Address: 710 Macdonald Avenue, Richmond CA 94801
Architect (1952 Remodel): Carl G. Moeller
Date Opened (as Costa): January 29, 1944
Date Re-opened (as New Fox): April 2, 1952
Date Closed: March 28, 1965 (as mainstream FWCT house, later leased for adult films)
Circuit/Owners: Fox West Coast Theatres, United Artists Theatres, United California Theatres, Syufy Enterprises (lessee), Independent Operator (lessee, adult films)
Number of Screens: 1
Number of Seats: 1108 (Costa), 1118 (New Fox)
Current Status: Demolished
The Costa Theatre was the second to last of the movie theaters that opened in Richmond during the World War II years, all of them designed to serve Richmond's rapidly rising population explosion. Richmond's population had quadrupled since the beginning of the war, almost entirely due to migrants from other parts of the country who came to California to work in the defense manufacturing industry. In Richmond's case that was primarily at the Kaiser Shipyards which was building the Liberty (cargo) ships at an amazingly rapid pace with the help of tens of thousands of mostly newly arrived workers.
Fox West Coast Theatres opened the Costa Theatre at 710 Macdonald Avenue on January 29, 1944 with a double feature from Paramount, the Technicolor musical "Riding High" and the drama "Hostages". The other Fox West Coast houses in Richmond at the time were the Fox (former the T & D and California), the State (formerly the Richmond) and the Liberty. The Grand at 23rd and Rheem would be purchased from Robert L. Lippert and joining the FWCT family later in 1944. The Costa's opening was apparently without the usual fanfare for a movie theater opening. Only a small news item in the Richmond Independent (left) on opening day announced the event and the Costa's ad was relatively small for a theater opening at only one column wide. There was none of the congratulatory ads from neighboring merchants and construction partners as well as press releases that usually accompanied the openings of local movie theaters. Apparently no grand opening celebration with visiting Hollywood celebrities either. Compare this to the accompanying hoopla when the former Costa reopened as the Fox eight years later (below) to see what the norm was and understand why the Costa's quiet opening was a bit curious.
The Costa's sub par programming hit bottom in July 1946 when these two "B" film turkeys from low budget distributor Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) slipped into town. "Strangler of the Swamp" and "The Flying Serpent' were more suited to the nearby Studio and Rio grindhouses which specialized in low rent fodder like this. Movies don't come too much worse than these two but you have to admit that the one sheet movie posters are alluring. As a boy if this combo had played the Costa a just a couple of years later I would have been first in line at the Saturday matinee! Note that even with the war over the Costa was still open all night...but for not much longer. With the closing of the shipyards in 1945 the decline in attendance for downtown movie theaters had definitely begun.
Midnight horror shows were common at Richmond theaters especially on any Friday the 13th and around Halloween. For some reason the titles of "These Super Chiller-Dillers" was omitted from this ad on Friday August 13, 1948. I'm not sure if the omission was inadvertent or you were just supposed to show up and be surprised. Hopefully they didn't bing back "Strangler of the Swamp" and "The Flying Serpent" for an encore showing! You could of course call the theater to get the titles.
By 1947 the Costa had discontinued it's "open all night" policy and was getting better quality films than they had during the war. One of my boyhood favorites"The Yearling" played the Costa in June 1947. The Costa sometimes shared more popular first run product like 1951's "Captain Horatio Hornblower" with the Grand on 23rd Street. At other times popular films would sometimes moved over to the Grand or Liberty right after their first week's engagement at the Costa.
Due to a monopoly related court decree Richmond's older Fox Theatre (formerly the T & D and California), only a block away from the Costa, had been sold to United Artists Theatres and renamed the United Artists in 1950. Fox West Coast Theatres then wanted to change the name of their new flagship Richmond theater from the Costa to the (New) Fox. After extensive remodeling in a Fox West Coast Theatres favorite decor known as Skouras-Style that name change happened with a grand opening celebration on April 2, 1952.
A full page of hype and advertising in the April 1, 1952 Richmond Independent promoted the New Fox's grand opening on the following day.
"Viva Zapata" with Marlon Brando and Jean Peters and "Hold That Line" with the Bowery Boys was the opening double feature attraction at the New Fox.
