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San Francisco used to be home to over 40 theaters and a drive-in, but that was 1958. A vintage ad from the time shows us how much we’ve lost.
The announcement below, posted on Twitter last week by TechCrunch editor-in-chief Walter Thompson, brought together almost every movie theater in San Francisco in 1958. We don’t know the exact date, but given that several Bridge over the River Kwai, which was released in the United States in the second week of December 1957 and won the Oscar for Best Picture and was the highest grossing film of the year, it was probably around January or February 58.
We can see a bunch of household names from theaters that we luckily still have around, including Castro, Roxie, Presidio, Vogue, Balboa, 4-Star, and New Mission (now Alamo Drafthouse). Unfortunately, the Empire in West Portal called for a halt during the pandemic, but maybe someone will revive it.
And that’s not even a full list of the era, as even the image above shows a few large, mid-market theaters not shown here, like the Paramount and United Artists theaters.
Many others only exist as shadows of themselves and reused spaces. The Alhambra is a gymnasium, the Harding is now the emporium arcade, El Rey is a church and has been closed for years, and The Strand is now a live theater space that is owned by the American Conservatory Theater.
And we can also see that the porn / adult content that they were allowed to show at the time had already started to creep into the once glitzy row of mid-market theaters – one cinema has just been labeled “Cinema. “at Market and the 6 was playing. “Virgin for Sale” and “Gay Paris Burlesque”, and the Farros theater one block away called “Adults Only” and it was showing “Striptease Girl”. But it’s funny that these theaters are advertising here all the way through all the legitimate theaters!
It should be noted that of the three drive-in drives listed, only the Mission Drive-In was within the city limits – at Crocker-Amazon, on Guttenberg Street next to Mission.
The Drive-In El Rancho I & II, seen here on Cinema Treasures, was in southern San Francisco, and Geneva, as the ad says, was next to Cow Palace.
As SF history buffs know, the middle market was once a lively cinema district, with The Strand being the only real evidence left of this. The Orpheum, Warfield, and Golden Gate Theaters, now used for stage performances, were vaudeville venues during this time.
Top Photo: Nat Farbman / The LIFE Image Collection via Getty Images
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