Comments from vokoban

Ken, I wonder why it’s so hard to find anything about this theater. Something must have happened there if it was around still in the 50’s. Does anyone know where to get a copy of that map on the webpage Ken posted? I want to see the rest of it. Maybe the Central Library has it.

I looked through that whole page trying to find that announcement with no luck. Maybe it was the evening edition, since the page I have access to is for that date and says Thursday morning. Apparently, this building was filled with different meeting halls and the Walker Auditorium as well as the theater. There are consistent events going on at this address all overlapping in time. The different halls listed are Lincoln Hall, Garfield Hall, and in the late 20’s Roosevelt Hall, which may be a renamed hall of the previous. There is not much about a movie theater after 1916 until around late 1923 when it is listed as Fine Arts Theater. In March 1924 the name changes to Grand Avenue Theater and then in 1926 the name changes to Orange Grove Theater.

Now I’m really confused…maybe Edward Kuttner(or Mozart) did build this theater. This article is very confusing to me. Maybe someone can explain…Joe? KenRoe?

(Sept. 13, 1913)
EDWARD MOZART IS CONVICTED
Declared to be the husband of one woman while for fifteen years he had been living with another, Edward K. Mozart, the local theatrical man, was convicted in the courts of Lancaster county, Pennsylvania yesterday on a statutory charge and sentenced to {illegible} months in prison.
Mozart was prosecuted by Georgia Kane, now living in Philadelphia. She traveled with the defendant. The case hinged on whether the couple had been legally married in Louisville. Mozart’s conviction raises numerous legal points. Georgia Kane is now established legally as Mrs. Mozart, according to eastern dispatches. Her son, born in Albany, N.Y., in 1895 is acknowledged as Mozart’s son, although the mother is said to have represented herself as the wife of one Robert Krouse at the time of the boy’s birth.
The verdict which established Mrs. Mozart and her son under the inheritance law in case of Mozart’s death is also expected to take away those priveledges from Anna May Kennedy, who for the past fourteen years has been known as Mrs. Mozart. Mozart married her in Washington State fourteen years ago.
Mozart is under sentence by the Philadelphia civil courts to contribute to the support of Mrs. Georgia Mozart, and an attachment is out for him. A detainer will probably be lodged in Lancaster to take him to Philadelphia when he finishes his sentence next February.
Since his arrest and extradition to Philadelphia last January Mozart has spent most of his time in Los Angeles assisting Anna M. Mozart conduct the theater bearing the family name at No. 730 South Grand avenue. Two weeks ago he informed his friends and business associates that he must return to the East on a matter of business. To those who recalled his apprehension on a charge brought by an alleged first wife in the Pennsylvania courts he declared his confidence of acquital.
At that time the Los Angeles Mrs. Mozart denominated the proceedings as the “effort of an adventuress, who was my husband’s partner in a vaudeville sketch thirty years ago, to get all she can out of him. Everybody in Lancaster, Pa., where I was brought up, knows that Mr. Mozart and I are legally married, and that the other woman has no claim. The action is brought under the common law procedure in force in Pennsylvania recognizing marriages if the woman can prove a certain number of years in residence with a man."
Mozart is well known in Los Angeles where he cut quite a dash as a moving picture impresario. Since his departure for Philadelphia a fortnight ago Mrs. Mozart has disposed of the theater on Grand avenue, and last evening could not be found at her home No. 1635 West Twenty-third street. At the theater employees who have been associated with her in the conduct of the house said they had not seen her during the day but were confident that she had not received any bad news from the scene of the trial. "Every letter since Mozart’s departure,” said Operator Reynolds, “either from himself or his lawyers has been optimistic and expressed confidence of a favorable outcome."
The Philadelphia claimant to the name was discovered at the time of the arrest to be living at No. 1628 Vine street in the Quaker metropolis, and is said to have displayed a marriage certificate to prove that she was legally wedded to the Los Angeles man in 1880 when she was but 15 years old.

Maybe it was called Lincoln Hall before Anna purchased it:

(June 11, 1909)
FRATERNAL AID PICNIC.
The Fraternal Aid Association will hold a basket picnic at Eastlake Park tomorrow. In the evening it will give a social at Lincoln Hall, No. 730 South Grand avenue. A fife and drum corps will supply music.

Joe, Edward Kuttner is mentioned in this obituary as the husband, but it sounds like Mrs. Anna Mozart Kuttner should get the credit for opening this theater.

(May 27, 1952)
Funeral services for Mrs. Anna Mozart Kuttner, 80, onetime vaudeville star and operator, who died Saturday, will be conducted at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Utter-McKinley Cresse Chapel, 5860 N Figueroa St. Internment will be in Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Mrs. Kuttner, who lived at 5345 Granada St., had been a resident of Los Angeles since 1912. In that year she founded the old Mozart Theater at 7th St. and Grand Ave., said to have been the first theater here where five and six-reel motion pictures were shown regularly. She and her husband, Edward, who died in 1937, also operated theaters in Elmira, N.Y., and in Lancaster, Pa. Earlier, she and her husband performed in vaudeville. Kuttner at one time was the driver for the noted midget, Tom Thumb. Mrs. Kuttner leaves a siter, Sarah Kennedy.

More wackos at the Mozart….

