Tustin Theatre
(also known as Tustin Twin, Elizabeth Howard’s Curtain Call Dinner Theater, and Curtain Call Theater)
680 El Camino Real, Tustin, CA. 92780

Specifications

    Operators: Independent/GCC/Century Cinema
    Status: Closed
    Opened: 6/20/62
    Closed: 1979
    Current Use: Dinner Theater 
    Screens: 1/2
    Seating: Slope 298 seats

Profile

The Tustin Theatre opened in the spring of 1962, beside the five freeway (accessed via the Newport Blvd. exit). Located in the corner of a strip mall complex, bordering Old Town Tustin, the small venue was Tustin’s first cinema.  Initially independently owned, the theatre tended to play B level fare throughout the 1960’s, as nearby Santa Ana cinemas monopolized first rate film booking. During the early 1970’s, the theatre was picked up by General Cinemas and enjoyed slightly more competitive booking. In 1974, the theatre was taken under the Century Cinema Circuit fold and twinned, creating two sub 200 seat auditoriums. Shortly after the auditorium was split, the venue began to appear as the Tustin Twin in showtime listings. Never particularly successful, the theatre was closed, as a cinema, by 1980.

In 1980, a mid western live theater proprietor, Elizabeth Howard, relocated to Orange County and set about reopening the venue as a dinner theater. Opening with a stage production of “Hello Dolly” and renamed Elizabeth Howard’s Curtain Call Dinner Theater, the venue became an Orange County landmark over the ensuing twenty-five years.

In 2005, Elizabeth Howard retired and the theater was taken over by a ministry, which continues to operate the venue as a dinner theater (sans alcohol and mature themes). In late 2007, the current operators, of the newly renamed Curtain Call Dinner Theater, began work on remodeling the former Villa/Captain Blood’s Theatre, in Orange, in to a second dinner theater.

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