Fremont Theater is still under repair. When else has the SLO icon gotten updates?
When a storm damaged the Fremont Theater marquee earlier this year, it was a reminder that it takes effort to keep a landmark alive.
San Luis Obispo’s other great theater, the Obispo, was lost to fire in 1975.
And the Fremont was almost lost to the changing fortunes of movie economics.
Theaters today are generic shoeboxes and at one time a former owner, Mann Theaters, wanted to subdivide the big theater into shoeboxes, destroying the dynamic muraled and neon lit ceiling to cater to smaller audiences.
The Fremont was built in the Streamline Moderne style by movie theater architect S. Charles Lee.
It was the golden age of movie palaces, opening in 1942 with comic celebrities Laurel and Hardy in attendance. The space is flexible enough to host films or live events.
About four decades after opening, the theater was suggested as the region’s performing arts center, tied to a parking garage at the corner of Morro and Monterey streets.
That plan fell through and ownership changed — but the theater endured.
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Over the years, the theater has had owners who have periodically updated the property.
The Fremont replaced the original projectors in 1990.
Today, color pictures are distributed not on film but digitally in wide-screen formats with sophisticated sound systems.
The marquee neon was refurbished by Edwards Theaters in June 1993 and a new 1,000-square-foot screen installed for Jurassic Park.
Richard Jackoway wrote this story about a May 16, 2002, upgrade to the theater.
Improvements to the Fremont come in time for ‘Episode II’
A bigger, brighter night at the movies
When “Star Wars” fans got their first look at “Episode II” last night, they saw it on a bigger screen, with a better sound system and brighter picture than ever before available at the Fremont Theater.
“It’s going to be much improved,” Bruce Sanborn, president of the Movie Experience, which runs the theater, said Wednesday afternoon.
The improvements are the first phase of three planned upgrades to the landmark downtown San Luis Obispo movie house, Sanborn said. He said he couldn’t elaborate on the other changes until plans are final.
The current improvements include a new and much wider screen — 56 feet wide. The previous screen was just under 40 feet wide, Sanborn said. The screen has already been installed, but films shown so far have not used the full width. The wide-screen “Star Wars” does.
The sound system has been upgraded by completing a system that was installed in the 1990s.
The projectors now have lamphouses that will produce a 50 percent brighter picture.
“It’s the full brightness that you’re supposed to have for industry standards,” Sanborn said.
The Fremont is among a nearly extinct breed of large, single-screen movie houses that used to be quite common throughout the United States. Most of the old theaters have been torn down, turned into concert venues, cut up into smaller theaters or abandoned.
“A theater like this one is extremely rare,” Sanborn said.
The art deco Fremont Theater opened its doors for the first time on Memorial Day in 1942. Film stars including Jackie Cooper, Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel attended the grand opening. The theater was designed by the same architect who created the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.
