Venerable theater on the skids
Here is a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1990
Aug. 13: San Francisco’s Embassy Theater, a Market Street institution since before the 1906 earthquake, soon may be just a hole in the ground. Preservationists want to save it for its historical significance but the owner wants $1.7 million for the property and the only potential buyer to surface is a gay arts organization that does not have that kind of ready cash. “Right now, it’s not worth anything,” sighed owner David Tsao, who says he faces bankruptcy. Tsao bought the Embassy at a foreclosure sale last year and announced he would rename it the Civic Cinema and stage live rock shows and old movies. Then the October 17 earthquake hit. The boarded-up eyesore at 1125 Market has been “red-tagged” ever since. Built in 1905 as the Bell Theater, the Embassy was the first theater in town to show the first “talkie,” “The Jazz Singer,” in 1928. The shabby pink structure, which has also been called the American, the Rialto and the Rivoli, also housed a bar, an art gallery and a famed dance studio. The studio was run for a half-century by a pair of vaudeville hoofers, Pat Mason and Stanley Kahn. Donald O’Connor learned to dance at the Mason-Kahn studio, or so the legend went. San Francisco showman Dan McLean ran the theater from 1938 until his death in 1983. McLean invented the wildly popular weekly “Ten-O-Win” wheel-of-fortune drawings on Thursday nights giving moviegoing pensioners a chance to win $5, $10 and $50 cash prizes.
— Maitland Zane
1965
Aug. 10: Mayor John F. Shelley yesterday called for an investigation into the racing deaths of two sports car drivers to determine whether the city’s contract with the Junior Chamber for races on Candlestick property should be cancelled. The Mayor expressed concern and deep regret over the deaths of Ken O’Neill Jr. of Saratoga and Bart Martin of Hayward in the annual Junior Chamber racing show. O’Neill was killed instantly when his small, modified MerlynClimax lost a wheel at 70 m.p.h. Martin was burned to death Sunday after he lost control of his Brabham-Ford at 100 m.p.h. Bob Winkelmann, Sports Car Club of America chairman said yesterday that the weekend racing program “was very successful … except of course, for the tragedy of the two deaths, for which no individual or group can be held responsible. The possibility of making a mistake that would cause injury or death is common knowledge and uppermost in the minds of mature race drivers.”
— Gordon Martin
1940
Aug. 13: When the Library Commission meets early next month it will be faced with petitions from at least three North Beach organizations asking for a public library branch “in North Beach.” Northern section leaders maintain — and it seems to us with a great deal of justice — that the so-called North Beach branch is in no position to serve the Beach, that it is a Chinatown branch. It is in a fine position for Chinatown residents. These groups have gone on record as urging the establishment of a branch library in the vicinity of Washington Square: North Beach Merchants Association, North Beach Boosters Association, and Columbus Civic Club. A coordinating committee is composed of Leo M. Bianco, Elios P. Anderlini and John Figone. The proposal for a bona fide North Beach library was first made by Bianco several weeks ago. General opinion in the northern section is that a branch is badly needed, as the present branch is much too far away to be of any benefit to schoolchildren. Said John Figone yesterday: “This is one of the most important projects yet to be undertaken for the improvement of North Beach. We intend to see it through to a successful finish.”
— Bill Simons
1915
Aug. 9: Strapped to his seat in a graceful monoplane, Charles Niles, the aviator, narrowly escaped death when his air craft plunged like a comet into the San Francisco Bay opposite the Stadium. The aviator saved himself from drowning by unstrapping himself while under water and climbing out on one of the wings of the plane which did not sink. The accident occurred when his engine stopped while he was flying at a height of 150 feet, 200 yards off shore. Because of the low altitude he was unable to right the monoplane or volplane down to relieve the shock of the fall. His injuries are a slightly fractured jaw bone, a badly lacerated chin and the loss of three upper and two lower teeth, together with the shock of the fall and the long immersion in water. He was rescued by J. B. Croxton who was passing in a motor-boat. His machine was towed to shore by the Fort Point life-saving crew. Niles was making his first flight on the Pacific Coast when he fell. He became internationally famous for his work in the aerial war corps of General Carranza in Mexico. Niles is the aviator for whom General Pancho Villa has offered a $25,000 reward if captured.