Uptown Theatre

Address: 2525 Macdonald Avenue, Richmond CA

Architect: O. A. Deichmann (San Francisco)

Date Opened: December 15, 1944

Date Closed: April 29, 1957

Circuit: Nasser Brothers

Number of Screens: 1

Number of Seats: 1200

Current Status: Closed (Structure still stands as Senior Center)

A late 1940's aerial view of the Uptown Theatre . Photo originally posted on Cinema Treasures by "georob6316".  Directly across the street from the Uptown as shown at the bottom of this photo is Casper's Hot Dogs which opened in 1947 and quite rare for a Richmond establishment is still going strong at the same location in 2016. Casper's was a great place for a before or after the movie snack during the years the Uptown was open. If you didn't like Casper's menu there was always Doggie Diner, just a couple blocks away at 23rd Street and Macdonald.

The Uptown, the furthest east of Richmond's Macdonald Avenue theaters and the final one to be built during World War II was opened by the San Francisco based Nasser Brothers circuit on December 15, 1944 with a couple of relatively "oldies", "When You're In Love" from 1937 and "The Cowboy and the Blonde" from 1941. A Donald Duck cartoon, newsreel and other short subjects completed the program. You definitely got your money's worth at the movies in those days!

Second only to the downtown Fox (formerly T&D and California, future United Artists) in seating capacity at 1200 seats, the Uptown was a very nice theater with a spacious lobby and auditorium. It featured low admission prices, second run double feature programming and for us kids great triple feature Saturday matinees. It quickly became a personal favorite of mine and remained so until it closed in 1957.

Ads for the Uptown from the Richmond Independent from various dates 1945-1949. Up until the early 1950's there were three program changes a week with new shows on Sunday, Tuesday or Wednesday and Friday. 

Friday ads from the Richmond Independent in 1952 highlight the Saturday matinee at the Uptown. For us kids it was usually the best show and biggest bargain in town. You saw the two regular features, seven cartoons, a newsreel, a reel of trailers and a bonus feature. Most of us would have gladly traded that newsreel for a serial chapter but that's nit picking! The bonus features were usually several years old (over twenty years old for the two in the ads above!) but there were occasionally some little gems that you couldn't see anywhere else in Richmond. Depending on the combined running time of the entire program you could go in at 10:00 AM and not get out until as late as 4:00 PM. All for a twenty cents, later a quarter I believe! Those were the days! 

Ads from the Saturday evening edition of the Richmond Independent from various dates in 1949, 1951 and 1953. The Independent didn't publish on Sundays so the program starting Sunday got more space than the program ending Saturday night.

In the ads above from March 1954 the Uptown is promoting their newly installed wide screen. The theater had yet to play anything in CinemaScope (it had just been introduced to Richmond at the Fox on Christmas Day 1953) but they were now playing all other films enlarged and cropped to fit their new wide screen. Those films were simply cropped to an approximate 1.85 to 1 aspect ratio via projector aperture plates and projected with shorter focal length lenses. Hollywood had been shooting most non 'Scope films in that ratio for the last six months or so but those made before the changeover (like 1951's "The Golden Horde" and "Tomahawk" in the above ads) suffered, sometimes greatly, by having the tops and bottoms of the old 1.33:1 frame chopped off. The layout of the spacious Uptown auditorium provided enough room to keep the stage and two curtains and still accommodate an adequately large screen so presentation of both standard widescreen and CinemaScope looked very nice at the Uptown. The only thing missing from CinemaScope was four channel magnetic  stereophonic sound which in the Richmond area remained exclusive to the further downtown and first run Fox and UA.

In the ads above the Uptown is promoting an amateur variety show which was added to their regular Saturday night film programs for a while in 1954 and 1955. Note in the ad at left that two spots (right after the explanation mark in "Miss Sadie Thompson") have been blanked out of the ad. These two features were originally shown in dual projector polarized 3-D but by mid 1954 the 3-D fad was almost entirely over and almost all second run theaters, even some first run theaters, were playing these films in "flat" 2-D. The Uptown wasn't equipped for dual projector 3-D anyway. 

The Uptown was obviously struggling to get customers in the doors in late 1956 and early 1957. Friday nights, traditionally one of the two most profitable nights of the week for movie theaters, were now designated "Family Night" at the Uptown with whole families admitted for only 75 cents for awhile, a new low for Richmond. Daily ad size in the Richmond Independent had been greatly reduced too. The small one column ads above are all from Fridays when in prior years the Uptown was heavily promoting it's Friday program and Saturday kids shows with large two column ads. No mention of those kids shows here but as I recall they still included extra cartoons and a third surprise feature. 

Without any advance notification the Uptown's days as a movie theater sadly came to an end on Monday April 29, 1957. The final double feature program which according to ads in the Richmond Independent played Sunday and Monday only consisted of "The Rawhide Years" from 1956 and  and "Tarantula" from 1955.

I vividly remember walking by the Uptown on my way to the nearby city library a day or so after the theater closed. I had no idea that the closure had taken place until I saw the blank marquee and empty poster cases and then noticed that the equipment was already being taken out of the theater. The manager was standing outside watching the equipment removal with tears in his eyes. As much as I loved the movies and the Uptown I felt like joining him!

Only the concrete shell of the former Uptown Theatre remains. It currently houses the Richmond Senior Center.

Main entrance to Richmond Senior Center. 2013 photos by John Rice.

So far I've only found an aerial photo of the Uptown, the one shown at the top of this post. If anyone has a web link or a personal non copyrighted photo taken at ground level that I can use with a credit I would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a comment or e mail me. Quality of the photo or even if it's a closeup or not is not that important. In the Uptown's case a shot of the 2500 block of MacDonald Ave.  (east side of street) taken between December 1944 and approximately May 1957 would be sufficient assuming that you can see the Uptown in the photo. Thanks!