Main Street Movie Theater Remembered

Arts Los Altos completed its 8th installation with a mural entitled Main Street Movie Theater Remembered. You can see this mural on the Third Street side of the Satura Patisserie building right next to 200 Main Street [An Inventory of Time & Place], a previous Arts Los Altos installation.

This latest mural project was sponsored by Roy and Penny Lave and is presented by Arts Los Altos. The mural is a window back to the 1950’s when the Los Altos Theater and Khan’s Pharmacy were iconic structures on Main Street in downtown Los Altos. The theater was closed in 1976 despite community efforts to preserve it. The Laves were an active part of the effort to save the theater and saw it as an important community asset. They were an instrumental part of a group that founded the Los Altos Community Foundation (now called the Los Altos Mountain View Community Foundation). They hoped the foundation would preserve community assets such as historical buildings in the future.

Arts Los Altos worked with Mel Kahn, the property owner, for permission to install another mural on his building. Arts Los Altos conducted a call for art and chose San Francisco artist, Emily Fromm. Fromm has a BFA from San Francisco State University where she studied painting , drawing and ceramics. She has completed many mural projects around the San Francisco Bay area, and has exhibited works worldwide. Fromm draws her inspiration from traditional sign painting, cartoons and comic strips in order to create nostalgic images of city locales with a contemporary twist. Her mural proposal began with study of old photos of the Los Altos movie theater. It progressed to an ink drawing that was digitally colored and submitted to Arts Los Altos.

Once chosen for the project, Fromm made a gridded chalk drawing on the building’s brick wall, sealed the bricks with a base paint layer, redrew the design freehand with chalk and began painting. This was the first time Fromm had painted on such an uneven surface, and making precise lines through rows of bricks was a challenge. Many who passed by had the opportunity to chat and marvel at Fromm’s freehand painting as she used various brushes and acrylic paint to create the layers of detailed design.

This mural with its hues of blue and yellow along with white highlights and detailed hand lettered sign work pops with color. It invokes both nighttime wonder and nostalgia. You can view Fromm’s largest public art commission, a large four panel mosaic with city scenes of San Francisco, at SFO in the Harvey Milk International Terminal.

At a Bicentennial event in 1976, The Great American Cowboy was shown at the theater. This film was directed by long time Los Altos Hills resident, Kieth Merrill. Merrill earned an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1974.

Based on an old Town Crier article, we believe the last movie shown at the theater was The Last Picture Show in February of 1977.