The Balboa Theatre

1634 Ocean Ave. | map |

Opened: This first Balboa Theatre opened December 23, 1922. It was on the north side of Ocean Ave. between Capitol Ave. and Faxon Ave. It was built and operated by Samuel H. and Alex E. Levin. 

 

Architects: Reid Bros. Thanks to Glenn Koch for spotting this architects' rendering from the San Francisco Examiner archives when that collection was being sold on eBay.
 

Seating: 520 

Thanks to Woody LaBounty for the opening day ad from the Chronicle. It appears with "The Original Balboa Theatre," his fine article about the theatre on the Western Neighborhoods site.

The "New" Balboa Theatre at 3630 Balboa St. opened in 1926, also a Levin operation.  The two theatres, five miles apart, both ran with the Balboa name until 1932 when this one on Ocean Ave. was renamed the Westwood Theatre.

Closing: The Westwood closed around 1933. Having the opulent El Rey Theatre four blocks west at at 1970 Ocean Ave. didn't help. It opened in 1931, also a project of Samuel H. Levin.

Jack Tillmany notes that another factor in the theatre's demise may have been a robbery of the theatre on January 11, 1932 that resulted in the killing of a police officer. The incident received a lot of press attention and may have affected attendance. Jack D. Green, the perpetrator, set some kind of record for the number of reprieves and after 28 years in prison, had "built a new life for himself" and was freed in 1960.

Status: The building the theatre was in has been demolished. There's now a Walgreens on the site.

A 1922 view looking east on Ocean Ave. It's a frame from a promotional film for the Westwood Park housing development. Jack Tillmany extracted the footage from the Library of Congress in return for some donations he made to them. Later he donated it to Woody LaBounty for the Western Neighborhoods Project. Prelinger Archives got it from Woody and it's since gone viral.

Another image from the Library of Congress footage, here looking back west toward the theatre.

A nice stitched together view from the Library of Congress footage that appeared with an article on the now-vanished site Up/Out. Raoul Walsh's "Kindred of the Dust" was a February 1922 release.

Customers checking out the boxoffice in 1922. Thanks to Ken Roe for posting the screenshot on Cinema Treasures. Again, it's from the footage Jack Tillmany got from the Library of Congress. The footage itself, with recent footage for comparison, can be viewed down at the bottom of  Woody LaBounty's "The Original Balboa Theatre" article on the Western Neighborhoods site.

Looking east at the Ocean Ave. business district c.1923. It's a photo from the Marilyn Blaisdell collection appearing on the Open SF History Project website. There's also a version from the Jack Tillmany collection on the San Francisco Public Library website. 

A c.1927 photo of the theatre running "Lady of the Harem" with Hoot Gibson, a November 1926 release. The photo from the Jack Tillmany collection appears on the Open SF History Project site. It's also on a Western Neighborhoods page about the theatre.

A grocery store was later constructed on the site, opening in December 1940. Thanks to Jack Tillmany for this photo of Gene's Market c.1950. 

More information: See the Western Neighborhoods page about the Balboa/Westwood. Also see a second page on the site by Woody LaBounty titled "The Original Balboa Theatre."

On Cinema Treasures the theatre is listed as the Westwood.

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.  

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