The old Costa officially becomes the New Fox with a gala premiere re-opening on April 2, 1952. Among the celebrities in attendance were Robert Wagner, Eileen Christy, Helene Stanley, Robert Allan and cowboy star Rex Allen. Photo from the Jack Tillmany Collection, used with permission.
Interior of the New Fox. Date unknown but sidewall speakers most likely indicate after the installation of CinemaScope and four channel stereophonic sound in late 1953. Photo from the Jack Tillmany Collection, used with permission.
The Fox played a reissue of the original 1933 version of "King Kong" in July 1952. "King Kong" would play the Fox one more time in early 1956, this time accompanied by "I Walked With A Zombie". Shortly after that Kong made his first appearance on television on the ABC Sunday Night Movie. There was more monster fun for us Richmond kids of all ages when the Fox and other Richmond theaters played Realart Pictures double feature reissues of the Universal horror classics. The original versions of "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" advertised above played the Fox at a midnight show in August 1955.
The shape of movie screens was changed forever in 1953 and the third dimension (depth) was temporarily added to the movie going experience for selected films in selected theaters. This wire service article which appeared in the Richmond Independent in February 1953 discusses with more than a little exaggeration what was on the immediate horizon for American movie goers. The rationale behind all of this technological innovation was of course to battle competition from television which by then had become almost a universal appliance in American homes.
Dual projector Polaroid 3-D arrives at the Fox in 1953. I saw this at the Fox and still remember ducking when Fernando Lamas threw a knife at the camera and it looked like it was coming right out of the screen!
CinemaScope was introduced to Richmond audiences at the Fox on Christmas Day 1953. Like 3-D which had been introduced earlier in the year CinemaScope, developed by 20th Century Fox and soon adapted by almost all of the major studios was another attempt to get people away from their TV sets by giving them a visual experience they definitely couldn't get at home on their at best 21 inch black and white TV sets. Using special "anamorphic" camera and projection lenses CinemaScope provided a w-i-d-e aspect ratio for movies, 2:55 to 1 width to height aspect ratio as opposed to the traditional 1:33 to 1 ratio. In addition if theaters would install a mandatory in the beginning but soon optional stereophonic sound system CinemaScope incorporated four separate channels of sound, three behind the screen, one for surround in the auditorium via a magnetic sound strip placed on the film and four channel sound amplifiers. In Richmond only the Fox and the UA opted for the more expensive stereo sound, 'Scope films played with mono sound only in all other area theaters. To make 'Scope films compatible with all theaters the aspect ratio was reduced to 2:35 to 1 to provide an optical sound track in addition to the magnetic stereo one on film prints. CinemaScope wasn't the TV killing miracle the studios hoped for but at least in the beginning it helped get people out of the house more and was highly promoted in newspaper ads, posters and trailers. Using improved technology (Panavision lenses in particular) that same wide aspect ratio stuck though and is still dominant today, even in digital cinema.
Personally I was more than a bit disappointed when I saw "The Robe" and CinemaScope at the Fox. Take a look at the Fox's ad from December 24, 1953 the day before the opening above. "The New Dimensional Photographic Marvel You See Without Glasses!". Talk about hyperbole! "Without Glasses" made me think there would be a stereoscopic (3-D) effect to it. In addition the illustration with the giant enveloping curved screen made me think it would be similar to Cinerama which I'd already seen and been greatly impressed with at San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre. At the Fox the picture was indeed wider although I don't believe there was a curve to the screen at all and definitely no illusion of 3-D. The multi-channel sound was nice but overall, probably because of my inflated expectations my initial verdict on over hyped CinemaScope was "no big deal". It didn't help that I couldn't get too interested in the bloated story line of "The Robe". As a average 13 year old boy at the time I think I would have more excited to watch a repeat of "The Man From Planet X" which I'd seen previously on the Fox's normal sized screen in black and white 2-D
CinemaScope was more impressive at the UA with it's bigger screen and less deep main floor auditorium when it shortly later was introduced with the more teenage boy friendly "Knights of the Round Table" and even more impressive when I saw it at the big movie palaces in Oakland and San Francisco. I soon became a fan of the 'Scope format and other even more impressive wide screen systems, 70mm Todd-AO in particular. As it was with Cinerama we had to go to San Francisco to see Todd-AO's superiority demonstrated in films like "Oklahoma!" and "Around the World in 80 Days" which where shown only at the Coronet.
