Grand Theater
730 S. Grand Avenue,
Los Angeles,
CA
90017
730 S. Grand Avenue,
Los Angeles,
CA
90017
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Here’s a display add that gives a cross street.
(Dec. 8, 1912)
MOZART THEATER-Grand Avenue And Seventh Street
THE BEST IN MOTION PICTURES Today and Tonight: THE HOLY CITY and DON CEASAR DE BEZAN
Continuous, 1 to 5-7 to 11. Prices, 10c and 15c; Matines, 10c.
(Sept. 15, 1912)
LITTA LYNN (HULLINGER)
Arranger, Composer, Teacher of Harmony
Pupil of Adolf Weidlig
Studio 24 MOZART THEATER.
Residence Phone. 57342.
(Sept. 11, 1912)
IRON BRIGADE REUNION
Col. J.A. Watrous presided over the reunion of the famous Iron Brigade yesterday afternoon from 2 to 4 o'clock in Grant Hall, Mozart Theater building. Watrous is Assistant Adjutant-General of the Grand Army and he was also a hero of that famous fighting machine which has gone down in history with an unsurpassed record for gallantry and sacrifice.
(Sept. 3, 1912)
For and audience to break out into plaudits at a motion-picture entertainment is something unusual, and yet this is what happened during this week’s opening performance Monday at the Mozart Theater, when the film, “Only a Miller’s Daughter” was being presented. The story is a very clever one, involving the love affair of a young farmer and the miller’s daughter, and the admiration of a wealthy young city chap for the same girl….
Here is a classified add that at least says Grand Ave.:
(Aug. 10, 1912)
CURCH NOTICES-MISCELLANEOUS
COUNT GELLESNOFF ON REVELATION
at 11 a.m., Grant Hall, Mozart Theater, Grand ave.
Joe, this predates the opening you listed for the Mozart. Could there have been another Mozart? There is no real location given, so I don’t know if this is a different place. The interesting thing is that it definitely showed films.
(Aug. 7, 1912)
It is rather unusual for a moving-picture house to attract an automobile patronage; but this is a feat that the Mozart Theater accomplised upon its opening night last Monday. Numbers of ladies in dainty, film toilets, attended by gentlemen in evening dress, were among the patrons . Boxes were occupied by Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, Prince and Princess Lazarovich, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Charles Wellington Rand, Miss Lilian Rand and Count Stephen Szymanowski. The Mozart Theater, conducted by a working force of young women, under the management of Mrs. Anna M. Mozart, purposes to offer only the best class of entertainment, both in the line of films presented, and the music rendered by the mellow-toned colossal Fotoplayer, which, the management feels sure, will be a source of pleasure to all its patrons.
At the center top of this photograph at the USC digital archives, there can be seen the rear of a theatre with the painted sign “Strand Theatre' on its wall (use the archive’s "zoom” feature to enlarge the section and make the writing legible.) This is probably the Mozart, which I believe was the only theatre on that block of Grand Avenue. I’ve also found that the name Orange Grove was used for this theatre in the mid-1920’s, not the 1940’s.
Incidentally, though the photo is labeled by the archives as being from 1921, it must be from 1920 or earlier, as demolition of the buildings left foreground on 7th and Broadway, where Loew’s State Theatre opened in 1921, had not yet begun.
The Mozart opened on August 14th, 1913. There is some evidence that it was still operating, under the name Grand Playhouse, in the late 1940s.
It would not surprise me if the Mozart was closed for a while, during the depression years, and re-opened later. I do now vaguely recall having read an article sometime in the early 1960s (perhaps in the L.A. Times, or Los Angeles Magazine) which mentioned a theater on Grand Avenue called the Grand, and said that it had been for a while Downtown’s only art house, during the late 1940s- early 1950s. As the Criterion was already gone by that time, the theater mentioned was probably the Mozart.
In any case, I’m sure that the theater was gone by the early 1960s. My memory of that stretch of Grand Avenue, across the street from Robinson’s Department Store, is fairly dim, but I think that at that time the building just below the alley south of Seventh Street housed a restaurant which had been there for decades, and south of that was only a stretch of parking lots. The restaurant probably had an address of about 720, so the theater building had most likely been next door to it, or another door or two south.
Thanks Joe;
I have just posted some details up on the Fox Criterion (former Kinema) listing on this site.
Sorry I can’t help out with any further details on the Mozart, as there is no Orange Grove Theatre listed in 1941, in fact no theatre at all on Grand apart from the Grand Internationale. I will keep my eyes open though.
No, I think that would be the theater listed on this site as the Criterion (or Fox Criterion), and which opened as the Kinema, sometime in the early 1920s. The Criterion was in the 600 block of Grand, just north of 7th Street. There are a couple of pictures of it in the L.A. Library photo database (I think the search terms with which I found them were “Theater Kinema”) The Mozart was an older theater, and smaller, I believe. In 1941, it might have been operating as the Orange Grove.
Joe;
The Film Daily Yearbook 1941 has a Grand Internationale Theater, W. 7th St and S. Grand Ave with a seating capacity of 1,700. Could this be the former Mozart Theater?
I have found this theater listed as one of Los Angeles' principal downtown movie houses in a map book which was probably published about 1950 (the page with the copyright date is missing, but the map of downtown shows the Hollywood and Harbor Freeways still under construction, and rapid transit tracks still running along Aliso Street.) At that time, the theatre was operating under the name Grand Playhouse.