This address went from flowers to Burlesque:
(Sept. 16, 1890)
Last evening a meeting of about seventy-five men interested in flower culture was held at No. 251 South Main street, when the Los Angeles Floral Society was organized.
(July 2, 1955)
ACTRESS DROPS DEAD ON CARTHAY CIRLCE STAGE
The final curtain fell on the Carthay Circle Theater stage last night for Isabel Bonner, New York stage and television actress, who collapsed and died as she played a hospital bed scene with Actor Dane Clarck in “The Shrike.” Miss Bonner, 47, who in private life is the wife of Joseph Kramm, author of “The Shrike,” was seated by the bedside of Clark when she suddenly fell forward with her head down on the spread.
Here is something interesting from an LA Times article from Nov. 6, 1983:
“Shoes of the Fisherman” was the last film to be shown before the wrecking crews moved in to dismantle the white and blue concrete structure with its multi-colored tiled high tower. The theater was something of a repository of early Californiana. In the lobby hung a painting, “California’s First Theatre,” by Frank Tenney Johnson, depicting the Eagle Theatre built in Sacramento in 1849, and painted on the drop curtain was “An Emigrant Train at Donner Lake,” also by Johnson, a tribute to the ill-fated Donner party.
A fascinating story unearthed in The Times' archives relates to the peculiarity of an early Carthay Circle Theater lease agreement. In complicated legal phraseology, the lease drawn in the 1930s stipulated that it would remain effective day to day just as long as a ticket of admission was sold regularly at the box office. In order to retain that lease through five lean years, when no entertainment was booked for the house, A.E. Weatherbee, “a tall thin man of serious mien and tremendous determination,” appeared at the theater each morning to comply with the law. Letting himself into the box office, Weatherbee removed his hat and opened the ticket window for business. That done, he strode around to the front announcing into the empty cubicle that he wished one ticket. At times, in a facetious mood, he would put down a $1 bill, return to the box office and make change, as he thrust the ticket through the window. Weatherbee would then proceed into the theater, chop his ticket at the door and drop the torn stub into the receptacle, retaining the other for his legal protection. Settling himself into a loge seat in the dimly lit auditorium, he would listen for 10 or 15 minutes while an organist “stroked the console.” The solemn duty performed, Weatherbee would lock up the theater. Another incident remembered by those who frequented the theater in the 1950s was the day the final curtain fell on the Carthay Theater for Isabel Bonner, a New York stage and television actress, who collapsed and died as she played a hospital bed scene with actor Dane Clark in “The Shrike.” The playgoers were then refunded their ticket money.
If you buy or rent the recently restored and released Norma Shearer version (the only version!) of Marie Antoinette, there is an extra on the dvd called Hollywood Goes To Town which has about 10 minutes of the premiere of Marie Antoinette at the Carthay Circle. They dress up the grounds with statues and things to look like Versailles.
Lost Memory, maybe this is the theater that is referred to on the website you linked. It’s from one of those Paramount Week theater listings from the LA Times. I don’t know if its on CT under a different name.
(Sept. 6, 1925)
NEW STAR THEATER, 2968. W. Pico St.
Sept. 6-7-Raymond Griffith in “Paths to Paradise"
Sept. 8-9-James Cruze’s "Welcome Home"
Sept. 10-11-Florence Vidor in "Grounds for Divorce"
Sept. 12-Antonio Moreno and Mary Miles Minter in "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine”
Here are some dates with names of this theater. LAT is Los Angeles Times with an address listed. The other dates are City Directory listings.
New Star [1906 Sanborn Map, 1906 LAT]
Theatre Royal [1908]
Bijou [1908 LAT]
Bockoven & Dean [1909 Listed Under Moving Pictures & Machines]
Regal [1909 LAT, 1915 LAT, 1915, 1916, 1919 LAT]
Here’s one for the New Star name:
(June 6, 1906)
NEW STAR THEATER-323 South Main St.
A Carload of Pretty Girls, A Barrel of Good Singing and a Bunch of Fun-Real Burlesque Up To Date
Prices-10c, 20c, 30c, and a few at 50c
(Feb. 19, 1908)
Bijou Theater
323 South Main St.
This afternoon and evening, all this week. The Tommy Burns-Gunner Moir fight pictures taken at London, England, ten rounds and knockout. Admission 25c, any seat.
(Jan. 15, 1919)
Dr. Gentry, Of Chicago
For 24 Years Exponent Of Divine Healing
and Preacher of Full Gospel of Christ, has been holding
Meetings at Regal Theater, 323 S. Main St.
