Brady is on over twenty councils, committees and commission for downtown redevelopment, and I know for a fact that he has a very special love for the Los Angeles Theater.
Brady is the one who took down Mike Davis and his book “The Ecology of Fear.” Don’t mess with Brady!
Hmmm… Well, that must be the guy then, and Brady Westwater is a good friend of his (Brady was at the party, too). And, believe me, if there is anybody you want standing up for the Los Angeles Theater, it’s Brady Westwater. That theater would be compromised over his dead body.
I met the owner of the Palace Theater at a party after the opera we did there (a very young man whose name I’ve forgotten). He also owns the restaurant where the party was, which had wonderful photos on the walls of the Palace Theater in its original vaudeville state). He said he had just bought a much smaller theater downtown as well, but I don’t think he owns the Los Angeles Theater.
I’m sure he could tell you the owner(s) of the Los Angeles Theater.
(I wish it were the guy who owns the Palace – like I said, a young guy who seems to have unlimited funds – he treated the entire cast to drinks and dinner at his restaurant – and a great appreciation for the history of the theaters on Broadway.)
There is actually lots of parking at the Pershing Square underground lot, which is only a block away from the theater. At the opera production I was in, mentioned above, a discount rate was negotiated with this parking facility for people with a validated ticket. It worked beautifully.
But the Los Angeles does have a shallow stage and limited backstage facilities, which compromise it for live productions. If some enterprising person would buy the property in back of it, the backstage area could be completely redone.
The “old drive-in in Culver City” mentioned above was the Studio Drive-In where Jefferson and Sepulveda come together. Unfortunately, it has been demolished. A housing project is on the site.
I was in downtown Culver City yesterday and saw that the Old Culver Theater, a wonderful old Art Deco movie house, has been turned into the Kirk Douglas Theater, a legitimate theater. It’s near the Culver Hotel, where the Munchkins were put up during the filming of Wizard of Oz – it’s the tallest building in town. You can’t miss it.
We were told, when the cast of Manon Lescaut was given a tour of the theater, that the wigs of the French nobility on the curtain were made of real human hair.
You can see an excerpt of the Manon Lescaut on YouTube. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show much of the interior of the theater, but it does give you an idea of what a production looked like on stage (I am on the far left – stage right – as “The Sergeant” – and am barely audible!).
I was in the cast of the opera performance mentioned above â€" I had a small part in Manon Lescaut as “Le sergent†and sang in the chorus. When I auditioned for the company I didn’t know where we would be performing, but was thrilled when I learned that it would be at the fabulous old Los Angeles Theater, since I remembered the theater vividly from my childhood.
In the mid ‘50s, my mother used to take my brother and me downtown from Culver City, and we’d go to a movie at the stunning Los Angeles Theater, and have lunch at Clifton’s Cafeteria across the street (still operating!). I remember seeing “The Robe†and “Demetrius and the Gladiators†there, and being terribly impressed by the over-the-top performances of actor Jay Robinson as Caligula in both movies (I also remember seeing Bette Davis in “The Virgin Queen,†which Jay Robinson was also in â€" more about Mr. Robinson later!).
Much later, in my adulthood, I also met the architect, S. Charles Lee, at a showing of the movie “The Seven Year Itch†at the theater. I was introduced briefly to Mr. Lee, a spry and friendly old man, who was doing what the rest of us were doing, standing just inside the front door, watching the amazed faces of people as they came in and saw the lobby for the first time!
And then, decades later, I was able to perform in the theater myself. The pseudo-French architecture of the theater suited Manon Lescaut perfectly, I think, though the theater was really too large for our purposes. One of the other cast members, Greg Iriarte, was a docent for the L.A. Conservancy, and I imagine that this is how the venue was obtained. Greg would have preferred the Orpheum as a performing venue, and it’s true that the Los Angeles had a very shallow stage and inadequate dressing rooms for a cast the size of ours. But I was thrilled to be at the Los Angeles, and it was a gift that it had dressing rooms at all, thanks to the fact that stage performances had taken place between movies in the early years. The dressing rooms had been furnished with modern mirrors and lights, but there were no tables or chairs, so we brought our own. One of the larger rooms, obviously designed for “the star,†had original mouldings and “French†tracework, and it was easy to imagine it as it might have been.
