{"id":133,"date":"2009-03-17T11:29:02","date_gmt":"2009-03-17T11:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/?p=133"},"modified":"2009-03-17T11:58:02","modified_gmt":"2009-03-17T11:58:02","slug":"the-westwood-of-orange-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/2009\/03\/17\/the-westwood-of-orange-county\/","title":{"rendered":"The Westwood of Orange County"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This past weekend marked anniversaries for both the beginning and\u00a0closing\u00a0chapters to\u00a0one of the more storied\u00a0periods in Orange County movie going. On March 13, 1968, \u00a0Fox West Coast\/National General opened the South Coast Plaza Theatre<\/a>, marking the theoretical start\u00a0to Costa Mesa’s “golden era” of movie going. Forty years later, the same week saw the demolition of the South Coast Plaza cinema complex.<\/div>\n
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Prior to the late 60’s, Orange County\u00a0had\u00a0been relegated to\u00a0somewhat of a B market,\u00a0for film distribution. While the\u00a0Santa Ana area had once been\u00a0host to first run bookings and even a few movie premieres, the county cinema scene had slipped dramatically by the dawn of the second world war.\u00a0Known more for agriculture and bedroom communities, than a thriving entertainment scene, studios had begun to\u00a0view the county as a secondary film market, that was far less sophisticated than it’s northern neighbor.\u00a0While Orange County would receive all the latest titles, booking would come after runs in the “big city” markets.<\/div>\n
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The\u00a0early breakthrough in Orange County’s re emergence, as a moving going powerhouse, came when James Edwards sought to take advantage of the county’s ever growing, yet under served, movie audience. Edwards, who had previously operated a theatre chain in Los Angeles, opened his first Orange County theatre on the corner of Adams and Harbor, in 1963; the modern,1,000 seat, Costa Mesa Cinema. Recognizing the\u00a0potential of\u00a0more lucrative bookings, Edwards\u00a0initiated a practice of guaranteeing box office receipts, in order to\u00a0secure early film releases. The approach proved to be an immediate success and the groundwork for a rejuvenated county cinema scene was in place.<\/div>\n
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Following on the heels of\u00a0the Costa Mesa Cinema’s\u00a0early success, a host of larger operators began to eye the Costa Mesa area and Edwards began expansion plans of his own. This cinema boom officially getting under way with the opening of the South Coast Plaza Theatre. Within a few years, a second\u00a0theatre was added to the South Coast Plaza<\/a>, Edwards opened an\u00a0additional cinema in Costa Mesa, and a string of venues appeared along the Costa Mesa\/Santa Ana border. In turn, the entire county began to see an influx of theatres, overseen by the “Westwood of Orange County”, Costa Mesa.\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
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By the mid 1970’s, studios began to\u00a0consider Costa Mesa the “Westwood of Orange County”, in reference to the area’s\u00a0collection of highly popular theatres and demographically desirable movie going audience.\u00a0No longer viewed as an unsophisticated after market, the former\u00a0open fields of Costa Mesa had given way to a burgeoning movie going hub.\u00a0\u00a0Be it a “sure bet” blockbuster or “want to be” contender,\u00a0the area was coveted\u00a0as a place films simply had to play. And, amid the\u00a0numerous\u00a0theatres that\u00a0dotted the area, the South Coast Plaza stood as the high profile centerpiece;\u00a0the venue’s tower signage\u00a0acting as a proverbial\u00a0movie going beacon. While\u00a0the county box office\u00a0crown would rotate between various theatres over the\u00a0ensuing twenty years, the South Coast Plaza, and it’s landmark tower,\u00a0remained the symbolic capitol \u00a0for\u00a0cinema throughout the era.<\/div>\n
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The\u00a0era\u00a0finally drew to a close by the early 1990’s. While still a popular movie going destination, Costa Mesa had fallen victim to Orange County’s success on a larger scale. Having seen multiplexes spring up throughout the county, Costa Mesa’s aging cinemas no longer had the drawing power of years past. The county had become a movie going hub, as a whole, and Costa Mesa just another city within this\u00a0cinema hot bed.\u00a0Over the decade, each of the\u00a0“Westwood era” cinemas began to slip in to irrelevance and close; the South Coast Plaza shutting down by the new millennium, to make way for the near bye Edwards Metro Pointe 12.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
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After sitting vacant for nearly a decade, the\u00a0centerpiece of this era was\u00a0torn down in March of 2008. Sadly, as the bulldozers and demo crews hacked away at the South Coast Plaza theatre complex, few even noted the passing. The\u00a0“Westwood era” was long forgotten and the South Coast Plaza Theatre was little more than an unwelcome eyesore, buried amidst the glass and steel towers of “progress”. Movie goers had moved on to their local mega-plexes and stadium seating.\u00a0Yet, despite vanishing in relative obscurity, the South Coast Plaza Theatre and it’s long gone peers had\u00a0left a legacy. Today, Orange County exists as one of the country’s top\u00a0grossing film markets,\u00a0all set in motion by the former “Westwood of Orange County”.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 This past weekend marked anniversaries for both the beginning and\u00a0closing\u00a0chapters to\u00a0one of the more storied\u00a0periods in Orange County movie going. On March 13, 1968, \u00a0Fox West Coast\/National General opened the South Coast Plaza Theatre, marking the theoretical start\u00a0to Costa Mesa’s “golden era” of movie going. Forty years later, the same week saw the demolition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}