Opening: It must have been sometime around 1912. It made it into the 1913 city directory as the Casino Theatre with a 4311 S. Central address. It was on the west side of the street a half block north of Vernon Ave. In the 1914 directory it's listed at 4309.
The theatre appears as the larger of the pink rectangles in the lower right in this detail from plate 21 of the Baist 1914 Survey Map from Historic Mapworks. It's also seen on the Baist 1921 Map. That's Vernon Ave. across the bottom of the image and Central up the right side.
There was some renaming of the numbered streets and renumbering on Central around 1938. The street north of the Casino, seen here as 43rd, became 43rd Pl. The next street up, seen here as 42nd, became 43rd St.
Under "theatres" in the 1915 directory the listing was "Michael Gore" at 4311 S. Central. The Gore Brothers had theatres all over town and later rolled their operations into what became West Coast Theatres. It's The Casino at 4311 in the 1916 and 17 directories. It's back to just Casino in 1919 and 1921. In 1922 the listing was again for "Michael Gore" and in 1923 it's Casino again.
A column of southend theatre ads in 1918 that included the Casino.
In 1921 or 1922 the neighborhood got a little busier with the opening of the larger Tivoli Theatre, later renamed the Bill Robinson, a block to the north on the same side of the street.
In the 1923 city directory the Casino gets a 4313 address. In 1924 it was listed in an August 31 Paramount Week ad as running the James Cruze production "The Covered Wagon" from August 31 to September 6. In the 1925 and 1926 directories they give the theatre a 4311 address.
Closing: 1926 might have been it for the Casino. That was the last year it appeared in the L.A. city directory.
Status: The building now on the site dates from 1967, at least that's what the city's Zimas system says. But 1967 could also have been the date of a major remodel. It may be that the long, skinny building that once housed the Casino has just been remodeled. With the street renumbering, the lot the Casino was on now has a 4361 S. Central address.
It's now pizza instead of movies. The restaurant may be in a remodeled version of the Casino Theatre. To the right we're looking north on Central toward what is now called 43rd Pl. Vernon Ave. is a half a very short block out of the frame to the left. Photo: Google Maps - 2019
More information: There was a plan in 1921 to replace the Casino with a new, larger theatre. This item appeared in the June 17, 1921 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor: "Theater and market building -- Lilly-Fletcher & Co...will erect a theater and market building at 43rd and Central Ave. for J.V. Akey. The theater has been leased to West Coast Theaters Corp. Plans for the building are by L.A. Smith...The theater will be 2-stories, 70 x 125 feet with offices in the 2nd story. The market will be 60 x 150 feet..."
The plan evidently wasn't pursued. There don't seem to be any theatres operating in the immediate neighborhood after 1926 other than the Tivoli. Thanks to Joe Vogel for finding this excerpt in the Los Angeles Public Library's California Index.
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