Tujunga Theater on Foothill

[Oss Rae]

I think this is the theater where I saw Ghost as a second-run movie in 1990. Albeit, this site says it stopped being a movie theater in 1979: cinematreasures.org/theaters/2333. (Their information isn't always complete, though.) I feel like I heard about a fire at that theater not long after I was there, but it was a long time ago.

[Brian]

I vaguely remember a fire there but not when.  That movie theater was called the Canyon in its last incarnation, Oss Rae, when you saw "Ghost" there in 1990. I attended one of its final screenings in 1991, Steve Martin's "L.A. Story." This webpage has photos of the building from 1938 to the near present -- except of the Hilltop Theatre I remember best -- along with a timeline and some cool links:

losangelestheatres.blogspot.com/2020/02/canyon-theatre.html

My dad was the CPA of the owner who refurbished the Hilltop, named Fink. His surname was not that uncommon but it was memorable to an 8 year old. He gave our family a tour of the theater before it opened and free passes at the box office. I went to kids' matinees on Saturdays, mostly cartoons and Flash Gordon serials with the occasional Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis movie that bored the rowdy candy throwing crowd. By 1969, when I was 11, I could walk from my home for more civilized Saturday matinees of the M rated (for Mature before GP and PG) "Butch Cassidy" or the first Woody Allen movie I saw, "Take the Money and Run."

Fink couldn't make much of a go with it so he sold the property circa 1970.  I don't know who owned the theater after that.  But it stopped screening movies before 1979, at least for a while.  In 1976, I had friends who knew the guy who promoted Clean Slate, the long running local covers band, for a one off concert there one night.  Somehow I wound up onstage introducing the band in my low rent Sherlock Holmes costume -- smoking jacket, deerstalker hat and a lit calabash pipe.  I had full run of the nonpublic areas of the building for the first time since 1966 and they were pretty decrepit.

Still, I caught some of my favorite films of all time at the Hilltop in the early '70's.  The popular features arrived weeks or months after opening in Hollywood or Westwood, no problem because I couldn't drive yet though I could take the RTD bus to Glendale with my brother for some great movies on Saturdays.  But my favorites were concert films only shown at the Hilltop north of the Hollywood Hills, like "The Concert for Bangladesh" and the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter."  I recall going there specifically to smoke cigars in 1976 in one of the unbroken seats during a revival of "A Clockwork Orange" just before smoking was outlawed by the city of Los Angeles in theaters and supermarkets.

I lived in Van Nuys from 1977 to 1980, but when I moved back to Tujunga I remember seeing "The Formula" with George C. Scott at the Rainbow Theatre in early 1981 and "Pink Floyd - The Wall" in 1982.  The new owners had removed the uninhabitable seats.  Then the Edwards chain, I recall, remodeled the theater in the late '80's during another closure but only kept it running for two or three years.

Anni moved in with me in 1993, so she never got to watch a movie there.  That block of Foothill Boulevard between Haines Canyon Boulevard atop a steep slope westward and Tujunga Canyon Boulevard sloping east -- has been cursed since the turn of this century despite its higher elevation.  A wonderful Japanese take out restaurant, Arigato, and the family owned stereo/electronics store Electro-Mart closed two decades ago.  Their buildings remained shuttered and decaying along with long gone Verdugo Hills Liquor in between.