Fourth Street’s Art Theatre is ready for its close-up, Mr. Van Dijs

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

By the time you read this, the Art Theatre will be open again—following one of the grandest restorations of a commercial building in recent history—making it once more Long Beach’s only independent movie house, and the city’s last functioning vintage theater.

At one point our list of antique movie houses was long, stretching from North Long Beach to Bixby Knolls (where a pompadoured Edmund O’Brien graced a premiere at the Crest) to the palaces along Ocean Boulevard, which sank in the 1960s and 1970s into porno-dom.

Now, the Art—born 1925, reborn 2008—is our last independent theater. Owned for almost exactly 35 years by film buff Howard Linn, it sold—at last—to urban developer Jan van Dijs, who until now has been best known for his sensitive redevelopment of the historic Ebell Club.

After last week’s grand Art re-opening, it’s fairly safe to say that he’ll be known for this project. Van Dijs and crew have spearheaded a restoration that returns the Art to its second look, post-’33 quake—a slightly abstract Streamline Moderne vision intended to portray the prow of a ship cutting majestically through the waves. New Long Beach Heritage President John Thomas, who’s doing consulting with the new Queen Mary owners, helped determine a color scheme for the Art: a mixture of tans, whites and blues that sets off its speedline-lined facade perfectly.

Inside, van Dijs added Dolby sound, but had the 1960s-era Christie film equipment carefully restored; no reason to monkey with a setup that still works admirably, he says.

Downstairs, seating is all new: approximately 380 darkly-wooded seats on a new floor—about a hundred fewer than before, which now equals more sitting room, and space for an expanded snack bar. Outside, the Art’s two vintage storefronts that flank the tile-and-stainless steel ticket booth have been revived. One is a coffee bar, the other (soon) a wine bar.

When we met in late July—the week before the seats and the restored neon sign arrived—van Dijs kept breaking away to confer with workmen and a city building inspector. He called later to emphasize one point: They’re not doing this restoration—painstakingly replastering each exterior flute, for example—to blot out Howard Linn. This theater, van Dijs says, wouldn’t be here today if Linn, now 80—and son Steve and wife Florence and all their employees—hadn’t dug in and held onto it for 35 years. And, of course, he’s absolutely right.

Tags: art theatre, Fourth Street, Long Beach, retro row