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  RAYLEEN HSU The Mann Bruin, built in 1937, and other theaters such as the Mann Village are tangible reminders of the past.

By Chris Young

Daily Bruin Staff

Visible even from the dorms on the hill, the Westwood Fox movie spire beckons students to its box office, showing the newest flick Hollywood has to offer.

Three landmark Westwood theaters, the Mann Village Theater (formerly known as the Fox Westwood Theater), the Mann Bruin Theater, and the Crest, capture elements of Westwood’s history and the movie-going experience of an earlier era. They offer students a glimpse of the past as they watch the latest blockbuster.

In the 1910s, UCLA moved from its campus near present-day L.A. City College, to its present location. The Janss Investment Company designed Westwood Village as a community around the school.

An art jury selected an architectural style for the Village, a colonial Spanish-Mediterranean design. Marc Wanamaker, vice president of the Los Angeles City Historical Society, said that Westwood’s design was unique for Los Angeles.

“It’s like being in Paris where you can clearly see the Eiffel Tower, the opera house,” Wanamaker said. “In Westwood you look up and can see its landmarks from different vantage points.”

A number of Spanish and Mediterranean-inspired towers, spires, signs and neon lights served as beacons to motorists driving on Wilshire and Sunset Boulevards. One of those towers belonged to what was formerly known as Fox Westwood Theater.

S. Charles Lee, a world-renowned theater architect, designed the Fox and the Bruin theaters on the intersection of Broxton and Weyburn Avenues.

“When you enter the Fox, you see it has a very large lobby that gives it a feeling of luxury,” said Ted Gooding, a director of the Theater Historical Society of America. “Also, the projection and sound equipment is first-rate. You have to have good equipment because this is a college area and students expect that quality.”

The Fox was built in 1931 with a Spanish colonial revival style with aspects of moderne – a combination of art deco and neon. Art deco was a design of the 1920s and 1930s with geometric and zigzag forms, bold outlines, and new building materials.

The Fox movie company added the distinct Fox Tower, a Westwood landmark, after they bought it from the Janss Company.

The Bruin was constructed in 1937, using neon as a main element.

Being built during the ’20s and ’30s, these theaters were made in a different era of motion pictures. At the same time in downtown Los Angeles, more than 10 large and elaborate theaters were built on Broadway.

These “movie palaces” feature opulent interiors and ambitious architecture. Several of the theaters still function today, such as the Los Angeles, Orpheum and Palace Theaters.

The Los Angeles Theater, one of the biggest downtown, had a five-story lobby, ballroom, restaurant, lavish bathrooms, crystal fountain and two balconies. It even had a “crying room” where mothers could take their children to avoid disturbing other patrons. Gooding said that the nearby Orpheum Theater took 100 people a day to operate, including phalanxes of ushers.

When sound came to movies in 1927, theaters were quick to respond. The Fox and Bruin had sound systems installed when they were built.

From the 1970s and on, multiplexes started to replace larger theaters. The Crest Theater, built in 1987, defied that trend with a single large screen and exterior and interior design that paid homage to the Fox and Bruin’s era.

Designed by Joe Musil, the Crest has an art deco interior, with murals that line the walls illuminated by black lights. Musil, also a theater architecture historian, said that in his murals he replicated what Westwood and Hollywood looked like in 1939.

Located south of Wilshire on Westwood Boulevard, the Crest is also known for its state-of-the-art sound and projection. Musil said that for every Disney picture that opens at the Crest, a studio technician from Disney comes and checks the equipment to make sure it’s up to certain standards.

“Disney executives wanted a special theater in Westwood with the same qualities their studios had,” Musil said. “They wanted to be able to go to a theater and see and hear movies exactly the way they were put together in the studio.”

Musil said that the Crest preserves some of the traditions of past movie watching.

“The movie-going experience is not as romantic as it used to be,” Musil said. “The Crest has two working stage curtains, colored lights and music before the show. They all used to do that. Now a lot of theaters don’t even have a stage crew, and show ads before the show.”

Notwithstanding the trends of many theaters, students can still catch a glimpse of those theaters of yesteryear, and almost in their own backyard.