Joy Theatre
2014 E. 1st St.,
Los Angeles,
CA
90033
2014 E. 1st St.,
Los Angeles,
CA
90033
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One of many neighborhood houses in East Los Angeles, the Joy opened in the early 1930s and has since been demolished.
Contributed by
William Gabel
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Recent comments (view all 10 comments)
Featured films on 4/9/42 were “Dumbo” and “Wild Bill Hickok Rides Again”.
There is a post office on this site now.
Advertised as the Olympus in the LA Times on 8/31/24, so that should be an aka.
The other scenario, since William Gabel said the theater opened in the early 1930s, was that the Olympus was a predecessor to the Joy. I think it more likely that there was one theater that opened in the 1920s instead of the 1930s.
And what was the address given for the Olympus?
2014 E. 1st Street.
Sounds reasonable to me. There is a Joy Theater listed in 1930 for Los Angeles but no Olympus Theater. So the Joy was operating at least by 1930 and the Olympus is no longer listed.
The Olympus Theatre is listed at 2014 E. First in the 1915 City Directory, and is still there in the 1929 directory. The Joy shows up in the 1936 directory (the next most recent that the L.A. Library has online.) Unfortunately, the building now on this site was built in 1961, so we can’t check the age of its predecessor.
Maybe someone can get hold of some Sanborn maps and compare descriptions of the type of construction. Or maybe some old photos will turn up so we can see if the Olympus and Joy occupied the same building. But a remodeling or simple renaming does seem more likely than a rebuilding, unless the Olympus burned down, or was irreparably damaged in the 1933 earthquake.
Shouldn’t this theatre’s city be changed to East Los Angeles?
Although some of the eastern parts of the City of Los Angeles, and the entire unincorporated district of East Los Angeles, plus the unincorporated districts of City Terrace and Belvedere, are all referred to colloquially as East L.A., there is a clear official boundary between the city and county areas. The Joy Theatre was well west of Indiana Street, and thus located within the city limits of Los Angeles, not in the unincorporated community of East Los Angeles, which lies entirely east of Indiana Street.