Town Theatre

When this theatre opened it was known as the Bard's Hill Street Theatre in 1920. It became the Town in the 1930's. It was part of a local theatre chain run by Louis L. Bard. Bard's ran three theatres in the Downtown Los Angeles area. The Hill Street, College and the Olympic. The chain also ran the Vista in East Hollywood, Academy in Pasadena, Glen in Glendale, Garfield in Alhambra and the West Adams Theatre over at Adams & Crenshaw area.

The Town Theatre was located at 444 S. Hill Street. (Hill Street near 5th)

I wonder if this was the first Pussycat theater. I recall reading an interview with David Friedman(co-founder of Pussycat) saying that he opened the first Pussycat on Hill St in the early 1960's in a theater that was not in business at the time.

Yes, this would be the place. All the movie business was located on Broadway and Main Street. The last theatres to run films on Hill Street were this one the Pussycat, The Warren and the Mayan.

Razed for a damn McDonalds, man this world is messed up...

Was the last pussycat theatre to be open the one on Santa Monica Boulevard?

With regards to the last statement, I do believe that the Tomkat on Santa Monica Blvd is the last Pussycat theater open in the Los Angeles. (They do show gay porn now however.) The Sunset closed in Oct 2003, which was the second Pussycat theater in the chain as it operated as one starting in 1966. In Sacramento, there is one theater that Pussycat ran (from 1975 until the late 1980's) that is still showing adult films and that is the Regency on Watt Blvd. (Prior to it becoming a Pussycat, it was the Coronet theater.)

My Dad owned the Pussycat chain. I am looking for one of the old Marquees. You know..the white oval with the silouette of a ms.Pussycat on it. If you have any information about any of these old marquess ..please let me know.

This was the first Pussycat owned by Dave Friedman. He is still kicking and is quite a guy.

Tim David
510 East durant Ave.
Aspen co 81611
970.309.3991
tbdavid@msn.com

The Southwest Builder and Contractor issue of 5/14/1920 announced the plans to remodel an existing building, 44'x100', at 442-446 South Hill Street, to become Bard's Hill Street Theater. The architect for the remodeling was Albert C. Martin, Sr.

Bard's Hill Street Theatre opened on the 12th October 1920. The architect was Albert C. Martin and a seating capacity of 700 is quoted, although this sounds more than there actually were. The opening bill was "The Fortune Teller" starring Marjorie Rambeau and a Buster Keaton comedy "One Week".

Lou Bard and Fred Miller organised the Far West Theatres Company in 1924 and the Hill St house became part of the chain. It was renamed the Town Theatre for many years until being re-named the Pussycat in 1970.

The Town Theatre closed (as the Pussycat) in September 1985.

There is a new building on the site of the Town Theatre as viewed in January 2005. The MacDonald's has gone and the new build is called Silver City. I'm not sure what it is though, maybe a casino or offices, hard to tell just looking at it?

What's scary to realize is that when I worked downtown (4th and Main), I used to each lunch at that McDonald's sometimes -- and never realized what had been there in the past.

The Town can be seen in the background of this undated vintage view of Hill Street.

I walked by the location last week. Silver City is not open to the public, so there is no way to tell what kind of business this is.

Obituary of Pussycat Theater owner Dan Sonney, from Los Angeles Magazine:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1346/is_5_47/ai_85281719

Silver City makes silver jewelry
http://www.silver-city.com/

There is a good color photo of the Town on this site:
http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/subwayarea.htm

Layers of history razed for a McDonalds that could have opened elsewhere?!? How moronic!!!

This photo would ostensibly show the building at the northeast corner of 6th and Hill. It looks to me like there's a theater there, but the Town was a block north. I don't recall seeing any theaters listed on 6th, but then again that may not be a marquee and may be something entirely different:
http://jpg2.lapl.org/pics03/00011006.jpg

OK, time for a retraction. That would be the Hill Street entrance to the Paramount/Metropolitan, I believe. I will post the photo on that page.

Here is an undated photo:
http://tinyurl.com/nvmf4

Ken: The undated photo is a bit blurry, making the marquee difficult to read, but I think one of the movies being shown is \"Confidential Agent\", with Charles Boyer and Lauren Bacall. That dates the photo at no earlier than 1945-- and its probably no later either, given the wartime crowds jamming the streetcar stop and the presence of only pre-war cars on the street.

Peter Lorre is also listed on the marquee.

I will admit that this 1939 photo doesn't show much of the theater, which is just north of the multi-story building on the northeast corner of 5th and Hill. The photo does give some historical context for that era, particularly the streetcars.
http://tinyurl.com/yfa39u

Here is a 1986 photo by Michael Putnam:
http://tinyurl.com/2o236j

Cool, that 1986 photo shows the Pussycat incarnation, but it looks like the place was already shuttered by that time. The VCR had already started killing the porno theater business. Almost none left now.

