University of Calgary Press has published a book about the city’s history from 1912 to 2005, in which the Lougheed Building and the Grand Theatre are prominently featured: Calgary’s Grand Story. (The page displays a very small picture of the interior of The Grand, as featured on the book’s cover.)
The clearest picture I’ve found of the Majestic is this excellent scan_01.jpg) of a frame from Harold Lloyd’s “Safety Last” which shows the theatre in the background. The scan is from the excellent Dr. Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans. I haven’t had a chance to peruse much of the site, but I expect that it might contain at least a few other scans of scenes from early movies shot on the streets of Southern California which might contain glimpses of other theatres.
Jeane Mari: The Bruce Torrence Collection has pictures of Ken Murray’s Blackouts (with Marie Wilson) at the Vine Street El Capitan. The biggest hit record of “Got a Date with an Angel” was probably the one by Hal Kemp and his orchestra, but I doubt that they could have fit onto the back of a truck.
The actual date of the fire which gutted the El Rey was August 5th, 1975. The event was reported in the Los Angeles Times the next day.
The El Rey was built by William Peters. San Francisco architects Mark T. Jorgensen and Otto A. Deichmann prepared the plans, according to the Better Theatres section of The Motion Picture Herald, October 17th, 1936. The theatre probably opened in 1937.
I’ve come across a contradiction in the Los Angeles Public Library’s database. Though text entries give the location of the Silent Building as 733 S. Hill Street (the theatre entrance was at the right end of the building), the data accompanying a a picture of the building gives an address of 730 S. Hill Street, which would put the building on the east side of the street. If the address on the west side of the street is correct, then the buildingis gone. If the address on the west side of the street is correct, then the building might well still exist.
The Granada was financed by C.W. Post of the Post Cereal family. It was originally designed in a Spanish architectural style, but much of the interior was remodeled in 1937 in the art deco style. The original proscenium was still intact as of 1993, and a plaster letter “P” for Post could be seen at the tops of the flanking columns. Though it was operated in its last years by Metropolitan Theatres, it opened as a West Coast Theatres house, and had been a Fox-West Coast house from the late 1920s into the 1960s.
Source: abstract of a paper from the Wilmington Historical Society, available in PDF format from the L.A. Public Library.
I had completely forgotten about that Broadway entrance to the Metropolitan! There was originally an entrance on Hill Street, as well, but only the Sixth Street entrance remained when I first saw the theatre. The L.A. Library has a photo of the interior of the Broadway entrance to the Metropolitan.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of January 9th, 1925, revealed that the plans for the Lyric Theatre were being prepared by the firm of Wilson, Merrill and Wilson, 128 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles. The building was to be 70' x 150' and the projected cost was $75,000. The owners and operators would be National Theatres.
If the Park Theatre was operating during the silent era, then it was not the T&D, plans for which (by San Francisco architect Albert A. Larsen) were announced in The Los Angeles Times on November 24th, 1929.
From Southwest Builder and Contractor, issue of 10/27/1928:[quote]“San Luis Obispo— Mrs. W.B. Martin has secured a permit for reconstruction the El Monterey Theater. The cost will be $20,000.”[quote]
The Reel Joy was operating as early as February, 1928, when it was mentioned in the 2/11/1928 issue of Exhibitor’s Herald and Moving Picture World.
The magazine Architect and Engineer, issue of February 1938, reported that work had begun on a remodeling of the theatre, to plans prepared by Oakland architects Miller & Warnecke.
RAGNAR: As near as I’ve been able to puzzle it out from the limited, scattered sources available to me, this is the relationship of the various theatre circuits which became Fox-West Coast: T&D was a San Francisco-based theatre circuit, owned by Fred Dahnken and William G. Turner. It began sometime early in the 20th century. There was some association with a circuit called Southwest Theaters, operated by C.L. Langley, who was also the managing director of T&D. Langley was also associated in some way with West Coast Theaters. In the 1920s, a partnership called West Coast-Langley operated theatres in Pasadena, among other places.
