shatter: The World was in the dark building at far left, beyond the parking lot you can see in the first of the three pictures hollywood90038 linked to above. If you look at the third of the three pictures, you can see a corner of the building where the Hawaii Theatre was located, just past another parking lot east of the Florentine Gardens.
Johnny V: You are mostly correct. Web references to the theatre-based Mickey Mouse Clubs of the 1930’s do usually name the Fox Dome Theatre in Ocean Park the home of the first chapter. However, your date of 1939 is off. The date most commonly given for the inauguration of the club is January 11, 1930 (though some websites give dates as early as 1929). What is certain is that the Disney Company published a bi-monthly newsletter called “The Official Bulletin of the Mickey Mouse Club” for distribution to club members, and the first issue was dated April 30, 1930.
Looking at the January 2007 photo, I’m thinking that this could not have been the Admiral Theatre, unless the entrance had once been in the central of the three storefronts shown here rather than the narrow storefront on the right which is where the Main Theatre’s entrance was. The Admiral had a fairly wide entrance, with some decent terrazzo flooring, as I recall.
kenmc: Either the building has had two floors lopped off its top, or that is a different building than the one the Central was in. I’m inclined to think its a different building. I have a vague memory of a parking lot being on that site in the 1960s. I have another vague memory of a scene in the movie “Chinatown” when Jake is fetching his car from a parking lot and we see the Million Dollar Theatre in the background across the street.
You can see the Central’s marquee (through a haze of smoke) in the picture I linked to last October from the CT Cozy Theatre page.
ken: That’s the 400 block of Broadway in your picture, isn’t it? The Cozy was in the 300 block. It was in that building which now includes among its tenants Goleth’s Beauty Salon, depicted in the photo you just linked to from the Central Theatre page.
Here’s a 1957 photo from the L.A. Library of a theatre called the Linkletter Playhouse, from which Art Linkletter did his television show. On the picture’s full data page (the library doesn’t allow linking to those, unfortunately), the address is given as 1232 North Vine Street. It must be the Filmarte, but with a slightly altered street number.
It’s hard to tell from these fragments, but it doesn’t look as though that block had two theatres on it at the same time. My guess would be that the Hitching Post was remodeled and became the Paris sometime in late 1949 or early 1950.
Next door to the Acme was the Grand Theater, at 1117 7th Street, in operation under that name from at least 1910 until 1917. It operated as a movie and vaudeville house under other names until 1926, after which it served other uses.
This historic photograph, c1910, shows part of what is likely only a sign pointing toward the Grand down the block along 7th Street, for the edification of passersby on busy K Street.
OK, the 1930 article in Southwest Builder & Contractor actually says that the new theatre is to be built at “17th and J Streets” which means it is the new Merced Theatre that it refers to (the “1” on “17” had been blocked out on the library’s reference card for some reason.) 17th Street is now called Main Street, and J Street has been renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Way.
The web site link listed above for this theatre no longer works, and I can’t find a new location. A recent edit to the Mainzer’s Wikipedia entry says that the building has been sold and the theatre is currently closed.
Meantime, here’s a bit of stuff about the theatre’s history I’ve dug up at the L.A. Library’s online California Index:
The Motion Picture Herald of 5/19/36 published this item:
“The Golden State Theatre and Realty Company plan to reopen the Merced Theatre at Merced… under the name of the Strand Theatre.”
An earlier article in the same publication (2/18/1928) said that the Merced Theatre was being doubled in size.
The only other probable reference to the Merced/Strand I’ve found is from Southwest Builder & Contractor of 5/1/1936 which says that Salih Bros. of San Francisco had been awarded the contract for altering the theatre building, at an estimated cost of $25,000.
However, there’s a complication to all this nomenclature. Southwest Builder & Contractor of 1/17/1930 makes reference to a Mr. Frank Alberti, “…manager of the Merced and Strand Theatres…” who was announcing plans for a new theatre for Golden State at 7th and J Streets, to be designed by Reid Brothers (presumably unbuilt.) But this indicates that the Strand name was already in use in 1930. I suppose it’s possible that Motion Picture Herald just didn’t get the message about the name change for the old Merced Theatre until the time of the renovations in 1936.