The acoustics of the theater seemed fine to me, and I didn’t feel I had to force at all in my solos (and, of course, we sang unamplified â€" even the spoken dialogue was unamplified), but some people remarked that the men’s voices traveled better than the women’s, so perhaps there was a lack of upper resonance in the theater. Though the place looked shabby in the strong rehearsal lights, in performance, when the auditorium was evocatively lit, the place looked overwhelmingly festive and gorgeous.
At our six performances we had an audience of about 600 people a night, a surprising turnout for an unknown/forgotten opera. However, it was obvious that the theater itself was bringing them in, because when we put on our next production, Verdi’s second opera, Un Giorno di Regno, at the Palace across the street (having lost the use of the Los Angeles Theater for undisclosed reasons), hardly anyone attended its six performances, and the company was forced to cancel the rest of the season. The Palace is the right size for an opera house, in my opinion, being about the size of a normal European opera house, e.g. the Stuttgart Opera, and it has better acoustics than the Los Angeles. But the Palace has nothing of that latter theater’s magnificence and glamour, faded though it may be.
Back to actor Jay Robinson: Southern California suffered some severe storms earlier in 2006, and the basement of the Los Angeles Theater was flooded, ruining the parquet flooring in the downstairs ballroom, and causing a dank, musty smell. During those same storms, out in the San Fernando Valley a tree fell on the parked car of a friend of mine. The tree happened to be on the property of Jay Robinson in Sherman Oaks (on Milbank at Woodman) near where I live, and because of this unfortunate circumstance, I got to meet him during the period of my performances of the Los Angeles Theater, where a half century before I had seen his (filmed) performances that had so impressed me. In fact, I found out his birthday on the internet, and took a card over to him and got invited in for a nice chat and a look at his movie and stage memorabilia. This icon from my childhood has lived a block away from me for the last 30 years! I felt that my experience with the Los Angeles Theater had gone full circle.
Brady is on over twenty councils, committees and commission for downtown redevelopment, and I know for a fact that he has a very special love for the Los Angeles Theater.
Brady is the one who took down Mike Davis and his book “The Ecology of Fear.” Don’t mess with Brady!
Hmmm… Well, that must be the guy then, and Brady Westwater is a good friend of his (Brady was at the party, too). And, believe me, if there is anybody you want standing up for the Los Angeles Theater, it’s Brady Westwater. That theater would be compromised over his dead body.
I met the owner of the Palace Theater at a party after the opera we did there (a very young man whose name I’ve forgotten). He also owns the restaurant where the party was, which had wonderful photos on the walls of the Palace Theater in its original vaudeville state). He said he had just bought a much smaller theater downtown as well, but I don’t think he owns the Los Angeles Theater.
If you contact Brady Westwater at http://lacowboy.blogspot.com/
I’m sure he could tell you the owner(s) of the Los Angeles Theater.
(I wish it were the guy who owns the Palace – like I said, a young guy who seems to have unlimited funds – he treated the entire cast to drinks and dinner at his restaurant – and a great appreciation for the history of the theaters on Broadway.)
There is actually lots of parking at the Pershing Square underground lot, which is only a block away from the theater. At the opera production I was in, mentioned above, a discount rate was negotiated with this parking facility for people with a validated ticket. It worked beautifully.
But the Los Angeles does have a shallow stage and limited backstage facilities, which compromise it for live productions. If some enterprising person would buy the property in back of it, the backstage area could be completely redone.
The “old drive-in in Culver City” mentioned above was the Studio Drive-In where Jefferson and Sepulveda come together. Unfortunately, it has been demolished. A housing project is on the site.
I was in downtown Culver City yesterday and saw that the Old Culver Theater, a wonderful old Art Deco movie house, has been turned into the Kirk Douglas Theater, a legitimate theater. It’s near the Culver Hotel, where the Munchkins were put up during the filming of Wizard of Oz – it’s the tallest building in town. You can’t miss it.
We were told, when the cast of Manon Lescaut was given a tour of the theater, that the wigs of the French nobility on the curtain were made of real human hair.
