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Jensen's Melrose Theatre, 4315 Melrose Avenue at Heliotrope – it opened in 1924. In 1914, Henry C. Jensen & Sons, the brick manufacturers based in the Pasadena-Glendale area, branched out into the movie theater business. This is their third, designed by E. E. B. Meindardus. And it has a history:
Designed as "a better class" neighborhood movie theater, specifically for movies, it has no stage house. The silent movies were accompanied by a Link 2-manual, 4-rank theatre organ and a ten-piece orchestra. …
It was managed for many years by Fox West Coast Theatres and during the mid-1950's it was here at the Melrose Theatre where Russell McCullough developed his Cinemiracle, 3-strip widescreen process. This was a cheaper and actually superior form of the 3-projection system to rival the Cinerama system, but only one movie was ever made in Cinemiracle. This was "Windjammer" which premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood in 1958. The Cinerama Company saw Cinemiracle as a competitor to their own system and they "bought out" the Cinemiracle process and shelved it.
The Melrose Theatre closed in 1959 and it was purchased by the Ukrainian Cultural Center, who transformed the building between 1959 and 1961 into their main Los Angeles headquarters, which officially opened on February 12, 1961.
And there's more – in the forties and fifties Jensen's Melrose Theatre was used by KTLA as a television studio – the home of The Morey Amsterdam Show. And now…
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