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I was talking to Mike Cecil, the manager of the DeAnza a couple of weeks
ago, and he said that The DeAnza Corp.had bought the property North of
the DeAnza to offset some capital gains from some other property they
had sold in Tucson.

Some folks may not remember but the property on the corner of 22nd and
Pantano (I think) that used to be a Payless Cashways was at one time
owned by SERO Amusements AKA the DeAnza Corp. They had planned to build
a drive-in there but the zoning was rejected because the City would not
approve the changes. Also, there was a planned drive-in where Park
Place now stands but it too, was rejected due to neighbors objections
over the zoning in the mid '50's.

Apparently, the SERO folks, a name formed of the initials of Charles
Skouras, Jr., Clauude Ezell, Michael Rosenberg and William Oldknow,
controlled 125 theaters in Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, California, and
Hawaii during the '70's.

William Oldknow, the patriarch and the "O" in SERO, was the father to
the lady who apparently now owns the DeAnza. I had heard that she
wanted to run the remaining theaters at drive-ins but apparently money
speaks louder than tradition or nostalgia, according to one source that
knows her and responded to me privately this afternoon.

The DeAnza opened on March 24, 1951 as the single screen Cactus, under
the ownership of Hugh Downs and Wesley Becker. It became the DeAnza 3
in 1977 and they added the fourth screen in 1978 to compete with the
Syufy Tucson 4 which had added a 5th screen the same year. It's now 54
years old. The Apache was also upgraded to a triple in 1977. I was
hoping with the recent remodels, the DeAnza would hang around for a
while longer.

Anyone interested in forming a non-profit group to try to buy and save
it? ;-)

In 1999, Jim Gobel who owns the Cinderella Twin in Aurora Colorado and
the Starlite Twin in Kansas City, tried to buy it but the financing fell
through. The asking price at that time was $1.3 million. Guess the
escalating land prices have doubled that figure in 6 years. A number of
folks have tried to buy it since but the deal always seemed to fall
through at the last minute.A couple of issues always affect the sale. There is no access off of 22nd street and the wash and Joquin (I think)
boulevard separates the properties.

I love drive-ins and Tucson once hosted 12 screens at the same time. They were the Apache, Fiesta, Miracle Mile (Biltmore Motor-Vue), Cactus,
Rodeo, Prince, Midway, 22nd Street, and in January 1974, the Tucson 4,
later 5, owned by the Syufy chain. All but the Miracle Mile and the
Tucson 5 were eventually owned by the SERO (DeAnza) chain by the late '70's.

I have a personal website where I have been collecting information over
the years from the newspaper archives called

With the modern technological advances in DVD and home theater, I can
see the drive-ins might be an endangered species but at this time, over
500 screens still exist out of the 5,300 that prospered in the mid-50's.

I miss Tucson of the '60's when I first came here to attend college. It's just another faceless corporate entity now....

George Cohn
Tucson AZ


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