Newspaper Story 35mm/70mm Film SF Bay Area + Photos Stanford Theatre Projector Room

[Terry Monohan]

11_Resized_20260810_181521.jpg SF Sunday Newspaper Story 35mm/70mm Film SF Bay Area + Photos Stanford Theatre Projector Room

In this past Sundays 'SF Chronicle' in the pink entertainment section Aug 9 2026 they had a great article about the movie theatres around the SF Bay Area that still show 35mm/70mm film. On the front cover they put a photo of the newly retired projectionist from the Fox Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto CA Phil Krikau.

The Stanford Theatre just runs 35mm classic films only from the late 1920's up to the mid 1960's. No DCP or video in the projection room. They are open 5 days a week with a matinee on the weekends located in Palo Alto CA not to far from San Francisco. A former Fox West Coast Theatre. Now owned by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. It was restored in the late 1980's.

Shown here on Film-Tech and the Cinema Treasures sites are some of my photos I took in the last two weeks of the theatre and the projection room area. A big thanks to the new projectionist 'Charlie' who let me take these exclusive images for us here . Phil did a great job training him to take over the projection duties at the Stanford Theatre.

Last weekend they showed a vault 35mm CinemaScope 20th Century Fox print of 'How To Mary A Millionaire' 1953 along with 'Designing Women' 1957 . Both of these I think originally had a 4 track mag stereo track. The 'Stanford' does have a great Dolby stereo unit and hidden surround speakers on the side walls. Too bad their 4 track mag stereo unit needs some kind of repair so we had to sit thru the movie in mono optical sound. The CinemaScope 35mm wide screen image from the Disney people looked crisp and clear with great color. No splices or lines on the film.

The projection guy 'Charlie' did a great job with all the changeovers and got all the curtain cues correct. So great to see the image projected on the title curtain then open. The Stanford Theatre has two sets of stage screen curtains. One goes up and the other parts.

I have been told by my 'New Mission Theatre' SF projectionist friend 'Jim' that the 'Stanford' has two old Simplex XL's in the booth. They are marked 35/70. He thinks they are from the early 1950's and are arc light. I wonder If they have ever shown a 70mm print?

I brought the SF newspaper story to the projectionist and the manager 'Cyndi' as they did not find a copy in the Palo Alto area this past Sunday. They did mention about the Stanford Theatre in the article.

So enjoy my photos and try to make a visit when you are in the SF Bay Area. This cinema has true SHOWMANSHIP!. They even play the mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ in the eve between the double bill. Love that they still use the red and blue lights on dim during the film showings.



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[Ryan Gallagher]

I spy two of the dreaded film cubes... I wonder how many stairs there are to the Stanford's booth?

[Terry Monohan]

Ryan I have seen worse as far as stairs up the balcony are to the projection booth. I have not seen a elevator in the Stanford Theatre lobby. So you do have to go up to the second level to enter the mid loge section then up more steps in the back of the balcony to reach the projection room.

One interesting feature at the beginning of the 1953 35mm CinemaScope print of 'How To Mary A Millionaire' they start with a short demo of stereophonic surround sound with a orchestra playing on a wide stage at Fox. They open with curtains on the film print after the 20th Century logo. The only mistake they made is not having them close after the demo stereo music ends. The film goes into the main title. They do close them on the film drapes at the very end of the credits. What I have seen done in the past with a keen projectionist that knows curtain cues he will use the theatres real stage curtains If they have them to close them after the music ends and open on the main title. I have seen the audience clap. Does the work live that the director at Fox did not think off when editing the scope print in 1953. The print they ran last week was in Mono sound.

I will post a few more images from the Fox Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto CA soon. They have a huge poster, movie still, lobby card and press book section next to the lobby in a annex room, check the room out before or after a movie. All original poster art from one sheets, inserts and huge foreign posters in frames. They must have a giant storage area to keep all these movie theatre classic treasures as they change the display a few times a year. Every few months they come out with a free printed listing mailing with photos of all the 35mm films that will be showings at the Stanford Theatre. Always have a big stack of them in the lobby or outside near the box office.

