Palace Theatre

What a great place the Palace Theatre used to be, and still is. So many interesting stories and the pics on this page are great. Does anyone know of any former employees of the Palace Theatre?

Ken, that shot is one of my favorites. It’s actually a postcard, and occasionally comes up for auction on eBay.

To me, an important part of any streetscape is the lighting. The old ornamental two- and three-headed lamps were beautiful; the plain hanging-acorn-style ones that replaced them on Broadway are not.

Funny that the nice ones were maintained on other streets decades after they were removed from Broadway. Now I’m certainly not saying this caused or hastened the decline of the street as a middle-class shopping and entertainment destination, but, really, what were the city planners thinking by taking such an action?

The Palace can be seen in Ed Wood’s “GLEN OR GLENDA” in an opening scene with a superimposed Bela Lugosi, that a features a very busy South Broadway on a chilly LA day with thousands of pedestrians, heavy traffic and a few streetcars. “PULL THE STRING!”

Circa 1995 close up of the marquee:
http://www.gmrnet.com/graphics/theatr1a.jpg

You can see alittle of the marquee and box office in the opening credits of the film “The Last Shot”.

Here is an old postcard of Broadway in the 1930s showing Loew’s State on the left and the Palace on the right.

In this photo, the right side of the street has, from front to back: a Nunn-Bush store, a jewelry store, the Palace theatre, the Forum(?) Cafeteria, Desmonds, something else that looks like a large department store but has no identifable sign, then the Broadway Arcade building (with a large radio antenna on top labelled KRKU or maybe KRRU), and then a hotel.

The left side has Leroys, some store beginning with Ch, Kress, the Los Angeles theatre, and Swelldom (and then lots of other buildings that don’t have identifying signs.)

On page 38 of Kevin Lynch’s book The Image of the City is a photograph of Broadway in Los Angeles. The photo is undated, but the book has a 1960 copyright. The street is lined with tall vertical signs for both theatres and retail stores: in this photo you can see such signs for LEROYS, KRESS, the LOS ANGELES theatre, SWELUDOM (??), HOTEL, DESMONDS, and the PALACE theatre.

The Palace marquee advertises the movie BELL BOOK AND CANDLE, which came out in 1958. A second feature is also listed on the marquee. It looks like ANNA LUCASTA, which was released in 1959.

In 1926, when the Orpheum Circuit moved to its new theatre further down Broadway, this Orpheum was given the name Broadway Palace, which was displayed on the marquee and used in advertisements for the theatre. The name didn’t become simply the Palace Theatre until sometime later. The inclusion of the street name in the theatre’s name may have been to distinguish it from an earlier Palace Theatre which had been located nearby on Seventh Street, and which had closed only a few years before.

I notice that the Blade marquees at each end of this theater say “Newsreels” in the photograph above. An issue of Daily Variety from September of 1939 announced this change in policy with the headline “Palace, Broadway, becomes News Palace.” I have a vague memory of a place on Spring Street where a parking lot opened a view of the back of one of the other theaters on Broadway- either the Globe or the Orpheum, I think- and even in the 1960s you could still see there an old, faded sign advertising the News Palace theater.

By the time I began attending movies at the Palace in the early 1960s, the blade marquees simply carried the name “Palace” on them. I remember getting a good look at the interior one night about 1962, when Metropolitan used to run Keno games during intermission, and the house lights would be turned all the way up. Even then, the auditorium was showing its age,
but it was still a splendid sight with its ornate beaux-arts decor. I remember that the orchestra floor had columns to hold up the balcony. (I think that the Million Dollar was the first wide theater in Los Angeles to be built with a clear-span balcony that needed no supporting columns on the ground floor. The Palace was a few years older than the Million Dollar.)

I also recall the rather plain lounge and restrooms in the basement. They extended under the sidewalk of Broadway, and the ceiling was of glass brick. You could hear the pedestrians walking above. It was quite a difference from the plush lower level lounge in the Los Angeles Theatre across the street.

This theater is seen in the opening minutes of Steven Spielberg’s “Duel”. It goes by fast, but after a lot of freeze-framing I got to see what was playing: a triple feature of “The Possession of Joel Delaney”, “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Brotherhood of Satan”. And across the street at the Los Angeles Theater: “Buck and the Preacher”.