Downtown: The 2004 aerial photo of that block you can fetch at TerraServer (the red pin icon for 448 S. Main is actually in front of the next building north) shows a building without a stage house, so I’m guessing the Regent was built as a movie house during the silent era.
Seymour: My visit to the Regent was around 1963. As a grind house it served as a flop for winos and homeless people (who were far fewer in number in those days than now), and it may have been more the unwashed and wine-sodden audience than the theatre which smelled bad. But then I’m sure that the seats weren’t turquoise in 1963, so the seats had probably been either reupholstered or replaced (maybe with used seats from another theatre, thus accounting for the shopworn condition) before your visit there. The old seats probably had acquired an odor from their years of use.
There were probably no homeless people using the Regent as a flop during its porno days, as porn theatres had much higher admission prices than grind houses did. By 1983, the homeless were probably sleeping in the all-night triple feature houses on Broadway.
I have a question for you; In your 1983 visits to the downtown theatres, did you go to a Main Street theatre called the Admiral? It was on the east side of the street, and not too far from the Regent. My last visits to downtown L.A. were in the mid-1980’s, but I only got to Main Street a couple of times in those days and I don’t recall seeing (or not seeing) the Admiral at that time. I know for sure it was there in the late 1960’s. My vague memory places the Admiral south of the Regent, but it may have been an earlier name for the Main Theatre, a bit north of the Regent, which was operating as a porn house in the early 1980’s.
The turquoise treatment Seymour describes must have been an artifact of the Regent’s porn period. When I went there during the theatre’s triple feature grind house days, there was no bright color in any part of the auditorium. Everything was dark and dingy and worn. The paint looked as though someone had bought a few cans of various shades and mixed them all together and it turned out a a brownish gray. I don’t recall there being any carpeting on the aisles at all. I don’t recall the Gothic walls and ceiling. Their impression had probably been overwhelmed by the uniform dinginess of the place.
No, the first Los Angeles Theatre on the west side of Spring between 2nd and 3rd was the one that became the Lyceum. There was a second Los Angeles Theatre farther down Spring Street, on the east side between 3rd and 4th, and that’s the one that became the Empress. The Los Angeles Theatre on Broadway is the third of that name. The second Los Angeles Theatre is not yet listed at CT under any name.
Ken: I see there’s a mention of the Main Street Olympic, too, and of the mysterious second Los Angeles Theater on Spring Street which later became the Empress. I wonder if Marcus Loew kept the name Empress for it? That might make it easier to track down.
Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of January 4, 1924 announced the plans for the Cameo theatre. The architect was J.T. Payne. The project was expected to cost $35,000.
Here is an extensive essay on the Pantages/Warnor’s, at the Historic Fresno web site. The theatre is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
erin: I can’t find any references to a Howard Sheehan in connection with Fox-West Coast Theatres, but there was a producer of that name working at 20th Century-Fox studios in 1947. There was also a Howard Sheehan mentioned in connection with the Vogue theatre in Hollywood in 1935. See comments by CT user vokoban on October 6, 2006 on the Vogue Theatre page.
The web site’s history section reveals that the El Rey was built in 1941, was owned by Luigi Puccini, who was a cousin of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, and the theatre was designed by architect Joseph B. Burwinkle.
My first visit to the Rialto was in 1972, when it was still being operated by Mann’s as a first run house. I don’t recall if this was before or after the fire which destroyed the left organ chamber. I do remember the building being a bit down at the heels, though. It must have been only shortly after this that the Rialto was taken over by Landmark, because I remember that on my next visit to the theatre it had become a revival house with an admission price of one dollar.