(Dec. 24, 1920)
In the old Regal Theater, 321 South Main street, hundreds of old men gathered as the guests of the Los Angeles Men’s Club, and sang ‘Silver Threads Among the Gold,’ weeping the while, and then applauding vigorously to be allowed to sing it over again. A number of talks and vaudeville acts were also given.
(May 2, 1909)
The Main-street Regal Theater programme for the coming week will include the first appearance of the Sisters Petite, singers and dancers; Warren Ellsworth, story-teller and monologist; James Heatherington, in illustrated songs and travelogues; new moving pictures, and music by Ransom’s orchestra.
(May 7, 1915)
Times $5000 Prosperity & Trade Contest.
Theaters
Regal Theater Musical Comedy, 323 S. Main.
Here are some articles I’m moving over from the Hippodrome page:
(Sept. 4, 1919)
GERMAN SIGN CHIPPED FROM TURNER HALL: TO BECOME “DRY SALOON."
A workman with a mallet and chisel yesterday chipped off the German words "Turn Halle” from the front of the building at 321 South Main street, thus putting out of existence in name Turner Hall, where for many years the German-speaking people of Los Angeles danced and sang and met in lodge and club gatherings. Over the door the city will place an electric sign reading, “Los Angeles Men’s Club,” and this institution, the only municipal organization of its kind in the United States, will be formally opened in about two weeks. The city has leased the building from its owners, the Turn Verein Germania, for one year with the right to extend the lease five years, and the Play Ground Commission is spending $3000 in fitting up the building as a men’s club. It was primarily established to be a returned service men’s club, but all men are to be welcome, and it will be, in effect, as called by Play Ground Commission Superintendent Charles B. Raitt, a ‘dry saloon.’ In the basement there will be pool tables and hot and cold showers. On the street floor there will be reading and smoking-room, and lunches, soft drinks, cigars, tobacco and cigarettes will be sold. The large auditorium where many famous dances were held in years past, and where many steins of beer were drunk to the words, “Hoch der Kaiser,” becomes a municipal gymnasium, and the German club rooms become committee rooms where evening classes will be conducted by the Board of Education.
I read in an article that they changed the name to Turner Hall in 1918 so it didn’t sound so German because of WW1. Ken’s photo posted above is very revealing. You can see the same rectangle shape balcony in the fire damage that shows up on the Sanborn map from 1906 that names the place the New Star Vaudeville. Here’s a link to a detail of the map:
I just noticed a post by ken mc on May 25, 2007 at 5:23pm above that probably clears up this whole Main Street Gym thing. His post says that the Main Street Gym is being demolished for a parking lot after 33 years and has been there since 1951….the same year that the Main Street Gym that I’ve been talking about burned. I guess they just moved across the street.
That silent era page must be referring to another New Star. The one I’ve been talking about wouldn’t have been showing anything by 1925. It was a gym and men’s club by then. Plus, that list is a little misleading since in 1925 every theater that showed movies would have been showing silent movies.
I think I’ll add this theater unless someone else wants to do it. With Ken’s last two posts there is no question that there was a theater that played movies at least part of the time at 323 S. Main.
It would have been New Star-Bijou-Theatre Royal-Regal.
That wouldn’t be this one. The name New Star only shows up from 1906-1908. Then its called the Bijou for a year and then the Regal until 1919 when it is turned into the Los Angeles Men’s club.
So do you think it should be added on CT? There seems to be plenty of evidence that there was a New Star/Bijou/Regal Theater within the building. Also, as I mentioned above, there are many articles from around 1910 about labor disputes at the theater. My theory about the gym is that after the 1951 fire it reopened across the street. Or, there could have been two gyms at the same time with the same owner for awhile.
I guess it had one more little name change:
(Feb. 19, 1908)
Bijou Theater
323 South Main St.
This afternoon and evening, all this week. The Tommy Burns-Gunner Moir fight pictures taken at London, England, ten rounds and knockout. Admission 25c, any seat.
Here’s one for the New Star name:
(June 6, 1906)
NEW STAR THEATER-323 South Main St.
A Carload of Pretty Girls, A Barrel of Good Singing and a Bunch of Fun-Real Burlesque Up To Date
Prices-10c, 20c, 30c, and a few at 50c
Anyone need their feather curled?
(July 21, 1892)
Gloves Cleaned, Feathers cleaned, dyed and curled.
No. 251 South Main st.
This address went from flowers to Burlesque:
(Sept. 16, 1890)
Last evening a meeting of about seventy-five men interested in flower culture was held at No. 251 South Main street, when the Los Angeles Floral Society was organized.
does anyone know who owns the Roxie now?
