The direct link to the Fehlman LaBarre’s theatre projects above no longer works. Use the link to their home page in this comment and from there, click on “projects”, and then on “entertainment complexes” to fetch links to photos and descriptions of nine of their designs.
The screen is actually “sized just short of a football field” built for gnomes. It’s a fact little known outside Baltimore that, in that city, football is played exclusively by gnomes- thus there’s some confusion among Baltimoreans about the relative sizes of football fields and movie screens.
According to Daily Variety, 11/7/1939, before having the Mayfair Theatre built, owner Mrs. Jenne Dodge operated a theatre in Ventura called the Mission.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of 11/3/1939 gives the name of the owner of the Mayfair as James Dodge.
I haven’t found any further information about the Mission Theatre in Ventura.
I don’t know who designed the actual theatre that’s been inserted into the old I. Magnin building, but the architect of the Magnin building itself was Myron Hunt, of Hunt & Chambers.
The only Hunt-designed theatres originally built as theatres that I know of were the Vine Street Playhouse (now the Ricardo Montalban Theatre) in Hollywood, and the Ambassador Theatre, inside the Ambassador Hotel.
EJHouston: The Ambassador was never called the Mirror. The Mirror Theatre discussed in my comment of Dec. 31, 2004, above was the playhouse in Hollywood originally called the Vine Street Theater and now known as the Ricardo Montalban Theatre. The Montalban was called the Mirror from 1931 to 1936.
The 1955 episode of I Love Lucy you saw was filmed in a studio, and the backdrop outside the rooms at the fictional “Beverly Palms Hotel” was a photograph. It would not be surprising if the Montalban Theatre, during its Mirror period, was in that photo. Using an old photo from the 1930s as the backdrop would have saved the cost of making a new one.
Google Maps Street View provides this photo of the Vogue’s building as it appears in 2008 (be patient while the picture loads- Google Maps' street view feature can be very slow at times.) The Los Angeles County Assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1929 for the building, which contains 4800 square feet, so completely covering its lot, which has dimensions of 40x120 feet.
The L.A. Public Library misidentifies this 1928 photo as being of the California Theatre in Bakersfield. Given the Moorish detailing, suitable for a theatre called the Granada, I wonder if perhaps it actually depict this house. The size and shape of the facade is a good match for that of the Granada, which can be seen on this page as it looked long after its 1950 remodeling.
I wonder if the 1928 photo ken mc posted on September 26, 2007, which the L.A. Library misidentifies as the California Theatre, could actually depict the Granada Theatre, which opened about that time? The theatre in the photo does have some Moorish design elements, suitable for a theatre of that name, and its facade is about the same size as the Granada’s, seen on this page some years after its 1950 remodeling.
The only photo I’ve found showing the Rialto is this ca.1940s shot of Baker Street, with the theatre at some distance in the center. A vertical sign for the Granada Theatre (presumably around the corner) can be seen at right.
Here’s an interesting bit of advertising history touching on this theater. In the late 1920’s, the Kellogg company used Hal Roach’s “Our Gang” to promote its new cereal, Kellogg’s Pep. On this page there’s a letter sent from the Pathe Exchange to the Classic Theatre in Watertown, Wisconsin, “suggesting” to the theater’s operator a course of action by which the house could secure “…additional and earlier bookings on OUR GANG comedies….” The already somewhat overbearing tone of the letter was given a sinister note by the “SEES ALL – KNOWS ALL” watermark which appeared on Pathe’s stationery.
Whether S. Charles Lee did any work for the final design of the Carmel Theatre or not, there is information about his relationship to it in Box 1, Folder 22 of his collected papers, according to the online finding aid for the collection at UCLA. If somebody with access to the collection itself comes across this page, I hope they’ll take a look at what’s in that folder and report back to us about it. If there are photos or drawings of it, they probably haven’t been digitized or they’d probably be on the Lee website.
Laurie, you have a sharper eye than I do. I hadn’t noticed the lettering on that building. It must be the building on the southwest corner 5th, right across Whittier from the Security Bank building. The county assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1926 for the building on that lot now, so it must be the same one in the photo. Unfortunately the library doesn’t have any closer photos of it, except one showing one end of the 5th street side of it (at far right in this photo.) I’d be interested to know what your neighbor might remember about the building with the arched front, too.
Also, I checked the finding aid for the S. Charles Lee papers at UCLA, and it does list Alfred Olander as the owner of the Garmar Theatre.
Laurie & Droog: Thanks for the confirmation of the Vogue’s location. Now I can have it added to the Cinema Treasures database. An opening date of 1940s also confirms my suspicion that the Vogue was in a converted store building rather than a purpose-built theatre building. The assessor’s office says the building itself was erected in 1929.