(July 25, 1915)
ECCENTRIC DRESS IN JAIL
The Owner, Well-known Music Teacher, is Held on Charges of Young Negress.
George Carr, a music teacher in the Mozart Theater Building, and a well-known character about the streets because of his eccentric dress, is in the County Jail in default of $1000 bail. The complaining witness is Beatrice Albritton, 14 years old, a colored girl who has been taking lessons of Carr. She also is a ward of the Juvenile Court. Mr. Carr, who wears a silk hat, Prince Albert coat and who passes considerable time on the street corners, was arraigned before Justice Summerfield.

I wonder what type of lessons he was giving that girl….

There are numerous movie advertisements for the Mozart in between the dates of these articles. I guess they had other performance halls or venues in the same building because there are many meetings and church services.

(May 8, 1914)
S.S. Hahn filed suit yesterday for $25,000 damages against J. Harvey McCarthy, William M. Swanson and Horace W. Bowman, for an alleged ejectment from Mozart Theater, March 23, last during a meeting of the Los Angeles Investment Company Stockholders' Protective Association. He alleges that as an interested stockholder, he was told by McCarthy that he must get out and that he was a disturber. He alleges personal injuries by reason of the ejectment.

This is funny to me since Harvey McCarthy is the man who built my neighborhood, including the Carthay Circle Theater. He made up the name Carthay from his last name.

(Sept. 15, 1912)
LITTA LYNN (HULLINGER)
Arranger, Composer, Teacher of Harmony
Pupil of Adolf Weidlig
Studio 24 MOZART THEATER.
Residence Phone. 57342.

(Sept. 3, 1912)
For and audience to break out into plaudits at a motion-picture entertainment is something unusual, and yet this is what happened during this week’s opening performance Monday at the Mozart Theater, when the film, “Only a Miller’s Daughter” was being presented. The story is a very clever one, involving the love affair of a young farmer and the miller’s daughter, and the admiration of a wealthy young city chap for the same girl….

Joe, this predates the opening you listed for the Mozart. Could there have been another Mozart? There is no real location given, so I don’t know if this is a different place. The interesting thing is that it definitely showed films.

(Aug. 7, 1912)
It is rather unusual for a moving-picture house to attract an automobile patronage; but this is a feat that the Mozart Theater accomplised upon its opening night last Monday. Numbers of ladies in dainty, film toilets, attended by gentlemen in evening dress, were among the patrons . Boxes were occupied by Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, Prince and Princess Lazarovich, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Charles Wellington Rand, Miss Lilian Rand and Count Stephen Szymanowski. The Mozart Theater, conducted by a working force of young women, under the management of Mrs. Anna M. Mozart, purposes to offer only the best class of entertainment, both in the line of films presented, and the music rendered by the mellow-toned colossal Fotoplayer, which, the management feels sure, will be a source of pleasure to all its patrons.

Sorry, my fingers were tired…I spelled remembrance incorrectly above.

This is a long article but I’m going to include it because it has a lot of great history…1933 style:

MAJESTIC THEATER’S HEYDAY RECALLED ON EVE OF RAZING
Golden, glamourous heydays of the once-proud Majestic Theater down near Ninth and Broadway, now about to be razed to make way for a parking station, are being recalled by old-time Los Angeles theatergoers. Built in September, 1908, the Majestic housed during its quarter-century of life many of the famous actors and plays of yesterday and today. In its earlier days it was run as a theater of touring attractions under the Schubert management. To it came William Faversham and Julie Opp in “The Fawn,” Mrs. Leslie Carter in “Two Women,” Florence Reed in “The Deep Purple;” to it came opera and dance spectacles, Gertrude Hoffman and her troupe in “Sumurun,” Mimi Aguglia in Italian repertoire and many others. Henry Savage’s production of the opera, “The Girl of the Golden West,” by Puccini, was given there. In this theater Ramon Novarro began his theatrical career-as an usher. Ramon still treasures two theater stubs given him by Charlie Chaplin. Later he was given bits, after that helped with stage management. Its golden era as a home of Los Angeles theater began shortly after the war. In the spring of 1919 the Wilkes brothers took it over and formed a stock company in which were Lewis Stone, Florence Oakley and David Hartford. In August of that year, having had little luck, the brothers turned the showhouse over to their sister, Wilhelmina Wilkes, who assembled a company which had Dickson Morgan as its stage manager. In this group were Edward Everett Horton, Evelyn Varden, Marie Curtis, Sara Sothern. The first play of this group to run more than two weeks was “The Willow Tree,” the second Oscar Wilde’s “The Ideal Husband.” Then came such plays as “The Nervous Wreck,” with Horton: “The Rear Car,” starring Franklin Pangborn; “The Fool,” by Channing Pollock. All three of these, successes later in the East, were started at the Majestic. Mary Newcomb became leading woman. Horton played “Clarence,” “Outward Bound” and “Beggar on Horseback.” And with Miss Newcomb became a theatrical idol of the town. Wilhelmina Wilkes died. Dickson Morgan, whose first production was “Oh, Boy,” a musical, went on as producer of plays. There were productions such as “Anna Christie,” with Pauline Lord; Shaw’s “Man and Superman,” with John Davidson featured, and Barrie’s “The Professor’s Love Story,” with Horton. Davidson substituted as leading man of the company one summer, while Horton was away on a vacation. Later days of the Majestic Theater found the Macloons presenting “The Desert Song,” “Hit the Deck” and “New Moon;” saw Eddie Horton come back from the Vine-street Theater and present “Serena Blandish” and “The Swan,” which gave Ralph Forbes great prestige. And during the last year or two-pictures and burlesque. Now it is to be razed.