You can see an excerpt of the Manon Lescaut on YouTube. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show much of the interior of the theater, but it does give you an idea of what a production looked like on stage (I am on the far left – stage right – as “The Sergeant” – and am barely audible!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqqMLrFae0I
I was in the cast of the opera performance mentioned above â€" I had a small part in Manon Lescaut as “Le sergent†and sang in the chorus. When I auditioned for the company I didn’t know where we would be performing, but was thrilled when I learned that it would be at the fabulous old Los Angeles Theater, since I remembered the theater vividly from my childhood.
In the mid ‘50s, my mother used to take my brother and me downtown from Culver City, and we’d go to a movie at the stunning Los Angeles Theater, and have lunch at Clifton’s Cafeteria across the street (still operating!). I remember seeing “The Robe†and “Demetrius and the Gladiators†there, and being terribly impressed by the over-the-top performances of actor Jay Robinson as Caligula in both movies (I also remember seeing Bette Davis in “The Virgin Queen,†which Jay Robinson was also in â€" more about Mr. Robinson later!).
Much later, in my adulthood, I also met the architect, S. Charles Lee, at a showing of the movie “The Seven Year Itch†at the theater. I was introduced briefly to Mr. Lee, a spry and friendly old man, who was doing what the rest of us were doing, standing just inside the front door, watching the amazed faces of people as they came in and saw the lobby for the first time!
And then, decades later, I was able to perform in the theater myself. The pseudo-French architecture of the theater suited Manon Lescaut perfectly, I think, though the theater was really too large for our purposes. One of the other cast members, Greg Iriarte, was a docent for the L.A. Conservancy, and I imagine that this is how the venue was obtained. Greg would have preferred the Orpheum as a performing venue, and it’s true that the Los Angeles had a very shallow stage and inadequate dressing rooms for a cast the size of ours. But I was thrilled to be at the Los Angeles, and it was a gift that it had dressing rooms at all, thanks to the fact that stage performances had taken place between movies in the early years. The dressing rooms had been furnished with modern mirrors and lights, but there were no tables or chairs, so we brought our own. One of the larger rooms, obviously designed for “the star,†had original mouldings and “French†tracework, and it was easy to imagine it as it might have been.
The acoustics of the theater seemed fine to me, and I didn’t feel I had to force at all in my solos (and, of course, we sang unamplified â€" even the spoken dialogue was unamplified), but some people remarked that the men’s voices traveled better than the women’s, so perhaps there was a lack of upper resonance in the theater. Though the place looked shabby in the strong rehearsal lights, in performance, when the auditorium was evocatively lit, the place looked overwhelmingly festive and gorgeous.
At our six performances we had an audience of about 600 people a night, a surprising turnout for an unknown/forgotten opera. However, it was obvious that the theater itself was bringing them in, because when we put on our next production, Verdi’s second opera, Un Giorno di Regno, at the Palace across the street (having lost the use of the Los Angeles Theater for undisclosed reasons), hardly anyone attended its six performances, and the company was forced to cancel the rest of the season. The Palace is the right size for an opera house, in my opinion, being about the size of a normal European opera house, e.g. the Stuttgart Opera, and it has better acoustics than the Los Angeles. But the Palace has nothing of that latter theater’s magnificence and glamour, faded though it may be.
Back to actor Jay Robinson: Southern California suffered some severe storms earlier in 2006, and the basement of the Los Angeles Theater was flooded, ruining the parquet flooring in the downstairs ballroom, and causing a dank, musty smell. During those same storms, out in the San Fernando Valley a tree fell on the parked car of a friend of mine. The tree happened to be on the property of Jay Robinson in Sherman Oaks (on Milbank at Woodman) near where I live, and because of this unfortunate circumstance, I got to meet him during the period of my performances of the Los Angeles Theater, where a half century before I had seen his (filmed) performances that had so impressed me. In fact, I found out his birthday on the internet, and took a card over to him and got invited in for a nice chat and a look at his movie and stage memorabilia. This icon from my childhood has lived a block away from me for the last 30 years! I felt that my experience with the Los Angeles Theater had gone full circle.
Rickard Roudebush