Pacific 1-2-3
6433 Hollywood Boulevard,
Los Angeles,
CA
90028
6433 Hollywood Boulevard,
Los Angeles,
CA
90028
60 people
favorited this theater
Showing 251 - 275 of 394 comments
Wow Paul! I would love to see them. First, have you sent them into Cinematour? I know they would love to post them. Second, would you be happen to be a Mac person and know how to drop photos on an iDisk? I am also going to shoot you an email…
How interesting!
Mark:
I’ve got a half-dozen post-earthquake pics of upstairs and 2.2 Gigs of other recent and historic pics of the place (palace?). How can I get them to you?
Paul Miller
Question: Are there any pictures out there of the post-conversion balcony auditoriums? Just curious.
The link worked fine for me.
Tim, that’s strange, because when I click that link, it brings you right to the Pacific/Warner building.
Strange, that link should bring you directly there.
In the enter city box, try typing: “6433 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA” (not Hollywood, as that always brings me to Hollywood Florida, even if I put “CA”.
Bway, still can’t log in to see the aerial view. It gives me a What and Where to type in, tried several different combinations but doesn’t work.
There was a seating monitor at the Los Angeles Theatre Downtown on Broadway.
They only used the main house (1200 seat) downstairs. The balcony theatres have been closed since the Northridge earthquake. Before I closed the theatre, I only ran the downstairs till Pacific closed it up.
Even though it’s closed again, did they make it back into one theater for the short time the screenings were held there?
One of the things I admired most about the Warner was that it was a fully-featured movie palace. No other Hollywood house (perhaps even in all of LA) had a seating monitor.
And compared to other Hollywood houses, it had been kept extremely clean in the stage, basement, and dressingroom areas. Until the house was divided-up, it was always run with dignity and sense of showmanship.
When I was assistant to Jack Tate in the early 70s, Ernie DelPonte was our daytime doorman. He had befriended such daily boulevard walkers as Marjorie Maine, and many was the time I’d step out to the box office to find several such long-retired actors and acresses talking old times with Ernie. I think it was Ernie who bought the ornate brass and gilded wood lobby seating monitor before the theatre was broken-up into three.
Yeah, I went by there a few weeks ago, and it didn’t look all that great from the outside….needs some love.
Thank you for the link to the aerial photo. I can make out my car sitting in the back parking lot.
What you can’t make out from the photo is that the auditorium is a roughly 100 foot diameter circle. And yes, it’s canted at about 45 degrees to the front entrance which does make the stage box roughly triangular. Pacific/Robertson Properties Group did take some care over the years to protect some of the original features. They supposedly covered the Italian murals with sheet rock to protect them, so they should be able to be uncovered and restored. Most of the plaster castings are still intact behind the drapes.
But, unfortunately the theater is abandoned and awaits it’s future. One thing is certain: only a lot of money and a love for the history of the building will save it. (also, a good respect for the ghost!)
Here’s an aerial view the Warner/Pacific. Notice how the theater is actually set up caddy-corner to the lot configuration, with the stage and auditorium set on a diagnal.
View link
In the photos linked above from March 2006, it appears that for the screening room it is now, all the theater is preserved, however, they covered it up with drapperies as it’s probably not in great shape. Hopefully one day it will be restored to it’s former glory….but at least it’s being used…and is not abandoned any more.
When I worked for Pacific, the DM for Hollywood was the saintly Dick Mason – a vaudevillian who couldn’t retire. I loved that man for his patience with a 22 year-old trying his hardest to do everything right.
At the Wiltern Theatre, I began working under Al Young – a card-carrying jerk. I’ll probably “pay” for saying that, but I’ve waited 32-years to say it, and it feels good. Harold Citron was President of walk-ins, and he hired me in his office on the 3d floor of the Warner Building.
Has anyone here thought of having a reunion of Pacific managers? Oh, the stories! How about having it at the Warner? Would Mike Forman be willing to make an appearance? It would be great to see him again.
I think kenmc’s broken link was to this picture, which definitely shows the Warner Hollywood, not the Warner Downtown as the picture’s info page claims. LAPL seems to get about 1%-2% of their captions wrong, which I guess is pretty good for a collection of 60,000 pictures, but you do have to watch out for their errors.
LAPL says this is 7th and Hill. I think not:
http://tinyurl.com/yohp3a
I am not sure those masses are very big. I don’t think most movie fans nowadays care very much about the fairyland aspect that drew people of city neighborhoods to the movie palaces back in the 20’s. I have found that people who go to a movie palace in today’s world will generally think it is amazing. But they don’t care enough to go out of their way to find such a place. Also, to be fair, some of the multiplexes built today are pretty cool. Los Angeles already has a fair number of large vintage entertainment spaces. I think you would need good programming and a person with very dynamic marketing ability to make this place float without municipal support.
As long as the Pantages Theatre is doing business, there is hope for the Pacific. But the cost to restore the theatre could be in the 30-40 million dollar area. pmiller posted that the building A/C was in poor shape, but for the most part the theatre was well taken care of by Pacific Theatre. When I closed the theatre the staff maintained the house till the end. Yes, the subway tunneling flooded the theatre’s basements. And Pacific choose to closed the house. We were only running the main house at that time. The Northridge earthquake damaged the twin balcony theatres. Over the years we ran those houses a few days after a major earthquake. There was no problems up there and the building, only the cost of putting the fake ceiling tiles back in place. Around that time Hollywood Blvd. at that end was not the movie going place it once was. All the real business was down the street at the Chinese and El Capitan.
Robertson Properties Group / Pacific Theatres which owns the property has been looking since they closed the house for a buyer. They were looking for around 14 million for the property at the time. They just need someone to restore the theatre from the 1978 tri-plexing.
Here’s a link to a list of the Cinerama presentations at this theatre (and other Cinerama venues in Los Angeles).
http://www.fromscripttodvd.com/cinerama_la.htm
Robertson Properties Group has been waiting to find a buyer for a long time for the theatre. Robertson Properties Group is the real estate division for Pacific Theatres with Chris Forman as their President and CEO. Everything worked when I last ran the theatre as the closing projectionist before Pacific closed it.
Why isnt this theater listed under its original name (and for that matter, all theaters on this site?) If you didnt live in the area, you wouldnt have a clue on how to find it. It took me forever to find this theater listing. That being said, I hope this theater can be made to come alive again in its original form. Isnt this the last shuttered movie palace on Hollywood Blvd??
See my comments for the last few years.
There is no screen, just a frame. All the speakers and projection equipment have been removed. The seats are all still there both downstairs and in the two upstairs auditoriums (the former balcony). The elevator has been “dead” since 1994.
There’s working A/C in the booth and Jack Warner’s old office but the main A/C is pretty inefficient and there’s no heat in the main hall.
Right now, everything is gathering dust, but if one of two potential tenants comes to agreement with the owners the palace may just get renovated with help from the Hollywood Redevelopment Agency.
On their own, the owners, Robertson Properties Group, will not do anything about the building.
Paul Miller
What is the current status of this theater now that the Digital Cinema Lab has vacated the building??