Postscript : One-Time Vaudeville Theater May Stage a Comeback Amid New Santa Ana Stores

The curtain is falling fast on the 73-year-old Yost Theater, a vaudeville stage in the 1920s and one of the first theaters in Orange County to feature Spanish-language films.

The movies won’t be shown on weekends anymore, but Santa Ana city officials hope the two-story building at 305 Spurgeon St. will take on new luster as a center for college and community theater and other cultural groups.

Santa Ana bought the Yost for $600,000 and will sell it to a five-man partnership developing the proposed Fiesta Marketplace. A final agreement on the $10-million complex of shops and restaurants, bounded by French, Bush, 3rd and 5th streets, will be considered by the City Council on Tuesday.

Irv Chase, owner of Chase Development Co. and one of the Fiesta partners, said the city will have a year to work out a proposal for management of the Yost before the partnership takes the reins.

Chase said his group hopes that Rancho Santiago College will manage the Yost, use it for performances and as a satellite campus, and rent it to other groups. Burt Peachy, dean of the college’s fine arts department, said work on a proposal has begun. “The real question mark is whether we can work out funding” to lease the Yost, he said.

Chase said the rental rates at the Yost will encourage community theater groups to perform there. “All these amateur theater groups that can’t afford to rent space in other theaters in Orange County would be able to use the Yost,” he said.

Built as a 950-seat theater in 1912 at a cost of $23,000, the Yost became a landmark vaudeville and movie house, and stars such as Ben Turpin and Eva Tanguay appeared there. It was first called the Auditorium Theater and then the Clunes Theater until Ed Yost bought it in 1919 and enlarged it to 1,700 seats.

Santa Ana native Luis Olivos leased the Yost 35 years ago and bought it 10 years later. The city bought the theater after he defaulted on a loan last year, and the 66-year-old Olivos has been in a bitter struggle to regain control ever since.

On a basement wall, Olivos pointed out posters of many of Latin America’s greatest movie stars from the 1940s and ‘50s, including Javier Solis, Angelica Maria, Jorge Negrete and others who performed in musical variety shows at the theater.

Roger Kooi, Downtown Development Commission director, said a community cultural center is vital to provide the proposed restaurants and stores with nighttime customers. “I doubt if the Fiesta Marketplace partners would want to retain the Yost in its current use,” he said. Chase also pointed out that a three-screen movie theater is planned nearby.

The Yost’s exterior will remain relatively unchanged, but the dilapidated interior will need extensive refurbishing.