Over the next several years I went to the Rialto more often than to any other theatre. Though by 1986, the last time I was there, the price had been upped to three dollars, it remained one of the best entertainment bargains around. The program would change twice a week, and there were often triple features, with the fare running from classic American and foreign movies all the way to “X” rated films such as the science fiction parody “Flesh Gordon”. I also attended one of the midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with its lively audience participation.
In all that time I don’t think the theatre received any more maintenance than was absolutely necessary to keep it from collapsing into a pile of rubble or being shut down as hazardous by either the city or the board of health. The balcony was always closed, as that was where they had moved all the big, leather-upholstered loges from the main floor, because the place almost had been shut down by the fire department due to the loge seats not being fire resistant. It was cheaper for the theatre’s operators to change them out for the balcony’s regular seats than to have them rebuilt with modern, fire-resistant stuffing.
Somewhere in a box in my garage I still have a couple of the monthly calendars published by the Rialto during the Landmark years, listing all the programs to be presented for the month. If I ever get a decent scanner, I’ll scan one of them, post it somewhere and link to it from this page.
ken mc: I’ve only just found it out myself, when I ran across that picture. I’ve been up and down that block at least a hundred times and never had a clue. Its hard to believe they were able to cram all this into that space though.
ken mc: When I compare thesephotos from the 1970s with the 1913 pictures I linked to on October 13th, the Optic looks much the same size in all of them to me. In the 1970’s pictures you can even still make out the outline of the old entrance arch, which has been partly enclosed above the added marquee. The theatre’s cornice line looks as though it’s in the same place relative to the taller building next door in all these pictures.
I just checked the pictures you linked to on October 4th, and the Optic building doesn’t show at all in the second of them. All we can see is the first three letters of its blade sign, which was attached to the building next door to the theatre. The low building in the first of those photos is probably not the Optic building at all, but a lower building demolished to make way for the theatre. The cornice line of the Optic was always about mid-level of the second floor windows of its next door neighbor to the north.
shatter: The World was in the dark building at far left, beyond the parking lot you can see in the first of the three pictures hollywood90038 linked to above. If you look at the third of the three pictures, you can see a corner of the building where the Hawaii Theatre was located, just past another parking lot east of the Florentine Gardens.
Johnny V: You are mostly correct. Web references to the theatre-based Mickey Mouse Clubs of the 1930’s do usually name the Fox Dome Theatre in Ocean Park the home of the first chapter. However, your date of 1939 is off. The date most commonly given for the inauguration of the club is January 11, 1930 (though some websites give dates as early as 1929). What is certain is that the Disney Company published a bi-monthly newsletter called “The Official Bulletin of the Mickey Mouse Club” for distribution to club members, and the first issue was dated April 30, 1930.
Looking at the January 2007 photo, I’m thinking that this could not have been the Admiral Theatre, unless the entrance had once been in the central of the three storefronts shown here rather than the narrow storefront on the right which is where the Main Theatre’s entrance was. The Admiral had a fairly wide entrance, with some decent terrazzo flooring, as I recall.
kenmc: Either the building has had two floors lopped off its top, or that is a different building than the one the Central was in. I’m inclined to think its a different building. I have a vague memory of a parking lot being on that site in the 1960s. I have another vague memory of a scene in the movie “Chinatown” when Jake is fetching his car from a parking lot and we see the Million Dollar Theatre in the background across the street.
You can see the Central’s marquee (through a haze of smoke) in the picture I linked to last October from the CT Cozy Theatre page.
ken: That’s the 400 block of Broadway in your picture, isn’t it? The Cozy was in the 300 block. It was in that building which now includes among its tenants Goleth’s Beauty Salon, depicted in the photo you just linked to from the Central Theatre page.
Here’s a 1957 photo from the L.A. Library of a theatre called the Linkletter Playhouse, from which Art Linkletter did his television show. On the picture’s full data page (the library doesn’t allow linking to those, unfortunately), the address is given as 1232 North Vine Street. It must be the Filmarte, but with a slightly altered street number.
Ken: I’m thinking this must be one of those cases when a name change didn’t make it into the Film Daily Yearbook.
