, Nov. 3, 1945.
[3] Post & Wave, October 26, 1945, p.1
[4] Post & Wave, Nov. 16, 1945.
[5] Ibid.
[6] “Beach Theater is sold to Fox West Coast” Press-Telegram, June 20, 1046, p8; Post & Wave, June 21, 1946, p1
[7] Weingart, one of LA’s richest men, had been the nation’s largest owner and manager of hotels pre World War II (including Long Beach’s Villa Riviera and Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont). He still owned numerous hotels but he had also diversified into insurance, savings and loans, and other forms of land development especially shopping centers and single family homes. From 1945-1960 he was the largest builder of single family homes in America, partnering with numerous well-known builders to construct large tracts in Bixby Knolls, Encino, Westchester, Alhambra, Downey, Norwalk, Culver City, Mar Vista, Hollywood Riviera, Palos Verdes, North Hollywood, Westchester, Panorama City, Mission Hills, and half of the west San Fernando Valley. In 1948 he met Eichenbaum at a wedding, and upon learning that Eichenbaum had just retired after selling one of Chicago’s larger department stores, Weingart asked him to run a new project of his – it would become the Lakewood Center, the largest shopping center in the world when it was built. They would partner on many other projects over the next 15 years.