It’s Finis for Landmark Art Theater in Los Feliz

The Los Feliz Theatre, a landmark art house that helped introduce Los Angeles audiences to the whimsy of Federico Fellini and the Angst of Ingmar Bergman, will go dark in October after 40 years because it cannot afford a steep rent increase imposed by the property’s new owner, a theater spokesman said Friday.

Bob Laemmle, co-owner of Laemmle Theatres, which leases the Vermont Avenue movie house and has long championed art films, said he received a 60-day eviction notice Aug. 12. The letter came from Denley Investment & Management Co. of Los Angeles, which manages the Los Feliz property for a group of investors that the firm declined to name.

Film experts say closure of the Los Feliz reflects a nationwide decline in single-screen theaters that show art or repertory films and a growing trend toward modern, multiplex screens. In Los Angeles alone, their number has dwindled from 13 to seven in less than a decade, said Steve Gilula, president of Landmark Theatre Corp., another art film company.

“Traditionally, an art theater is an older theater in a run-down neighborhood. That’s the only way you can afford the lower rent,” Laemmle said in an interview. “As property values go up, a single-screen business like this one cannot exist.”

Eviction Notice

Both parties said the eviction notice culminates several months of unsuccessful negotiations over terms of a new lease. Laemmle said that Denley tripled the rent when the property was purchased earlier this year and that the firm wants to “raise it tenfold again” when a six-month lease expires in September.

Laemmle declined to say how much the Los Feliz currently pays, but a Denley spokesman said the company wants to ask about $1 a square foot for the 7,500-square-foot facility. The theater will probably be renovated for retail use, perhaps as a music store, Denley spokesman Steven Book said.

“The Laemmles had that theater for 40 years for low rent, for many of those years below market value. The owner is looking for a fair return on his investment,” Book said.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Woo, who represents Los Feliz, said he is looking into whether there is way to save the theater.

Chatterton’s Bookshop, several doors away on Vermont, has collected about 2,000 signatures on a petition that calls the Los Feliz “an important neighborhood monument” and says its demise would be a tremendous loss for both the community and Los Angeles culture.

Old World Charm

Local merchants say the theater anchors a thriving neighborhood with an old world charm that includes ethnic restaurants, bookstores and quaint apartment buildings.

In years past, the Los Feliz Theatre was the exclusive screening ground for much of the French new wave films of the 1950s and the avant-garde Italian films of the early ‘60s, according to the Laemmles. This year, it played host to the American Film Institute film festival.

AFI Filmfest Associate Director Gary McVey said the Los Feliz Theatre drew fewer complaints from festival goers than any other site in the past six years.

“A lot of people aren’t familiar with it . . . but once they walked in the door they loved it,” he said.

Laemmle, whose company owns or leases 16 other screens in nine theaters, called the closing of the Los Feliz “a real shame.” He said the Los Feliz’s last picture show will probably take place around Oct. 11.