El Centro Theatre

TheatreMonkey: I just got off the phone w/ Bill Krisel. He was elated!! with the El Centro Theatre web site. That is his Cadillac in front of the theatre on an opening night, not Sydney’s as the caption says in one of the photos. He said Sydney bummed a ride everywhere. Those are Krisel’s letters on the facade. He cut them out of plywood and mounted them. It is Bill bending over the bucket in the photo of the gang working outside to ready the theatre for opening night. I recognized him from his WWII army photos. Krisel said all of the actors shared the work to run the theater. Krisel designed the set for “Rain” depicted in one of the photos.

He couldn’t believe I found this stuff. He had just gotten off the phone w/ Sam Goldwyn, Jr. They had just spent 45 minutes reminiscing about Sydney whose obit was in today’s Times. Sydney and Sammy were the “Bad Boys” of Blacke-Fox Academy and both hated it. He said the obit got it right that it was just a dumping ground for movie star’s kids and Sydney dropped out after 8th grade or so.

Gloria Greer, current Palm Springs TV personality and Social Life Editor for Palm Springs Life Magazine, was then known as Gloria Grant and she is on the playbill for the first play to be performed in the theater. In the third photo from the bottom left she is the woman at the bar (Sydney is the bartender). She later married a man named Jim Greer whom Bill designed two small jobs for in the early 1960s. The one-year anniversary photo has whom Bill thinks is Paulette Goddard cutting the cake, Sydney in the back and Charlie on the left. Paulette used to go out w/ the Sydney, Carlie, Jr. and Bill in Charlie’s Rolls-Royce to cruise Sunset and Beverly Hills when the boys were just teenagers.

Im so happy to hear so much more info on the theatre.

Joe, thanks for your additional information. I have some Sanford Fire Insurance maps. One from 1919 and the other from 1950.
Here are links to the files
View link
View link

Joe,
Sorry its Sanborn Fire Insurance.

I am very pleased to see this theater translate to such willing and openly creative hands as those of Mr. Roday and the masterly Shakman. My history with this theater spans a decade longer than I, as my mother produced her first Los Angeles production of a musical, “Out of the Mouths of Babes” a feminist piece while the theater was still called The Cast and her friend Ted Schmidt was still at the helm. Who do I need to contact in order to produce her last piece, How Katrina Plays at what was always her favorite little historic Hollywood theater. Blessings in advance, Mason Synclaire

My grandmother and her sister rented the Ivy Theatre for 6 months on April 17, 1916: “together with one Edison moving picture machine, 200 opera chairs , one piano, one re-wind, three carpet strips, one silver curtain, electric fixtures” , according to a contract I have between the two women and Bert Levey Circuit. I also have a playbill for two showings of “the Two Doctors”, “Fogg’s Millions”, “Fire! Fire! Fire!”, “a Female Cop”, “Snakeville’s Fire Brigade”.