Carthay Circle Theatre

I don’t think Olympic was Copuntry Club. Country Club still exhists and branches off Olympic near Crenshaw. It was named for the Los Angeles Country club which used to be there before it moved to Rossmore and Beverly Boulevard. Olympic was formerly know as 10th Street and was renamed when the Olympics came to Los Angeles.
voxopop

I knew that Olympic was Country Club Blvd. at that time but I didn’t realize that this stretch of San Vicente was called Eulalia Blvd. then.

Here is the 1937 photo again:
http://tinyurl.com/2gonxd

I bought Caprice after reading Orlando’s comment above. Here’s a cropped screenshot I took of Doris' stunt double going over the edge of the balcony which shows the ceiling of the Carthay Circle:

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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.

This blurb was in the LA Times, 12/15/44. I couldn’t figure out if the jailbird was Ginger Rogers or Shirley Temple:

Unusual Film Announced for Three Theaters

“I’ll Be Seeing You” will begin extended engagements at Carthay Circle, United Artists and Fox Wilshire Theaters. Starring Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotten and Shirley Temple, the picture is a romantic drama of a soldier who is given a Christmas furlough after being released from a long hospitalization. He meets a girl who has been given a similar holiday leave from a woman’s penitentiary for good behavior. Assisting the stars are Spring Byington, Chill Wills and others.

Actually, a friend was the stunt coordinator on Grease 2 and we filmed at Norwalk High…I think they mentioned the first one was filmed there too. Carthay Center School (my old school, like voxpop, I grew up on Commodore Sloat Drive) can be seen in a few scenes of Paul Mazursky’s “Alex in Wonderland”. In the background of one scenes you can see the awful insurance building being constructed on the site of the freshly demolished theatre. However, if you run the film slowly, you can see Donald Sutherland drive by our old gas station when he drops off his daughter at the school…there was a gas station attached to the property along with Figart’s electronic store. In front of the Theatre was the Green’s grocery store/deli.

In the background of some those Carthay Circle photos can be seen a school building. Is that the same school used in the movie “Grease!”?

I grew up on Commodore Sloat Drive one of the streets on which the theatre was situated. I rode my bike in the parking lot. The theatre was described as mission style but the theme of the theatre had to do with the old west. There were glass display cases in the lobby of old saddles and western memorobilia. Above the lobby water fountain was a bas relief in concrete of a tribute to pioneer women, showing a woman standing next to a wagon wheel. I know this because I own it, having bought it from Cleveland wrecking when they tore down the theatre. It is in my garden.

Next to the theatre on a grassy way, officially dedicated as a park, were historic monuments of the west, chosen and maintained by the Native Sons of the Golden West organization. This grassy way continued north of the theatre in a median on Crescent Heights Blvd., to Wilshire Boulevard. and south onto the next block. The median and the monuments are still there.

These things are significant in that when Natioanl General tore down the theatre, it was their intention to destroy the parkway and construct a huge building in the center of a residential neighborhood, effectively destroying the community. Years later I attended a party with some lawyers who were laughing that they had almost destroyed a community and made a lot of money.

Unfortunately for National General, the community was an activist community who stopped the plan and forced NG to build, respecting the grassy park. For this reason, NG constructed two smaller buildings with a park between them, denying them the huge profit they anticipated from a huge building.

This helped the neighborhood survive but didn’t save the theatre.

I believe that the mettle of a companiy’s leadership shows when times are difficult and creative thinking is required. The same minds who sold the Carthay Circle Theatre to National General are the ones who sold the 20th Century Fox backlot to Alcoa outright, without any royalty, to create Century City, so they could finance the movie Cleopatra which lost money.

I wonder if Rupert Murdock, who now owns Fox, would have made the same decisions. I think not.

I was the assistant mgr at the Fine Arts Theatre under Jim Peters
I was offered the same position in 1969 at the Carthay Circle for the Shoes of the Fishererman starring Anthony Quinn. Knowing that the fire dept deemed the upper level a hazard due to the steep incline,I declined the promotiom. Later the upper level of the Fox Wilshire was also closed for the same problem.

For the opportunity to purchase vintage and reprint photographs of the beautiful theater – both interior and exterior views. Check the eBay store of HEMETSPHERE. www.ebay.com

Hey, Ken McC: that first, accidental picture— where was it taken, and when?

I am a fifth generation Angeleno who’s lived in New York for 26 years. When I return home on business or leisure, I take my kids to all the historical sites dad remembers. Carthay Circle, near where I grew up, was last on our journey. But please tell me whewre that areal photo was taken, thank you in advance.

By the way, can those great photos be accessed directly from the internet (as well as other Hollywood and LA landmarks)? If so, can someone please provide the site?