{"id":203,"date":"2009-06-13T08:59:57","date_gmt":"2009-06-13T08:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/?p=203"},"modified":"2009-06-13T08:59:57","modified_gmt":"2009-06-13T08:59:57","slug":"grand-start-sad-ending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/2009\/06\/13\/grand-start-sad-ending\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Start Sad Ending"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ninety three years ago, Anaheim’s Grand Theatre\u00a0<\/a>opened\u00a0to great fanfare, with\u00a0a sold out showing of “Romona”, that was\u00a0eagerly attended by the county’s top dignitaries and VIPs.\u00a0Being\u00a0one of the first\u00a0Orange County\u00a0theatres built outside of Santa Ana, the June 12, 1916 opening was a source of great pride for the city of Anaheim.\u00a0Yet,\u00a0the Grand’s prestigious\u00a0start\u00a0was a far cry from how this “modern wonder of engineering and beautiful luxury” would spend\u00a0the second half of it’s sixty seven year run.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By the 1950’s, the Grand\u00a0had\u00a0begun a rather dramatic slide from prominence, falling victim to the common challenge of being an\u00a0aging\u00a0attraction in an ever expanding market of “newer”, “bigger”, and “better”. Facing increasing hardship, the Grand was briefly closed in 1955, before being\u00a0reopened, as the Garden Theatre; moving in to the realm of B film booking for the next two decades. In an attempt to stay financially viable, this move also resulted in the theatre\u00a0finding the need to\u00a0keep pace with\u00a0a demand for mature content;\u00a0B schlock gave way to softcore “adults only” films, which ultimately\u00a0resulted in hardcore pornography by the late 70’s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1978, the\u00a0theatre was\u00a0added to the Pussycat chain of adult cinemas and renamed the Pussycat Garden. While only staying open for\u00a0another four years, the venue became notorious for both the pornographic films being shown and a series of legal battles between the City of Anaheim and the theatre’s\u00a0controversial operators.\u00a0In 1983, the city finally managed to shutter the theatre, via condemnation powers, razing the site for newly zoned housing usage. The legal battles continued until the Summer of 1986, when Anaheim managed to reach an out of court\u00a0settlement with Pussycat for $800,000 (the chain had previously demanded $1.2 million). The\u00a0one time\u00a0“pride\u00a0of Anaheim” was paid to simply go away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ninety three years ago, Anaheim’s Grand Theatre\u00a0opened\u00a0to great fanfare, with\u00a0a sold out showing of “Romona”, that was\u00a0eagerly attended by the county’s top dignitaries and VIPs.\u00a0Being\u00a0one of the first\u00a0Orange County\u00a0theatres built outside of Santa Ana, the June 12, 1916 opening was a source of great pride for the city of Anaheim.\u00a0Yet,\u00a0the Grand’s prestigious\u00a0start\u00a0was a far cry […]<\/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-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","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=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}