The name Olander is familiar to me. An acquaintance named Don Olander some thirty years ago told me that his family ran either the bowling alley or the coffee shop in the bowling alley (the memory is dim) that was in the northern part of Montebello, southwest of Garfield and Pomona Boulevard. The subject of the Vogue never came up in our conversation, but the name Olander is not common so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same family.
But as one mystery is solved, another opens up. Or, now, two more. The building which is probably at 520 Whittier and which may have been a theater is still a mystery, now that we know it wasn’t the Vogue; and in addition we now have the Cameo on the opposite side of Whittier somewhere in that same area. I’m quite sure that only two theaters (the Garmar and the Vogue) were operating in Montebello by the late 1950s, so the odds of anyone showing up who remembers either the Cameo or the possible theater at 520 Whittier are slim, so this is probably another research mystery.
L.A. County Assessor’s office says the building currently on this site (southwest corner of Florence and Walnut) was built in 1981. The Florencita Theatre is gone.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives the effective year built for this building as 1940. The “Year Built” space on its page has “0000” in it. Grrrr, missing data!
The county assessor’s office lists three structures on two lots at this address: A 6000 sq.ft. building erected in 1912; a 3600 sq.ft. building erected in 1914; and a 4320 sq.ft. building erected in 1957. TerraServer’s satellite view shows that the building just west of the one abutting the alley (see ken mc’s photos linked above) has a section behind it with a different style of roof than the street-front section.
The alley-side brick wall in Ken’s photo looks too old for 1957 so is probably from the 1910s. That building also looks a bit narrow for a theatre. The City’s ZIMAS site gives the addresses of the two lots as 1896 and 1898 W. Adams, so it seems likely that the theatre was in the building farther from the alley.
The question is, which section of the building next to the alley-side building is of 1910s vintage. From above, the back section of the western building looks more like it would have held an auditorium, but it also looks more like it might be newer construction. I wonder if the theatre’s auditorium was there, and replaced in 1957, or if the former front section of the theatre building was replaced then?
If the front of the theatre had originally been divided into lobby, foyer, and a couple of storefronts, with load-bearing walls separating them, then it would have made sense for someone converting the property for another use to demo and replace that part of the building, and keep the auditorium section with its clear span. In any case, it seems likely that at least part of the Adams Theatre has been demolished.
The 1939 L.A. City Directory has the Allena Theatre listed at 120 E. Santa Barbara Avenue. The 1942 directory has it at 126 E. Santa Barbara. In the 1956 directory, Kapp’s market is listed at 120 E. Santa Barbara, and the Allena Theatre is not listed at all. According to the L.A. County assessor’s office, the building currently on that lot, now numbered 120 E. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, was built in 1982.
Thanks, Laurie. I’ve checked Google Maps street view and the parcel viewer at the L.A. County Assessor’s website, and I see a building at 712 Whittier Boulevard that looks vaguely familiar to me. Could you take a look at this photo at Flickr and tell me if the building now housing Salon Maxx, and having an angled projection punctured by three round holes, is the building which housed the Vogue? As I said in my earlier comment, I only saw the place a few times, and that was ages ago, so my memory is pretty dim. But I do now have a vague recollection of that architectural feature with the three holes in it, and another vague memory that there was a parking lot just a little way east of the Vogue (and there is one just a bit east of this building), but I’m not at all positive about any of this.
Patsy and William: I don’t think the reference in Karol’s book could be to the El Capitan on Vine. From the early 1940s until 1949, the El Capitan on Vine Street was the venue of Ken Murray’s Blackouts, an extraordinarily popular stage review which ran for 3,844 performances, so I doubt the theatre would have been available for any other purpose.
Desi Arnaz was the bandleader on Bob Hope’s weekly (Tuesday night) radio show in 1946 and 1947, but I’m pretty sure the show originated from the NBC studios at Sunset and Vine, and the band would probably have been in the studio, as a rule.
It’s possible that the book is correct about the venue, though. Maybe Arnaz and the band did play at the Paramount Theatre at least once during 1947. Paramount’s production and exhibition arms were still united in 1947, and Bob Hope’s movies were released through Paramount. Any or all of his 1947 films (he made three that year) are likely to have had runs at the Hollywood Paramount. If so, then a remote broadcast of the radio show from the theatre (with Arnaz leading the orchestra as usual), to promote a Bob Hope movie, would not have been out of the question.
I’m just speculating about this, of course, but such an event at the Paramount seems more likely than an appearance by the Arnaz orchestra at the El Capitan on Vine in that year.
The direct link to the Fehlman LaBarre’s theatre projects above no longer works. Use the link to their home page in this comment and from there, click on “projects”, and then on “entertainment complexes” to fetch links to photos and descriptions of nine of their designs.
http://www.fehlmanlabarre.com/#home
I don’t think anything remains from the 1942 renovation.
