Why Fine Arts Theatre matters.
Fine Arts Theatre is an enduring Art Deco cinema where Beverly Hills' eastern Wilshire Boulevard corridor meets B. Marcus Priteca's theater architecture, single-screen film exhibition and a succession of operators that has kept motion pictures inside the 1937 auditorium for nearly nine decades.
Set along Wilshire Boulevard near South Stanley Drive and just steps from the eastern Beverly Hills boundary, the theater occupies the city's historic cinema corridor west of La Cienega Boulevard, with the commercial blocks of the Wilshire-La Cienega district extending east into Los Angeles and Beverly Hills' residential streets beginning immediately south of the boulevard. Stepped setbacks organize the narrow Zigzag Moderne facade around an asymmetrical marquee and vertical blade sign, giving the single-story building a pronounced vertical emphasis despite its compact scale. The auditorium concentrates viewing into a single room, preserving the spatial directness of a neighborhood movie house through decades in which many comparable theaters were subdivided or lost. Photochemical projection remains central to the building through 35mm and 70mm presentation, with two Norelco DP70 projectors supporting the large-format program alongside digital cinema. The result is a compact movie theater whose Moderne facade, intact single-screen configuration and continued commitment to film projection preserve an unusually direct connection with Wilshire Boulevard's prewar cinema culture.
What defines Fine Arts Theatre.
Fine Arts Theatre is best known for surviving as a single-screen cinema through repeated changes of name, ownership and exhibition strategy since businessman Joseph De Bell developed the original Wilshire Regina Theatre in 1937. De Bell spent $75,000 on the project, commissioning B. Marcus Priteca, the prolific theater architect associated with the Pantages circuit, with S.E. Sonnichsen supervising construction. The 800-seat house opened on April 21, 1937 with That Girl from Paris and Black Legion, charging adults 25 cents and children 10 cents. Its original program extended beyond the auditorium through a freestanding ticket booth, lobby fountain and a small theaterette in the women's lounge intended to accommodate patrons with children. Fox West Coast Theatres acquired the operation in 1948, remodeled it, renamed it Fine Arts Theatre and reopened the house in December with The Red Shoes. Mann Theatres and Laemmle subsequently operated the cinema, followed by closure in 2009 and another reopening under Laemmle as the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in September 2015. Beverly Hills designated the property Local Historic Landmark 35 in 2017, formally protecting a building recognized for Priteca's design and its contribution to the city's surviving collection of historic theaters. The house marked its 89th anniversary in April 2026 with a weekend of classic films, continuing public exhibition inside the same auditorium that opened during the final years of the Depression.
Large-format film projection gives the contemporary theater its strongest technical distinction. Two Norelco DP70 machines, transferred from Westwood's former National Theatre, accommodate both 35mm and 70mm film and operate with Strong lamphouses using 4-kilowatt lamps. The projection path runs 88 feet to a screen measuring 14 feet 6 inches high by 33 feet 6 inches wide, concentrating large-format imagery inside a room substantially more intimate than the 800-seat configuration of 1937. Current seating stands near 410 after successive alterations reduced the original capacity, changing audience scale. Monthly 70mm screenings keep wide-gauge photochemical presentation in regular public use, supplemented by other repertory and special-event programs. That programming has included restored animation, classic Hollywood features and filmmaker-centered events, making the projection booth itself central to the theater's continuing purpose. The surviving combination of a 1930s auditorium and later large-format equipment gives Fine Arts Theatre a direct technological continuum between neighborhood movie-house exhibition and contemporary repertory cinema.
How Fine Arts Theatre fits.
Fine Arts Theatre works as the anchor for a Beverly Hills outing connecting an earlier Art Deco movie palace on the same boulevard, a Depression-era federal building converted for performing arts and an oil fortune translated into one of Southern California's most elaborate private estates.
Begin at Saban Theatre, opened as the Fox Wilshire on September 19, 1930 and designed by S. Charles Lee during the opening phase of a career that eventually encompassed hundreds of theaters. The black-and-silver Art Deco building combined its movie palace with commercial, residential and office functions, placing film exhibition inside a larger Wilshire Boulevard development; its early decades included major premieres, among them the 1953 presentation of How to Marry a Millionaire with Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall. Continue to The Wallis, where Beverly Hills' 1934 post office survives inside a 70,000-square-foot performing-arts complex created with a foundational $25 million contribution directed by Wallis Annenberg. Architect Zoltan E. Pali restored the federal building and joined it with the 500-seat Bram Goldsmith Theater and 150-seat Lovelace Studio Theater, preserving eight WPA frescoes inside the former post office as live performance replaced postal work. Conclude at Greystone Mansion & Gardens, commissioned after Edward L. Doheny gave his son Ned 12.58 acres as a wedding gift in 1926. Gordon B. Kaufmann designed the residence, P.J. Walker Company constructed it and Paul G. Thiene developed the grounds; construction began in February 1927, the family moved in during September 1928 and the complete estate cost $3,166,578.12. The 46,054-square-foot mansion contains 55 livable rooms, Indiana limestone facing, Welsh slate roofing, hand-carved oak work and five chimneys individually conceived by different artists. Beverly Hills purchased the surviving property in 1965, dedicated it as a public park in 1971 and secured National Register recognition in 1976. The progression moves from S. Charles Lee's 1930 movie palace through a federal post office remade for contemporary performance and culminates at Gordon B. Kaufmann's Doheny estate, connecting cinema, civic culture and private oil wealth across the architecture of twentieth-century Beverly Hills.
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