Fox Theater can celebrate turning 95 this Saturday because supporters stepped up and saved it 35 years ago

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — There’s a party going on Saturday night at the temporarily transformed Fox Theater — a 95-year birthday party that might never have happened if not for the dedication of a lot of determined townsfolk 35 years ago.

This Saturday, Bakersfield will celebrate the birthday of one of its greatest civic treasures, part of the Fox West Coast Theatres chain of the late 1920s and 1930s.

As graceful and substantial as the Bakersfield Fox is, however, the story today is really about its survival against significant economic and logistical obstacles. If not for a persistent band of nostalgic supporters, the Fox might have been wiped from the ground 35 years ago, as has been the fate of other Foxes.

Fox Theater to present ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’

Aged and decrepit, with an inattentive, nonlocal owner uninterested or incapable of investing in its rehabilitation, the local Fox was at one point a prime candidate for an incursion of homelessness…

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