In case anyone looks this far back in the news archives: This is not the Alcazar Theatre listed on Cinema Treasures, located at 260 O'Farrell Street. The Geary Street Alcazar, originally built as the Islam Temple for the Shriners, only took on the name Alcazar some time after the demolition of the O'Farrell Street Alcazar. I have no information on whether or not the Geary Street Alcazar has ever operated as a movie theatre.
The photo at the Noe Hill web site, linked above by TC on Sep 27, 2005, depicts a different Alcazar Theatre, at 650 Geary Street, built in 1917 as a Shriner’s temple, designed by architect T. Patterson Ross. Some time after the O'Farrell Street Alcazar was demolished, the former Islam Temple on Geary Street became a legitimate theatre and took on the name Alcazar. I have no information on whether or not the Geary Street Alcazar has ever been used as a movie theatre, but as of 2006 it is still in operation as a live theatre.
Harkins Bricktown Cinemas will be one of the venues for Oklahoma City’s deadCENTER film festival again this year, June 7-11, 2006. Harkins may be a megaplex corporation, but they do give some support to independent films.
ken mc: I just saw you question from last December. The Cairo would have been in the block just south of 110th Street, which was almost ¾ of a mile south of Century- in fact, only a few blocks north of Imperial Highway.
Ken Roe posted a list of the 24 theatres being operated by the Edwards Circuit in 1950, and the Cairo (unless there were two theatres of that name in Los Angeles at the time) was among them. The list as in one of the comments on the page for the El Cameo Theater.
Will, the Historic American Buildings Survey data on the Tivoli goes so far as to say that the theatre was “…reputedly one of the first five public buildings in the United States to be air conditioned.” The claim sounded a bit extravagant to me, which is why I softened it to “…one of the first in the nation….” As the survey was done in 1974, perhaps not much information on the early history of air conditioning in America had yet been compiled. I do know that it was not yet a commonplace feature of public buildings at the time, but it also seemed unlikely that the Tivoli would have had only the fifth plant ever installed in an American public building.
According to this article, the first public building in the U.S. to have a modern air conditioning plant was the J.L. Hudson department store in Detroit, in 1924. I don’t know how rapidly air conditioning spread in the following years, but I do know that it remained a fairly costly luxury until after WWII. As late as the 1950’s, I recall that among the dozen or so theatres in the area where I lived a few miles east of downtown Los Angeles, none were yet air conditioned. The nearest air conditioned theatre I knew of was the United Artists in Pasadena.
William, are you sure about the Skouras-ization of the Palace in 1947? When I began going to the theatre in the early 1960’s, the auditorium had the same, ornate Renaissance decor seen in old photographs of it (and the style “Renaissance” needs to be added to the theatre’s information at the top of the page, buy the way.) I don’t remember the lobby as clearly, but I certainly don’t recall it having any of the art moderne style for which Skouras was so famous. I do know that the ticket foyer had had its ornate decoration largely covered over by then, but it wasn’t particularly art moderne, either- just sort of bland. If Skouras was responsible for that, it wasn’t one of his better designs.
Original announcements of new theatres sometimes exaggerated the seating capacity a bit, and sometimes the plans were altered between the time of the announcement and the actual beginning of construction, and the capacity would end up a bit larger or smaller than originally announced.
It was also fairly common for a theatre to be reseated during its lifetime, most often by installing wider seats, sometimes by more extensive alterations that increased leg room by reducing the number of rows, and either of these would thus reduce the seating capacity. There were also some occasions when seating capacities of a theatre went up. This happened most often when a theatre originally built with an orchestra pit would have the pit covered over and a couple of rows of seats added in the new floor space.
The American Memory web site of the Library of Congress contains some information about the Tivoli (click on “Historic Buildings” link under “Architecture, Landscape” heading, then enter “Tivoli Chattanooga” in the search box.)
The site has twelve data pages about the Tivoli from the Historic American Buildings Survey (there are also ten photographs of the theatre.) According to the survey, the architects were C.W. and George L. Rapp, with Chattanooga architect R.H. Hunt associated. The survey also says that the auditorium had a seating capacity at opening of 2,300, and its greatest dimensions were 100'x126'.
