Well, dear readers, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away cities had beautiful motion picture theaters – palaces for the big ones, and mostly nice for the neighborhood ones (the nabes as I like to call them). The kiddies today, of course, don’t really understand that this city once had so many single-screen movie theaters that you literally could not drive six blocks without finding one. They dotted the LA landscape and were part of its fabric, and were part of every big city’s fabric. It was a ritual, a rite, going to a movie theater. Those days, of course, are long gone, and today we have twenty-screen multiplexes in the middle of food courts and malls. That is the movie going experience of today. Most of those theaters seat between 100 and 700 people. There are no curtains, there are ads, there is no showmanship, there is no experience. You go, you can put your drink in a little holder, you can rock back and forth in your seat, you can eat nachos – THAT is today’s movie going experience. Warning: Long notes ahead.
Those who’ve read the Kritzer books, all of which were meant to be a valentine to an era when going to the movies was fun, special, and an adventure, know that I began my movie going at a very early age. My clearest memory is seeing The High and the Mighty a bunch of times at the Village Theater in Westwood on their newly installed and mighty impressive curved Cinemascope screen. I’m sure I saw movies before that – maybe High Noon, which I have a vague memory of, but mostly I’d say it was 1954 when my memory kicked in. I know I also saw The Tender Trap in 1955 at the Village in Cinemascope and can remember as if it was yesterday that wonderful opening song with Sinatra singing against a blue sky or backdrop on that huge Cinemascope screen. I would have been around six at the time. By that time, I was going to one of my three neighborhood movie theaters regularly for the Saturday matinee – with my grandfather on my father’s side, Grandpa Sam. That’s where I discovered The Three Stooges and Commando Cody and Captain America and cartoons and double features. They could show the new widescreen ratio of 1.85 (barely) but couldn’t show Cinemascope properly – they showed it basically letterboxed with the sides cut off. I saw Beneath the 12-Mile Reef there and it was a disappointment because usually the Stadium got the big Cinemascope features and had the screen to show them. The Lido was the other – I saw Invaders from Mars there, and Forbidden Planet (my aunt Yette took me) and Dialoblique and The Red Balloon and, of course, the 1956 double bill that adorns the cover of Benjamin Kritzer – The Man Who Knew Too Much and Autumn Leaves. Both the Picfair and the Lido got the cheesy horror and sci-fi movies. At the Picfair I saw Tarantula and The Fly and Horrors of the Black Museum. Later, I saw Pocketful of Miracles there, and One, Two, Three and A Hard Day’s Night. At the Lido I saw I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Teenagers from Outer Space. I saw Orson Welles’ The Trial there and Ladybug, Ladybug and The Mind Benders and Bachelor Flat and tons of others. The Stadium got the classy stuff and they didn’t do the standard Kiddie matinees – you could go to a Saturday matinee there, but just see the normal double bill. It got most of the big Fox Cinemascope pictures along with the second runs of all the big roadshow things – and they had stereophonic sound. At the Stadium I saw things like Carousel and The King and I, Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Bells are Ringing, Gigi, Daddy Long Legs, The Ten Commandments (reissue), Around the World in Eighty Days, The Time Machine, Village of the Damned and hundreds upon hundreds of others. The Lido and the Picfair are long gone – the Lido was razed around 1980, becoming a parking lot. The Picfair had become a discount appliance store and was burned down in the Rodney King riots. The Stadium is still there – in 1960 it closed and was turned into a temple.
But it was the palaces I loved, or even the higher class nabes. The Picwood in Westwood was one of my favorites – saw many movies there, including Midnight Lace (it was a Universal house and got most of those films), The Birds, and later The Boy Friend. The Village was one of my favorites and I saw incredible first-run films there, including many, many sneak previews. My very first sneak preview that I remember seeing was in 1954 – Target Earth at the Baldwin Theater. At the Village, in addition to the two films I’ve mentioned, I saw previews of High Time, Experiment in Terror and many others. At the Bruin, across the street, I saw a preview of The Caretakers (weird because the opening scene was shot at and inside the Bruin), I saw What’s New, Pussycat many times there and tons of other films. Miraculously both theaters are still there and more miraculously still running films.
