Added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 14, 2013

The City of Inglewood is filthy with large-scale entertainment venues like the Kia Forum, SoFi Stadium, YouTube Theater and soon-to-be-opened Intuit Dome. So it was extra surprising to learn that, before the Cinépolis multiplex opened in the summer of 2023, Inglewood hadn’t had a movie theater of its own for nearly three decades. 

Back in the middle of the 20th century, Inglewood was awash in single-screen theaters. There was the Academy Theatre with its eye-popping spire bedecked in neon, the 5th Avenue, the Imperial, the Inglewood and the Century Drive-In, among others. In the ’50s, you could head up to the main commercial corridor of Market Street and find the Ritz, the Fox and the United Artists Theatre within two blocks of each other. By the early 2000s, every single one of the above was demolished, abandoned or turned into a church.

But we are not here to mourn Inglewood’s rich theatrical past, now faded. We are here to tell the story of its sole representative on the National Register, the Fox Theatre, comatose since the ‘80s but fully revivable. 

The Fox Theatre was built in 1949, literally across the street from the United Artists. It replaced the Granada Theatre, which had burned down in 1945, its husk later purchased by the Fox West Coast Theater Company. 

In the context of film history, this was a strange time for the Fox empire to be building a new theater. For decades, major film studios could control the distribution and exhibition of their films by exclusively playing them in theaters owned by the studio – “vertical integration” you might call it. But federal prosecutors called the practice anticompetitive, and a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In 1948, the year before the Fox Theatre Inglewood opened, United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. went all the way to the Supreme Court. The case resulted in the Paramount Decree: a mandate that film production companies must divest themselves of their theater chains. The Fox Theatre Inglewood was the final LA-area movie house built by Fox before it was compelled to sell off half of its theaters to other operators. 

Charles and Spyros Skouras, managers of the Fox West Coast Theater Company, ended their LA theater-building run on a high note. They hired master theater designer S. Charles Lee to build their final movie palace, the same guy behind the historic Los Angeles and Tower theaters downtown, the priapic art deco spire on the renovated Alex Theatre in Glendale, the Fox Wilshire Theatre (now the Saban) in Beverly Hills and so many more in LA and beyond. Fun fact, Lee also designed Temple Israel of Hollywood, where I spent much of my childhood. 

Making good on his famous maxim “the show starts on the sidewalk,” Lee designed an imposing facade dominated by a stepped, pre-Columbian-looking false front that extends above the roof, like shrugging shoulders in support of the perpendicular tower sign. Big box letters spelling out “FOX” ran down both sides of the tower, highlighted in neon. The two-sided marquee was a fun confection, with an abstract teardrop-shaped figurehead in the center (also covered in neon) and the word “Fox” written in low-key neon script on either side. This must have been a great theater for rubbernecking at night. 

Inside, the right angles of the facade start to soften. You get a kidney-shaped lobby, a ceiling that swells and undulates throughout the property, and a curved concession stand. The interior design, by Fox’s in-house decorating maven Carl Moeller, is all about seductive curves, plumes, vines and florals. From the lobby terrazzo to the rocaille around the proscenium to the gilded arabesque on the ceiling of its 1,008-seat auditorium, Moeller’s work brings a rococo exuberance to the Fox Theatre Inglewood – it’s fancy, but exciting too.

Like many of the Fox theaters built or renovated under the Skouras brothers’ watch in the ‘40s and ‘50s, this one has lavish drapery, murals, and 3D scrolls and swirls and crest motifs. This was all in keeping with the Skouras tradition of bringing a touch of decadence to neighborhood theaters, for a post-WWII audience looking to be taken somewhere else for a couple hours. 

The Fox Theatre Inglewood cost $400,000, and boasted a bunch of novelties: concealed indirect lighting, air conditioning, automatic exit doors, even a soundproof “cry room” for parents to bring their tempestuous children during the show. The grand opening took place on March 31, 1949 with the premiere of Mr. Belvedere Goes to College starring Shirley Temple and Clifton Webb (who both showed up). 

In its heyday, the Fox was a popular first-run movie theater that often ran test previews of new pictures along with full premieres. Eventually Mann Theatres succeeded Fox West Coast, and ran the theater until around 1974. For its last decade of operation as a theater, it was run independently. In the few years before closing its doors in 1984 (or 1988, according to some sources), the Fox was a Spanish-language movie house.