Eventually, all these companies were joined in a series of deals and mergers, under the West Coast Theaters banner, and by 1929, William Fox (who had opened his first nickelodeon in Brooklyn in 1904, and began producing movies in 1913 in order to have a reliable source of product to exhibit in his chain of theatres in the east) had acquired a controlling interest in the chain, which then became Fox-West Coast Theaters.
It was partly the debt Fox incurred in wiring several hundred theatres for sound that led to his bankruptcy in 1930. He then lost control of both the studio and the theatres, which in 1935 came under the control of Darryl Zanuck’s 20th Century Pictures.
I haven’t been able to discover the relationship of T&D Junior to Fox. Some theatres attributed to that company’s ownership were built quite a while after the merger of TD&L with Fox, and were operated by Fox-West Coast in later years.
Southwest Builder and Contractor of July 11, 1914, named the Fresno architectural firm of Swartz, Hotchin and Swartz as those who prepared the plans for remodeling the armory into Theatre Visalia for Spaulding, Mitchell and Levi. An issue of the same magazine from May, 1913, had mentioned two Los Angeles architects as being engaged for the project, but that deal must have fallen through.
Jack, you are correct that Variety has long called indoor movie theatres “hardtops” to distinguish them from “ozoners” or “passion pits” (Variety nomenclature for drive-ins.) Variety has always had a language of its own, and even has its own name for that language, and now features a web page with a handy glossary of its terms: Slanguage. Many terms originated at Variety have made their way into general use (“sex appeal” being an example), and there are others that deserve to. I’m particularly fond of “sprocket opera” for film festival, and “zitcom” for a T.V. comedy aimed at a teenage audience.
Burgundy soda was sold from the soft drink machine at the Garfield Theatre in Alhambra, too. I hadn’t thought about that in ages, but I used to buy it every time I went to a movie there, as that was the only place I knew of where it was available. It had a nice, subtle grape flavor, not as sweet as the concord grape based sodas that were more common in those days, as I recall. Heh. I guess I was a budding wine snob, even at twelve years old. I remember now that I used to wish that I could get burgundy soda outside the theatre, because I thought it would make a great flavor for a float. Thanks for the reminder of a long forgotten delight, Watcher.
ken mc: It turns out that the Tally’s New Broadway Theatre in the picture you discovered is listed on Cinema Treasures, under its final name, the GarnettTheatre, at 554 S. Broadway.
Having seen the 1929 picture of the Arcade Building, I’m sure that Tally’s New Broadway is the Garnett. The lot between the Arcade Building and Silverwood’s store on the corner of 6th Street looks to be about the right size for this theatre.
I’ve never seen the Conservancy’s theatres database, but I’m sure they have had access to a lot of information about the city’s buildings. One reason I can think of for an error is that often, permits were issued for planned buildings and then those plans were never carried out, but the records remain in the city’s files, with no indication that the building wasn’t built. It’s possible that a theatre was planned for this site, but not built, and the Conservancy’s researchers didn’t follow through to find the age of the building which now stands on this site.
If that address is immediately south of the Broadway Arcade Building, then it probably is the Garnett. I think the Arcade Building was completed in 1927, and the theatre would have been its next door neighbor, assuming it was still there by then. Here is a photo of the Broadway end of the Arcade Building dated 1929, showing the commercial building which replaced the theatre next door.
The Los Angeles Public Library photo collection contains a picture (revealed by Cinema Treasures user ken mc, by the way), of Tally’s New Broadway Theatre, clearly showing the location as being in the 500 block of Broadway, on the east side of the street, just north of 6th Street (this can be seen by the presence of a sign in the background on the wall of the Hotel Hayward, which was at the southwest corner of 6th and Spring.) If this theatre at 428 Broadway was also Tally’s New Broadway, it must have been given that name after the Tally’s New Broadway in the 500 block was closed. I have no idea when that latter event took place, though.
