Town Theatre
444 S. Hill Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
444 S. Hill Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
6 people
favorited this theater
Bard’s Hill Street Theatre opened in October 1920 as one of the chain of Bard’s theatres. It later became the Town Theatre, and is noted as being the first in the chain of Pussycat Theatre’s, when it converted to adult movies in March 1967.
It was closed in September 1985, and later razed to make way for a McDonalds.
Contributed by
William Gabel
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Recent comments (view all 58 comments)
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:
View link
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).
No matter where a projectionist worked, they could always pick up extra money by working the Midnight shift at a Pussycat theater. This booth was itty-bitty, but it was clean and ran great! I remember, well, I think I remember, the booth was painted a dark green. Heck, for all I know, maybe it was black. Wow, the first Pussycat.
Nice 1946 photo.
There’s a screencap of the Pussycat here: http://therockfordfilestv.blogspot.com/2011/08/rockford-files-episode-profit-loss-car.html