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While movie theatres have existed in Orange County for slightly over one hundred years, the first public screening of a motion picture in the county dates back to June 25, 1897. Held in the upstairs “opera house”, of Santa Ana’s 2nd Spurgeon Building, the film presented was the, March 1897, James J. Corbett vs. Bob Fitzsimmons heavyweight title fight. […]

Opened in the Fall of 1972, at a cost of $30 million, the Laguna Hills Mall has served southern Orange County for the better part of four decades. While originally built without a cinema, deferring business to the near bye Saddleback 1-2-3, a theatre was later added, as part of an early 80’s remodel. This theatre, which is about as non […]

  Be it the result of a theatre’s lackluster later years tainting memories or an “out with the old, in with the new” mentality, many, formerly popular, cinemas fade from the public’s collective consciousness soon after closing. Then, one finds a theatre, like Anaheim’s Century 21, which never managed to enter this public awareness in the first place. Opened in June […]

  Pictured below is a close up of an Automaticket machine. Evolving from being gear and lever driven, to powered by electric motors, these ticketing machines served as somewhat of an industry standard for over eighty years (if you have ever received a carnival/raffle style ticket, at a theatre, it was likely distributed via an Automaticket machine). […]

While disruptive children are often portrayed as a modern hassle of movie going, this problematic issue has likely been around as long as parents have been taking children to the movies. These days, the problem is generally taken for granted or occasionally addressed through alternative admissions programs (21 and over only, “mommy Mondays”, etc.). However, there was once a rather simplistic answer to this […]

Demonstrating how swiftly the tides of notoriety shift with cinemas, we have Cinema Viejo. Opened in 1970, as the area’s fist movie theatre and one of the only modern cinemas south of Newport Beach, Cinema Viejo was, for a time, a heavily cited selling point in literature for the, then new, community of Mission Viejo. .   Twinned and renamed the […]

Pictured below is a 1951 photo of Buena Park’s Valuskis Theatre (once known as the Grand); a venue with a sorted history that included one of the darkest moments in Orange County cinema. .   On May 19, 1951, a ten year old girl, Patty Jean Hull, was abducted from the theatre and murdered by a convicted sex […]

Following up on the Brookhurst post the other day, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a closer look at the Brookhurst Loge.   Opened on February 18, 1970, with a screening of “Oliver!”, the Loge was intended as a luxury, “adults only”, option for patrons of the Brookhurst Theatre. The theatre featured a small, level auditorium (i.e. […]

Conventional theatre lore has generally hailed Santa Ana’s Temple theatre as the first cinema in Orange County, having opened in 1909. However, I recently stumbled across a picture that suggests the first movie theater in Orange County was possibly opened a few years earlier and at a different site all together. The Santa Ana Theatre (alternatively billed as […]

We here at Cinelog wish you all a happy new year. May you have fond memories of the year that was and make some wondeful new ones in the year to come. Pictured above is a view of the South Coast Plaza Theatre’s auditorium (circa 1969). The former Fox West Coast venue was later twined by Mann Theatres […]