Town Theatre
444 S. Hill Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
444 S. Hill Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
6 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 56 comments
Reopened as Town on March 23rd, 1935. No grand opening ad appeared in the LA Times.
February 4th, 1966 grand opening ad as Pussycat in the photo section.
Here’s a link to a shot of the Town in October ‘55 — https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5668/22294085863_54e106057f_o.png
From the Getty Archives, Leonard Nadel Collection, under “Traffic, Land Use, Housing and Street Conditions, Shopping”
There’s a screencap of the Pussycat here: http://therockfordfilestv.blogspot.com/2011/08/rockford-files-episode-profit-loss-car.html
Nice 1946 photo.
No matter where a projectionist worked, they could always pick up extra money by working the Midnight shift at a Pussycat theater. This booth was itty-bitty, but it was clean and ran great! I remember, well, I think I remember, the booth was painted a dark green. Heck, for all I know, maybe it was black. Wow, the first Pussycat.
The feature films playing in Joe Vogel’s post from Jan 30th, 2009 are
“Confidential Agent” (1945 from WB) Charles Boyer, Lauren Bacall & Peter Lorre. The second feature was “Two O'Clock Courage” (1945 from RKO).
Here is a 1946 photo. It may have been posted before on one of the dead links above but I post it below:
View link
The Town can be seen on the right in this 1939 photo from the USC archives:
http://tinyurl.com/d5g63w
Finally! Although the building is over two hundred feet distant, and the scan is a bit blurry, here is a photo of Bard’s Hill Street Theatre in the 1920s. The detail in the image is not too good, but it looks as though the theater had the same sort of fancy facade that Bard’s 8th Street had before it became the Olympic.
The photo is from the Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library and Archive.
A photo giving a fairly decent view of the Town in the 1940s. I believe the main feature is “Casablanca.”
According to city records, the 444/SilverCity bldng was constructed in 1987.
In April 1942 the theater was running 2 a.m. shows, presumably for second shift workers during the war. I recall that the State was staying open all night at that time as well.
They were doing work on this building today, so I took a look. I assume this new building replaced the theater building, which was demolished. I don’t think there was any reuse of the old building.
http://tinyurl.com/3rlecc
http://tinyurl.com/4ga9uk
New book-length Pussycat Theatre history from the San Diego Reader:
View link
The LA Library keeps producing photos from a seemingly bottomless source, so I will continue to check their site. Maybe we will get lucky.
Ken: I’d guess that this photo is from ca.1939-1940. The women’s outfits closely resemble Rosalind Russell’s in “His Girl Friday”, and I see the rear end of a car at far right that looks like it might be a ‘39 Chevy coupe (incidentally, John’s Old Car and Truck Pictures is a handy place to look when you’re trying to determine the dates of old photos that happen to have cars in them.)
I wonder if we’re ever going to find a photo of the Town showing what it looked like in the early years after its 1920 opening? In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if the austere modern facade with its vertical dividers might not actually have been the original design, and Albert Martin was just ahead of his time? After all, only a few years later, in 1926, he was the architectural engineer for L.A. City Hall, a strikingly modern building for that year.
We don’t have too many photos of this theater, so I’ll take what I can get. I often have lunch at the Subway immediately adjacent to the architectural atrocity that replaced the Town.
Here is a new addition from the LAPL. The Town is visible on the east side of Hill Street:
http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics45/00072154.jpg
Here is a 1970 ad from the LA Times:
http://tinyurl.com/2kyalf
Here is the location today:
http://tinyurl.com/2fy389
i was wondering what killed the pussycat chain. But then I remember the words VCR and the birth of the young porn industry in 1980. The movie Bogie Nights talks about that. This theatre has so much history i have a diary from my great grandfather about him and his friends going there.
I probably didn’t put it in right as an aka, I should have made it one word. Thanks.
The Band Box is listed here as Shamrock Theatre.
Well the address is the site of the 13 floor, William Fox Building which was built in 1929/30.