Opened: Original opening date of the Grandview is unknown. It was evidently in business as early as 1936. It's on the north side of the street between Stockton and Grant.
This 1955 photo by Orlando from Getty Images appears in a SF Gate album "A Glimpse Back at San Francisco's Chinatown." It's also in the set on Buzzfeed: "31 Beautiful Photos Of Life in San Francisco's Chinatown in the '50s."
Jack Tillmany comments: "Once upon a time I saw a February 1937 Metrotone Newsreel about Chinatown, and there was the Grandview, in its usual location, but with a much earlier styled vertical (in English)."
Reopening: November 21, 1940. The theatre was a project of filmmaker Joseph Sunn Jue. It was known as the Chinatown Theatre from about November 1978 until 1989.
Architect: The original architect is unknown. Alexander A. Cantin did the 1940 remodel.
Seating: 300
The ad for the 1940 reopening in the Chronicle. Thanks to Jack Tillmany for the find. The page can be viewed on Newsbank. Pretty exciting: the theatre featured "fluorescent mural paintings." Jack noted that the shop that made them was in a former theatre on Sutter St., the Empire.
"Chinatown Ghost Story," an article by Tara Shioya in the December 11, 1996 issue of the San Francisco Weekly News discusses the theatre: "In the fall of 1940, filmmaker Joseph Sunn Jue brought a little Hollywood to San Francisco's Chinatown. The neon-banded marquee of his new 300-seat Grandview Theater lit up Jackson Street. Sparkling blue, with dark, plush carpeting and uniformed usherettes, the Grandview was the neighborhood's first modern movie theater. Today, Jue's theater is a bargain store that sells plastic footwear and made-in-China clothes from dusty cardboard boxes. The building has been gutted -- the seats and carpeting removed, the floor leveled. The exterior is industrial gray. Red characters painted over the old marquee outside state that this is now the Chinatown Discount Center." Thanks to Toma M. Linda for posting the excerpt on San Francisco Remembered.
Seating: 370
Status: It's now retail. The floor has been filled in. The exit doors (almost a floor below the entrance, with steps up to Jackson) are still visible if you look down one of the passageways on either side of the building.
The Grandview in the Movies: There's evidently a good interior shot in the film "Jade." The theatre can also be seen in the 1972 Peter Bogdanovich film "What's Up Doc?"
A 1941 photo of the facade from the Jack Tillmany collection.
A
1944 shot of kids looking at the photos outside the theatre. It's from
Arthur Dong's documentary "Hollywood Chinese." The photo appeared in a 2014 SF Gate article on the CAAMFest that year.
A pan down the facade of the Grandview can be seen 3 minutes into the 1952 travelog "China By the Golden Gate." The 21 minute film is on You Tube from Periscope Films. The narrator notes that it's one of three theatres in Chinatown running Chinese films. Thanks to Bob Ristelhueber for sharing a 13 second clip on the BAHT Facebook page.
Looking toward the Bay Bridge in a July 21, 1960 photo on the Open SF History Project website. Thanks to Jack Tillmany for spotting it.
A 1960s photo taken by Jack Tillmany.
A 1964 photo of the Grandview by Alan J. Canterbury. It's in the San Francisco Public Library collection.
A 70s photo taken by Tom Gray that's in the Jack Tillmany collection.
A 1980s photo taken by Tom Gray from the Jack Tillmany collection.
Looking east toward Grant. Photo: BC -
2015
Looking up the hill toward Stockton. Head
down that passage this side of the theatre and you can still see the
exit doors way below street level. Photo: BC - 2015
More information: A 1996 SF Weekly "Chinatown Ghost Story" discusses the history of the Grandview. See the July 2017 SF Gate article by Susanna Guerrero "Notice this Chinatown movie theater? It has a fascinating history" for some facts and a few distortions.
An article in the October 10, 1938 Chronicle discussed D.W. Lowe, "The Chinese Movie King" and his firm Grandview Motion Picture Company. A resident of San Francisco, he had a long history as a restauranteur as well as a film producer. The article mentions that he had acquired a theatre along the way (unnamed) and dabbled in the Chinese opera business. The page with the article is on Newsbank. Thanks to Jack Tillmany for locating it.
The Chinatown and North Beach album on the BAHT Facebook page has many photos of other theatres in the neighborhood.
Jack Tillmany's Arcadia Publishing book "Theatres of San Francisco" can be previewed on Google Books. It's available from Amazon or your local bookseller.
See the Cinema Treasures page about the Grandview.
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