Losing a Landmark — Clay Theatre closing
Onescreen cinema in Pacific Heights is last in the Bay Area for art house chain
The warm whiteonred neon blade and marquee at the Clay Theatre, one of the oldest movie theaters in San Francisco and a signpost on Fillmore Street in Pacific Heights since around 1910, will flicker off after one last picture show as the shoeboxshaped room is scheduled to close Sunday, Jan. 26.
With the 325seat Clay going dark, that leaves San Francisco with the Vogue Theatre on Sacramento Street as the only neighborhood firstrun single screen in the city. The Clay is part of a chain of art houses across the country owned by Landmark Theatres, including venues in Berkeley, Albany, Oakland, Palo Alto and Santa Cruz in addition to the Embarcadero Center Cinema and Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco.
Landmark President Paul Serwitz, reached by phone in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Jan. 22, confirmed the closure and said the Clay had been losing money for six consecutive years.
“Much of Landmark’s DNA is in older theaters like the Clay, but we’ve put many efforts into making the Clay work and are unable to operate it viably,” he said.
Serwitz added that the Opera Plaza Cinema on Van Ness, which also had been rumored to face closure, will remain open and is scheduled for
refurbishing.
The Clay’s fate “came as a shock to me,” the Clay’s landlord, Balgobind Jaiswal, said Tuesday, Jan. 21. Jaiswal, who also owns Cielo Boutique on the same block of Fillmore as the theater, said he has been exploring the concept of combining the movie theater with a restaurant to make it viable but has not yet found a food partner for that venture.
Despite the pending closure, Alfonso Felder of the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation sounded hopeful for the future of the historic building.
“There is a level of interest in the community for it staying a theater that I’m optimistic will result in another chapter,” said Felder, whose organization bought and saved the Vogue. “The Clay has been around since 1910, so it has some fortitude.”
The darkening of the Clay Theatre follows the recent closure of the Guild in Menlo Park as the last two single screens in Landmark’s Bay Area portfolio.
The chain was launched in 1975 by San Franciscans Gary Meyer and Steve Gilula. Landmark took over the Clay in 1991 and throughout that decade was a major force in the indie film craze that was fed constant product by studios like Miramax and Orion Classics.
Meyer sold the chain to Samuel Goldwyn Jr. in the late ’90s, starting the long, slow whittling of the chain through sales and a bankruptcy before Landmark was purchased by Cohen Media Group in late 2018.
By then the Bridge Theatre, another beloved Landmark single screen off Geary Boulevard, had already folded and it was rumored that the Clay would be next to fall.
In 2010, the Clay looked as if it was going to be saved by the San Francisco Film Society (now SFFilm), which had been in talks to take it over from Landmark. But that deal fell through, compelling Jaiswal to reduce rent for Landmark to keep the theater running.
This time around, Jaiswal said he was not offered any terms by Landmark, which is on a monthtomonth rent. He expects to be served notice that Landmark will vacate any day now and suspects it is closing to give the operator ample time to remove its equipment.
But in a post on the Facebook page “Save The Clay Theatre San Francisco” on Tuesday, Clay floor staffer and inhouse historian Michael Blythe blamed the impending closure of the Clay on the landlord Jaiswal, not the operator Landmark. He implored moviegoers to contact Jaiswal by email and come to the theater to demand it remain open.
“Ask that he work with Landmark to make the improvements needed to the facility without destroying its simple charms,” Blythe stated. “Tell them how much you adore this building before it is too late.”
Netta Fedor, who lives a short walk from the theater, came to the Clay on Monday as soon as she heard the rumors to commiserate with Blythe, who took time away from popping corn to comfort her.
“I’m sick. I see every film that comes here,” said Fedor, who said she had seen 670 movies in San Francisco theaters in 2019 — many of them at the Clay.
“It’s a shame to lose all the local theaters,” said Rachel Reynard, who took the 22Fillmore from her home in the Mission to watch “Honeyland” on Monday. “It’s a lovely thing to have in a neighborhood, and it’s going to be a loss.”
Unlike many of the early theaters in San Francisco that were either converted storefronts or built for vaudeville and other live performances, the Clay was built as a movie theater, with no backstage, said Blythe.
While historians like Blythe contend the theater opened in 1910, there is no documentation that it is the oldest theater in the city. Bill Counter, who runs the Facebook page Bay Area Historic Theaters, said old telephone directories date the Regent, the Vogue and the Roxie Theater to 1913 but no earlier.
Originally called the Regent, and briefly the Avalon, the theater’s exterior was altered once — in the 1950s when an archway was removed and the name was changed to the Clay, with a new blade and marquee. The ticket booth was also moved from the center of the foyer to the side.
Early advertisements show it as “The Clay International,” and it has held steady as a home for firstrun independent foreign cinema. The Clay serves the broader Bay Area at midnight on Saturdays when it screens campy cult films, a concept it launched in 1972 with the premiere of John Waters’ “Pink Flamingos.”
The Clay became part of the Surf chain of theaters before Landmark took it over in the mid1990s. At one point 500 seats were crammed into the narrow room, but that was reduced as people got wider and taller, Blythe said. The chairs were last replaced in the 1990s.
That is right about the time a rat took up residence in the rafters. It became part of the show, scampering along the ceiling and dangling its long tail so the audience could see it.
“The Clay is part of San Francisco history and means a lot to people who love art films,” said Meyer, the Landmark cofounder. “On the other hand, operating a single screen is difficult and the Clay has not been updated in a long time.”
Among the Bay Area singlescreen theaters to close in recent decades are the Northpoint (2007), the Metro (2006), the Coronet (2005), the Alhambra and the Royal (both 1998), the Pagoda Palace (1994) and the Cannery (1993). The Alexandria on Geary Boulevard was converted to a triplex before closing in 2004. The Four Star in the Richmond and both the Presidio and Cinema 21 in the Marina were single screens converted to duplexes or fourplexes by Lee Family Theaters.
The Roxie, off 16th Street in the Mission, is now a nonprofit that relies heavily on revivals and repertory programming. And while the Castro Theatre, opened in 1922, is also singlescreen, it is a movie palace at a major intersection and serves the broader Bay Area mainly as a repertory house and festival venue.
“I’m sad, of course, to lose the Clay,” said Counter. “What can you say? It’s another one that bites the dust, and San Francisco is poorer because of it.”