The El Rey Theater—then called the Majestic—was the first motion-picture showcase in Chico when it began screening silent films in 1906.
Today, the El Rey lives on as the oldest and largest single-screen theater still standing in Nor-Cal north of Sacramento. Shuttered since 2005, when it was slated for conversion to office space, the El Rey now has a chance for a new life as a multiuse cinema and performing arts center in the heart of downtown Chico.
Over its century of use, the theater has weathered numerous changes of name, ownership, exterior façade, and interior décor.
The El Rey began life as the Majestic in 1905 as a combination vaudeville house and Elks Lodge in a Neo-Classical Revival style, with attached retail and office space. Within months, the theater began presenting films—a relatively new art form—for 10 cents a ticket.
In 1925, the National Theater Syndicate bought the movie house and renamed it the National, hosting not only movies but plays, comedic events, opera, and school functions.
In 1937, Warner Bros. brought Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and the cast and crew of “The Adventures of Robin Hood” to film in Bidwell Park, Chico’s own Sherwood Forest. The National hosted the movie’s premiere in May 1938.
A 1946 fire gutted the theater, then operating as the American.
It returned to life as the El Rey in its present ‘40s Moderne style; it gained the name and eye-catching neon sign when a theater in Oakland, also owned by the American chain, burned down, leaving only its “El Rey” marquee to be salvaged. Oakland’s loss was Chico’s gain.
The whimsical fairy murals that grace the interior were an almost accidental afterthought. James Seaton, a building painter, was part of a crew hired to paint the interior and exterior of the theater for its reopening in 1947. Seaton’s talents as a muralist came to light when he sketched some fairy faces on the sweeping curves of the theater wall; his boss and the theater managers gave Seaton the green light to lay down the paint rollers and take up fine brushwork.