The official opening of the Tivoli was March 19, 1921, with the movie “Forbidden Fruit” and Mae Murray, the star of the movie, made a personal appearance. The first talking picture seen in Chattanooga premiered at the Tivoli on July 9, 1928. Chattanooga’s first CinemaScope screen was installed in the Tivoli in 1953. It was 45' wide and 25' high, with a 4' inward curve.
In 1931, the Tivoli became the first public building in Chattanooga (and one of the first in the nation) to install an air conditioning system, a Carrier plant built in Germany that year.
From its opening in 1921 until 1957- almost its entire history as a movie theatre- the manager of the Tivoli was Mr. Emmet Rogers. The Tivoli closed as a movie theatre on August 17, 1961.
On the Tivoli’s Wurlitzer organ, the survey has this to say (the survey dates from 1974):
“The first major addition was that of a new organ in 1924. This Wurlitzer pipe organ was built in 1921 and purchased by a theater in San Diego for $25,000. In 1924 the Tivoli bought it and sent it back to the Wurlitzer factory in North Tonawanda, New York for renovation. It was used in the Tivoli from 1924-1939 when it was shut down. It was removed from the orchestra pit and put backstage…. After 24 years the organ was restored in 1965 by five local members of the Association of Theater Organ Enthusiasts and was put at the left of the stage.”
There is considerably more information about the theatre in the survey, which is available for download from the web site as 12 high resolution compressed TIFF files (viewable in most popular image viewer programs) of about 20 to 40 K each.
The description for this theatre says that it was opened in 1912 and then renovated in 1927. But the page at Carthalia containing the old postcard (linked in the comment by TC above) contains text that reads “NB: The building is not identical with another "Varsity Theatre”, built 1912 at another site on University Avenue and later converted to a restaurant."
There is a photograph of that earlier Varsity Theatre at the web site of the Palo Alto Historical Association. Another photo of the first Varsity at the same web site has text indicating that it was located in the block west of Bryant Street. The Google map for the new Varsity shows its location as being a block and a half EAST of Bryant Street, and on the opposite side of University Avenue from the original Varsity Theatre.
So Carthalia is apparently correct, and the new Varsity was not a renovation of the earlier theatre, but an entirely new building in a different location.
I’m inclined to agree with Cinecitta that this building is unlikely to have been used for movies. An article in the Amador Ledger Dispatch of January 9th, 2003, contains a single line saying “The Claypiper Theatre across the highway, long the home of laughter-filled melodramas whose actors filled the motel rooms, is now an antique store.” So the Claypiper was, at least for part of its history, one of those theatres that presented vintage, Victorian-style “cheer the hero and hiss the villain” plays for tourists visiting the gold rush country.
The photograph of the balcony shows that it has a row of windows overlooking the street. Exterior windows are unlikely things to find in a movie house. An even more convincing bit of evidence is the fact that there’s no room up there for a projection booth, and it doesn’t look as though there could have been one squeezed onto the ground floor either.
Still, I suppose there’s always the possibility that the theatre did show movies at some time in the past (the silent era, perhaps), with really heavy coverings over those windows, and the projector set up in the balcony itself— provided it is an actual old building. I live in the Sierra region myself, and I know that fake old-time buildings are still being built here, and you can never be sure if something that looks 19th century has really been around that long or was built only thirty or forty years ago.
On the evidence so far, though, I’d say this building was probably never a movie house.
The principal architect of Salem’s Elsinore Theatre was Ellis F. Lawrence, with associate Fred S. Allyn, both of the firm of Lawrence and Holford. Lawrence was later to become the founding dean of the University of Oregon School of Architecture.
An article in Southwest Builder & Contractor, issue of October 2, 1925, announced that architect L.A. Smith was preparing plans for the Imperial Theatre in Long Beach. The theatre was remodeled from an existing building. The previous use of the building was not specified.
A 1933 issue of the same publication said that architect Clifford Balch had been hired to plan repairs to the exterior of the Imperial Theatre following damage in the earthquake of that year.
As the theatre was art deco in later years, some extensive remodeling must have taken place, which probably eliminated most or all of Smith’s earlier design.
