Only a few historic movie theaters remain in San Diego County. These are their stories.

On an unassuming Tuesday in mid-August, a substantial line formed underneath the glowing lights of the Village Theatres’ glittering marquee in Coronado for a matinee showing of “The Naked Gun.”

Seventy-eight years prior, a similar line formed there for its very first screening: a double-feature of “Irish Eyes are Smiling” and “The Well Groomed Bride,” which both debuted in Technicolor. 

In recent years, San Diegans have seen some of their cherished neighborhood movie theaters shut down — such as the Ken Cinema and Guild Theatre, as well as many chain multiplexes. But the Village is one among a handful of local historic theaters whose doors remain open, thanks to a handful of die-hards who refuse to let classic cinema-going become a thing of the past.

“It’s a tough business to be in,” said Allen Largent, the owner of San Diego County’s oldest fully operational cinema, the La Paloma Theatre. “It takes somebody that is stubborn and stupid and obstinate and not married to run a single-screen movie theater.”

A 98-year old theater 

La Paloma sits in the heart of Encinitas off Highway 101, an old Spanish colonial-revival building that has grown sun-bleached and faded over the years. 

It opened in 1928 with a screening of the silent comedy film “The Cohens and Kellys in Paris,” selling out all 540 seats in its single auditorium. An article in the San Diego Union recounting its opening night referred to the theater as a “temple of cinema.” Since its heyday, the theater has remained largely untouched, aside from a sporadic handful of cosmetic touch-ups.

Largent first started working at La Paloma as a teenage projectionist in 1979. He said that in 1992, after the building had changed hands several times, he used his life savings to buy the place out and hasn’t had a day off since. He now runs the theater with a small staff, including his right-hand-man Steven Schoelen, who helps with movie selection and marketing on top of day-to-day operations.

La Paloma is the only fully operating movie theater left in San Diego County with both digital and reel-to-reel capabilities, showcasing new releases and nostalgia flicks that attract cinephiles from all over the county. Schoelen even recounted a surprise visit from lauded director and film buff Quentin Tarantino in 2017.

“He wanted a tour,” said Schoelen. “I walked him around, took him up to the projection booth, and then his assistant called us later, and they rented out the theater. Jonathan Demme had just passed away, so he sent us down a ‘Something Wild’ 35-millimeter print. He was very into our projectors and the lamphouses.”

Tarantino owns two old-school cinemas in Los Angeles: the New Beverly Cinema and Vista Theater, both of which have been refurbished and prioritize showing films on 35-millimeter print. The director purchased the Vista off a small cinema restoration corporation called Vintage Cinemas in 2021. Now, Vintage Cinemas only oversees two properties — including Village Theatres in Coronado.

Unlike the spiffed-up Village Theatres, La Paloma’s façade has fallen into disrepair over the years. The marquee has chipped away, the proscenium faded and the upholstery on the seats wearing thin.

“The only reason the movie theater is still here is because of Allen,” said Bruce Ehlers, mayor of Encinitas.

Leading up to the theater’s centennial, Largent has had some conversations with the city of Encinitas about the current state and future of the business, as well as the possibility of renovation. In early August, the mayor took a walk-through of the theater to assess what that might look like.

“The bones are fantastic in this building. I’ve seen far worse,” said Ehlers. 

Improvements, he said, would likely be superficial, though some seismic reinforcements to the building itself could come into consideration, as well.

Simultaneously, Largent is considering non-profit options for keeping the theater alive.

“The phrase I like to use is ‘preserve, restore and protect,’” said Largent. “That would be my vision, my goal. Then I’d be able to retire and leave it in capable and competent hands that will continue to operate it as a single-screen movie theater.”

Apart from selling tickets in the box office, slinging popcorn and running the projector, Largent and Schoelen have had to play a variety of roles to ensure that their movies make it to the screen every day.

“You’ve got to be a plumber and an electrician. You gotta learn how to use a computer. You’ve got to wear a lot of hats, yeah? And you just have to be dedicated,” said Largent. 

Sacrifices, he said, are a regular ordeal. 

“I have to decide — do I fix the toilet or do I worry about the layer of dust on top of the speakers? When the lights go down, are the speakers working? Can we put on the show?” he said. “If there’s a broken seat way in the back, it’s not going to stop you from doing the show.”

Schoelen does most of the projecting work these days, mainly using a digital projector with the rare — though highly coveted — 16- or 35-millimeter reel-to-reel screening.

“It’s very difficult to get prints. And when you do get them, the condition’s not always great,” said Schoelen.

Largent recounted that the last time they tried to show a film on print, the drive belt broke, the projector head jammed up and the film melted right off the screen.

“You don’t want to do that to a print that’s not yours,” he said gravely.

A new life for historic theaters 

Located on Coronado’s bustling main street, Orange Avenue, the Village first opened as a 600-seat, single-screen theater. In the 1990s, the building began to deteriorate and was eventually abandoned until Lance Asplaugh of Vintage Cinemas purchased it in 2010, bent on restoring it to its former glory — and turning it into a multiplex. 

Asplaugh said the company put in $500,000 of its own money towards the renovation, partnering with the City of Coronado for the other $2.675 million it would take to cleave the single screen into three.

“It’s been one of the joys of my life,” said Asplaugh, who said he’d been in and around the movie theater business since he was a kid. “It took multiple trips over multiple years of schmoozing and lunch meetings at their offices in San Diego, having them visit our theaters in Los Angeles, and on and on, until they finally said yes.”

The Village reopened during the summer of 2011 with a digital marquee, a brightened exterior and brand new interior, including a collection of historic San Diego-themed murals painted by Disney muralist Bill Anderson. The main auditorium now sits around 200, bookended by two smaller screening rooms that each sit 38.

