After 76 years, this historic Fresno theater survives. It’s a community effort

Teresa Hull has been around Crest Theatre so long, she sometimes forgets what makes the 76-year-old movie house so special.

There are reminders.

Like the people (quite a few, actually) who vividly remember seeing the 1974 disaster film “Earthquake” at the theater. To hear it told, the experience was immersive, Hull says.

“The whole theater was shaking.”

Hull’s family has owned the theater (and the accompanying block of buildings along Fresno Street) since 1996 and save for three years during the pandemic and a few years when it was leased to a church, they have quietly kept it open and operating.

Most recently, they’ve been running weekend movie nights, screening old-run and cult-classic films to audiences eager for a nostalgic kick. On the May 4 weekend, they hosted multiple days of Star Wars films and animation. The Saturday night Disney films have become popular with families, but also the so-called Disney adults, which explains the rack of Mickey and Minnie Mouse ears for sale in the lobby. There are horror films (“Friday the 13th,” screened on June 13) and comedies. And horror comedies.

The 1990 film “Tremors” plays Sunday.

The historic Crest Theatre fundraising concert

Also on Sunday is the first in a series of weekly fundraising concerts being put on in collaboration with Destructive Productions. It is a bill of local punk and rock bands: The Velisha, Russian Leg Sweep, Animal Style and No Ambition.

Tickets are $10, cash only and available at the door.

Franco Villanueva has been booking underground punk/ska/metal and metal concerts since 2005 and, along with his wife, Maria, operates Destructive Productions out of a warehouse/community space in an industrial part of downtown Fresno.

“We’ve always been about trying to help,” Villanueva says, whether it’s offering up studio space for young bands and artists or coordinating events with groups like Fresno Skateboard Salvage.

The couple had actually been trying to wind down the number of concerts they were promoting at the warehouse when they were approached by the theater. But they had long followed the Crest’s offerings (especially the horror films) and often come down to watch movies with their kids, Maria Villanueva says, during a tour of the theater.

“We are fans,” she says.

“We love it here.”

For now, the concerts will focus on local performers, but Villanueva already has a list of touring bands he thinks would be a good fit for the theater.

The return of a live music venue?

Concerts are a bit of a return for the Crest.

Inside the auditorium, there are 525 seats situated under a high ceiling, done in the dark blue and ornate gold-leafed molding that is original to its 1949 opening. The seats sweep up from the back of a large, open dance floor and stage; a reminder of when the theater was primarily used as a music venue.

In the late 2000s and into the 2010s, the theater saw a run of punk, metal and hip-hop tours come through. That included acts like The Misfits, Rob Zombie, Andre Nickatina, Lamb of God, Escape the Fate and Berner.

Then, there were the raves.

Hull’s mother, Gloria León, loved electronic dance music, and offered the space up at a time when EDM concerts were mostly underground (as opposed to the mega-events they’ve become today). In her 60s at the time, León could often be found out on the dance floor with the crowd.

“Gloria was an innovator,” Hull says.

Fresno’s ‘perfect theater’

But the Crest was built for movies.

It was built in 1948, a full decade after Fresno’s first true movie house opened in the what would become the Tower District.

It was to be “the perfect theater,” according to its own advertising in The Fresno Bee, which ran an entire section of stories in advance of opening night. There were pieces on theater’s projection and sound equipment (“60 watts of power” with a built in public address system); its interior design (gilded swirls of gold-leafed molding that flowed “unbroken from the walls to the domes in the ceiling”) and exterior flourishes (an iconic 50-foot neon tower that blazed with “75,000 watts of electricity.”)

The theater operated as one of Fresno’s many movie houses through the 1970s; first as one of the Fox West Coast Theaters (which included the Tower Theatre) and then as a Mann Theater. When Hull’s mother bought the Crest in 1996, it was owned by actors Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, according to the family

Keeping the theater operational has not been without its challenges.

Some of more historic features were damaged or misplace during a time when the venues was being rented to La Iglesia Universal del Reino de Dios (the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God). The same church that later took over and gutted the historic Hardy’s Theater on Van Ness.

The family repainted some of the ornate trim work to its original gold and only recently found a grand chandelier that used to hang in the main lobby.

There are other signs of age.

The walls, golden ornamental swirls notwithstanding, are flaking in spots and outside, the ticket booth is closed up. The glass is gone from the old poster boxes, replaced by wood slats, which Hull would like to see filled with art, if anyone is willing.

The marquee is still being used, though the neon sign has long gone dark. The price tag to fix the thing was pegged at least $250,000 back in 2016, when the family made its last big push toward restoring the theater.

“There are a lot of renovations that need to be done around here,” says Hull’s husband Gabriel Rodriguez, who helps run the theater. The pair took over from Hull’s sister after her mother died in 2020.

Help the Crest get a new AC unit

Air conditioning is high on the list.

In February, the theater kicked off $35,000 fundraising campaign to repair the AC unit. Ticket sales from all the Sunday night concerts will go toward that cause.

But really, any help would be appreciated, Rodriguez says.

“If they’re good at sweeping,” he says, “we’ll take it”

That’s what it’s going to take to keep a venue like this around, Villanueva says, and the reason that he and his wife were so quick to offer their help.

Fresno isn’t like the Bay Area or Los Angeles, he says.

The city has its own mechanisms. “Something just sparks here,” he says.

But it still takes the work and people coming together.

“The community has to step it up.”

This story was originally published July 18, 2025 at 5:30 AM.