I typed “southeast corner” at the beginning of that first comment. I meant southwest corner, of course. The corner location was occupied by Owl Drug Company, beginning at latest in the early 1920s, and it was still there in the 1960s. I was in the store many times.
Addition: The library also has a picture of the building which occupied this site before the Norton Block was built. The corner store of this building, which would have been 601 S. Broadway, was occupied by a saloon. (The library mistakenly identifies the picture as having been taken in 1911, but other information there indicates the likely year to have been 1906.)
There was another Broadway Theatre nearby, however. Another picture at the library shows Tally’s New Broadway Theatre in the 500 block of South Broadway, on the east side, just north of 6th Street. The location is easily identified by the sign on the wall of the building in the background, which was the Hayward Hotel, at the southwest corner of 6th and Spring. The library identifies this picture as having been taken in 1909, and it seems accurate in this case.
This raises some question about the claim that the Broadway Theatre at 428 South Broadway was Tally’s New Broadway. If it was, then it must have taken that name after the Tally’s New Broadway in the 500 block was closed. This Tally’s New Broadway is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The 6 story building at the southeast corner of 6th and Broadway was originally called the Norton Block, and was completed by 1908. I have seen it pictured in old postcards. The L.A. Public Library has photos of it. Here is a full view from the 1920s, before the art deco style remodeling. Here is a view down Broadway with the lower part of the Norton Block at the right. This picture must have been taken in the late ‘20s, as the Los Angeles Theatre down the block does not yet exist. I think it’s unlikely that this building ever contained a theatre. If there ever was a theatre in the building, it must have occupied only a small part of the ground floor, which is filled with the columns supporting the floors of offices above.
University of Calgary Press has published a book about the city’s history from 1912 to 2005, in which the Lougheed Building and the Grand Theatre are prominently featured: Calgary’s Grand Story. (The page displays a very small picture of the interior of The Grand, as featured on the book’s cover.)
Here is a decent picture of the Barron Building, taken during the time the theatre was closed.
The architect of the Uptown was John A. Cawston, of the firm of Stevenson, Cawston & Stevenson.
Here is a brief essay about the Barron Building, courtesy of the Calgary Public Library.
The clearest picture I’ve found of the Majestic is this excellent scan_01.jpg) of a frame from Harold Lloyd’s “Safety Last” which shows the theatre in the background. The scan is from the excellent Dr. Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans. I haven’t had a chance to peruse much of the site, but I expect that it might contain at least a few other scans of scenes from early movies shot on the streets of Southern California which might contain glimpses of other theatres.
Jeane Mari: The Bruce Torrence Collection has pictures of Ken Murray’s Blackouts (with Marie Wilson) at the Vine Street El Capitan. The biggest hit record of “Got a Date with an Angel” was probably the one by Hal Kemp and his orchestra, but I doubt that they could have fit onto the back of a truck.
The actual date of the fire which gutted the El Rey was August 5th, 1975. The event was reported in the Los Angeles Times the next day.
The El Rey was built by William Peters. San Francisco architects Mark T. Jorgensen and Otto A. Deichmann prepared the plans, according to the Better Theatres section of The Motion Picture Herald, October 17th, 1936. The theatre probably opened in 1937.
I’ve come across a contradiction in the Los Angeles Public Library’s database. Though text entries give the location of the Silent Building as 733 S. Hill Street (the theatre entrance was at the right end of the building), the data accompanying a a picture of the building gives an address of 730 S. Hill Street, which would put the building on the east side of the street. If the address on the west side of the street is correct, then the buildingis gone. If the address on the west side of the street is correct, then the building might well still exist.
