California Theater

Written by Bakersfield Magazine

Prior to the days of talkies but after the world of nickelodeons; during a time of prohibition, flappers, and The Great Gatsby, The California Theater on Chester Avenue and Wall Street was an entertainment haven for Bakersfield. It was a place to see the latest from DeMille or to eagerly stand in line to catch the newest release from silent film star Constance Talmadge.

These weren’t the days when movies ran for two months in theaters—if you didn’t make it down to the movie house during a film’s four-day run, you didn’t see it.

So it seemed all of Bakersfield turned up to see Talmadge’s performance as Helen Weyringer in Her Sister From Paris on this Saturday in November (don’t ask how we found out it was a Saturday).

They packed the renovated theater, which was originally the old Scribner’s Opera House. Reopened on September 14, 1920 after old W. H. Scribner was fed up with the competition from the Bakersfield Opera House (which opened in 1906), The California Theater boasted a pit orchestra to accompany the silent movies and vaudeville acts that graced the stage, and was actually large enough to have a 2-manual, 10-rank organ. And unlike the flashlight-toting teens of today, the young ushers of yore were known to dress up to accompany the picture that was showing. The release of the 1926 film You’re in the Navy Now had usherettes donning sailor uniforms (we’ve seen the pictures).

While it was considered the first metropolitan building in Bakersfield upon its construction in 1889, this location proved inhospitable for both the opera house and the theater and in 1966 became the Community National Bank.

Never again would this building draw crowds that seem more in keeping with the movie premieres of today than with the glitz and glamor of Bakersfield during the Roaring 20s.

Article appeared in our 26-4 Issue - October 2009

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