In Ocean Park, where my grandparents lived, we had the Dome Theater, another great theater with great Cinemascope, where I saw Wichita and many other movies. Then there was Hollywood, of course. I think my earliest movie going memory from there was seeing Pardners with Martin and Lewis in 1956 at the Paramount Theater (now the El Capitan), although I may have seen something prior to that. Also at the Paramount I saw The Music Man and Bye Bye Birdie and two doctors, Zhivago and Dolittle and Poltergeist. The Chinese was a magnificent theater (I haven’t been there since the remodel to IMAX) – I saw Windjammer there, and then West Side Story over and over and over again. That was really my becoming a regular on Hollywood Blvd. So, the Paramount (El Capitan) and the Chinese are thankfully still showing movies. Further east, I went to the Vogue all the time – saw Days of Thrills and Laughter there and The Parent Trap many times, and What’s New, Pussycat played there, too, and so many other great films – it’s become a rock club, I believe. Nearer to Highland was the Hollywood – I saw Explorers there, but I wasn’t a regular attendee – it always seemed too cheap for my tastes. It’s now a wax museum. The Egyptian was a favorite – I saw Ben-Hur there, and King of Kings and Mutiny on the Bounty and The Empire Strikes Back and Alien. It’s now the American Cinematheque but looks nothing like it did.
Then there was the New View, where I saw the sixth run of North by Northwest, just because I followed that film everywhere. The building is still there (after it was the New View it became a Pussycat Theater for many years). Then there was the Iris – that became the Fox – I saw The Apple Dumpling Gang there, as well as the Close Encounters special edition. It, like the Vogue, is a rock club. At this point I should mention that The First Nudie Musical previewed at a lot of places – but the two that really meant something (and I went to both – seeing a third of the film at one and a third of the film at the other, before heading to Paramount to see the final third on the lot) were the Village and the Vogue. And the film played at the Fox during its run. There were two low-rent theaters, too – the Admiral and the Academy – one of them became the Holly and that building is still there. I saw films at both, but not often.
This is getting long, but I’m having fun. Then to the east of Vine we had the Pix, which I think was formerly called the Hawaii or the Hunley – I saw Torn Curtain there many times and many other films. It became the Henry Fonda Theater and is now mostly a rock venue. And, of course, the Pantages, now a legit house. There I saw Gypsy and Spartacus and The Great Race and tons of others. I worked there for three months when they were showing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. And I forgot the Warner Cinerama, where I saw Seven Wonders of the World, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, and How the West Was Won – after that it became the Pacific and I saw The Counterfeit Traitor and Flower Drum Song and Thoroughly Modern Mille and 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange and Carrie. It now houses a church. Down the street was the World – three movies for ninety-nine cents. We practically lived there when I went to LACC and I even worked there for a week. There’s a building there, but no façade and completely gutted. The Dome, of course, built in 1963 – Mad World, Grand Prix, Close Encounters, ET, and on and on and still there.
Going back to my neck of the woods, the Wilshire (now the Saban, a legit house) – saw The Five Pennies there and To Kill a Mockingbird and Let’s Make Love and Birdman of Alcatraz and The World of Henry Orient and Exodus and The Sound of Music and tons of others. Down the street was the Fine Arts – David and Lisa, The Miracle Worker, That Man from Rio and so many other 1960s films. It sits empty. On the Miracle Mile we had the Fox Ritz, where I saw The Adventures of Haji Baba and Scent of Mystery – it’s a parking lot. The El Rey, where I saw Psycho on its opening day and first performance – it’s a rock club. The Four Star, where I saw The Angry Red Planet, Pepe, Behind the Great Wall (in AromaRama), and where I had my first kiss in the back row, seeing Where the Boys Are. It was just demolished earlier this year. The Stanly Warner Beverly Hills – Song Without End, Lawrence of Arabia, The Sandpiper and so many others – now a parking lot. The Beverly Theater – Rebel Without a Cause, Dr. Strangelove, Tom Jones, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, That’s Entertainment, The Subterraneans – a gorgeous theater, now demolished. Around the corner, the Beverly Canon – Sundays and Cybele and other art films, now demolished. And the Carthay Circle Theater was one of the most gorgeous movie palaces ever – I only saw two movies there, but what an experience – the first was El Cid and the second was the 70mm reissue of Gone With the Wind. I only wish I’d seen the Todd-AO films there – Around the World and Oklahoma! both played there, as did Can-Can.
