Tally's Electric Theatre
311 S. Spring Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
311 S. Spring Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
5 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 47 of 47 comments
It’s hard to tell from the photos, but after looking at my large images in photoshop on my computer, the 262 address is a parking lot now. The building on the corner of 3rd is apparently the same building but was sliced diagonally to let 3rd flow through when they took the corner off. Unless they built a new building with the exact same footprint minus the diagonal slice it must be the same building since it lines up perfectly with the current photo. The remaining building north a little is getting ready for the wrecking ball from what a few business owners on Main have told me. That will mean that the Cathedral and the 3rd corner building are the only remaining buildings on the whole east side of Main block. The 266 address on the Sanborn map is actually the corner building now which I believe has a 3rd street address now but I’m not positive. If anyone wants a similar overlay of another block or area, let me know.
KenRoe: Then we’ve definitely got two different theatres in this short stretch of Main Street; Tally’s Electric (later called the Lyric) at 262 S. Main and the Liberty at 266 S. Main. That means we’re still in need of a photo of the Main Street Tally’s/Lyric (and both theatres still need their own CT pages, too.)
Wait. If the room labeled “Theatre” in your Sanborn map is definitely 262 S. Main, then the Liberty and Tally’s Electric were not the same theatre. The Liberty would have been a bit farther south than Tally’s Electric. As can be seen by comparing map with old and new photos, the Liberty Theatre building backed (and backs?) up to the side wall of the Hotel Bisbee (aka Hotel Manhattan) on 3rd Street, but the room labeled “Theatre” on your map is a bit farther north than that. So there were two theatres on that section of that block of Main Street. Puzzling.
There were two Liberty Theatre’s, one located at 266 S. Main Street which operated from the early part of the 20th Century until pre-1930 (which is the photograph incorrectly placed on the the ‘other’ Liberty Theatre-its final name (aka Novelty Theatre & Chinese Theatre), 136 S. Main Street which operated from at least the 1930’s until the 1950’s.
vokoban: I just checked your Flickr posts and it certainly looks as though the surviving building on Main Street at what is now the corner of 3rd could be the Liberty Theatre (and thus maybe Tally’s Electric), minus its front section. It’s the right size and shape, and looks as though it’s in the right location. The building depicted as the Liberty is either that one or was the vanished building immediately south of it.
Again, I’ve checked the two photos of the Liberty at Brent Dickerson’s page and I’m now quite sure that the truncated corner building still standing at the northeast corner 3rd and Main is at least on what’s left of the lot once occupied by the Liberty Theatre, and may be the same building. A hidden landmark!
Tally’s Electric on Main Street doesn’t yet have a listing at Cinema Treasures. But there is what I’m pretty sure is a picture of it when it was called the Liberty Theatre. That page gives the Liberty’s address as 136 S. Main, but the photo on the page depicts a building which can be seen at the east end of 3rd street in some other old photos of the area. The Liberty name must have belonged to more than one theatre at various times. See my recent comment on that page for the explanation of why I think the picture may depict Tally’s Electric Theatre some time after he left Main Street.
Does anyone know the Cinema Treasures page for the original Tally’s Electric at 262 s. Main? I put together a few graphics to show the actual location using a 1906 Sanborn map and a current satellite image. Here they are even though they don’t refer to the Spring street address:
This is a side by side comparison:
View link
This is an overlay version:
View link
I took a hike down Spring Street today. Status should be closed/demolished. There’s no evidence of any turn of the century buildings on this block.
Does the building still exist?
The Electric Theater was mentioned in yesterday’s LA Times article about the decline of theaters in downtown Los Angeles.
That’s a great observation about the letter reuse! I’ve seen businesses do that today.
vokoban: My source for the information about Tally converting his Main Street theatre to vaudeville after six months is the American Heritage article by David Nasaw, to which I linked in my comment above. This was apparently not uncommon in the early days of movie theatres. Before 1905, there wasn’t much product available, and the novelty of the short reels of scenes and tableaux and random events which were then available soon wore off.
It wasn’t until movie producers began making comedy, drama and adventure films with at least rudimentary plots that theatres specializing in movies became financially successful. Of course, the vaudeville theatres themselves frequently ran films in those years, but they were not the main attraction. Tally was obviously persistent, though, so he probably exhibited movies in his theatre whenever there was something available that he thought would draw patrons.
