On Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, the Elmwood Rialto Theater, Berkeley’s last movie theater, celebrated its 30th anniversary.
That is, its 30th anniversary since its reopening. The theater first opened in 1914, under the name of Strand Theater. At about 110 years old, the theater bears a City of Berkeley Landmark plaque, proudly displayed in its box office window, marking it as one of the Elmwood neighborhood’s “first commercial structures.”
The neighborhood is now filled with bustling shops, cafés, and salons. On a Saturday afternoon in late October, the Elmwood area was packed with families. Children wearing Halloween costumes and holding plastic jack-o-lanterns were running up and down the streets collecting candy from each store as part of the Rockridge Halloween Parade.
The Elmwood Theater was crowded with excited children and their parents exiting its free Saturday Family Matinee. That day, they showed “Hotel Transylvania,” befitting the spooky season.
Watching movies on a computer or at home may be quickly replacing movie theaters. When the pandemic hit, many theaters closed, unable to sustain their businesses when they were shut down indefinitely. Then, during quarantine, subscriptions to streaming services soared and most studios shortened the time-span between theatrical release and streaming release. Ky J. Boyd, director of the Elmwood Theater said, “People’s viewing habits changed because we taught everybody how to stream.”
Unfortunately, all of these factors plus inflation have meant more expensive movie tickets. Boyd said, “The pandemics and the strikes happen, minimum wage keeps going up, utility and operating costs keep going up, food costs keep going up. Just as everybody feels the impact in their own wallet, we’ve felt it as well … we have to raise prices and it’s been very challenging.”
The shift away from theater-going has been seen close to Berkeley High School. At one point, downtown Berkeley had about six movie theaters. In 2020, it had three. In May of 2022, Shattuck Cinemas and the California Theatre, both owned by the same chain, shut down. This left United Artists’ Regal Theater the only theater left in downtown Berkeley. In the early months of 2023, it closed too.
Only the Elmwood Theater survived, and it has come close to being shut down time and time again. It closed in 1941 during World War II, then reopened in 1947 under the name of the Elmwood. In 1988, the theater caught fire. A plan was proposed to demolish the theater and turn it into a shopping mall. Burl Willes and Laurie Capitelli, along with several others such as David Salk, Frederic Harvey, and Alan Hibbard, began a campaign to save the theater. Capitelli worked as a real estate broker and his wife, Marilyn Capitelli, owned a bookstore in the neighborhood, then called Avenue Books, now Mrs. Dalloway’s. Willes worked across the street from the Elmwood Theater, and lived just a few blocks away. Willes said, “It was a joint effort of quite a few people. And, we really worked with the city. The city really wanted to save that theater too.”
The city’s contribution was to designate the Elmwood as a landmark. That made it much more difficult to bulldoze and rebuild the Elmwood as anything but a new movie theater. United Artists, the corporation that owned the theater at that time, decided to sell the theater. Along with their friends, Willes and Capitelli fundraised and got a loan from the City for repairs to the damaged theater, then bought the Elmwood.
“We held two fundraising events on consecutive Saturdays … On those two Saturdays we raised $425,000 from the neighbors,” Capitelli said proudly. “It was in the form of the loan … by the end of this month, probably the middle of next, we will have paid them all back.”
However, this was not the end of the Elmwood’s troubles. In 2004, the theater had to make up one million dollars worth of repairs after it was flooded due to a broken sewer line. Boyd also mentioned the 2023 actors’ and writers’ strikes. “In a lot of ways, you know, the pandemic was one blow but the strikes were another blow and they really impacted film production … so we’ve been dealing with having a reduced number of films to show,” Boyd said.
Willes spoke of a particular incident in which a car crashed right into the marquee of the theater. Apparently, two people had been arguing in a car. Their argument frightened their poodle, who jumped into the front seats and caused the driver to veer into the theater’s electrical box. “It was the weekend before Oppenheimer opened … this was going to bring a lot of people back to the theater after the pandemic … we reopened right on time, but it was a narrow escape,” Willes said.
Both Capitelli and Willes see a bright future for the Elmwood Theater. It now serves food and wine to accompany the films. While they often tend to focus on independent cinema rather than mainstream films, they try to show something for everyone. There are free family films for younger children, film art exhibitions, National Theater live for the arts and theater communities, and free classics for older generations. Willes said, “People of all ages like to go to the movies if there is something worth going to.”
Furthermore, Boyd has been trying to keep theater accessible to everyone. “To combat (rising ticket prices) We created a loyalty program that we call Movie Lover. And movie lover is totally free to sign up for,” Boyd said. The program allows any member to see a movie for only nine dollars on Monday evenings.
Capitelli and Willes credit the Elmwood Theater’s success in part to the community. Capitelli said, “I think people are kind of stunned when they hear that we raised so much (money) in just two Saturday afternoons. But when we announced to the neighborhood that we were going to try and save the theater, people came out of the woodwork wanting to help.”
Boyd echoed this sentiment. “We live and die with the community. I mean, you know, without an audience it’s just light flickering in the dark,” Boyd said.
At the end of the day, there’s nothing like being in a movie theater. “There is something about being part of a community of people … you’re in a big theater, there’s 100 people, and they’re all laughing together … It’s just the difference between watching a ball game on TV versus being there in person. You know it’s a lot more fun to be in the grandstands whooping and hollering with a group than watching it alone,” Willes said.
Boyd also gave the reminder that without the community continuing to come to the Elmwood, they won’t be able to keep afloat. Boyd said, “If you value this experience, you need to support it because movie theaters are not going to exist without the support of an audience. And we’re doing everything we can pragmatically … we’re trying everything we can… but, you know, if we’re gonna survive, the audience has to meet us halfway and show up. So support storytelling. Come see the movies.”