The screen is actually “sized just short of a football field” built for gnomes. It’s a fact little known outside Baltimore that, in that city, football is played exclusively by gnomes- thus there’s some confusion among Baltimoreans about the relative sizes of football fields and movie screens.
Here’s a 1945 photo of the El Rey Theatre in Paradise, from the Eastman’s Originals Collection at U.C. Davis.
According to Daily Variety, 11/7/1939, before having the Mayfair Theatre built, owner Mrs. Jenne Dodge operated a theatre in Ventura called the Mission.
Southwest Builder & Contractor of 11/3/1939 gives the name of the owner of the Mayfair as James Dodge.
I haven’t found any further information about the Mission Theatre in Ventura.
I don’t know who designed the actual theatre that’s been inserted into the old I. Magnin building, but the architect of the Magnin building itself was Myron Hunt, of Hunt & Chambers.
The only Hunt-designed theatres originally built as theatres that I know of were the Vine Street Playhouse (now the Ricardo Montalban Theatre) in Hollywood, and the Ambassador Theatre, inside the Ambassador Hotel.
EJHouston: The Ambassador was never called the Mirror. The Mirror Theatre discussed in my comment of Dec. 31, 2004, above was the playhouse in Hollywood originally called the Vine Street Theater and now known as the Ricardo Montalban Theatre. The Montalban was called the Mirror from 1931 to 1936.
The 1955 episode of I Love Lucy you saw was filmed in a studio, and the backdrop outside the rooms at the fictional “Beverly Palms Hotel” was a photograph. It would not be surprising if the Montalban Theatre, during its Mirror period, was in that photo. Using an old photo from the 1930s as the backdrop would have saved the cost of making a new one.
Google Maps Street View provides this photo of the Vogue’s building as it appears in 2008 (be patient while the picture loads- Google Maps' street view feature can be very slow at times.) The Los Angeles County Assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1929 for the building, which contains 4800 square feet, so completely covering its lot, which has dimensions of 40x120 feet.
There is now a Cinema Treasures page for the Vogue Theatre.
The L.A. Public Library misidentifies this 1928 photo as being of the California Theatre in Bakersfield. Given the Moorish detailing, suitable for a theatre called the Granada, I wonder if perhaps it actually depict this house. The size and shape of the facade is a good match for that of the Granada, which can be seen on this page as it looked long after its 1950 remodeling.
I wonder if the 1928 photo ken mc posted on September 26, 2007, which the L.A. Library misidentifies as the California Theatre, could actually depict the Granada Theatre, which opened about that time? The theatre in the photo does have some Moorish design elements, suitable for a theatre of that name, and its facade is about the same size as the Granada’s, seen on this page some years after its 1950 remodeling.
The only photo I’ve found showing the Rialto is this ca.1940s shot of Baker Street, with the theatre at some distance in the center. A vertical sign for the Granada Theatre (presumably around the corner) can be seen at right.
Here’s an interesting bit of advertising history touching on this theater. In the late 1920’s, the Kellogg company used Hal Roach’s “Our Gang” to promote its new cereal, Kellogg’s Pep. On this page there’s a letter sent from the Pathe Exchange to the Classic Theatre in Watertown, Wisconsin, “suggesting” to the theater’s operator a course of action by which the house could secure “…additional and earlier bookings on OUR GANG comedies….” The already somewhat overbearing tone of the letter was given a sinister note by the “SEES ALL – KNOWS ALL” watermark which appeared on Pathe’s stationery.
Whether S. Charles Lee did any work for the final design of the Carmel Theatre or not, there is information about his relationship to it in Box 1, Folder 22 of his collected papers, according to the online finding aid for the collection at UCLA. If somebody with access to the collection itself comes across this page, I hope they’ll take a look at what’s in that folder and report back to us about it. If there are photos or drawings of it, they probably haven’t been digitized or they’d probably be on the Lee website.
Laurie, you have a sharper eye than I do. I hadn’t noticed the lettering on that building. It must be the building on the southwest corner 5th, right across Whittier from the Security Bank building. The county assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1926 for the building on that lot now, so it must be the same one in the photo. Unfortunately the library doesn’t have any closer photos of it, except one showing one end of the 5th street side of it (at far right in this photo.) I’d be interested to know what your neighbor might remember about the building with the arched front, too.
Also, I checked the finding aid for the S. Charles Lee papers at UCLA, and it does list Alfred Olander as the owner of the Garmar Theatre.
Correction to my previous comment: The bowling alley I mentioned was southeast of Garfield and Pomona Boulevard, not southwest.
Laurie & Droog: Thanks for the confirmation of the Vogue’s location. Now I can have it added to the Cinema Treasures database. An opening date of 1940s also confirms my suspicion that the Vogue was in a converted store building rather than a purpose-built theatre building. The assessor’s office says the building itself was erected in 1929.
