Related Guides

Popular Cities in California

Online Favorites

Travel Resources

ShoulderSeason

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Screensavers
share this article del.icio.us DIGG Facebook StumbleUpon

From Primedia Publications
Page:
1 

A Last Hurray for Hollywood
A Saturday in Los Angeles' Last "Golden Age" Movie Palaces.

By Carol Glines

Downtown Los Angeles boasts the largest concentration of pre-World War II theaters in America.
In the 1920s, American moviegoers sat transfixed as Greta Garbo gave John Gilbert a lingering kiss, Douglas Fairbanks flew on a magic carpet, Harold Lloyd hung precariously from a giant clock, Clara Bow danced the Charleston, and Rudolph Valentino rode a horse across a burning desert. And the glamour and excitement didn't end when the lights went up—because early films were shown in lavish movie palaces as spellbinding as anything on celluloid.

Luckily, you can still see a collection of historic theaters on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. The heart of the city has declined from its glory years of the 1920s, but Broadway between 3rd and 9th Streets is the first and biggest Historic Theater District listed on the National Register of Historic Places and boasts the largest concentration of pre-World War II theaters in America.



A 1920s patron could walk into a Los Angeles theater resembling a French palace or a Spanish cathedral.
During the Golden Age of movies, theaters created total entertainment environments for patrons. The designs of ticket booths, lobbies, auditoriums, staircases, and even sidewalks and restrooms put moviegoers into as many exotic worlds as the films themselves. A 1920s patron could walk into a Los Angeles theater resembling a French palace or a Spanish cathedral.

No wonder L.A. native Mary DeBolske, 68, says, "Going to the movies on Broadway was the highlight of my growing up. It was a real taste of glamour."

Take a stroll down Broadway and you'll get an idea what it must have been like to be a filmgoer here in 1931, when the street was the West Coast's equivalent of New York's Great White Way, with a dozen major theaters in a six-block area. There's a broad spectrum of survival here—some theaters are closed and facing an uncertain future, some have been converted to other uses, and some still screen movies.

On Broadway you can see an example of a nickelodeon at the Renaissance Revival-style Cameo Theater. Called a nickelodeon because of the nickel patrons paid to see short silent films and newsreels, the Cameo opened in 1910 and was the oldest continuously operating movie theater in California until it closed four years ago.

Another 1910 example, the Palace, is the oldest surviving vaudeville theater in the country and still open for moviegoers. Its French Renaissance design was created by G. Albert Lansburgh for the Orpheum circuit. The facade, in concrete and colored brick, features large Romanesque arches, and above the marquee, terra cotta theatrical masks designed by Spaniard Domingo Mora depict song, dance, music, and drama. Some thought movies would be a passing fad, but in 1915 director D.W. Griffith caused a sensation with The Birth of a Nation. A hit, it was the first lengthy feature epic. This stimulated even more theater building.

Broadway really became a theater center when the great showmen Alexander Pantages and Sidney Grauman tried their luck on the street. Pantages began his career by staging shows for miners in the gold fields of Alaska. He later opened a theater in Seattle and eventually owned one of the largest vaudeville chains in the country. His first Los Angeles theater, the Pantages, opened on Broadway in 1910. Built by the architectural team of Octavius Morgan and J.A. Walls, the Beaux Arts building still has PANTAGES written in concrete over the marquee and the original terrazzo sunburst designs embedded in the sidewalk.

The interior, originally done up as an English music hall, has been extensively remodeled through the years, but you can still see films here. In the 1920s the name of the theater was changed from the Pantages to the Arcade Theater, borrowed from the Broadway Arcade Building next door.

Like Alexander Pantages, Sidney Grauman had worked in Alaska, entertaining gold miners as part of his father's traveling minstrel show. Young Grauman convinced his father they should go into the movie business, and in 1906 they successfully converted a San Francisco store into a theater. The Graumans later opened San Francisco's Imperial, combining movies with live vaudeville acts.

  Related Articles
 •  All that Glitters
 •  The Saturday Matinee Tour



Page:
1 


Carol Glines is a reporter, freelance writer, and Los Angeles native with a strong interest in classic movies and architecture.
Sponsored Results