Pan Pacific Theatre

7554 Beverly Boulevard,
Los Angeles, CA 90036

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Showing 1 - 25 of 51 comments

RickB
RickB on December 25, 2012 at 12:58 pm

Comparing some of the earlier and later pictures of the theater it’s a little surprising how much more dramatic it looks with a wider sidewalk in front of it. I presume the street was widened after the theater was built.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on May 15, 2012 at 8:07 pm

The opening year for the Pan Pacific Theatre was probably either 1936 or 1937, as the entry for architect Welton Beckett (William Pereira’s partner) in the AIA’s 1956 American Architects Directory lists the design as a 1936 project.

BobSe
BobSe on November 24, 2011 at 12:49 pm

@Matt Spero: I was the regulat projectionist at the Pan for about two years before it went non-union. The shock you received was because the rectifiers they installed to replace the generator shared the same ground…whenever one or both rectifiers were on, you got shocked unless you opened the old table switch and broke the circuit. I have no photos of the interior, but I do have some old polaroids of the booth after it was automated.

BRADE48
BRADE48 on June 7, 2011 at 8:06 pm

I remember going to the Pan Pacific Auditorium as a child for events like Ringling Bros Circus, Auto Shows, Sportman’s Show etc. The movie theatre I did not go to until before it closed. They showed 2nd run double features at a cheap, cheap price.

images982003
images982003 on February 15, 2010 at 3:26 am

please come and join us if your a fan of the pan pacific auditorium

http://ppaplayground.ning.com/

we are fan’s of this great building

moviebear1
moviebear1 on August 7, 2009 at 11:36 am

Does anyone have any interior phots of this theatre? I once worked there as a relief projectionist showing Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I remember getting a light shock anytime I would touch both projectiors at the same time.

Matt Spero

Ken Roe
Ken Roe on April 5, 2009 at 12:27 pm

This theatre’s main introduction above, has now been amended.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on April 5, 2009 at 1:59 am

The into definitely needs to be rewritten. It currently isn’t about the theater at all.

And while we’re at it, Modern or Mid-Century Modern (the latter more often referring to interior design, but increasingly used to describe buildings as well) should definitely be added to the choice of architectural styles available when submitting theaters to the site. The more issues of Boxoffice from the 1940s on I look at, full of photos of totally modern theater buildings, the more obvious it becomes to me that hundreds of theaters were built in purely modern styles. It doesn’t make sense to call them At Moderne, because most of them have left every trace of that style behind.

What we should call some of the recent multiplexes and megaplexes that borrow heavily from Art Deco and Art Modern, I don’t know. I guess Neo-Deco or Neo-Moderne might do, but I’ve come to think of them as Mannerist Moderne, since they usually have an exaggerated “referential” quality to their designs, characteristic of Mannerism.
But I don’t think any architecture critic has used that appellation.

In the 1970s, the late critic C. Ray Smith wrote a book called “Supermannerism,” which was mostly about architect Paul Rudolph, but the term appears never to have stuck as a stylistic appellation. I think he was on the right track, though. The works of more recent celebrity architects such as Michael Graves look Mannerist as hell to me.

kencmcintyre
kencmcintyre on April 5, 2009 at 12:23 am

Along those lines, the introduction is incorrect as it refers to the auditorium and not the theater.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on April 5, 2009 at 12:07 am

The Art Deco designation at top is the another result of the confusion between the theater and the auditorium. The auditorium I’d consider Streamline Moderne with some lingering Art Deco elements, so I’d say it would be best classified as Art Moderne. The theater, on the other hand, was a fairly pure Midcentury Modern design, although those split, angled columns certainly have a Googiesque quality. However, this theater was built before there ever was a Googie’s coffee shop.

Some of the moderne and modernist buildings designed for theaters were probably among the inspirations for what became the Googie style. What many theater architects did in their designs was to use the building exterior itself as an advertisement, which is essentially what John Lautner did when he come up with the first Googie’s coffee shop design in 1949. I see Googie not so much a style of its own as I do a modernist-influenced extension of the whole theatrical approach to architecture as something to pull in the customers, which was done even with the earliest big movie houses built in the 1910s.

And if form follows function, and one of the functions of a commercial building is to attract the attention of potential patrons, then I suppose Googieism can be seen as an expression, somewhat bent, of the first modernist credo, even though it’s not entirely within the modernist aesthetic.

I’d go so far as to say that placing as much or more emphasis on architectural effects to attract attention as on functionality of use is one of the primary distinctions between Moderne Modern, just as it was a major distinction between the somewhat eclectic classical revival theater designs of architects such as Thomas Lamb, and the purer classical revival designs of academic architects such as McKim, Mead, and White. It’s also one of the reasons why purist modern architects usually saw the moderne as an example of architectural backsliding, little better than the various revival styles, pure or not, that they wanted to displace.

