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This past year, Corona Del Mar’s long dormant Port Theatre was saved from the wrecking ball and plans were announced for an extensive remodel; promising to re launch the theatre as an upscale, lounge style, cinema. While work on the theatre began almost immediately, it soon became apparent that the building was in need of a […]

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 […]

This past week, a rumor surfaced that Seal Beach’s historic Bay Theatre is up for sale. Built in 1947, this former Fox West Coast Theatre has managed to survive, virtually unchanged, for some sixty-two years. Having focused on art and classic bookings, since the late 1970’s, the Bay has carved out a stable niche in the Orange […]

  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 […]

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 […]

Opened on April 5, 1961, Anaheim’s Brookhurst Theatre was the first Orange County cinema to feature 70mm films and was one of the county’s finer movie going destinations, well in to the 1970’s. At the time of the theatre’s opening, the design was termed “ultra modern” and the amenities were considered a step above other county movie going options. As a result, the […]

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 […]