Just wished to comment that in the new Academy Award nominated film, “The Aviator”, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, we see DiCaprio as Hughes attending a premiere at the Pantages in 1939. How do we know it is 1939? Because a poster in the Boxoffice street lobby has a poster advertising as a coming attraction, MGM’s “The Women”! This is an error. Being an MGM production, “The Women” never played at this theater, an RKO property. Further, at that time and through the second world war years, all posters at the first run theaters in Hollywood had specially made, unique, and expensive hand-cut posters that were NOT paper sheets printed by National Screen Service, as was the case with all other theaters everywhere.
The Director of “The Aviator”, Martin Scorsese, never caught this error. LarryGardner
When I first went to the Hollywood Pantages, in Nov. 1944, as a boy,
the ads in the paper’s movie section called it “RKO Pantages” and, downtown LA, “RKO Hillstreet”, and these two RKO houses screened first-run films from Columbia studio, RKO (of course, but NOT “B” pictures such as “Cat People”, which were shown down the street at the Hawaii theatre), and Universal. The first Hollywood Theatre I went to also in 1944 was the Eygptian, to see MGM’s “Dragon Seed”. It was s dazzling experience to visit this theatre; but that same day/evening when entering the Pantages (“Casanova Brown”, with Gary Cooper), the fantastic lobby with its light grey heavy carpeting and overall magnificence for all time put every other movie house I’ve been in to shame. I would go, regardless of program, for years just to be in this theatre. LarryGardner
Just wished to comment that in the new Academy Award nominated film, “The Aviator”, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, we see DiCaprio as Hughes attending a premiere at the Pantages in 1939. How do we know it is 1939? Because a poster in the Boxoffice street lobby has a poster advertising as a coming attraction, MGM’s “The Women”! This is an error. Being an MGM production, “The Women” never played at this theater, an RKO property. Further, at that time and through the second world war years, all posters at the first run theaters in Hollywood had specially made, unique, and expensive hand-cut posters that were NOT paper sheets printed by National Screen Service, as was the case with all other theaters everywhere.
The Director of “The Aviator”, Martin Scorsese, never caught this error. LarryGardner
When I first went to the Hollywood Pantages, in Nov. 1944, as a boy,
the ads in the paper’s movie section called it “RKO Pantages” and, downtown LA, “RKO Hillstreet”, and these two RKO houses screened first-run films from Columbia studio, RKO (of course, but NOT “B” pictures such as “Cat People”, which were shown down the street at the Hawaii theatre), and Universal. The first Hollywood Theatre I went to also in 1944 was the Eygptian, to see MGM’s “Dragon Seed”. It was s dazzling experience to visit this theatre; but that same day/evening when entering the Pantages (“Casanova Brown”, with Gary Cooper), the fantastic lobby with its light grey heavy carpeting and overall magnificence for all time put every other movie house I’ve been in to shame. I would go, regardless of program, for years just to be in this theatre. LarryGardner