(July 2, 1955)
ACTRESS DROPS DEAD ON CARTHAY CIRLCE STAGE
The final curtain fell on the Carthay Circle Theater stage last night for Isabel Bonner, New York stage and television actress, who collapsed and died as she played a hospital bed scene with Actor Dane Clarck in “The Shrike.” Miss Bonner, 47, who in private life is the wife of Joseph Kramm, author of “The Shrike,” was seated by the bedside of Clark when she suddenly fell forward with her head down on the spread.
Here is something interesting from an LA Times article from Nov. 6, 1983:
“Shoes of the Fisherman” was the last film to be shown before the wrecking crews moved in to dismantle the white and blue concrete structure with its multi-colored tiled high tower. The theater was something of a repository of early Californiana. In the lobby hung a painting, “California’s First Theatre,” by Frank Tenney Johnson, depicting the Eagle Theatre built in Sacramento in 1849, and painted on the drop curtain was “An Emigrant Train at Donner Lake,” also by Johnson, a tribute to the ill-fated Donner party.
A fascinating story unearthed in The Times' archives relates to the peculiarity of an early Carthay Circle Theater lease agreement. In complicated legal phraseology, the lease drawn in the 1930s stipulated that it would remain effective day to day just as long as a ticket of admission was sold regularly at the box office. In order to retain that lease through five lean years, when no entertainment was booked for the house, A.E. Weatherbee, “a tall thin man of serious mien and tremendous determination,” appeared at the theater each morning to comply with the law. Letting himself into the box office, Weatherbee removed his hat and opened the ticket window for business. That done, he strode around to the front announcing into the empty cubicle that he wished one ticket. At times, in a facetious mood, he would put down a $1 bill, return to the box office and make change, as he thrust the ticket through the window. Weatherbee would then proceed into the theater, chop his ticket at the door and drop the torn stub into the receptacle, retaining the other for his legal protection. Settling himself into a loge seat in the dimly lit auditorium, he would listen for 10 or 15 minutes while an organist “stroked the console.” The solemn duty performed, Weatherbee would lock up the theater. Another incident remembered by those who frequented the theater in the 1950s was the day the final curtain fell on the Carthay Theater for Isabel Bonner, a New York stage and television actress, who collapsed and died as she played a hospital bed scene with actor Dane Clark in “The Shrike.” The playgoers were then refunded their ticket money.
Here’s a satellite images of 2698 W. Pico. The red marker is supposed to be the address, but I don’t have a lot of faith in those markers.
View link
I wish they had a way to search addresses on here. Maybe if you do it by keyword?
If you buy or rent the recently restored and released Norma Shearer version (the only version!) of Marie Antoinette, there is an extra on the dvd called Hollywood Goes To Town which has about 10 minutes of the premiere of Marie Antoinette at the Carthay Circle. They dress up the grounds with statues and things to look like Versailles.
I don’t know how he does it, but Joe Vogel usually knows if its been listed.
Sorry…I messed up the address. It should be 2698 W. Pico.
Lost Memory, maybe this is the theater that is referred to on the website you linked. It’s from one of those Paramount Week theater listings from the LA Times. I don’t know if its on CT under a different name.
(Sept. 6, 1925)
NEW STAR THEATER, 2968. W. Pico St.
Sept. 6-7-Raymond Griffith in “Paths to Paradise"
Sept. 8-9-James Cruze’s "Welcome Home"
Sept. 10-11-Florence Vidor in "Grounds for Divorce"
Sept. 12-Antonio Moreno and Mary Miles Minter in "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine”
Here are some dates with names of this theater. LAT is Los Angeles Times with an address listed. The other dates are City Directory listings.
New Star [1906 Sanborn Map, 1906 LAT]
Theatre Royal [1908]
Bijou [1908 LAT]
Bockoven & Dean [1909 Listed Under Moving Pictures & Machines]
Regal [1909 LAT, 1915 LAT, 1915, 1916, 1919 LAT]
Here’s one for the New Star name:
(June 6, 1906)
NEW STAR THEATER-323 South Main St.
A Carload of Pretty Girls, A Barrel of Good Singing and a Bunch of Fun-Real Burlesque Up To Date
Prices-10c, 20c, 30c, and a few at 50c
(Feb. 19, 1908)
Bijou Theater
323 South Main St.
This afternoon and evening, all this week. The Tommy Burns-Gunner Moir fight pictures taken at London, England, ten rounds and knockout. Admission 25c, any seat.
(Jan. 15, 1919)
Dr. Gentry, Of Chicago
For 24 Years Exponent Of Divine Healing
and Preacher of Full Gospel of Christ, has been holding
Meetings at Regal Theater, 323 S. Main St.
