Jingling Keys in the Lobby: LA’s Silent Movie Theatre

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 11, 2026 · How we verify

On Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, the Silent Movie Theatre spent decades as one of the few places in California where audiences could watch Valentino and Chaplin the way their first audiences did: projected, in a room built for the purpose. It is also a building with two deaths attached to it, one slow and one violent, and a reputation among staff and visitors for behaving as though someone is still keeping an eye on the programming.

Quick Facts on the Fairfax Avenue Theatre

• Address: 611 N Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036
• Opened: 1942, founded by film collector John Hampton
• Known for: silent film preservation and screenings; later operated as Cinefamily
• Names attached to the ghost stories: John Hampton and Laurence Austin

John Hampton’s Shrine to the Silent Era

The theatre was founded in 1942 by John Hampton, a film enthusiast who built the venue around a single idea: that silent pictures deserved to be preserved and shown rather than left to rot in cans. Stars such as Rudolph Valentino and Charlie Chaplin filled the screen for audiences who, by the 1940s, could find the silent era almost nowhere else in the city.

Hampton’s devotion came at a cost that is documented rather than legendary. His methods of preserving those prints involved hazardous chemicals, and that exposure has been linked to the cancer that was eventually diagnosed and that killed him in 1990. He lived above his own theatre for 45 years, in an upstairs apartment that features heavily in the stories told about the building since.

The Murder of Laurence Austin in the Lobby

The theatre’s darker chapter is a matter of record. In 1997 the then owner, Laurence Austin, was murdered in the lobby. The killing was the result of a plot devised by his partner, whose aim was to claim Austin’s fortune. It is a Hollywood crime story with no supernatural component at all, and it did more than anything else to fix the building in the public imagination as a place marked by tragedy as well as by film history.

Austin had a habit in life of jingling his keys. That small detail matters, because it is the one that turns up again and again in what people claim to hear in the lobby afterwards.

What People Report Inside the Silent Movie Theatre

Charlie Lustman acquired the theatre in 1999 and set about restoring it. According to staff and visitors, the restoration and the shift toward modern programming coincided with a run of odd incidents. None of it is verified. All of it is anecdote, passed between employees and audiences, and it clusters around two men.

• Equipment failures during modern screenings. Malfunctions at events showing anything other than silent film have been read by staff as Hampton registering his disapproval of changes to his venue.
• Unexplained noises throughout the building, reported at odd hours rather than during shows.
• Sightings that witnesses have attributed to Hampton and to Austin, described in general terms rather than in detail.
• Keys jingling in the lobby, in the spot where Austin was killed, echoing the nervous habit he was known for.
• A presence in the upstairs apartment, where Hampton lived for 45 years. The story told there is not a frightening one: he is said to be guarding his original vision for the place.

Worth being clear about the shape of these accounts. They are interpretations laid over ordinary events, a projector jamming, a sound in an empty room, in a building where everyone present already knows the history. That does not make the reports dishonest. It does mean the ghost stories fit the biographies a little too neatly to be treated as evidence.

Visiting the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax

The building stands at 611 N Fairfax Ave in Los Angeles, on a stretch of street that rewards a walk even if the doors are shut. It has changed hands and identities more than once, operating in later years as Cinefamily, so anyone travelling specifically to see it should confirm what is happening at the address before setting out rather than assuming a screening will be on.

There is no ghost tour here and no paid paranormal access. What the theatre offers is the thing it was built for: a small, strange, single-purpose room in the middle of Los Angeles, with a history that includes a preservationist who died of his own chemicals and an owner shot in his own lobby. Whatever anybody hears in that lobby, the record alone is enough reason to stand outside it.

See The Silent Movie Theatre for Yourself

Sources

• Rialto Theatre (National Park Service)
• South Pasadena's historic Rialto Theatre sold to downtown developer
• South Pasadena's Rialto Theatre will reportedly become a church
• 13 Los Angeles Locations Every 'La La Land' Fan Should Visit
• Rialto Theatre: history + exterior views
• Wikipedia: Rialto Theatre (South Pasadena, California)

Ghost Tours Nearby

Los Angeles Ghost Tours: Terrors of Tinseltown★ 4.6 (181)from $26Hollywood Chills 3-Hour Tour: Celebrity Scandals and Cemeteries★ 5.0 (5)from $293Hollywood Ghost Hunting Experience with Real Paranormal Tools★ 4.9 (270)from $55

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