Architect Silas Reese Burns designed the Silent Building and the Alhambra Theatre. In partnership with architect Sumner P. Hunt at the time, his firm was called Hunt and Burns.
Two articles on the Temple Theatre in Alhambra (L.A. Times of 12/25/1921 and Southwest Builder & Contractor of 6/3/1921) mention that Mr. O.H.Scheusener would be the operator of the theatre. The SB&C article further mentions that Scheusener was already the operator of another picture house in Alhambra. As the other two theatres in Alhambra were built later than this (the Alhambra in 1923 and the Garfield in 1925), unless there was yet another theatre in the city at that time, the theatre Mr. Scheusener operated must have been the Granada.
That the Granada already existed in 1921 is shown by this 1920 photograph from the Los Angeles Public Library. Third Street is in the foreground, and the Granada is the white two story building on the far right corner of Second Street, one block east.
There is an article in the magazine Builder & Contractor, issue of December 25, 1916, which announces the plans for construction of a theatre in Alhambra, for J.D. Morgan, designed by architect Harley S. Bradley. Assuming that this theatre was actually built, then it was most likely the Granada. This is all a bit speculative so far, but there seems to be a good chance that the Granada opened in 1917 and was designed by Harley S. Bradley.
The Los Angeles Times mentions this theatre by the name Granada in an article published on July 16, 1941, so the name was changed to the Coronet some time after that.
A wider version of the picture at the top of this page is here.
Toni: According to this page at the Internet Broadway Database, Charles Alphin’s “Ski-Hi” was the final production mounted at Hoyt’s Theatre on 24th Street (between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue) in June and July of 1908. Charles Alphin’s IBDB page doesn’t list any other works yet. Many of the pages at the IBDB site are incomplete.
There is also a writer named Charles Alphin listed at the Internet Movie Database, with four movies in his filmography, all from 1926. Is this also your grandfather? At least one of the movies on his list, a Charley Chase short called “Bromo and Juliet” is available on DVD— in two different collections, in fact: The Charley Chase Collection, Vol.2, and The Lost Films of Laurel and Hardy, Vol.3 (Oliver Hardy had a small part in the movie.)
Also, I think that your grandfather’s Olympic Theatre is listed here at Cinema Treasures under one of its later names, The Gaiety (though the head of the page gives the wrong address for it. It should say 523 South Main Street.)
I’d like to see photos of the Olympic Theatre. If you have a picture of the exterior, we might be able to confirm that it was the same building seen at the lower left in this ca1917 photo, when it was called the Omar Theatre.
vokoban: It looks as though that is the Mozart building in that second picture. It’s the right distance down Grand Avenue, and is the right size. In fact, I recognized the cursive writing on the sign immediately, as I’ve seen a sign exactly like it, though much faded. It was (and according to a November 24th, 2004 comment by ejaycat on the Fox Pasadena page here, still is) on the wall of the former Clune’s Pasadena Theatre. Apparently, Billy Clune ran the Grand Avenue house for a while, too.
As for the date of the picture, it must be fairly close to 1912, and more likely earlier than later, given the fact that the southeast corner of 7th and Grand is still occupied by a house converted to commercial use, no cars are in sight, and the pavement looks very primitive. Even by the early 1920’s, that corner looked very different.
Oh, the salacious prurience! Bare breasts on the Internet! Who would have thought there could be such a thing? The club site does have three decent, though small, pictures of the facade. Let’s steal their bandwidth and link directly to the first picture here. See the next two pictures by changing the “club1” in the URL to “club2” and then “club3” (there are six more pictures after that, of the interior following conversion, but there’s little in them recognizable from the original theatre decor.) This way, the prudes can see the theatre without seeing the, um, mammalian features on the site’s front page. They will be uncorrupted (except for the whole bandwidth theft thing, but what’s that next to the evils of prurience?)
Yes, Sarah Bernhardt had her right leg chopped off following an accident in 1914: [quote]In 1915, during an unfortunate performance in the title role of Victorien Sardou’s drama La Tosca, Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) injured her right leg so badly that it had to be amputated. While she was recovering, the manager of the Pan-American Exposition (in San Francisco) asked for permission to exhibit her leg, offering $100,000 for the privilege. Bernhardt cabled this reply: “Which leg?”
