The Capri Gets a Reprieve--Projector Will Roll Again

The Capri.

Decades ago, it was one of the city’s premier film palaces, a glitzy showcase where San Diegans queued up for a chance to see exclusive runs of Hollywood classics: “Around the World in 80 Days,” “My Fair Lady,” “Funny Girl.”

Then came a spate of checkered years, beginning in the mid-1970s, and the reputation of the formerly elegant Hillcrest theater began to tarnish as its fare shifted from boffo hits to porno splits such as “The Devil in Miss Jones” and “Deep Throat.”

Last year a decidedly run-down Capri closed entirely. The worn-out seats and once top-of-the-line projection equipment were auctioned off and the theater was sold to Great American First Savings Bank. It seemed the Capri would become another large-screen casualty to the bottom-line reality of property development.

But on Wednesday, the Capri was literally given a new lease on life. Landmark Theaters and Great American announced that a lease had been reached and the one-time Hollywood palace will reopen in June as a “fine arts” cinema.

“We are elated to be able to save one of the remaining single-screen theaters” in San Diego, Landmark President Steve Gilula said.

Landmark, which operates the Ken Cinema, the Guild and the Cove theaters, will change the Capri’s name to the Park Theater, since it is about half a mile north of Balboa Park, Gilula said.

The challenge for Landmark is to beat the movie industry rap that the taint of porno can’t be removed.

“In San Diego, we have been able to disprove the notion that you can’t take an adult theater and turn it around,” Gilula said, referring to the Guild and the Ken Cinema, once adult movie houses, which now show a variety of European films, such as Carlos Saura’s dance film, “El Amor Brujo” and Andrei Tarkovsky’s “The Sacrifice.”

The Capri will fill the gap left by the closure of the Fine Arts Theater in Pacific Beach, which Landmark operated until it was razed last year as part of a shopping center expansion.

In a telephone interview from Landmark’s Los Angeles headquarters, Gilula said Landmark chose the Capri because there were no suitable older theaters in Pacific Beach to replace the Fine Arts. “We’re very excited about all of the activity in the Hillcrest area,” Gilula said. “We felt (the theater) could draw from the metropolitan area.”

Landmark’s San Diego-area manager, Bill Richardson, recalled seeing “some of the hottest shows in town” at the Capri.

“I saw ‘Ben Hur’ at the Capri in 1959,” Richardson said. “It was the premier showcase cinema in San Diego before Mission Valley theaters eclipsed it. I remember when it turned into a porno house in the mid-1970s.”

The movie house was built in 1926, and functioned as the Egyptian theater until Burton Jones took it over in the mid-1950s.

Under Jones, the Capri came into its heyday. Jones renovated the structure inside and out, put the best equipment in, and persuaded Hollywood distributors to permit the Capri to show first-run films. Tickets for hit shows were sold on a reserved-seat basis only, and popular films ran a year or longer.

“He made a showcase out of it,” said former projectionist Richard Koldoff, who worked there in the late 1940s and early ‘50s. “He was a real showman.”

The plans for the Park Theater, which has more than 700 seats, are for it to show films for long runs, thus freeing the Ken Cinema to show more films for one- and two-day stints.

Landmark specializes in fine art films and operates 33 theaters in eight states.