Splitting the theater into three, Asplaugh said, was an act of necessity. “You just have to. With rent and financing the way it is, there’s a lot of money right out the door before you’ve even played anything.”

Film distributors and exhibitors typically split the revenue of box-office sales, with distributors taking the highest cut in the first several weeks of a film’s release. The rate differs from movie to movie and studio to studio, but Asplaugh emphasized that trying to keep pace with a single screen was bad for the Village’s business.

“If you open a big movie, like ‘Superman,’ you put it in the big theater. Then, in two weeks, you move ‘Superman’ into one of the screening rooms and then put ‘Fantastic Four’ in the big one for two weeks, and then ‘Freakier Friday’ and so on,” said Asplaugh. “It’s very rare that we run out of films, but the way the market is today — there are times where I wonder how these 15-plexes and 20-screen movie theaters can make it. Sometimes we don’t even have three movies to play.”

As for La Paloma’s future, Largent isn’t interested in a multiplex.

“If someone wants to turn this into anything but a single screen, there’s the door,” he said.

According to Asplaugh, Vintage Cinemas doesn’t plan to purchase any more properties as he begins looking ahead to retirement. He described how they had considered trying to save the Ken Cinema, but ultimately no deal was made. Asplaugh also said his lease at the Village — which was meant to expire in May 2026 — is up for extension.

“We don’t want to walk away,” he said. “I’d like to continue with another 10 years if possible. But in 10 years when I’m 76, it’ll probably be time to say goodbye and goodnight. You have to know when to get off stage.”

In that instance, the question becomes: who will take it upon themselves to preserve these historic theaters throughout the county?

“San Diego needs its own Quentin,” said Ethan van Thillo, the founder and executive director of MEDIA ARTS Center San Diego. The organization operates Digital Gym Cinema, the last independent art-house theater in the San Diego area. It opened in 2013 and is now inside UC San Diego’s Park and Market building in East Village.

Creative cinema solutions

About 50 miles up Interstate 15 from San Diego, another historic theater sits on Main Street in Fallbrook, the Mission Theater. It opened in 1948 as a first-run cinema, but eventually stopped showing movies regularly. In 2018, the building was put up for sale and bought by Fallbrook real estate agent Roy Moosa as a passion project.

“It’s so important to Fallbrook,” said Moosa. “Had it fallen into the wrong hands, it would have completely affected downtown. What’s happened with most small town theaters is when they shut down, they become churches, or they get knocked down or boarded up. … It was just too important to let it slide.”

Under Moosa’s ownership, the theater has deliberately scaled back its operations to only show classic movies on Fridays and live music on Saturdays. Community organizations are able to rent out the space the rest of the week for live theater performances or business meetings. A small team of volunteers run the theater during its operating hours and have turned it into a shrine of classic film, with framed authentic autographs lining the walls and a Hollywood-style walk of fame on the terrazzo out front.

Unlike La Paloma and the Village, the Mission Theater doesn’t show new releases anymore, so it doesn’t have to abide by the same ticket revenue model. Moosa said they are licensed for movie exhibition, paying distributors to play movies that are not on their first run — but the most modern film they’ve shown came out in 2012.

“They can go anywhere for the new stuff,” said Steve Britschgi, the theater steward at Mission. “One of the things we wanted to do is give (audiences) something you can’t get somewhere else. It’s a special juju here.”

Their movie selection is hand-picked by a committee of volunteers, who not only want to offer a nostalgic experience for their visitors, but perhaps show the community a film they would have never seen otherwise. They estimate that screenings average around 63 attendees per week, though on Aug. 1, 181 patrons came to see “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”

“People laugh more when they’re sitting with other people,” said Stephanie Gaddis, a regular volunteer at the Mission. “They clap at the end of the movie. We showed ‘Singing in the Rain’ and people were clapping after each song, like there were really people singing up there.”

Going forward, they want to open a VIP Lounge on the upper floor of the building, as well as to set up a fully-equipped podcasting studio to rent out. Moosa emphasized that, while the classic movie screenings are important to the identity of the theater, being a variety house is what keeps the bills paid.

One-of-a-kind experiences

San Diego’s historic Balboa Theatre, which turned 100 in 2024, follows a similar model, with Silent Movie Mondays played to live organ accompaniment and various retro film series, in addition to live programming. The Balboa recently underwent a $26.5 million restoration, funded by the city’s redevelopment agency.

“Showing movies is a negligible amount of our business,” said Steven Johnson, the vice president of San Diego Theatres, which operates the Balboa.

Though La Paloma is primarily focused on film screenings, it has long acted as a live music venue, hosting acts from Jerry Garcia to Eddie Vedder. Keeping true to its history as a vaudeville stage, a midnight cast of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” performs frequently on Fridays. 

In addition, Largent has been renting the space out to Light Church on Sundays. He hopes that it will continue to operate primarily as a cinema with city support and a nonprofit dedicated to restoring the old gem.

“There’s nothing in the San Diego area like La Paloma,” said Largent. “There are similar places, but it’s one of its kind.”

All the owners and operators of these historic theaters agreed that significant support is needed to keep these theaters going — community, corporate or otherwise. In the case of La Paloma, though political support is being floated, the financial and logistical realities loom large.

“I don’t want the city to take it over completely,” said Ehlers, the Encinitas mayor. “He’s proven it can still be a viable business. It could be as simple as a few thousand dollars to get a new screen and improvements to the sound system, or it could be half a million and we do some real renovations.”

Despite, San Diego’s recent record of multiscreen cinema closures, all three historic theaters continue to be open for business. The number one thing keeping them that way is their audiences. 

“It’s making an investment beyond the mortar of the theater,” said Johnson on continuing to preserve historic San Diego theaters. “They are part of history, and hopefully they can be part of the future.”