But I’m sure architecture critics will be arguing about these distinctions for decades to come, so whatever descriptive terms eventually get adopted for these various styles are unlikely to be decided by me. I have fun blathering about it on the Internets, though.

kencmcintyre
kencmcintyre on April 4, 2009 at 6:50 pm

That actually looks like Googie, as opposed to Art Deco. Similar to many of the Googie-style coffee shops in the 1950s.

kencmcintyre
kencmcintyre on April 4, 2009 at 4:08 pm

That is a great photo, Chuck. Here is one from 1983:
http://tinyurl.com/cfnmqf

MiamiJer
MiamiJer on March 22, 2009 at 4:07 pm

It is sad that many Fairfax residents, especially transplants, are not aware of the history surrounding Pan Pacific Park. The Pan-Pacific Auditorium was a landmark structure in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, California which once stood at 7600 West Beverly Boulevard near the site of Gilmore Field, an early Los Angeles baseball venue predating Dodger Stadium. It was located within sight of both CBS Television City on the southeast corner of Beverly and Fairfax Avenue and the Farmers Market on the northeast corner of Third Street and Fairfax. For over 35 years it was the premiere location for indoor public events in Los Angeles. The facility was closed in 1972, beginning 17 years of steady neglect and decay. In 1978 the Pan-Pacific Auditorium was included in the National Register of Historic Places but 11 years later the sprawling wooden structure was destroyed in a spectacular fire. Nothing remains of the venue since it was demolished. Copy & paste link for pics & more info:

View link

Meredith Rhule
Meredith Rhule on December 20, 2008 at 8:35 pm

Bob Seeling thought he would retire here. HAAA

unihikid
unihikid on February 8, 2008 at 9:23 pm

ok i know this is about the theatre and not the aud,but just to let some of you know,it took them about 3 years to tare down the remainder of the facade,i remember it well because it scared the sh_t out of me(i was like 8 or 9).i use to have boy scout meetings near by and when i got older i would sneak in the lot where the aud use to be and i would make plans on how to take the art deco lamp post,sadly they even tore thoes down.

charlie

DixonSteele
DixonSteele on September 15, 2007 at 7:30 am

Sad. Saw some great double bills here in the early 80s incl THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and CANNERY ROW!

kencmcintyre
kencmcintyre on August 4, 2007 at 1:14 am

Here are some photos of the demolition from the LA Times on 9/23/84:
http://tinyurl.com/2kb9fd
http://tinyurl.com/2wnppr

PANPACIFICLVR
PANPACIFICLVR on August 3, 2007 at 12:02 am

Yes Joe, you took the words right out of my…fingers!

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on August 2, 2007 at 1:43 am

Ken, it was the Pan Pacific Auditorium that closed in 1972. The Pan Pacific Theatre remained open until 1984.

kencmcintyre
kencmcintyre on August 2, 2007 at 12:57 am

This ad is dated January 1980, which conflicts with the 1972 closing date. I don’t think the Pan Pacific auditorium was showing films:
http://tinyurl.com/2v27tv

jerry4dos
jerry4dos on July 7, 2007 at 12:36 am

“The park” was a fortunate side benefit. The County bought the property to improve the storm-drain system. A big pit was dug which will collect storm water in event of a 100-year storm that overwhelms the drainage system. It would hold the water until the normal drainage system could handle it. That’s why the park is in the shape of a big bowl, and no substantial improvements are in the center of the park. They may be underwater some day.

kencmcintyre
kencmcintyre on July 6, 2007 at 11:25 pm

There is an interesting article in the LA Times dated 9/23/84 concerning the demolition of the theater. If you have access to the LA Times archives, there are numerous photos of the demolition. The accompanying story is too long to reproduce here. It does state that the theater opened in 1935 and was closed in 1972. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The county bought the site from the estate of car magnate Errett Cord for 10.45 million dollars in 1979. The plan at that time was to use the space for a park.

kencmcintyre
kencmcintyre on June 3, 2007 at 12:57 pm

Feature films on 1/22/50 were “Forever Amber” and “Embraceable You” Phone number was MI-6274.

kencmcintyre
kencmcintyre on May 26, 2007 at 6:11 pm

The theater changed hands in September 1947, according to the LA Times:

Pan-Pacific Sold to Cord in $2,250,000 Deal

In a $2,250,000 transaction, stockholders of the Pan-Pacific Corp. yesterday sold the Pan-Pacific Auditorium, Theater and Bowling Alley and the Los Angeles ice hockey team franchise to E. L. Cord, former automobile manufacturer.