Theater Stages Comeback With Classic Films : Movies: It has burned down, been rebuilt and featured X-rated films. Now the theater is showing oldies but goodies exclusively.

Louie Federici was a schoolboy when the State Theater was born in Pasadena in 1918. And like Federici, who is now nearing 80, the Colorado Boulevard theater has been a witness to changing times.

In the early days, it was a proud Fox West Coast moving picture theater. Then it burned down, was rebuilt, changed hands. When it finally closed its doors a couple of years ago, it had a garish sign headlining X-rated films.

But last spring, Federici cranked up the dormant projector and restored the neon marquee, and the 700-seat auditorium once again flickered with movies such as “Robin Hood,” “Top Hat” and “Suspicion.” It is the only theater in the San Gabriel Valley that exclusively shows old movies.

“You have to be a lover of the old classics to be in this business,” said Federici, who has spent his life working in theaters such as the State--taking tickets, popping popcorn and watching glamorous stars cavort on screen.

Federici, of Hollywood, and his partner, Bob Stein, 55, of Studio City, hope they can revive the revival house. But they know they’re bucking a trend.

Both men have owned and operated theaters for a living. Over the last 20 years, they say, too many have drawn their curtains for good.

“Louie and I want to make it so successful that it stays a theater and doesn’t turn into another strip shopping center,” Stein said.

But they admit that making a one-screen, individually owned movie theater successful is not an easy proposition these days.

“It’s a dated concept,” Stein said. “You simply cannot run this type of theater unless you have a special policy to draw people.”

With four-, eight- and now 16-plexes luring crowds of moviegoers, and with videotape rentals a popular and cheap alternative, old theaters are fast disappearing.

“The old, single-screen theater is a thing of the past,” said Tim C. Warner, president of the California branch of the National Assn. of Theater Owners, a trade organization representing 2,700 screens in the state. “There’s a trend to try to save and to restore those theaters, but they are getting rarer and rarer.”

Stein and Federici have operated the State since last April, scheduling an eclectic collection of classic romances, mysteries, comedies and musicals on its 20-by-40-foot screen.

One weekend they might show “Father of the Bride” and the next, “The Divorce of Lady X.” While the Laemmle theater at the other end of Colorado Boulevard is showing the new version of Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” the State is planning to run the Laurence Olivier classic.

Stein said he and Federici draw on more than half a century of movie-watching to help them pick their cinematic lineup. “You start to have a feel for films, an intuition. I can’t really put my finger on it,” he said.

Sometimes the picks are not right, and the draw is slow. But gradually the State is building an audience from all over Southern California.

Brian Banks, an 18-year-old journalism student at UC Santa Barbara, said he does not mind the two-hour drive to Pasadena when the State is showing a movie he wants to see.

“My mom and my grandparents have told me about these movies like ‘Gone With the Wind’ and ‘Citizen Kane’ when they first came out,” Banks said. “I enjoy seeing them like they were then. You lose a lot when you see them on television.”

Steve Reese, 40, a commercial lending officer who lives in Pasadena, agreed. “This is a new thing for me,” said Reese, who has seen “Camille,” “Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Phantom of the Opera” at the State.

Some customers come to relive childhoods spent in Saturday afternoon matinees. Others hate watching the classics chopped up and distorted on television screens.

“I’ve seen a lot of these movies on television, having grown up with television,” Reese said. “But it’s fun to see the uncropped, wide-screen version. These are movies that will never die.

“I took my kids to see ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ and they liked ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ better than ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ ” he said.

The revival house is not for everyone. A mailing list for the State has built slowly to about 200 names. “We’re still not really making any money,” Stein admitted.

But he and Federici are betting that the State will survive. And they are willing to do some unorthodox things to keep it alive. At $3 for adults and $2 for senior citizens and students, ticket prices for the evening’s double bill are actually cheaper than most video rentals.

On New Year’s Eve, the two partners kept the theater’s doors open all night. Federici made popcorn while Stein’s wife and children brewed coffee and sold candy to people lined up to watch the Rose Parade.

The theater’s cavernous auditorium has played host to a children’s theater group. Stein, who also works as a concert promoter, lined up a folk singer to play there and is contemplating more live performances. Last week, the Festival of Animation was on the marquee.

If enough customers do not pack the theater to ensure its salvation, it is unlikely that the State would be preserved as a historic landmark such as its South Pasadena neighbor, the Rialto Theater, which shows first-run art films and cult offerings such as “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” There is nothing ornate or unique about the State’s architecture. Its walls are bare, its lighting subdued.

“This was not a classy theater,” even in its heyday, Stein said. When the two men took over, they did little more than tear down the red-flocked wallpaper left over from when the place was called the Pussycat Theater. Inside the auditorium, the ceiling vents are scarred with soot, and the only ornaments are lighted wall sconces reminiscent of the moderne look popular when the State was rebuilt after the fire in the 1930s.

A narrow staircase winds up to a cluttered projection booth overflowing with heavy film canisters. A part-time employee sometimes spends the night on a mattress in a cubbyhole off the booth.

“We’ll never get rich with an operation like this,” Federici said.

But patrons such as Dick McCann, 48, of South Pasadena hope they will keep the State open anyway. McCann, an architect, said he appreciates seeing timeworn buildings occupied again.

“Here we are with all the modern kinds of buildings, and all of the shopping centers, and it’s really a credit to the people that own and operate” old buildings “to try to do something different. There’s getting to be less and less examples of these theaters that were once a part of our country,” McCann said.

Warner said many theatergoers appreciate old movie houses like the State because they can see the films in the environment for which they were created. As he put it: “It recreates the excitement and the glamour of Hollywood.”