About the same time CinemaScope was introduced theaters started showing all films in a wide screen format. If they weren't 'Scope they would be cropped in the projector and shown in a ratio of about 1:85 to 1 (width to height) on their wide screens. By late 1953 the Hollywood studios were photographing films to accommodate that projection ratio although older films made before that transition suffered greatly at theaters when they played them with tops and bottoms of the frame cut off on their wide screens.
More CinemaScope at the Fox in 1954 and 1955. By 1955 with "Land of the Pharaohs" CinemaScope's box office appeal had lessened and was promoted far less in advertising. Here it gets only equal mention with the color process, WarnerColor. "Land of the Pharaohs" was one of the better Scope films I saw at the Fox though, quite impressive with its spectacle and great Dimitri Tiomkin score in four track stereo.
There was no CinemaScope or color or stereophonic sound in this double feature combo which showed up at the Fox later on in 1954. Instead it consisted of a couple of black and white cheapies from B film specialists Allied Artists, both made before Hollywood's conversion to widescreen. I remember catching this program at the Fox and to be fair "Riot in Cell Block 11" directed by future "Dirty Harry" director Don Siegel was (and still is) quite good! Second rate programs like this never lasted at the Fox more than a week, some only played a partial week, usually Sunday to Tuesday or Wednesday to Saturday.
Like many of the other Richmond movie theaters the Fox occasionally featured a little adult oriented exploitation to compliment it's mainstream first run and reissue material. The nudist camp drama "Unashamed" which played the Fox in October of 1956 had been floating around adult and regular theaters since 1938 and would continue to do so well into the 1960's. The co-feature "Intimate Relations" was a 1953 British drama. These are type of programs us teenage boys would just love to have seen back then but of course their "Adults Only" status prohibited it. When some us of finally caught up with them as adults years later we found we really hadn't missed very much!
CinemaScope and stereophonic sound and an occasional nudist picture wasn't going to keep the Fox running forever though. At the beginning of 1958 the surprise announcement came that both of
Richmond's remaining downtown theaters, the Fox and UA were immediately
shutting down. I don't recall any reason for the sudden shutdown being
made public in the beginning but I later heard that both lack of
attendance and high labor costs were the reason. With all the theater
closings we'd seen it was not a total shock but still a major
disappointment to us movie fans, young and old alike. That left Richmond
with only two indoor theaters, the flea pit Rio on lower Macdonald Avenue and
my neighborhood theater the Park in El Sobrante. In addition the two drive-ins were still open in
San Pablo as well as the Cerrito which operated weekends only in El Cerrito.
I
thought it was all over for our two main downtown movie theaters but
the Fox re-opened as suddenly as it had closed six months earlier on
Friday June 13, 1958. The UA followed suit and re-opened two months
later on August 15. The TV columnist for the Independent
said that a new contract with the projectionists' union had a lot to do
with the re-openings of both theaters (one man in the booth instead of
the former two?)
but I can't verify that. Anyway it was great for Richmond citizens to
have our two big
downtown first run theaters back up and running again! The Fox's
re-opening program consisted of Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and the
Joel McCrea western "Cattle Empire". The Fox celebrated the occasion by
being open all night Friday and Saturday. possibly the first time a
downtown Richmond movie theater had been open all night since the end of
the war years when the Studio, State and Rio (the Costa too for a while) ran all night to provide
entertainment for around the clock working defense industry employees. I
remember going to this show at the Fox on Saturday afternoon, the day
after the re-opening. It was for me a sad farewell to the Fox, a place
where I'd spent so many pleasant afternoons in the preceding years! As I
was to move from Richmond just a couple weeks later and still a month before
the UA re-opened it was the last also the last time I was ever in any
downtown Richmond movie theater.
