The Riverside Pussycat operated within a theater at 3801 Seventh Street (later renamed Mission Inn Avenue) best known as the Fox Theater, though it was originally called the Riverside Theater when it opened in 1929. Ten years later, in 1939, the theater hosted a preview screening of Gone With the Wind, soon to become the fodder of local legend.
After being renamed Fox West Coast (“The Show Place of the Orange Belt”), the locale was subdivided in 1942, with a new smaller stage area becoming a live theater venue called the Lido. This space sat just over 500 people and included its own separate entrance, marquee, and lobby, around the corner from the main theater entrance but in the same building.
The entire building was designated a historical landmark in 1978. Around this time, Walnut purchased a lease on the locale, and then bought the entire property, including the smaller adjacent Lido Theater. In that space, Walnut operated a smaller screen as a Pussycat until around 1986.
A blog reader recently emailed me about this house, and how it was set up. “There were probably about three stores – head shops, thrift store, that sort of thing – separating the theaters. In the late-eighties, the Pussycat became a revival house, and the main theatre was shut down.”
(April 1982)
Projectionist Dan Whitehead recalls “The Pussycat was the fly space and stage of the Fox Theater. It was one weird house, real thin and high. The Fox Riverside is where the money for the retirement fund came from; don’t ask me how that worked, I don’t have a clue. It was a beautiful, typical, grand old movie palace.”
After Walnut stopped running the small back-theater in 1986, that space continued to screen porn until at least 1992, keeping the Pussycat signage for a time under a lease arrangement with Walnut. When Million Dollar Video assumed the lease in ’92, they cut porn for good. In front of the building, the Fox mostly screened family movies and then Spanish films from 1988 through the early ‘90s. Walnut sold their stake in the property in 1993.
In 2005, the city of Riverside bought the theater building for 2.9 million (after filing eminent domain on its owner). The following year, Riverside officials announced the Fox would undergo a $25 to $30 million dollar renovation, to convert the venue into a 1,600-seat performing arts center.
The old Pussycat space now houses dressing rooms and a ticket office.
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Once Upon a Time in Riverside 