(Dec. 24, 1920)
In the old Regal Theater, 321 South Main street, hundreds of old men gathered as the guests of the Los Angeles Men’s Club, and sang ‘Silver Threads Among the Gold,’ weeping the while, and then applauding vigorously to be allowed to sing it over again. A number of talks and vaudeville acts were also given.
(May 2, 1909)
The Main-street Regal Theater programme for the coming week will include the first appearance of the Sisters Petite, singers and dancers; Warren Ellsworth, story-teller and monologist; James Heatherington, in illustrated songs and travelogues; new moving pictures, and music by Ransom’s orchestra.
(May 7, 1915)
Times $5000 Prosperity & Trade Contest.
Theaters
Regal Theater Musical Comedy, 323 S. Main.
Here are some articles I’m moving over from the Hippodrome page:
(Sept. 4, 1919)
GERMAN SIGN CHIPPED FROM TURNER HALL: TO BECOME “DRY SALOON."
A workman with a mallet and chisel yesterday chipped off the German words "Turn Halle” from the front of the building at 321 South Main street, thus putting out of existence in name Turner Hall, where for many years the German-speaking people of Los Angeles danced and sang and met in lodge and club gatherings. Over the door the city will place an electric sign reading, “Los Angeles Men’s Club,” and this institution, the only municipal organization of its kind in the United States, will be formally opened in about two weeks. The city has leased the building from its owners, the Turn Verein Germania, for one year with the right to extend the lease five years, and the Play Ground Commission is spending $3000 in fitting up the building as a men’s club. It was primarily established to be a returned service men’s club, but all men are to be welcome, and it will be, in effect, as called by Play Ground Commission Superintendent Charles B. Raitt, a ‘dry saloon.’ In the basement there will be pool tables and hot and cold showers. On the street floor there will be reading and smoking-room, and lunches, soft drinks, cigars, tobacco and cigarettes will be sold. The large auditorium where many famous dances were held in years past, and where many steins of beer were drunk to the words, “Hoch der Kaiser,” becomes a municipal gymnasium, and the German club rooms become committee rooms where evening classes will be conducted by the Board of Education.
I read in an article that they changed the name to Turner Hall in 1918 so it didn’t sound so German because of WW1. Ken’s photo posted above is very revealing. You can see the same rectangle shape balcony in the fire damage that shows up on the Sanborn map from 1906 that names the place the New Star Vaudeville. Here’s a link to a detail of the map:
View link
Now I’m almost sure that this is the place they filmed a few scenes in The Street With No Name starring Richard Widmark.
It probably is. It seems like a lot of places added ‘new’ for awhile. Makes everything confusing with all of these same and similar names.
I just noticed a post by ken mc on May 25, 2007 at 5:23pm above that probably clears up this whole Main Street Gym thing. His post says that the Main Street Gym is being demolished for a parking lot after 33 years and has been there since 1951….the same year that the Main Street Gym that I’ve been talking about burned. I guess they just moved across the street.
That silent era page must be referring to another New Star. The one I’ve been talking about wouldn’t have been showing anything by 1925. It was a gym and men’s club by then. Plus, that list is a little misleading since in 1925 every theater that showed movies would have been showing silent movies.
I think I’ll add this theater unless someone else wants to do it. With Ken’s last two posts there is no question that there was a theater that played movies at least part of the time at 323 S. Main.
It would have been New Star-Bijou-Theatre Royal-Regal.
That wouldn’t be this one. The name New Star only shows up from 1906-1908. Then its called the Bijou for a year and then the Regal until 1919 when it is turned into the Los Angeles Men’s club.
So do you think it should be added on CT? There seems to be plenty of evidence that there was a New Star/Bijou/Regal Theater within the building. Also, as I mentioned above, there are many articles from around 1910 about labor disputes at the theater. My theory about the gym is that after the 1951 fire it reopened across the street. Or, there could have been two gyms at the same time with the same owner for awhile.
I guess it had one more little name change:
(Feb. 19, 1908)
Bijou Theater
323 South Main St.
This afternoon and evening, all this week. The Tommy Burns-Gunner Moir fight pictures taken at London, England, ten rounds and knockout. Admission 25c, any seat.
Here’s one for the New Star name:
(June 6, 1906)
NEW STAR THEATER-323 South Main St.
A Carload of Pretty Girls, A Barrel of Good Singing and a Bunch of Fun-Real Burlesque Up To Date
Prices-10c, 20c, 30c, and a few at 50c
I wonder what 50 cents got you…..