TCL Chinese Theatre
6925 Hollywood Boulevard,
Hollywood,
Los Angeles,
CA
90028
6925 Hollywood Boulevard,
Hollywood,
Los Angeles,
CA
90028
126 people
favorited this theater
The Chinese Theatre is arguably the most famous movie theatre in the world. It opened as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on May 18, 1927 with Cecil B. DeMille’s “The King of Kings” starring H.B. Warner and a stage prologue “Glories of the Scripture” which had a cast of 200. Seating was provided for 2,200, all on a single sloping floor (apart from a private box located at the rear, to the left of the projection box overhanging the rear orchestra seating). The theatre was equipped with a Wurlitzer 3 manual 17 ranks theatre organ which was opened by organist Frederick Burr Scholl, and accompanied the 65-piece symphony orchestra conducted by Constantine Bakaleinikoff. The Chinese Theatre has been the site of thousands of movie premieres and the destination of millions of tourists. Scores of celebrities have left their footprints, hand prints and hoof prints on the walkways near and on the theatre’s courtyard.
In 1973, Mann Theatres bought the Chinese Theatre. Two auditoriums, each seating 750, were added next to the Chinese Theatre, turning the theatre into a triplex operation from April 12, 1979. In 2000, the two added auditoriums were razed to make way for the construction of the Kodak Theatre — the new site of the Oscars.
In 2001, the original 1927 built Chinese Theatre underwent a renovation to return its exterior to its original design and Mann Theatres, in late-2001, also added an adjoining 6-screen multiplex theatre, designed by the architectural firm Behr Browers Architects of Westlake, CA. Seating capacities in the six new screens are: 459, 177, 177, 177, 177, 279.
Still opulent in red tonality and Asiatic influences, the main original auditorium of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre remains the ultimate movie palace experience, and now seats 1,162.
In August 2009, Mann Theatres announced they were planning to put the Chinese Theatre up ‘For Sale’, and it was sold to an independent operator in April 2011. In January 2013, the naming rights were sold to television manufacturer Television China Ltd., and it was renamed TCL Chinese Theatre.
The main original auditorium was closed at the end of April 2013. Renovations expected to be concluded by September 2013 are ongoing to turn the historic auditorium into a 986-seat IMAX theatre, with a 94 foot wide screen.
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Recent comments (view all 1,237 comments)
Hello From NYC-
a history question. down thru the years Grauman’s Chinese(i refuse to call it by any other name) hosted many exclusive first run engagements of big films when studios still opened their big releases in only one theater. this is where my question comes in- other than the roadshow engagement of “West Side Story” did the Chinese host any other roadshow engagements?
This past weekend was Star Wars weekend, and when it comes to Star Wars, some of the films in the franchise, especially the first one, had its world premiere at the main auditorium in 1977. Now that was a premiere.
bigjoe59: The Chinese hosted some roadshow engagements other than West Side Story over the years, but the only ones I recall offhand were Hello Dolly and Windjammer. By the late 1950s, which is as far back as my personal experience of Hollywood Boulevard goes, roadshow engagements were much more likely to be booked at the Egyptian or the Pantages or even the Paramount (now El Capitan) than at the Chinese. The Warner Hollywood got all the Cinerama roadshows of course, until the Cinerama Dome opened.
Hard ticket engagements also took place at some theaters outside Hollywood, usually at houses on or near Wilshire Boulevard. The Carthay Circle was the most notable roadshow house outside Hollywood, but there were also quite a few hard ticket engagements at the Fox Wilshire and the Warner Beverly Hills, and even at a few smaller theaters.
to Joe Vogel-
thanks for the info about roadshow engagements
in the Hollywood/L.A. area. being a New Yorker
i have always been interested in which theaters
in the Hollywood/L.A. area were the ones traditionally used by the studios for reserved
seat movies as me and my friends called them.
speaking of which. i believe it was somewhere on this site that i saw an ad from the fall of 1960 announcing the start of mail orders for the roadshow run of “Exodus” at the Wiltern Theater on Wilshire Blvd. to the best of your recollection was that the only roadshow enagagement that the Wiltern ever hosted?
There are quite a few engagements and roadshow listings here:
http://fromscripttodvd.com/70mm_in_los_angeles_main_page.htm
They are still running tours of the Chinese and expected to get a look at the theater under construction but no. I hope someone is smart enough to get video of all the renovations.
bigjoe59: I don’t know of any other reserved seat engagements at the Wiltern, but it seems likely that there could have been a few. It is a big, palatial theater in a district that, until the late 1950s, still had a number of fairly posh neighborhoods nearby.
It’s likely that quite a few roadshows were hosted at theaters in downtown Los Angeles as well, but not in recent memory. The last hard ticket movie downtown that I know of was in the mid-1950s, when Todd-AO was installed in the United Artists Theatre and the house shared the reserved seat engagement of Oklahoma with the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. It ran five weeks exclusively at the Egyptian, then ran in both houses for 46 weeks, then an additional six weeks exclusively at the United Artists.
A replica of this theater was used for a key scene in Iron Man 3.
That was the real thing, not a replica.
He may have been referring to the post-explosion scene as the “replica.”