It’s interesting that Tally changed the name of his theatre to the Lyric. It’s certainly a more fitting name for a vaudeville house than Electric Theatre would have been- and, if the name “TALLY’S ELECTRIC” was spelled out in capital letters, “LYRIC” was easily (and cheaply) made from the letters he already had.
When Tally’s Electric changed it’s name to the Lyric at 262 south Main, was it opened as a vaudeville house? Here’s something from Oct. 11, 1903, but it sounds like the ‘moving pictures’ were more of a special show than the regular fare:
A set of moving pictures called “Fairyland,” shown at the Lyric Theater in this city now, is an interesting exhibit of the limits to which moving picture-making can be carried in the hands of experts equipped with time and money to carry out their devices…….T.L. Tally, manager of the Lyric, claims to have the only film of its kind in the West.
A comment above suggests that the first movie theatre in the world was opened by George Melies in Paris, in 1896. In fact, Melies theatre (named Theatre Robert-Houdin), which he acquired in 1888, was a live performance venue, specializing in magic acts. Melies added movies to his programs in 1896, but continued to present the magic shows as well. Theatre Robert-Houdin, therefore, would not qualify as an actual movie theatre, any more than would the many Vaudeville houses and other theatres in the United States which began including early movies as part of their programs about the same time Melies did.
Here is a page about Melies and his early work in the development of movies.
Thomas Tally’s Spring Street location was not the first theatre especially built for movies. As can be seen from the picture linked in the comment above by ken mc, this was the location of Tally’s Phonograph Parlor, which was a storefront arcade containing phonographs and primitive viewing machines through which an individual viewer could see “moving pictures” produced by means of a device which flipped through a series of still photographs on cards.
The room at the back was “Tally’s Theatre” which he opened in 1896, following the great success of the first exhibition of movies in Los Angeles, at the Orpheum Theatre (the Grand, on Main Street) earlier that year. Here is a quote from David Nasaw’s article on the early history of motion picture exhibition, published in the November, 1993 issue of American Heritage Magazine:[quote]“After two weeks of sold-out performances, the projector and its operators left the Orpheum for a tour of nearby vaudeville houses. But it turned out that theaters outside Los Angeles could not provide the electrical power needed to run the projector, so the machine was hauled back to Los Angeles and installed in the back of Thomas Tally’s amusement parlor.
“In the front of his store, Tally had set up automatic phonograph and peepshow machines that provided customers, for a nickel a play, with a few minutes of scratchy recorded sound or a few seconds of flickering moving images. Tally now partitioned off the back of his parlor for a ‘vitascope’ room.”[/quote]
It was Tally’s Electric Theatre at 262 South Main Street which was opened in 1902, and was the first permanent theatre in America built especially for the exhibition of movies. It proved not to be as permanent as Tally had hoped, though. The venture was a financial failure and, after six months of showing movies, Tally converted the house into a Vaudeville theatre.
From the LA Library, circa 1896:
http://jpg2.lapl.org/theater2/00015465.jpg
Bway:
I checked the location with Terraserver, and found my memory of the area confirmed The site if the theater is now occupied by a large office building (probably built in the 1920s.) The server won’t recognize the address 311 S.Spring, but does fetch 315. The building occupies the entire corner of the block, all the way to 3rd Street. There are very few small buildings from before the 1920s era left on Spring Street, which was for decades the main financial district of Los Angeles, lined mainly with banks and corporate offices, and a few hotels. Most of the banks and corporate headquarters have departed these buildings, but it is still a splendid collection of mostly 1920s-1930s architecture, though much of it lies vacant.
The Broadway Theatre in the 400 block was called Tally’s “New” Broadway, because he had an earlier Tally’s Broadway Theater in the 800 block. That theater was demolished in 1929, to make way for an expansion of the May Company Department Store.
Thanks. Unfortunately, it could be a new building (new being any building after the theater vacated). I guess I’ll have to drive by and see.
I will be in Los Angeles in January. Does anyone know if this theater buikding still exists and if it does, what it is now?
I would love to drive by when I am there, but wont bother unless there is srill something there. It looks like it is just south of the 101, and just west of the 101’s intersection with the 5. I don’t know if I was in that part of LA when I was there a few years ago, but do know the general area there.
The Tally’s Electric Theatre was the first movie ‘Theatre’ in the United States. I believe the World’s first was in 1896 in Paris. it was called George Melies' Theatre.
Tally also ran Tally’s New Broadway Theatre (428 South Broadway), another Tally’s Electric Theatre (262 South Main Street; both in Los Angeles), and Tally’s Theatre (904 State Street) in Santa Barbara.