Roxie Theatre

Now that my curiosity about the Roxie’s auditorium has been satisfied (thanks to the LA Conservancy’s recent gallery of downtown theater pics), I’m wondering what the original marquee looked like. Surely the red plastic letters superimposed on white plastic boxes can’t predate the 1950s, but I can’t recall seeing any earlier pictures.

A tidbit: Metzger seems to have had a brief spell in the news in 1928 as the head of a syndicate which procured the Broadway Palace Theater. He became the Palace’s supervising manager and instituted a policy of double feature attractions: a musical comedy plus a photoplay. (A month later the Times reported the policy a success: ‘every attendance record has been shattered.’)

I’m told the owners are called the Helen family, and own the full row – the Cameo and Arcade too. Not sure if they’re on board this new revitalization scheme announced today, but there’s a slightly odd mockup of the Roxie included in their pictorial.

About 6 or 7 years ago I sweet talked one of the shop owners to let me explore the building. I was able to walk up the left staircase up to a second level lobby area. Their are two staircases on either side of the lobby, and at the second level I saw some fantastic Art Deco neo-classical pillars with a very stylized modern Ionic capitols. I got into the men’s room, but the smell was bad, and the shop owner said it was time to leave. As We made out way back down the stairs, I saw a white double door that I assume lead into the Auditorium. I’ve only seen two photos of the interiors, but they showed a very handsome restrained Deco design.

Here are some July 2007 photos:
http://tinyurl.com/23lwwc
http://tinyurl.com/2f5adp
http://tinyurl.com/yqcqgl

Denny, your last line sounds like the beginning of a Mickey Spillane novel…“I worked the day shift out of the Roxie. The walls were red. My eyes were redder, probably because of the cheap gin I had for breakfast. One night, this dame walked into my projection booth…”

I worked the Roxie about April or May in 1976 for two weeks when the projectionist took a vacation. There was three movies on the program. During those two weeks I remember running Kingdom of the Spiders, Deranged, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare Honeymoon and several kung fu movies. The booth was small and narrow with three super simplex projectors and two of the simplex arclight lamphouses were converted to xenon. Even with this setup we still made change-overs on two thousand foot reels. I never went into the auditorium but only saw it through the booth ports. The auditorium had a balcony and the screen was kinda small. The decor color was crimson red. I worked the day shift.

The stories of Mr. Metzger and the anonymous suicide sound like they could have been scenes out of noir movies of the era. But at least nobody ever came crashing through the roof of the Roxie.

The Roxie was one of the Broadway theatres I never got around to attending. It was already a grind house when I began going downtown, and I preferred going to the first or second run theatres farther south, or on Hill Street. All the theatres north of 6th street except the Million Dollar were a bit sad and run down by the 1960’s.

Of course, since the building is still there, there’s always a possibility that it will be renovated and re-opened some day, so I might still get a chance to add it to my list of theatres I’ve attended.

Another death in this theater, I wonder if it is haunted….

(Dec. 25, 1954)
Only clues to the identity of a woman who slashed her wrists and died early yesterday between a row of seats in a downtown all-night theater were a Canadian dollar bill and a telephone number written on a cafe receipt, homicide detectives reported. The body was found by a patron, Claude R. Williams, 2108 S Maple St., when the house lights went up at 5 a.m. yesterday after the last show in the Roxie Theater, at 518 S Broadway.
Police said both the woman’s wrists were deeply slashed and blood had flowed down the sloping floor of the theater past several rows of seats. Beside the body detectives found a double-edged razor blade which evidently was the intrument of her suicide. The woman wore a brown wool suit and brown suede shoes. Beside her lay a black nylon raincoat. Her brown leather purse held only $2.62 in cash, the Canadian bill and a receipt from a cafe at 10113 W Washington Blvd. Detectives said the telephone number handwritten on the receipt was the number of the cafe. The cafe propietor, Dave Brandt, told police, however, that he could recall no woman answering the description of the suicide. Detectives said the woman apparently slashed her wrists, slumped to the floor and died without attracting any notice in the dark theater. No patrons reported hearing an outcry. The night manager, Clarence Warner, said the house, which was showing “Crossed Swords,” starring Errol Flynn and Gina Lollobrigida, and the psychological adventure, “Track of the Cat,”…
had been in

Frightening….

(Aug. 5, 1943)
FILM THEATER MANAGER DIES IN BOX OFFICE
A customer stepped up to the box office of the Roxie Theater, 518 S. Broadway. “One ticket, please,” he said. There was no response. The man in the glass enclosure, Harry R. Metzger, 37, mangager, seemed coldly unconcerned. His eyes stared straight ahead. The customer called attendants. Metzger, they found, was dead, apparently of heart disease.

This close up cuts out the huge vertical marquee on the roof:
http://www.gmrnet.com/graphics/theatr1h.jpg

Though I’m familiar with many other Broadway theaters, I never visited the Roxie. Unfortunately, all the photos I’ve ever seen have been of the exterior. Does anyone recall details about the auditorium, such as the design or the decor?