Fox Theatre Inglewood

The Fox Theatre building on N. Market St. in Inglewood was constructed in 1949 to replace an earlier theater that burned down in 1944. Architects were S. Charles Lee for the exterior and Carl G. Moeller for the interior. Shirley Temple and Clifton Webb, stars of the movie that premiered at the theater's opening night, made an appearance, drawing a crowd of thousands. It was the last movie theater built by Fox Theatres after a court ruling changed the ability of a movie studio (like Twentieth Century Fox) to also own movie theaters. Vacant since 1988, the Fox Theatre Inglewood was entered into the National Register of Historic Places in 2013 for its Streamline Moderne architectural style.

The former movie theater on this spot in Inglewood, the Granada Theater, opened in 1924 and burned to the ground in 1944. A new theatre building was designed by architect Charles S. Lee and was completed in early 1949. "The show starts on the sidewalk" was a guiding principle of Lee's approach to designing movie theaters. The Fox Theatre Inglewood was a mid-century building in the new Streamline Moderne style. The new theater, which cost $400,000 to build, was described in the local paper as "ultra-modern." The interior was the design of Carl G. Moeller. The head of Fox West Coast Theaters, Charles P. Skouros, touted the 1,008-seat theater's latest developments in screen projection and sound.

Shirley Temple was one of the stars of the first film screened at the Fox Theatre in Inglewood, Mr. Belvedere Goes to College. The actress, who played a college student and a war widow. made an appearance at the premiere on March 31st, 1949 at the Fox; a crowd of about ten thousand gathered on the nearby streets to see the many Hollywood stars who attended opening night of the theater. The next day, the theater started continuous showings at 12:30 in the afternoon of a movie starring Robert Taylor and Ava Gardner. On that week's Saturday morning, the theater planned a special children's movie premiere with appearances by Western movie stars.

The Fox Theatre in Inglewood was one of five Fox West Coast movie theaters in Inglewood when it was built, and one of dozens of the company's movie theaters in the Los Angeles area. Another movie theater, United Artists, was right across the street from the Fox on North Market Street (Inglewood's main street). The Fox Inglewood was the final movie theater built by Fox Theatres; a lawsuit forbade motion picture studios (Twentieth Century Fox was the same organization as Fox Theatres) from owning movie theaters and claiming exclusive rights to screen their films.

The Fox Theatre switched to screening Spanish-language films before it closed in 1988; it was owned then by Mann Theaters. The interior was used for filming in the 1990s, so the walls display movie posters from then. A former National Football League player, Mark Fields, purchased the theater building in 2003 and planned to convert it into a sports bar with condominiums and a parking garage.

A group formed in 2009 to support restoring the still- vacant theater; the Inglewood Fox Theatre Alliance helped to have the building documented for listing in the National Register of Historic Places; much of the interior still held the original equipment and displayed the original furnishings. The building was put up for auction in 2010. There were plans for the City of Inglewood to bid on the property and then work with local groups to rehabilitate the building to become a non-profit, multi-purpose events center. The plans didn't materialize, and the theater building was up for sale again in 2015. Roof failure has caused water damage to the interior, including the collapse of part of the auditorium ceiling. The building remains vacant.

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Anonymous. "Big premiere to open new theater." Daily News (Los Angeles) March 31st, 1949. 21-21.

Anonymous. "Fox West Coast Theatres, Movies are better than ever: Inglewood." Daily News (Los Angeles) July 22nd, 1950. Advertisements sec, 22-22.

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Fox West Coast Theatres. "The place to go! Fox West Coast Theatres." Evening Citizen News (Los Angeles) April 1st, 1949. Advertisements sec, 18-18.

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Lambros, Matt. Fox Theatre Inglewood, California, After the Final Curtain. September 3rd, 2015. Accessed June 30th, 2023. https://afterthefinalcurtain.net/2015/09/03/fox-theatre/.