Kind of ironic that the McDonald's couldn't make a profit in that location either...

I thought the Town was in this circa 1930 photo, but the hotel shown is on the NE corner of Hill and 4th (not 5th), so it must be something else. Kind of looks like a theater, though:
http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics37/00068248.jpg

aka Bard's Cinema Theater? LA Times, 8/8/22:

THEATER PANIC BARELY HALTED
Smoke from Bakery Blaze Starts Exodus
Manager Reassures Crowd and Stops Rush
Cafe Employees Driven to Street by Fire.

A panic was narrowly averted in Bard's Cinema Theater, 444 South Hill street, late yesterday, when a fire originating in the storeroom of the M. Lowis bakery and cafe, next door, raged for nearly an hour, threatening for a time to spread to the theater.

So far, no photos of the Town during its first decade when it was Bard's Hill Street Theatre have surfaced, but here is a photo from the 1910s showing the east side of Hill Street south of 4th Street. The building which A.C. Martin remodeled for Bard's Theatre is easy to spot, being the sole one-story structure on the near block, and having a full-width awning.

LA Times reports a fire in the Band Box, 608 S. Hill, on 2/28/27. This was a Fox theater,according to the clipping. Band Box doesn't show up as an aka, so I'm wondering where we have this listed.

Well the address is the site of the 13 floor, William Fox Building which was built in 1929/30.

The Band Box is listed here as Shamrock Theatre.

I probably didn't put it in right as an aka, I should have made it one word. Thanks.

Amazing article on PUSSYCAT THEATERS in California here....

sdreader.com/php/cover.php?mode=article&showpg=1&id=20070621

Here

http://www.sdreader.com/php/cover.php?mode=article&showpg=1&id=20070621

i was wondering what killed the pussycat chain. But then I remember the words VCR and the birth of the young porn industry in 1980. The movie Bogie Nights talks about that. This theatre has so much history i have a diary from my great grandfather about him and his friends going there.

Here is the location today:
http://tinyurl.com/2fy389

Here is a 1970 ad from the LA Times:
http://tinyurl.com/2kyalf

Pleasure Plantation featured William Scope, Gerald Nomes, Kim Pope and Mike Naylor. I doubt that those are the names on their birth certificates.

Here is a new addition from the LAPL. The Town is visible on the east side of Hill Street:
http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics45/00072154.jpg

It would be a nice photo if the bus wasn't in the way.

We don't have too many photos of this theater, so I'll take what I can get. I often have lunch at the Subway immediately adjacent to the architectural atrocity that replaced the Town.

Ken: I'd guess that this photo is from ca.1939-1940. The women's outfits closely resemble Rosalind Russell's in "His Girl Friday", and I see the rear end of a car at far right that looks like it might be a '39 Chevy coupe (incidentally, John's Old Car and Truck Pictures is a handy place to look when you're trying to determine the dates of old photos that happen to have cars in them.)

I wonder if we're ever going to find a photo of the Town showing what it looked like in the early years after its 1920 opening? In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if the austere modern facade with its vertical dividers might not actually have been the original design, and Albert Martin was just ahead of his time? After all, only a few years later, in 1926, he was the architectural engineer for L.A. City Hall, a strikingly modern building for that year.

The LA Library keeps producing photos from a seemingly bottomless source, so I will continue to check their site. Maybe we will get lucky.

New book-length Pussycat Theatre history from the San Diego Reader:
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/bands/2008/aug/07/pussycat-theater-history-when-cathouses-ruled-ca-n/

They were doing work on this building today, so I took a look. I assume this new building replaced the theater building, which was demolished. I don't think there was any reuse of the old building.
http://tinyurl.com/3rlecc
http://tinyurl.com/4ga9uk

In April 1942 the theater was running 2 a.m. shows, presumably for second shift workers during the war. I recall that the State was staying open all night at that time as well.

According to city records, the 444/SilverCity bldng was constructed in 1987.

A photo giving a fairly decent view of the Town in the 1940s. I believe the main feature is "Casablanca."

Finally! Although the building is over two hundred feet distant, and the scan is a bit blurry, here is a photo of Bard's Hill Street Theatre in the 1920s. The detail in the image is not too good, but it looks as though the theater had the same sort of fancy facade that Bard's 8th Street had before it became the Olympic.

The photo is from the Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library and Archive.

The Town can be seen on the right in this 1939 photo from the USC archives:
http://tinyurl.com/d5g63w

Here is a 1946 photo. It may have been posted before on one of the dead links above but I post it below:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrolibraryarchive/3483045523/

The feature films playing in Joe Vogel's post from Jan 30th, 2009 are
"Confidential Agent" (1945 from WB) Charles Boyer, Lauren Bacall & Peter Lorre. The second feature was "Two O'Clock Courage" (1945 from RKO).