The Last Picture Show : Blaze Guts 1926 Cinema in Santa Ana

The Broadway Theater in Santa Ana, a vacant, boarded-up movie house that was the largest and once among the most glamorous theaters in the county, was gutted by a predawn fire Tuesday.

The fire, which was reported by a police officer on patrol about 2:40 a.m., burned for more than 3 hours, sending flames shooting more than 30 feet above the theater’s roof, Santa Ana Fire Department spokeswoman Sharon Frank said.

About 100 firefighters battled the blaze, including virtually every firefighter on duty in Santa Ana, as well as crews from the Orange County Fire Department, she said.

Firefighters kept the blaze from spreading to adjoining buildings. It was put out about 6 a.m., she said.

No Injuries Reported

No injuries were reported, and the cause of the fire is under investigation, Frank said.

The fire destroyed the roof and much of the interior. Fire officials said the building is probably a total loss, but they will not know until the end of the week whether the structure’s concrete walls--about three stories tall--can be preserved, Deputy City Manager Jan Perkins said.

“We went there (in the 1950s) as kids,” said Bob Fainbarg, a Santa Ana businessman whose uncle, Allan Fainbarg, bought the theater in the 1960s. “There were only three theaters in town then . . . and they used to give away tickets. Later they cost 35 cents. That sure isn’t much now, is it?”

Dave Williams, who co-owned the theater with Allan Fainbarg until the city bought it for $900,000 in 1987, said it used to be “the place to go in Santa Ana. . . . It was the finest theater in Orange County up to the mid-1950s . . . and it’s sort of a sad thing to have something like that vanish.”

But the theater died long before fire roared through its empty rows of seats Tuesday morning.

Largest Ever Built in County

Completed in 1926, it is the largest theater in the county, with 2,040 seats, said historian Jim Sleeper, who has written one book and is completing another on early movie-making in the county.

The Moorish-style theater opened its elegant doors June 2, 1926, with a showing of “The Rainmaker,” starring William (Buster) Collier Jr., Sleeper said.

California Lt. Gov. C.C. Young was on hand, as was a parade of celebrities, he said.

The following year, Cecil B. DeMille premiered his film “The King of Kings,” setting off a string of previews at which Hollywood executives tested their films at the movie palace on what they thought was a “typical American” audience, Sleeper said.

Photos from the period show crowds of well-dressed citizens lined up around the corner waiting to get into the theater.

Sold to Fox Theater Chain

In 1929, E.D. Yost sold the theater to what eventually became the Fox theater chain.

In 1952, fire destroyed much of the building. It was rebuilt in 1954, but without the ornate facade or plush interior that had made it stand out. With its new square, concrete look, the theater lost most of its glamour.

“It was not on the Historic Register,” City Real Estate Manager Bob Hoffman said. “It was not a Yost Theater (a historic theater nearby now being renovated)--that has a vaudevillian history to it.”

Allan Fainbarg, who as a boy ushered in the theater during its glory days, and Williams, a Santa Ana businessman, bought the theater in the mid-1960s. Fainbarg could not be reached Tuesday, but Williams remembered that the theater was already in decline when they bought it.

“It kept going downhill,” Williams said. “The operators that had it showed things that would attract audiences--kung fu movies, no porno stuff, some Spanish movies.”

Posters Still Tacked to Front

Even after the fire Tuesday, Spanish-language posters from the movie house’s last days in the summer of 1987 were still tacked to the theater’s front.

The city bought the theater in 1987 for $900,000 as part of Centerpointe, a major downtown redevelopment project that was to have included a hotel and office complex.

Deputy City Manager Perkins said the $900,000 purchase price represented the value of the land, because the dilapidated building’s worth was “practically nil.”

But the developers of the project backed out last year after marketing studies showed that a large downtown hotel would not be viable. The city has not yet contracted with another developer to build a project on the site, which extends east from the theater’s location on Broadway between 4th and 5th streets to Ross Street.

The massive back wall of the theater, near the Civic Center complex, bears testimony to the troubles the city has had in moving the project forward. Painted on the wall is the slogan: “Summer in the City--Centerpointe ‘85,” a remnant of the city’s early plans for the project.

Tuesday morning, smoke rose from behind the sign, through the building’s gaping hole where the roof had been.

In the front of the building Tuesday afternoon, workmen nailed plywood across windows and plate-glass doors broken in the fire.

One workman said vagrants often found a way into the building. “We were supposed to come here yesterday to board it up again,” he said.

Fate Up to Developers

City Real Estate Manager Hoffman said the theater’s fate would have been up to the developers who bought the site. “Our plan was not to demolish it until we had a developer on the site, on the chance that he would incorporate it into a larger development, either as a theater or just preserving the walls,” he said.

But Hoffman said the chances that a developer would preserve the building as a theater are slim.

“Large theaters in downtown are considered white elephants today,” he said.