Late 1959 night view of 9th and Macdonald Avenue. The Fox is still lit up as downtown Richmond's last remaining first run movie theater. The other first run house the United Artists has closed in September and is in the process of being converted into a Woolworth's variety store. A few blocks beyond the Fox (not visible in this photo) the Macdonald Avenue's only other remaining movie theater, the shabby Rio continues to grind out second run product in an increasingly depressed neighborhood and will ironically outlast every theater on Macdonald Avenue whose numbers totaled eight in their prime only fifteen years earlier.
Although the UA Theatre lasted not much over a year after it's August 1958 re-opening the Fox hung on for nearly seven more years but from what I've heard played movies to a dwindling number of patrons and with increasing problems with some of the more uncivil and disruptive ones among them. Downtown Richmond was definitely becoming a more dangerous place to be, in particular at night. The worst though was yet to come in the latter 1960's and beyond.
Ads for the Fox from the Richmond Independent for various dates 1961 through 1963. Although by then the Fox was the only major movie theater left in downtown Richmond it didn't always get it's films first run. The area drive ins and even the Park in El Sobrante now had more clout with distributors and were able to secure some of the bigger hits first. Thus the Fox played a combination of first and second run product as well as a scattering of reissues like the Walt Disney combo advertised at bottom above.
The Fox was showing the above Peter Sellers Inspector Clouseau reissue combo on New Year's Day 1965 but it's days as as a mainstream movie theater were severely numbered. The lights would go out (on mainstream films at least!) for good in less than three short months.
Not exactly a stellar program to say goodbye to Richmond but this was the last ever mainstream movie program to play the Fox, a rare triple feature at that! "T-Bird Gang" and "Hot Rod Rumble" were from 1959 and "Hot Rod Rumble" was from 1957. This was the type of exploitation schlock material better suited to grind houses like the Rio and drive-ins but by 1965 the Fox was obviously playing just about anything to get paying customers in the door. Still it's sort of a sad farewell to what was once one of the jewels of downtown Richmond. The ad above from the Richmond Independent is from Saturday March 27, 1965. The program ended Sunday March 28 and the Fox closed it's doors as a mainstream theater forever. Only a brief existence as an adult theater some years later and eventual demolition were in it's future.
I wonder if any of the weekend cruisers on Macdonald Avenue (and there were apparently still lots of them in those days!) parked their hot wheels to check out these thee masterpieces of cinema? Hopefully there weren't any "rumbles" in the lobby or auditorium! The newspaper article below mentions that outbreaks of violence by rowdy youths weren't unknown at the Fox during it's final years.
Article from the Richmond Independent from March 29, 1965, the day after the Fox closed. The reporter is obviously confusing this Fox with the former T&D/California/FOX/United Artists on the other side of Macdonald Avenue when he erroneously mentions the August 1, 1931 opening program and the description of the Fox in the following paragraph. This Fox's predecessor at this location the Costa didn't even open until 1944. I did find it interesting that Fox West Coast had sometime earlier sold this Fox to United Artists Theatres and that the merged UA/United California circuit had leased it to Syufy Enterprises for it's final period of mainstream operation. I didn't live in Richmond at the time but I'd always wrongly assumed this Fox being a Fox West Coast house until the very end.
The Fox's closing just warranted a brief mention in the movie theater industry trade publication Box-office magazine's April 26, 1965 issue.
A poster on Cinema Treasures reports finding an ad in an old Berkeley Barb (legendary underground newspaper from the hippie era) dated June 1969 showing that the Fox Richmond was once again open and showing adult films starting at 9:00 AM daily. The ad from the Independent on May 1, 1970 confirms that policy, now with a slightly later starting time. Running porn was how many formerly first class movie theaters throughout America, both downtown and in the neighborhoods, spent their final years.
The Fox Theatre in the early 1970's, over five years since it stopped showing mainstream films. It's possibly still featuring adult films in this picture but the end of the road is near for Macdonald Avenue's last major movie theater!
Today there is residential housing facing Macdonald Avenue between 6th Street and 8th Street. As shown in this image from Google Maps 7th Street no longer goes all the way through from Bissell to Macdonald. The Costa/Fox Theatre was located near the corner of 7th and Macdonald, as shown by the red arrow near top of image.
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