[Jim Cassedy]

Friend Terry might have misread or misunderstood some info I gave him after he shared some of
those pictures from the Fox Stanford/PaloAlto in advance with me on Sunday. Most of us here
who are familiar with equipment can spot that while those are Simplex XL projector heads,
the projectors have no DTS readers nor is there a DTS player in the audio rack. So those XL's
are most likely the 35mm version only. I did mention tto Terry hat those big STRONG 35/70
SPECIALlamphouses were designed for large screens and 70mm projection.
I've often seen them used in CINERAMA booths too. In fact there's a Cinerama projector for
sale on e-bay right now which has one of those lamphouses on it. In some other photos Terry
shared, I saw at least one Selsyn motor on or near one of the projectors. This would make
sense since they've also got that mag-follower rack, which would need a Selsyn system to
keep it in sync with the film. A few years ago, The Stanford contacted me to see if I would be
interested in doing some work there, mostly because I've had alotta experience working with
carbon arcs. But the 'timing' of their request was not ideal for me since I had just taken on
another full time commitment here in San Francisco, and I really didn't want to make the
slightly long commute between SF and Palo Alto.
Terry (and a two other friends & neighbors) informed me on Sundaythat my arm apparently
appears in that same newspaper article. Terry is nice enough to mail me a copy, and one of
the regular customers at 'my theater' promised to bring me a copy later this week too.

MyArmAtWork.jpg

[Josh Jones]

I spy two of the dreaded film cubes... I wonder how many stairs there are to the Stanford's booth?

We used to call them fox boxes. I recently acquired two prints that came in those. Following print assembly they had a date with a box cutter, and finally the recycling bin.

The XL's also have no magh penthouses, and a standard SH-1000 soundhead, which would preclude 70mm operation in a rep house.

Back when I was working at The Fargo, we had automated the curtain call between the trailers and the feature. There was a black slug with a cue on it we placed between the two.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Wish we could get back to the days of a more predictable studio-card and title sequence at the head of digital films too. Those of us with a curtain would love to use em between our pre-roll and feature, but half of the first images seen would be inappropriate to project on a curtain. (restoration information, yada yada).

In our case, most often at the Paramount we had a live intro, which could easily be done in front of the main curtain right before the feature. Perfect separation opportunity. However the only mic permissible for the projectionist to use was fed through the screen channels (and our curtain is way too heavy to block it and still call it passable), rather than routed through the live PA out in the house. As such, except in extreme special circumstances with more crew called, we were relegated to just a static image backdrop and no curtain at all before pre-roll or feature. Sadness for projectionists.

For those that stay till the end of credits they get to experience the nice curtain move, but mostly for ushers clearing the room.

Maybe our new spec'd system after renovation will have more capabilities to be flexible on where a live mic get's amplified. A projectionist can dream anyway.

[Tj Hopland]

Those are some fun looking control panels. Presumably one or all the boxes are full of relays to make the whole multi station functions work? Like maybe one box has the relays for curtain and masking and such? Another one has sound related controls. Looks like they are on like rev 7 currently. I wonder what rev 1 looked like? Or if rev 1 ever ran? Maybe the first operational version was 2 or 3?

The presence of the dubber indicates that at one time they must have been doing quite a few screening sorts of things, likely due to their proximity to Dolby? Perhaps that's the 4 track that was mentioned as not currently working? It may work still its just there isn't anything to play on them since that was never a general release format.

I do wonder if they actually had a 4 track print(s). Optical on those was pretty terrible. Besides being mono which is a downgrade in itself for a title that had a stereo track the mag surround track covers half the optical track and that tended to make them noisy and really low fi.


The Strong 35/70 special was a fairly short lived model that I think came out around 1960. Other than the labels I'm not sure that it was really different than the Super 135 / Excelite 135 that came before it. I would have to look at manuals or old catalogs to see if the reflector was different. If it had any other special feature it was graduations on the knob that moved the burner assembly fore and aft which was their idea for a quick change between 35 and 70 operation, same as just the Z adjustment on a xenon. Ideally you would use a beam spreader, different reflector or moved the whole lamphouse which all have their pros and cons too.

You can't quite see that knob / mechanism in the photos but its the bottom front corner under the main body with the knob facing the screen. I think all the big Strong angular trim lamps starting with the Mighty 90 and ending with the Futura II had a method to move the burner assembly in relation to the reflector. I just don't recall if they all had some sort of knob or screw where it is on the 35/70 special or if some it was more like sloted holes inside that you could not actually do on the fly. There was probably a dozen different variants of this lamphouse spanning 20 or so years and they were more or less the same as far as overall concept and design.

Being 1960 it would have missed the first few rounds of Cinerama which tended to be conversions and not as big of screens but would have been around for those later projects where they were purpose building for the process. This would be things like the Coopers and the Dome sorts of places. I want to say the Futura replaced the special and those came out in the early 60's so had to be a pretty short lived model. I'm not sure if Strong had multiple modles available at the same time or if you just had to take the current model. They always advertised the latest model as being the most versatile yet so you could buy the 35/70 special and run a 9mm trim if that's all you needed.

[Mark Ogden]

For those that stay till the end of credits they get to experience the nice curtain move, but mostly for ushers clearing the room.

Even if there is nobody left in the theatre, a nice curtain close is something a projectionist does just for himself.