She hummed the “Marseillaise” as she was wheeled down the hospital corridor and afterwards used a wheelchair, disdaining prostheses and crutches – bearers instead carried the divine Sarah around in a specially designed litter chair in Louis XV style with gilt carving, like a Byzantine princess. Immediately upon leaving the hospital, she filmed Jeanne Dore (1915), again directed by Louis Mercanton. She was shot either standing or sitting; this in fact pinned her down and forced her to use facial expression rather than movement and helped her performance. The five-reel film, distributed by Universal in the U.S., got rave reviews and reflected well upon both its game star and the industry as an art form. (From Richard Gordon’s “An Alarming History of Famous and Difficult Patients: Amusing Medical Anecdotes from Typhoid Mary to FDR.” St. Martin’s Press; 1997)[/quote]
A number of years ago, David Kirby published a book of poetry with the titel “Sarah Bernhardt’s Leg.” I’ve never read it, but I do like the title.
But back on the subject of the Mozart, I see that the May 8, 1908 article you quoted in your comment of March 1st gives the name of the original architects of the theatre as Eisen & Son. This must have been Theodore A. Eisen (1852-1924) and Percy A. Eisen (1885-1946.) T.A. was the Eisen in the firm of Curlet, Eisen and Cuthbertson which designed the old L.A. County Courthouse on New High Street in the 1880’s. Percy was later a partner in the firm of Walker and Eisen which designed many Los Angeles area theatres in the 1920’s and later. T.A. was also in partnership with Sumner P. Hunt for a while in the late 19th century. The partnership of Eisen & Son was disolved in 1917.
This theatre certainly endured a lot of changes in its less than 40 years. I suppose the instability was partly the result of its having been outside the main theatre district of Los Angeles. At least we now have the name of the architects, a firm opening date of the first Monday after December 18th, 1908, a closing date of the first Saturday after July 4th, 1946, and an opening night seating capacity of 900. Now, if someone can only find some pictures (of more than just its back wall) under one or another of its identities.
In case anyone looks this far back in the news archives: This is not the Alcazar Theatre listed on Cinema Treasures, located at 260 O'Farrell Street. The Geary Street Alcazar, originally built as the Islam Temple for the Shriners, only took on the name Alcazar some time after the demolition of the O'Farrell Street Alcazar. I have no information on whether or not the Geary Street Alcazar has ever operated as a movie theatre.
The photo at the Noe Hill web site, linked above by TC on Sep 27, 2005, depicts a different Alcazar Theatre, at 650 Geary Street, built in 1917 as a Shriner’s temple, designed by architect T. Patterson Ross. Some time after the O'Farrell Street Alcazar was demolished, the former Islam Temple on Geary Street became a legitimate theatre and took on the name Alcazar. I have no information on whether or not the Geary Street Alcazar has ever been used as a movie theatre, but as of 2006 it is still in operation as a live theatre.
There is a link to a virtual tour of this theatre on the Coronado page of the Rockford Centre Events web site.
Address: 2535 Pacific Coast Highway (per stevorini’s comment of April 14, 2005, now about midpoint on this page.)
The U.A. Torrance was located at 2735 Pacific Coast Highway, according to the theater listings in The Los Angeles Times of February 10th, 1971.
Harkins Bricktown Cinemas will be one of the venues for Oklahoma City’s deadCENTER film festival again this year, June 7-11, 2006. Harkins may be a megaplex corporation, but they do give some support to independent films.
The opening day of the Edwards Alhambra Place Cinemas was May 24th, 1985, according to the ad displayed at the Making Movies web site.
ken mc: I just saw you question from last December. The Cairo would have been in the block just south of 110th Street, which was almost ¾ of a mile south of Century- in fact, only a few blocks north of Imperial Highway.
Ken Roe posted a list of the 24 theatres being operated by the Edwards Circuit in 1950, and the Cairo (unless there were two theatres of that name in Los Angeles at the time) was among them. The list as in one of the comments on the page for the El Cameo Theater.
Here is the official web site of the Vine Cinema. No pictures of the theatre, unfortunately, except a small shot of the marquee.
