Touting all the glamor of “a night on Broadway,” the Santa Clarita Valley — or the Valencia Valley as The Signal’s publisher tried to call it back then — threw its arms open in support for the star-studded premiere of “The Sons of Katie Elder” on Aug. 10, 1965.
Two of the movie’s stars, Nita Talbot and Joel “Jody” McCrea, lit up the silver screen after entertaining the crowd at the celebration for the opening of the Plaza Theatre at 23710 Lyons Ave., according to coverage from the time in The Newhall Signal and Saugus Enterprise, as The Signal was known at the time.
However, construction crews crushed any remnants of the relic to rubble Friday, as the former site of the theater is now slated to become a Dollar Tree store. The demolition closes an interesting subplot of Newhall’s cinematic history.
The Plaza expanded to three screens in 1992 in an ultimately doomed effort to compete with a six-screen Mann theater, which opened on Cinema Drive in 1981.
An entry at SCVHistory.com briefly encapsulates the development of the SCV’s current movie theater scene:
“The same year the Plaza expanded, The Newhall Land and Farming Co. opened the Valencia Town Center mall with a new Edwards multiplex cinema,” according to a page dedicated to the location on SCVHistory.com. “It was followed in 1998 by another Edwards multiplex on a former Canyon Country elementary school site, built by a developer-partner of the property owner/landlord, the Sulphur Springs Union School District. The Mann shut down and sat vacant until 2005 when it was remodeled into a church. No more cinema on Cinema Drive.
“And no more cinema in Newhall,” the website’s curator, SCV historian Leon Worden notes. “The Plaza had given up on movies by 1999 and became a banquet hall.”
City officials confirmed Friday the Planning Division has approved demolition permits, as well as plans for the construction of the discount retailer.
