According to the Los Angeles Herald, this theater was the site of a major dispute over the open-shop issue in which the Central Labor Council listed the non-union Regal as “unfair to unions” and mounted a nightly picket, with as many as 200-people, through the winter of 1909/1910.
I’m reading this thread years after it ran out, because I’m researching the Socialist Movie
Theater that opened on LA’s 5th Street between Los Angeles and Main in September 1911. And I’ve found an address that may offer some clues to it’s location.
Looking at Baist’s 1910 Real Estate Map, that block on Fifth Street covers #s 106-131. An “LA Record” article about the Theater from 1911 refers readers with questions about it to “Frank C. Hillyard, 129 East Fifth Street, Los Angeles,” which is in the correct block.
As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, Hillyard was a lifelong union man (International Molders' Union), who was then in his mid-twenties and very active in LA during the “General Campaign Strike Committee for the Unionizing of LA,” 1910-12. So that seems to fit.
However, that address would put the Theater in the then-rather posh King Edward Hotel (117-131 5th Street), or in one of its street level commercial spaces.
Conversely, perhaps Hillyard was staying in the hotel (which seems somewhat unlikely, as it would have been new, fashionable,and perhaps expensive in 1910?)
Does anyone have thoughts on the likely candidacy of the King Edward as the location of the Socialist Movie Theater?
According to the Los Angeles Herald, this theater was the site of a major dispute over the open-shop issue in which the Central Labor Council listed the non-union Regal as “unfair to unions” and mounted a nightly picket, with as many as 200-people, through the winter of 1909/1910.
I’m reading this thread years after it ran out, because I’m researching the Socialist Movie Theater that opened on LA’s 5th Street between Los Angeles and Main in September 1911. And I’ve found an address that may offer some clues to it’s location.
Looking at Baist’s 1910 Real Estate Map, that block on Fifth Street covers #s 106-131. An “LA Record” article about the Theater from 1911 refers readers with questions about it to “Frank C. Hillyard, 129 East Fifth Street, Los Angeles,” which is in the correct block.
As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, Hillyard was a lifelong union man (International Molders' Union), who was then in his mid-twenties and very active in LA during the “General Campaign Strike Committee for the Unionizing of LA,” 1910-12. So that seems to fit.
However, that address would put the Theater in the then-rather posh King Edward Hotel (117-131 5th Street), or in one of its street level commercial spaces.
Conversely, perhaps Hillyard was staying in the hotel (which seems somewhat unlikely, as it would have been new, fashionable,and perhaps expensive in 1910?)
Does anyone have thoughts on the likely candidacy of the King Edward as the location of the Socialist Movie Theater?