Will, the Historic American Buildings Survey data on the Tivoli goes so far as to say that the theatre was “…reputedly one of the first five public buildings in the United States to be air conditioned.” The claim sounded a bit extravagant to me, which is why I softened it to “…one of the first in the nation….” As the survey was done in 1974, perhaps not much information on the early history of air conditioning in America had yet been compiled. I do know that it was not yet a commonplace feature of public buildings at the time, but it also seemed unlikely that the Tivoli would have had only the fifth plant ever installed in an American public building.
According to this article, the first public building in the U.S. to have a modern air conditioning plant was the J.L. Hudson department store in Detroit, in 1924. I don’t know how rapidly air conditioning spread in the following years, but I do know that it remained a fairly costly luxury until after WWII. As late as the 1950’s, I recall that among the dozen or so theatres in the area where I lived a few miles east of downtown Los Angeles, none were yet air conditioned. The nearest air conditioned theatre I knew of was the United Artists in Pasadena.
William, are you sure about the Skouras-ization of the Palace in 1947? When I began going to the theatre in the early 1960’s, the auditorium had the same, ornate Renaissance decor seen in old photographs of it (and the style “Renaissance” needs to be added to the theatre’s information at the top of the page, buy the way.) I don’t remember the lobby as clearly, but I certainly don’t recall it having any of the art moderne style for which Skouras was so famous. I do know that the ticket foyer had had its ornate decoration largely covered over by then, but it wasn’t particularly art moderne, either- just sort of bland. If Skouras was responsible for that, it wasn’t one of his better designs.
Original announcements of new theatres sometimes exaggerated the seating capacity a bit, and sometimes the plans were altered between the time of the announcement and the actual beginning of construction, and the capacity would end up a bit larger or smaller than originally announced.
It was also fairly common for a theatre to be reseated during its lifetime, most often by installing wider seats, sometimes by more extensive alterations that increased leg room by reducing the number of rows, and either of these would thus reduce the seating capacity. There were also some occasions when seating capacities of a theatre went up. This happened most often when a theatre originally built with an orchestra pit would have the pit covered over and a couple of rows of seats added in the new floor space.
The American Memory web site of the Library of Congress contains some information about the Tivoli (click on “Historic Buildings” link under “Architecture, Landscape” heading, then enter “Tivoli Chattanooga” in the search box.)
The site has twelve data pages about the Tivoli from the Historic American Buildings Survey (there are also ten photographs of the theatre.) According to the survey, the architects were C.W. and George L. Rapp, with Chattanooga architect R.H. Hunt associated. The survey also says that the auditorium had a seating capacity at opening of 2,300, and its greatest dimensions were 100'x126'.
The official opening of the Tivoli was March 19, 1921, with the movie “Forbidden Fruit” and Mae Murray, the star of the movie, made a personal appearance. The first talking picture seen in Chattanooga premiered at the Tivoli on July 9, 1928. Chattanooga’s first CinemaScope screen was installed in the Tivoli in 1953. It was 45' wide and 25' high, with a 4' inward curve.
In 1931, the Tivoli became the first public building in Chattanooga (and one of the first in the nation) to install an air conditioning system, a Carrier plant built in Germany that year.
From its opening in 1921 until 1957- almost its entire history as a movie theatre- the manager of the Tivoli was Mr. Emmet Rogers. The Tivoli closed as a movie theatre on August 17, 1961.
On the Tivoli’s Wurlitzer organ, the survey has this to say (the survey dates from 1974):
There is considerably more information about the theatre in the survey, which is available for download from the web site as 12 high resolution compressed TIFF files (viewable in most popular image viewer programs) of about 20 to 40 K each.The description for this theatre says that it was opened in 1912 and then renovated in 1927. But the page at Carthalia containing the old postcard (linked in the comment by TC above) contains text that reads “NB: The building is not identical with another "Varsity Theatre”, built 1912 at another site on University Avenue and later converted to a restaurant."
There is a photograph of that earlier Varsity Theatre at the web site of the Palo Alto Historical Association. Another photo of the first Varsity at the same web site has text indicating that it was located in the block west of Bryant Street. The Google map for the new Varsity shows its location as being a block and a half EAST of Bryant Street, and on the opposite side of University Avenue from the original Varsity Theatre.