And then…nothing. For the past 40 years, the Fox has sat empty and disused as new tenants have come and gone around it. Even as Market Street undergoes a slow revitalization, a succession of Fox Theatre owners has just sat on the property, neither investing in its rehabilitation nor demolishing it to build something new. On occasion it’s been used for film shoots (here it is as a backdrop for the 1987 action flick Wanted Dead or Alive).

From the outside, the Fox is a depressing sight. The metal signage and neon were ripped away long ago, leaving just the outline of the word “FOX” on the vertical blade sign. The marquee is boarded up in plywood (thoughtfully painted blue), and the entrance vestibule is totally hidden by more vertical boards that unintentionally echo the tall fiddlehead patterns on the concrete above. 

But the inside is another story entirely. In an oral history on the Inglewood Public Art website, artist and longtime Inglewood champion Anne Cheek La Rose reported that after the final movie screening, “the projectors were turned off, the lights were turned off, the doors were locked and they walked away.” It was only in heavy use for a couple decades, and almost nothing has been touched since it closed in the ‘80s. Yes, plaster is peeling, there are big holes in the ceiling, and what looks like water damage on the walls. I saw a picture of mushrooms growing out of a patch of carpet. But all of the elements that defined the Fox? The original concession stand, the rocailles on the auditorium walls, the seats, the projection booth and original box office? They’re still intact, and available for repair if needed.

In 2014, Matt Lambros photographed the Fox Theatre Inglewood for his book After the Final Curtain: The Fall of the American Movie Theater. He captured a building that was slowly decaying, but still remarkably well preserved given how little attention has been paid to it. Over the years there have been efforts to protect the Fox and find a restoration-minded owner. Around 2010 the LA Historic Theatre Foundation partnered with the Inglewood Historic Preservation Alliance on a “Save the FOX” campaign, which resulted in an offer from the City of Inglewood to buy the theater. The offer was rejected, but the groups did get the Fox added to the National Register of Historic Places in early 2013, so that’s something. At least now any attempt to demolish it would trigger a CEQA review.

Around 2018, the Fox Theatre was purchased by Thomas Safran & Associates, a big LA developer that recently completed the market-rate residential project Astra a block north of the Fox. There’s been no movement on a restoration or a sale for the theater, but who knows what the future will bring? It’s nuts to think that the Fox Theatre Inglewood has now been closed for longer than it was open. It’s a mid-century movie palace trapped in amber. Or if not amber, maybe some other substance that’s not quite as good a preservative. Formaldehyde? JELL-O?

Thanks to Matt Lambros, Michelle Gerdes and the Pacific Electric Railway Historical Society for granting permission to use their photos. And special thanks to Bill Counter – whose impossibly comprehensive Los Angeles Theatres blog is a north star for every post I write about LA theaters.

Resources & Recommended Reading

+ City News Service: “ 1st Inglewood movie theater in 30 years opens Friday” (Daily Breeze, July 20, 2023)

+ Counter, Bill: “Fox Inglewood” (Los Angeles Theatres blog) 

+ Counter, Bill: “Fox West Coast” (Los Angeles Theatres blog)

+ “Film Stars to Help Open New Fox Inglewood Theater” (Los Angeles Times, March 29, 1949 – via ProQuest)

+ Flores, Jessica: “Can Inglewood revive Market Street?” (Curbed LA, December 4, 2019)

+ Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation: “Fox Inglewood Theatre” (lahtf.org)

+ “Fox Theatre” (cinematreasures.org)

+ Fox Theatre Inglewood’s NRHP nomination form (author redacted)

+ Gnerre, Sam: “Inglewood’s commercial landscape once was dotted with movie theaters” (Daily Breeze, August 5, 2017)

+ Inglewood Public Art: “Fox Theatre” (inglewoodpublicart.org)

+ Lambros, Matt: “Fox Theatre Inglewood, CA” (afterthefinalcurtain.net, September 3, 2015)

+ La Rose, Anne Cheek: “Bringing Back the INGLEWOOD FOX THEATRE” (lahtf.org)

+ Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation: “Inglewood Fox Birthday Party” (YouTube video, April 2, 2010)

+ Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation: “Insider’s Peek #1 – Fox Inglewood” (YouTube video, November 28, 2009)

+ “New Theater Opening Set” (Los Angeles Times, March 27, 1949 – via ProQuest)

+ Paonessa, Laurie: “Fox Theatre Inglewood” (Clio: Your Guide to History, July 5, 2023) 

+ Sonksen, Mike: “On Location: Inglewood” (PBSSocal.org, November 18, 2014)

+ “Wanted: Dead or Alive” (Historic L.A. Theatres in Movies, 2018)