Warner Beverly Hills Groundbreaking

TLSLOEWS on May 25, 2012 at 3:31 pm

Thanks Ross,for this bit of history.

ChasSmith on February 19, 2013 at 11:08 am

Yes, thank you so much for this.

It’s a little disappointing that the newsreel doesn’t take us inside, but it’s still essential viewing. I never knew the theater in its prime, but I lived in the area and attended a number of second runs in the mid-1970s, and it was the most amazing interior ever. A supreme loss.

The newsreel ends with Warner Brothers' wish that the theater not be found unworthy. Some five decades later, it was found very unworthy by the city of Beverly Hills, as was much else there. What was once a wonderful “village” of affordable and accessible shops, theaters, bookstores, record stores, and eateries, is now a sterile gold and platinum wasteland, almost unrecognizable to those who knew it only a few decades ago.