So Carthalia is apparently correct, and the new Varsity was not a renovation of the earlier theatre, but an entirely new building in a different location.
I’m inclined to agree with Cinecitta that this building is unlikely to have been used for movies. An article in the Amador Ledger Dispatch of January 9th, 2003, contains a single line saying “The Claypiper Theatre across the highway, long the home of laughter-filled melodramas whose actors filled the motel rooms, is now an antique store.” So the Claypiper was, at least for part of its history, one of those theatres that presented vintage, Victorian-style “cheer the hero and hiss the villain” plays for tourists visiting the gold rush country.
The photograph of the balcony shows that it has a row of windows overlooking the street. Exterior windows are unlikely things to find in a movie house. An even more convincing bit of evidence is the fact that there’s no room up there for a projection booth, and it doesn’t look as though there could have been one squeezed onto the ground floor either.
Still, I suppose there’s always the possibility that the theatre did show movies at some time in the past (the silent era, perhaps), with really heavy coverings over those windows, and the projector set up in the balcony itself— provided it is an actual old building. I live in the Sierra region myself, and I know that fake old-time buildings are still being built here, and you can never be sure if something that looks 19th century has really been around that long or was built only thirty or forty years ago.
On the evidence so far, though, I’d say this building was probably never a movie house.
The principal architect of Salem’s Elsinore Theatre was Ellis F. Lawrence, with associate Fred S. Allyn, both of the firm of Lawrence and Holford. Lawrence was later to become the founding dean of the University of Oregon School of Architecture.
An article in Southwest Builder & Contractor, issue of October 2, 1925, announced that architect L.A. Smith was preparing plans for the Imperial Theatre in Long Beach. The theatre was remodeled from an existing building. The previous use of the building was not specified.
A 1933 issue of the same publication said that architect Clifford Balch had been hired to plan repairs to the exterior of the Imperial Theatre following damage in the earthquake of that year.
As the theatre was art deco in later years, some extensive remodeling must have taken place, which probably eliminated most or all of Smith’s earlier design.
Architect Silas Reese Burns designed the Silent Building and the Alhambra Theatre. In partnership with architect Sumner P. Hunt at the time, his firm was called Hunt and Burns.
Two articles on the Temple Theatre in Alhambra (L.A. Times of 12/25/1921 and Southwest Builder & Contractor of 6/3/1921) mention that Mr. O.H.Scheusener would be the operator of the theatre. The SB&C article further mentions that Scheusener was already the operator of another picture house in Alhambra. As the other two theatres in Alhambra were built later than this (the Alhambra in 1923 and the Garfield in 1925), unless there was yet another theatre in the city at that time, the theatre Mr. Scheusener operated must have been the Granada.
That the Granada already existed in 1921 is shown by this 1920 photograph from the Los Angeles Public Library. Third Street is in the foreground, and the Granada is the white two story building on the far right corner of Second Street, one block east.
There is an article in the magazine Builder & Contractor, issue of December 25, 1916, which announces the plans for construction of a theatre in Alhambra, for J.D. Morgan, designed by architect Harley S. Bradley. Assuming that this theatre was actually built, then it was most likely the Granada. This is all a bit speculative so far, but there seems to be a good chance that the Granada opened in 1917 and was designed by Harley S. Bradley.
Here is a photo of the Mission Playhouse from September, 1940, during the time it was operating as a movie theatre.
The Los Angeles Times mentions this theatre by the name Granada in an article published on July 16, 1941, so the name was changed to the Coronet some time after that.
A wider version of the picture at the top of this page is here.
Toni: According to this page at the Internet Broadway Database, Charles Alphin’s “Ski-Hi” was the final production mounted at Hoyt’s Theatre on 24th Street (between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue) in June and July of 1908. Charles Alphin’s IBDB page doesn’t list any other works yet. Many of the pages at the IBDB site are incomplete.
There is also a writer named Charles Alphin listed at the Internet Movie Database, with four movies in his filmography, all from 1926. Is this also your grandfather? At least one of the movies on his list, a Charley Chase short called “Bromo and Juliet” is available on DVD— in two different collections, in fact: The Charley Chase Collection, Vol.2, and The Lost Films of Laurel and Hardy, Vol.3 (Oliver Hardy had a small part in the movie.)