Here’s a 1951 picture.
Here’s another from 1951.
It’s hard to tell from these fragments, but it doesn’t look as though that block had two theatres on it at the same time. My guess would be that the Hitching Post was remodeled and became the Paris sometime in late 1949 or early 1950.
Here is an especially evocative nocturnal view of the Alhambra Theatre from the late 1920s.
Listed as a Pacific Drive-In triplex in the L.A. Times Calendar section, Sunday August 24, 1986.
Next door to the Acme was the Grand Theater, at 1117 7th Street, in operation under that name from at least 1910 until 1917. It operated as a movie and vaudeville house under other names until 1926, after which it served other uses.
This historic photograph, c1910, shows part of what is likely only a sign pointing toward the Grand down the block along 7th Street, for the edification of passersby on busy K Street.
OK, the 1930 article in Southwest Builder & Contractor actually says that the new theatre is to be built at “17th and J Streets” which means it is the new Merced Theatre that it refers to (the “1” on “17” had been blocked out on the library’s reference card for some reason.) 17th Street is now called Main Street, and J Street has been renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Way.
The web site link listed above for this theatre no longer works, and I can’t find a new location. A recent edit to the Mainzer’s Wikipedia entry says that the building has been sold and the theatre is currently closed.
Meantime, here’s a bit of stuff about the theatre’s history I’ve dug up at the L.A. Library’s online California Index:
The Motion Picture Herald of 5/19/36 published this item:
An earlier article in the same publication (2/18/1928) said that the Merced Theatre was being doubled in size.The only other probable reference to the Merced/Strand I’ve found is from Southwest Builder & Contractor of 5/1/1936 which says that Salih Bros. of San Francisco had been awarded the contract for altering the theatre building, at an estimated cost of $25,000.
However, there’s a complication to all this nomenclature. Southwest Builder & Contractor of 1/17/1930 makes reference to a Mr. Frank Alberti, “…manager of the Merced and Strand Theatres…” who was announcing plans for a new theatre for Golden State at 7th and J Streets, to be designed by Reid Brothers (presumably unbuilt.) But this indicates that the Strand name was already in use in 1930. I suppose it’s possible that Motion Picture Herald just didn’t get the message about the name change for the old Merced Theatre until the time of the renovations in 1936.
A 1957 photo of the El Rey from the Oakland Public Library.
Downtown: The 2004 aerial photo of that block you can fetch at TerraServer (the red pin icon for 448 S. Main is actually in front of the next building north) shows a building without a stage house, so I’m guessing the Regent was built as a movie house during the silent era.
Seymour: My visit to the Regent was around 1963. As a grind house it served as a flop for winos and homeless people (who were far fewer in number in those days than now), and it may have been more the unwashed and wine-sodden audience than the theatre which smelled bad. But then I’m sure that the seats weren’t turquoise in 1963, so the seats had probably been either reupholstered or replaced (maybe with used seats from another theatre, thus accounting for the shopworn condition) before your visit there. The old seats probably had acquired an odor from their years of use.
There were probably no homeless people using the Regent as a flop during its porno days, as porn theatres had much higher admission prices than grind houses did. By 1983, the homeless were probably sleeping in the all-night triple feature houses on Broadway.
I have a question for you; In your 1983 visits to the downtown theatres, did you go to a Main Street theatre called the Admiral? It was on the east side of the street, and not too far from the Regent. My last visits to downtown L.A. were in the mid-1980’s, but I only got to Main Street a couple of times in those days and I don’t recall seeing (or not seeing) the Admiral at that time. I know for sure it was there in the late 1960’s. My vague memory places the Admiral south of the Regent, but it may have been an earlier name for the Main Theatre, a bit north of the Regent, which was operating as a porn house in the early 1980’s.
