Address: 6500 Fairmount Avenue, El Cerrito CA 94530
Date Opened: October 29, 1948
Date Closed: November 25, 1956
Circuit/Owners: Blumenfeld Theatres, Independent
Number of Screens: 1
Number of Car Spaces: 900
Current Status: Demolished
The El Cerrito Motor Movies is in the final stages of construction in October 1948. Thanks to Stephanie Spinola for posting the three very nice photos above on her Lost Mastheads Facebook page.
Thanks to Jack Tillmany for this photo of the El Cerrito Motor Movies. Date unknown but obviously sometime before the installation of a wide CinemaScope formatted screen in 1954.
The sign and marquee for the El Cerrito Motor Movies can be seen at right at the intersection of San Pablo Avenue and Fairmount Avenue, just inside El Cerrito's city limits on the Albany/El Cerrito border. Fairmount led to the main entrance of the drive in.
Aerial view of the El Cerrito Motor Movies. That's Fairmount Avenue at the bottom of the photo and an unnamed access street leading to the drive-in's entrance at right. The Santa Fe Railroad right of way is on the left and the greenery at the top of the is Cerrito Creek. Thanks to Matt Spero for posting this photo on the Bay Area Historic Theatres Facebook page and an anonymous commenter to this blog for corrected street identification here.
Article from the Oakland Tribune about the upcoming opening of El Cerrito Motor Movies:
"What was once a dog track and later a large trailer court has now become one of the largest drive-in movie theaters on the Pacific Coast. After months of construction, the El Cerrito Motor Movies, at Fairmount Avenue, a block east of San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito will have it's grand opening tomorrow night. The drive-in, which will be operated under direction of Blumenfeld Theaters, will have three changes of programs a week, the change days being Friday, Sunday and Tuesday."
The El Cerrito Motor Movies, the first drive-in theatre in the San Francisco Bay Area opened on October 29, 1948. The ad above ran in the Richmond Independent on opening day.
Twentieth Century Fox's "Green Grass of Wyoming" and Republic's "Lightnin' in the Forest" was the opening double feature attraction at the El Cerrito Motor Movies.
Ads from the Richmond Independent for double feature programs that played at the El Cerrito Motor Movies during July of 1951. On Wednesdays and Sundays an entire carload of patrons was admitted for only $1.00.
Typical ads from the El Cerrito Motor Movies from August and September 1952. These two double feature programs were of the type that did best at the drive-ins in the 1950's, adventures and westerns in Technicolor. Science fiction and light comedies did well too, heavy dramas and musicals not so much!
Like almost every other indoor and outdoor movie theater in the Richmond area during the 1950's the El Cerrito Motor Movies occasionally supplemented it's mainstream movie programming with adults only exploitation films. Extremely tame by today's standards (maybe a PG rating), this three unit played on Friday August 29, 1952 at midnight. "Honky Tonk Girl" is from 1941, "The Devil's Harvest" from 1942 and "Love Moods", a 17 minute color short with legendary burlesque star Lili St. Cyr is from 1952.
The El Cerrito Motor Movies presented (left) pre-Memorial Day and (right) pre-4th of July Dusk to Dawn shows on May 29 and July 3, 1956. These all night movie marathons consisted of the regular double feature program plus three (sometimes four!) additional features, usually several years older but sometimes more entertaining than the main program...if you could stay awake long enough to watch them.
By 1956 Blumenfeld Theatres had sold or leased the El Cerrito Motor Movies as well as the indoor Cerrito (now advertised as New Cerrito) in El Cerrito and Oaks in Berkeley to an independent operator. All three of these theaters were frequently featured in the same combined ad as illustrated above in this ad from the Richmond Independent on Saturday November 24, 1956. This was the last ad to feature the El Cerrito Motor Movies as after the next evening's showings the drive-in would close it's gates permanently.
The adventure film "Bandido" and the musical "The Best Things In Life Are Free" were the last two films to play at the El Cerrito Motor Movies. The drive-in would soon be demolished to make way for the El Cerrito Plaza Shopping Center which still stands in it's place today, although the shopping center went through partial demolition, remodeling and a reopening in 2002.
Hello, I'm wondering if you can let me know the source of the first two posters/advertisements in this post. I'd love to find higher resolution versions. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI get most of my movie poster images by using Google Image Search and looking for large images first, medium if no large ones exist. It appears that I had to settle for small (not even 640 x 480) on these two though, adequate for my blog but not much else. Sorry I couldn't have been more help.
DeleteThanks for posting this. Bob Blumenfeld
ReplyDeleteThank you for doing this work. I too graduated in 1958 although from El Cerrito High School. My father worked nights at the El Cerrito Motor Movies. One of my treasured memories as a child was the night my dad took me into the projection room and the snack building to personally meet the workers. When my mother would drive us out of the motor movies at the end of the night, we would be so excited to see our dad up a ladder changing the marque. Strange to some, but happy family memories!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments Bob and Judy. It's nice to hear from people who had a personal connection with the operation of these theaters. Mr. Blumenfeld is a member of the family who built and operated the El Cerrito Motor Movies and many other fine movie theaters in Northern California, some of them like the Tower in Sacramento still standing and operating today.
ReplyDelete