Also, I think that your grandfather’s Olympic Theatre is listed here at Cinema Treasures under one of its later names, The Gaiety (though the head of the page gives the wrong address for it. It should say 523 South Main Street.)
I’d like to see photos of the Olympic Theatre. If you have a picture of the exterior, we might be able to confirm that it was the same building seen at the lower left in this ca1917 photo, when it was called the Omar Theatre.
vokoban: It looks as though that is the Mozart building in that second picture. It’s the right distance down Grand Avenue, and is the right size. In fact, I recognized the cursive writing on the sign immediately, as I’ve seen a sign exactly like it, though much faded. It was (and according to a November 24th, 2004 comment by ejaycat on the Fox Pasadena page here, still is) on the wall of the former Clune’s Pasadena Theatre. Apparently, Billy Clune ran the Grand Avenue house for a while, too.
As for the date of the picture, it must be fairly close to 1912, and more likely earlier than later, given the fact that the southeast corner of 7th and Grand is still occupied by a house converted to commercial use, no cars are in sight, and the pavement looks very primitive. Even by the early 1920’s, that corner looked very different.
Oh, the salacious prurience! Bare breasts on the Internet! Who would have thought there could be such a thing? The club site does have three decent, though small, pictures of the facade. Let’s steal their bandwidth and link directly to the first picture here. See the next two pictures by changing the “club1” in the URL to “club2” and then “club3” (there are six more pictures after that, of the interior following conversion, but there’s little in them recognizable from the original theatre decor.) This way, the prudes can see the theatre without seeing the, um, mammalian features on the site’s front page. They will be uncorrupted (except for the whole bandwidth theft thing, but what’s that next to the evils of prurience?)
Yes, Sarah Bernhardt had her right leg chopped off following an accident in 1914: [quote]In 1915, during an unfortunate performance in the title role of Victorien Sardou’s drama La Tosca, Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) injured her right leg so badly that it had to be amputated. While she was recovering, the manager of the Pan-American Exposition (in San Francisco) asked for permission to exhibit her leg, offering $100,000 for the privilege. Bernhardt cabled this reply: “Which leg?”
She hummed the “Marseillaise” as she was wheeled down the hospital corridor and afterwards used a wheelchair, disdaining prostheses and crutches – bearers instead carried the divine Sarah around in a specially designed litter chair in Louis XV style with gilt carving, like a Byzantine princess. Immediately upon leaving the hospital, she filmed Jeanne Dore (1915), again directed by Louis Mercanton. She was shot either standing or sitting; this in fact pinned her down and forced her to use facial expression rather than movement and helped her performance. The five-reel film, distributed by Universal in the U.S., got rave reviews and reflected well upon both its game star and the industry as an art form. (From Richard Gordon’s “An Alarming History of Famous and Difficult Patients: Amusing Medical Anecdotes from Typhoid Mary to FDR.” St. Martin’s Press; 1997)[/quote]
A number of years ago, David Kirby published a book of poetry with the titel “Sarah Bernhardt’s Leg.” I’ve never read it, but I do like the title.
But back on the subject of the Mozart, I see that the May 8, 1908 article you quoted in your comment of March 1st gives the name of the original architects of the theatre as Eisen & Son. This must have been Theodore A. Eisen (1852-1924) and Percy A. Eisen (1885-1946.) T.A. was the Eisen in the firm of Curlet, Eisen and Cuthbertson which designed the old L.A. County Courthouse on New High Street in the 1880’s. Percy was later a partner in the firm of Walker and Eisen which designed many Los Angeles area theatres in the 1920’s and later. T.A. was also in partnership with Sumner P. Hunt for a while in the late 19th century. The partnership of Eisen & Son was disolved in 1917.
This theatre certainly endured a lot of changes in its less than 40 years. I suppose the instability was partly the result of its having been outside the main theatre district of Los Angeles. At least we now have the name of the architects, a firm opening date of the first Monday after December 18th, 1908, a closing date of the first Saturday after July 4th, 1946, and an opening night seating capacity of 900. Now, if someone can only find some pictures (of more than just its back wall) under one or another of its identities.