LAST HURRAH FOR AN OLD FILM PALACE

The Fox West Coast Theatre, one of Long Beach’s oldest and most luxurious movie palaces, has seen its share of changes since its 1925 opening: Art Deco renovations of its Italian Renaissance facade, sound equipment for talkies, the addition of Cinemascope and stereo sound.

In January, the next and final chapter of the Fox story will be ushered in with a minimum of fanfare--courtesy of the wrecking ball.

Before the once-great theater makes way for yet another downtown hotel, an enthusiastic group of Long Beach residents have decided that some ceremony is in order. The result is “Farewell to the Fox” (Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m.), a tribute to the days when movie theaters offered live stage shows with their features, ushers led patrons to their seats and exotically tapestried curtains draped every Magnascope movie screen.

Piloting the tribute is Joe Musil, a Long Beach architect and theater historian whose own history with the Fox dates back to 1956, when at 19 he became its youngest house manager.

Lured back to the Fox after 20 years as a free-lance architect, Musil has assembled a volunteer crew of entertainers to revive the moviegoing spirit of the ‘30s.

In addition to screening Busby Berkeley’s 1933 “Footlight Parade,” the Fox will host conductor Owen Sweeton and the Fox Melody Masters, baritone Buddy Faye, Rube Wolf and his Red-Hot Jazz Syncopation Stage Band, movie organist Bill Coffman, the Andrews Sisters-style Society Swing Trio, magician Dale Salwak and about 150 Rockettes-like chorus girls, marching band members and dance-band musicians.

“What we’re doing is drawing people here to the show, giving them a real slam-bang evening and raising their consciousness about what they’re tearing down,” Musil explained. “In the old days the Fox had an electricity you could not match anywhere, and we’re bringing that back to life.”

For Musil, the greatest attraction of the movie palaces was “disorientation.”

“When people come into a theater, they’re disoriented, purposely so, through the magic of the orchestra and the colors. You’re disoriented into a world you won’t allow yourself to enter any other time; usually you can’t determine what’s beyond the walls of the theater, or which streets are on what side.

“At least, that’s what should happen. It does not happen in the theaters we have today, because there’s no attempt at architectural embellishment or a theme or atmosphere.”

Among the Fox’s most imaginative embellishments was an evening-gowned “spot girl.”

“The spot girl’s role was to stand on a pedestal and direct the traffic of the customers,” Musil explained. “Every time the doorman tore a loge ticket, he would step on a little floor button, which caused a certain light in the exit sign to glow above the doorway.

“The spot girl would watch that light, and whenever it glowed bright she knew that the entering customers had loge tickets, so she could automatically tell them which way to go. This was a great mystery to the patrons; everybody thought she could read minds.”

Musil believes that theater owners are rediscovering the importance of surroundings in the moviegoing experience. He cites the recent restoration of the Gordon Theatre (now the Showcase) as a hopeful sign that the days of the movie palace may not be over.

“Palaces, like the Fox, the Wiltern, the Pantages, are special; they’re places of the mind,” he said. “They’re sensual retreats, and satisfy not only people’s desire to relax and be entertained but also a lot of their secret inner feelings. We’ve reinstated an avenue to the fantasy land that people would like to enter.”

Come January, this particular avenue will be closed for good.

(For information about “Farewell to the Fox,” call (213) 433-1134.)