I could go on and on, as I went to movies all over the city. But you get the idea – most of the theaters are completely gone, some of the buildings are left but are other things, and right now there are probably less than eight single screen theaters in LA. It was once a very special place. It’s now, well, I don’t know what it is, but I really miss what it used to be.
That was REALLY long, wasn’t it? Yesterday, I only got about six hours of sleep, then I did a jog, then had scrambled eggs and a bagel. Then it was a two-hour work session for the next Kritzerland show but we got everything routined and assigned, so that’s good. Then Sami and mom came over and we ran all the monologues that had changes – she seems to be getting more comfortable with them and she mostly has them down pretty well. We also sang through a bunch of songs. Then we went to the Boneyard Bistro for a late lunch/early dinner. We all had brisket and three ribs and we split a sausage – all great. Then I came home and got the singers their music, after which I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I finished watching The Loved One. No need to write much about it, as I’ve written about it several times – other than to say you cannot imagine how that film pushed every envelope – “The movie with something to offend everyone” and boy was it true. Wonderful actors, great direction and photography, and terrific score by John Addison and a very wacky screenplay by Christopher Isherwood and Terry Southern. Interesting facts: Robert Morse looped his entire role because his accent was so erratic during filming. Every time Jonathan Winters is talking to or about his brother, the blessed Reverend Wilbur, he calls him Will, but if you watch his mouth, he’s really calling him Al. It was a convoluted plot point that just confused people so they changed it in post. If you’ve never seen it, it’s well worth checking out, and there’s about a minute of footage shot on Hollywood Blvd. circa 1964 – you can see Hody’s and the Vogue and the Gold Cup and some other classic Hollywood venues of that era.
After that, I was looking something up and it led me to Cinema Treasures, and looking at all my “saved” theaters there made me wax nostalgic, which I hope wasn’t too boring for you dear readers. Believe me, it could have been two hundred pages long because the theaters I mentioned are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I didn’t mention the Culver or the Meralta in Culver City or the Loyala or the Pan Pacific, all of which I frequented, not to mention theaters in mid-town LA and downtown and certainly not to mention the plethora of single screen theaters in the Valley, not a ONE of which exists anymore (a few of the buildings do and in the case of the Studio and the La Reina, they had to keep the facades intact). Maybe we’ll do a part two sometime.
Today, I plan on relaxing, eating something light, doing a jog, and catching up on more viewing.
Tomorrow I have a lunch meeting at noon-thirty, and then tons of stuff to do, and the rest of the week is meetings and meals, seeing a couple of things, doing the show order and writing the commentary and beginning to think about our fifth anniversary show.
Let’s all put on our pointy party hats and our colored tights and pantaloons, let’s all break out the cheese slices and the ham chunks, let’s all dance the Hora and the Continental because today is the birthday of our beloved dear reader Cillaliz. So, let’s give a big haineshisway.com birthday cheer to our beloved dear reader Cillaliz. On the count of three: One, two, three – A BIG HAINESHISWAY.COM BIRTHDAY CHEER TO OUR BELOVED DEAR READER CILLALIZ!!!
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, eat, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them – of course, you can post your own movie theater stories and what you saw where and what they are today. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have taken this little trip down memory lane.