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By Frank Taylor In the 70 odd years since the motion picture theatre first appeared on the American scene, it has run the gamut of store fronts to baroque palaces that boggled the imagination, to intimate little theatres. While it is still fun to go to the movies — the trip isn’t what it used to be. It is hard for most of today’s generation to remember a night at the movies — the way it used to be, with throngs of people waiting to get into the deep plush seats, held back by purple velvet ropes and petite livered usherettes, while the music of Jessie Crawford or Gaylord Carter swelled through the baronial chambers of the theatre. Then customers left the real world, one in which they found themselves struggling for survival probably, and entered a realm of grandeur seldom approached before or since. Now after buying a ticket, the average movie fan is hustled into a tiny lobby, where his ticket is snatched away by the high school kid selling popcorn behind the counter. He will probably be left to his devices in finding a seat in the new mini theatre, and will probably trod on the toes of a dozen people before he eventually finds an unoccupied spot in the cramped rows of functional chair-like seats. The film flashed on the screen is likely as not to be a semi-nude production, filled with much profane language and double meaning jokes. Somehow, the movies instead of progressing with the 20th Century, have slid backwards, almost to the time the early nickleodeon operators converted empty stores into theatres with the simple addition of a few bench seats. One of the monuments to the past, the architectural nightmare if you will, of William Fox, the now departed, San Francisco Fox Theatre. This monument of plaster and gilt contained seating for 5,200 persons. Oh, it was brazen and in the opinion of some, vulgar, its detractors have called it a steel cage, but it was a building few who entered its walls seldom forgot. There was a glamorous entrance, a cavernous and overwhelming area to wait for seats, and the auditorium bristled with a scale of dimensions and Hollywood-like grandeur. Called “Movie Palace Modern” the San Francisco Fox (knocked down to GRAUMAN’S OTHER CHINESE - Showman Sid Grauman is internationally known for his Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd., but few remember his rnagnificent palace downtown, the Million Dollar Theatre. TOWERING STRUCTURE - One of the largest theatre buildings in California, the Million Dollar Theatre is rich with orna¬ mentation and lavish use of artistic imagination.