Start your Los Angeles area historic theatre explorations by heading to one of these major sections: Downtown | North of Downtown + East L.A. | San Fernando Valley | Glendale | Pasadena | San Gabriel Valley, Pomona and Whittier | South, South Central and Southeast | Hollywood | Westside | Westwood and Brentwood | Along the Coast | Long Beach | [more] L.A. Movie Palaces | Site Navigation |

To see what's recently been added to the mix visit the Theatres in Movies site and the Los Angeles Theatres Facebook page. Questions? Contact us.

Brentwood Twin

2524 Wilshire Blvd. Santa Monica, CA 90404  | map | 

Opened: July 1, 1970. The building started as as a bowling alley and was converted into a twin theatre. It was initially an operation of Sid Kurstin's mini-circuit and ran as a first-run house.
 
Architect: Unknown

Seating: 600 

 This item appeared in the May 25, 1970 issue of Boxoffice.They didn't make that June 15 date.   
 


A listing for the July 1 opening that was located by Mike Rivest.  
 
It's listed in the 1972 phone book as the Brentwood I & 2. 
 

A 1972 ad for "Jeremiah Johnson" on one side and "A Doll's House" on the other. Thanks to Brade 48 for locating this ad and others for the Cinema Treasures page about the Brentwood. 

 

A July 1977 ad for Visconti's "Ossessione" that was located by Gerald DeLuca.  
 

An October 1977 ad located by Dyban for a post on Cinema Treasures.   

An October 1977 item Ken McIntyre located in the L.A. Times:

"Three months ago, proprietor Gene Rosenthal began showing older often classic-films on one of his screens to complement the current commercial fare on the other. The result has been attendance from a cross-section of the community-senior citizens to youngsters--all drawn by programming that varies from science fiction to nostalgia.

"The bill changes twice weekly and focuses on 'in-depth classics,' that is older films, rather than on the more current alternative movies shown at some of the other theaters. A recent Brentwood attraction was 'My Man Godfrey' and 'His Girl Friday.' There were also a few days of Harold Lloyd films. The theater was a bowling alley when Rosenthal took it over eight years ago."

As competition increased the Brentwood began running second run double features. M. Weston, a Cinema Treasures contributor, comments about the booth: 

"I was the projectionist at this theatre for several years during the 80s. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it wasn’t a bad theatre, and it did some good business as I remember. The staff was non present because there was a lot of partying in that place! The theatre had Cinemeccanica projectors, pretty good projectors in my opinion. Cinema 1 had a V-18 tower projector (13,000 ft reel), 2 had two V8 projectors (6 thousand foot reels, changeovers)."
 
Cineplex Odeon operated the venue for a while in the 80s as a first run house. 
 
 

A 1982 Cineplex ad for "Invitation au Voyage." Thanks to Dyban for locating it.   

Closing: The theatre closed in 1989. Cineplex exited after opening their new Broadway 4 on the 3rd St. Promenade in October 1989. 

Status: It was then used for retail and was later demolished. There's now an office building on the site. 

More Information: Everything known about the Brentwood Twin is on the Cinema Treasures page for the theatre. No photos have surfaced. 

Posted by

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)