The name Olander is familiar to me. An acquaintance named Don Olander some thirty years ago told me that his family ran either the bowling alley or the coffee shop in the bowling alley (the memory is dim) that was in the northern part of Montebello, southwest of Garfield and Pomona Boulevard. The subject of the Vogue never came up in our conversation, but the name Olander is not common so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same family.
But as one mystery is solved, another opens up. Or, now, two more. The building which is probably at 520 Whittier and which may have been a theater is still a mystery, now that we know it wasn’t the Vogue; and in addition we now have the Cameo on the opposite side of Whittier somewhere in that same area. I’m quite sure that only two theaters (the Garmar and the Vogue) were operating in Montebello by the late 1950s, so the odds of anyone showing up who remembers either the Cameo or the possible theater at 520 Whittier are slim, so this is probably another research mystery.
L.A. County Assessor’s office says the building currently on this site (southwest corner of Florence and Walnut) was built in 1981. The Florencita Theatre is gone.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives the date of construction for the 7403 sq.ft. building at this address as 1925.
The whole block is a strip mall now, built in 1990.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives the effective year built for this building as 1940. The “Year Built” space on its page has “0000” in it. Grrrr, missing data!
The county assessor’s office lists three structures on two lots at this address: A 6000 sq.ft. building erected in 1912; a 3600 sq.ft. building erected in 1914; and a 4320 sq.ft. building erected in 1957. TerraServer’s satellite view shows that the building just west of the one abutting the alley (see ken mc’s photos linked above) has a section behind it with a different style of roof than the street-front section.
The alley-side brick wall in Ken’s photo looks too old for 1957 so is probably from the 1910s. That building also looks a bit narrow for a theatre. The City’s ZIMAS site gives the addresses of the two lots as 1896 and 1898 W. Adams, so it seems likely that the theatre was in the building farther from the alley.
The question is, which section of the building next to the alley-side building is of 1910s vintage. From above, the back section of the western building looks more like it would have held an auditorium, but it also looks more like it might be newer construction. I wonder if the theatre’s auditorium was there, and replaced in 1957, or if the former front section of the theatre building was replaced then?
If the front of the theatre had originally been divided into lobby, foyer, and a couple of storefronts, with load-bearing walls separating them, then it would have made sense for someone converting the property for another use to demo and replace that part of the building, and keep the auditorium section with its clear span. In any case, it seems likely that at least part of the Adams Theatre has been demolished.
The 1939 L.A. City Directory has the Allena Theatre listed at 120 E. Santa Barbara Avenue. The 1942 directory has it at 126 E. Santa Barbara. In the 1956 directory, Kapp’s market is listed at 120 E. Santa Barbara, and the Allena Theatre is not listed at all. According to the L.A. County assessor’s office, the building currently on that lot, now numbered 120 E. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, was built in 1982.
Thanks, Laurie. I’ve checked Google Maps street view and the parcel viewer at the L.A. County Assessor’s website, and I see a building at 712 Whittier Boulevard that looks vaguely familiar to me. Could you take a look at this photo at Flickr and tell me if the building now housing Salon Maxx, and having an angled projection punctured by three round holes, is the building which housed the Vogue? As I said in my earlier comment, I only saw the place a few times, and that was ages ago, so my memory is pretty dim. But I do now have a vague recollection of that architectural feature with the three holes in it, and another vague memory that there was a parking lot just a little way east of the Vogue (and there is one just a bit east of this building), but I’m not at all positive about any of this.
Patsy and William: I don’t think the reference in Karol’s book could be to the El Capitan on Vine. From the early 1940s until 1949, the El Capitan on Vine Street was the venue of Ken Murray’s Blackouts, an extraordinarily popular stage review which ran for 3,844 performances, so I doubt the theatre would have been available for any other purpose.
Desi Arnaz was the bandleader on Bob Hope’s weekly (Tuesday night) radio show in 1946 and 1947, but I’m pretty sure the show originated from the NBC studios at Sunset and Vine, and the band would probably have been in the studio, as a rule.
It’s possible that the book is correct about the venue, though. Maybe Arnaz and the band did play at the Paramount Theatre at least once during 1947. Paramount’s production and exhibition arms were still united in 1947, and Bob Hope’s movies were released through Paramount. Any or all of his 1947 films (he made three that year) are likely to have had runs at the Hollywood Paramount. If so, then a remote broadcast of the radio show from the theatre (with Arnaz leading the orchestra as usual), to promote a Bob Hope movie, would not have been out of the question.
I’m just speculating about this, of course, but such an event at the Paramount seems more likely than an appearance by the Arnaz orchestra at the El Capitan on Vine in that year.