The turquoise treatment Seymour describes must have been an artifact of the Regent’s porn period. When I went there during the theatre’s triple feature grind house days, there was no bright color in any part of the auditorium. Everything was dark and dingy and worn. The paint looked as though someone had bought a few cans of various shades and mixed them all together and it turned out a a brownish gray. I don’t recall there being any carpeting on the aisles at all. I don’t recall the Gothic walls and ceiling. Their impression had probably been overwhelmed by the uniform dinginess of the place.
No, the first Los Angeles Theatre on the west side of Spring between 2nd and 3rd was the one that became the Lyceum. There was a second Los Angeles Theatre farther down Spring Street, on the east side between 3rd and 4th, and that’s the one that became the Empress. The Los Angeles Theatre on Broadway is the third of that name. The second Los Angeles Theatre is not yet listed at CT under any name.
Ken: I see there’s a mention of the Main Street Olympic, too, and of the mysterious second Los Angeles Theater on Spring Street which later became the Empress. I wonder if Marcus Loew kept the name Empress for it? That might make it easier to track down.
Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of January 4, 1924 announced the plans for the Cameo theatre. The architect was J.T. Payne. The project was expected to cost $35,000.
Here is an extensive essay on the Pantages/Warnor’s, at the Historic Fresno web site. The theatre is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
erin: I can’t find any references to a Howard Sheehan in connection with Fox-West Coast Theatres, but there was a producer of that name working at 20th Century-Fox studios in 1947. There was also a Howard Sheehan mentioned in connection with the Vogue theatre in Hollywood in 1935. See comments by CT user vokoban on October 6, 2006 on the Vogue Theatre page.
The El Rey has a web site:
http://elreytheater.com/
The web site’s history section reveals that the El Rey was built in 1941, was owned by Luigi Puccini, who was a cousin of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, and the theatre was designed by architect Joseph B. Burwinkle.
My first visit to the Rialto was in 1972, when it was still being operated by Mann’s as a first run house. I don’t recall if this was before or after the fire which destroyed the left organ chamber. I do remember the building being a bit down at the heels, though. It must have been only shortly after this that the Rialto was taken over by Landmark, because I remember that on my next visit to the theatre it had become a revival house with an admission price of one dollar.
Over the next several years I went to the Rialto more often than to any other theatre. Though by 1986, the last time I was there, the price had been upped to three dollars, it remained one of the best entertainment bargains around. The program would change twice a week, and there were often triple features, with the fare running from classic American and foreign movies all the way to “X” rated films such as the science fiction parody “Flesh Gordon”. I also attended one of the midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with its lively audience participation.
In all that time I don’t think the theatre received any more maintenance than was absolutely necessary to keep it from collapsing into a pile of rubble or being shut down as hazardous by either the city or the board of health. The balcony was always closed, as that was where they had moved all the big, leather-upholstered loges from the main floor, because the place almost had been shut down by the fire department due to the loge seats not being fire resistant. It was cheaper for the theatre’s operators to change them out for the balcony’s regular seats than to have them rebuilt with modern, fire-resistant stuffing.
Somewhere in a box in my garage I still have a couple of the monthly calendars published by the Rialto during the Landmark years, listing all the programs to be presented for the month. If I ever get a decent scanner, I’ll scan one of them, post it somewhere and link to it from this page.
ken mc: I’ve only just found it out myself, when I ran across that picture. I’ve been up and down that block at least a hundred times and never had a clue. Its hard to believe they were able to cram all this into that space though.
ken mc: When I compare these photos from the 1970s with the 1913 pictures I linked to on October 13th, the Optic looks much the same size in all of them to me. In the 1970’s pictures you can even still make out the outline of the old entrance arch, which has been partly enclosed above the added marquee. The theatre’s cornice line looks as though it’s in the same place relative to the taller building next door in all these pictures.
I just checked the pictures you linked to on October 4th, and the Optic building doesn’t show at all in the second of them. All we can see is the first three letters of its blade sign, which was attached to the building next door to the theatre. The low building in the first of those photos is probably not the Optic building at all, but a lower building demolished to make way for the theatre. The cornice line of the Optic was always about mid-level of the second floor windows of its next door neighbor to the north.