The Granada was financed by C.W. Post of the Post Cereal family. It was originally designed in a Spanish architectural style, but much of the interior was remodeled in 1937 in the art deco style. The original proscenium was still intact as of 1993, and a plaster letter “P” for Post could be seen at the tops of the flanking columns. Though it was operated in its last years by Metropolitan Theatres, it opened as a West Coast Theatres house, and had been a Fox-West Coast house from the late 1920s into the 1960s.
Source: abstract of a paper from the Wilmington Historical Society, available in PDF format from the L.A. Public Library.
I had completely forgotten about that Broadway entrance to the Metropolitan! There was originally an entrance on Hill Street, as well, but only the Sixth Street entrance remained when I first saw the theatre. The L.A. Library has a photo of the interior of the Broadway entrance to the Metropolitan.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of January 9th, 1925, revealed that the plans for the Lyric Theatre were being prepared by the firm of Wilson, Merrill and Wilson, 128 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles. The building was to be 70' x 150' and the projected cost was $75,000. The owners and operators would be National Theatres.
If the Park Theatre was operating during the silent era, then it was not the T&D, plans for which (by San Francisco architect Albert A. Larsen) were announced in The Los Angeles Times on November 24th, 1929.
From Southwest Builder and Contractor, issue of 10/27/1928:[quote]“San Luis Obispo— Mrs. W.B. Martin has secured a permit for reconstruction the El Monterey Theater. The cost will be $20,000.”[quote]
The Reel Joy was operating as early as February, 1928, when it was mentioned in the 2/11/1928 issue of Exhibitor’s Herald and Moving Picture World.
The magazine Architect and Engineer, issue of February 1938, reported that work had begun on a remodeling of the theatre, to plans prepared by Oakland architects Miller & Warnecke.
RAGNAR: As near as I’ve been able to puzzle it out from the limited, scattered sources available to me, this is the relationship of the various theatre circuits which became Fox-West Coast: T&D was a San Francisco-based theatre circuit, owned by Fred Dahnken and William G. Turner. It began sometime early in the 20th century. There was some association with a circuit called Southwest Theaters, operated by C.L. Langley, who was also the managing director of T&D. Langley was also associated in some way with West Coast Theaters. In the 1920s, a partnership called West Coast-Langley operated theatres in Pasadena, among other places.
Eventually, all these companies were joined in a series of deals and mergers, under the West Coast Theaters banner, and by 1929, William Fox (who had opened his first nickelodeon in Brooklyn in 1904, and began producing movies in 1913 in order to have a reliable source of product to exhibit in his chain of theatres in the east) had acquired a controlling interest in the chain, which then became Fox-West Coast Theaters.
It was partly the debt Fox incurred in wiring several hundred theatres for sound that led to his bankruptcy in 1930. He then lost control of both the studio and the theatres, which in 1935 came under the control of Darryl Zanuck’s 20th Century Pictures.
I haven’t been able to discover the relationship of T&D Junior to Fox. Some theatres attributed to that company’s ownership were built quite a while after the merger of TD&L with Fox, and were operated by Fox-West Coast in later years.
Southwest Builder and Contractor of July 11, 1914, named the Fresno architectural firm of Swartz, Hotchin and Swartz as those who prepared the plans for remodeling the armory into Theatre Visalia for Spaulding, Mitchell and Levi. An issue of the same magazine from May, 1913, had mentioned two Los Angeles architects as being engaged for the project, but that deal must have fallen through.
Jack, you are correct that Variety has long called indoor movie theatres “hardtops” to distinguish them from “ozoners” or “passion pits” (Variety nomenclature for drive-ins.) Variety has always had a language of its own, and even has its own name for that language, and now features a web page with a handy glossary of its terms: Slanguage. Many terms originated at Variety have made their way into general use (“sex appeal” being an example), and there are others that deserve to. I’m particularly fond of “sprocket opera” for film festival, and “zitcom” for a T.V. comedy aimed at a teenage audience.
Burgundy soda was sold from the soft drink machine at the Garfield Theatre in Alhambra, too. I hadn’t thought about that in ages, but I used to buy it every time I went to a movie there, as that was the only place I knew of where it was available. It had a nice, subtle grape flavor, not as sweet as the concord grape based sodas that were more common in those days, as I recall. Heh. I guess I was a budding wine snob, even at twelve years old. I remember now that I used to wish that I could get burgundy soda outside the theatre, because I thought it would make a great flavor for a float. Thanks for the reminder of a long forgotten delight, Watcher.
ken mc: It turns out that the Tally’s New Broadway Theatre in the picture you discovered is listed on Cinema Treasures, under its final name, the GarnettTheatre, at 554 S. Broadway.
Having seen the 1929 picture of the Arcade Building, I’m sure that Tally’s New Broadway is the Garnett. The lot between the Arcade Building and Silverwood’s store on the corner of 6th Street looks to be about the right size for this theatre.
I’ve never seen the Conservancy’s theatres database, but I’m sure they have had access to a lot of information about the city’s buildings. One reason I can think of for an error is that often, permits were issued for planned buildings and then those plans were never carried out, but the records remain in the city’s files, with no indication that the building wasn’t built. It’s possible that a theatre was planned for this site, but not built, and the Conservancy’s researchers didn’t follow through to find the age of the building which now stands on this site.
If that address is immediately south of the Broadway Arcade Building, then it probably is the Garnett. I think the Arcade Building was completed in 1927, and the theatre would have been its next door neighbor, assuming it was still there by then. Here is a photo of the Broadway end of the Arcade Building dated 1929, showing the commercial building which replaced the theatre next door.
The Los Angeles Public Library photo collection contains a picture (revealed by Cinema Treasures user ken mc, by the way), of Tally’s New Broadway Theatre, clearly showing the location as being in the 500 block of Broadway, on the east side of the street, just north of 6th Street (this can be seen by the presence of a sign in the background on the wall of the Hotel Hayward, which was at the southwest corner of 6th and Spring.) If this theatre at 428 Broadway was also Tally’s New Broadway, it must have been given that name after the Tally’s New Broadway in the 500 block was closed. I have no idea when that latter event took place, though.
I typed “southeast corner” at the beginning of that first comment. I meant southwest corner, of course. The corner location was occupied by Owl Drug Company, beginning at latest in the early 1920s, and it was still there in the 1960s. I was in the store many times.
Addition: The library also has a picture of the building which occupied this site before the Norton Block was built. The corner store of this building, which would have been 601 S. Broadway, was occupied by a saloon. (The library mistakenly identifies the picture as having been taken in 1911, but other information there indicates the likely year to have been 1906.)
There was another Broadway Theatre nearby, however. Another picture at the library shows Tally’s New Broadway Theatre in the 500 block of South Broadway, on the east side, just north of 6th Street. The location is easily identified by the sign on the wall of the building in the background, which was the Hayward Hotel, at the southwest corner of 6th and Spring. The library identifies this picture as having been taken in 1909, and it seems accurate in this case.
This raises some question about the claim that the Broadway Theatre at 428 South Broadway was Tally’s New Broadway. If it was, then it must have taken that name after the Tally’s New Broadway in the 500 block was closed. This Tally’s New Broadway is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The 6 story building at the southeast corner of 6th and Broadway was originally called the Norton Block, and was completed by 1908. I have seen it pictured in old postcards. The L.A. Public Library has photos of it. Here is a full view from the 1920s, before the art deco style remodeling. Here is a view down Broadway with the lower part of the Norton Block at the right. This picture must have been taken in the late ‘20s, as the Los Angeles Theatre down the block does not yet exist. I think it’s unlikely that this building ever contained a theatre. If there ever was a theatre in the building, it must have occupied only a small part of the ground floor, which is filled with the columns supporting the floors of offices above.
ken mc:
The Capitol in Long Beach is listed on Cinema Treasures under its final name, the Tracy.