Burgundy soda was sold from the soft drink machine at the Garfield Theatre in Alhambra, too. I hadn’t thought about that in ages, but I used to buy it every time I went to a movie there, as that was the only place I knew of where it was available. It had a nice, subtle grape flavor, not as sweet as the concord grape based sodas that were more common in those days, as I recall. Heh. I guess I was a budding wine snob, even at twelve years old. I remember now that I used to wish that I could get burgundy soda outside the theatre, because I thought it would make a great flavor for a float. Thanks for the reminder of a long forgotten delight, Watcher.
ken mc: It turns out that the Tally’s New Broadway Theatre in the picture you discovered is listed on Cinema Treasures, under its final name, the GarnettTheatre, at 554 S. Broadway.
Having seen the 1929 picture of the Arcade Building, I’m sure that Tally’s New Broadway is the Garnett. The lot between the Arcade Building and Silverwood’s store on the corner of 6th Street looks to be about the right size for this theatre.
I’ve never seen the Conservancy’s theatres database, but I’m sure they have had access to a lot of information about the city’s buildings. One reason I can think of for an error is that often, permits were issued for planned buildings and then those plans were never carried out, but the records remain in the city’s files, with no indication that the building wasn’t built. It’s possible that a theatre was planned for this site, but not built, and the Conservancy’s researchers didn’t follow through to find the age of the building which now stands on this site.
If that address is immediately south of the Broadway Arcade Building, then it probably is the Garnett. I think the Arcade Building was completed in 1927, and the theatre would have been its next door neighbor, assuming it was still there by then. Here is a photo of the Broadway end of the Arcade Building dated 1929, showing the commercial building which replaced the theatre next door.
The Los Angeles Public Library photo collection contains a picture (revealed by Cinema Treasures user ken mc, by the way), of Tally’s New Broadway Theatre, clearly showing the location as being in the 500 block of Broadway, on the east side of the street, just north of 6th Street (this can be seen by the presence of a sign in the background on the wall of the Hotel Hayward, which was at the southwest corner of 6th and Spring.) If this theatre at 428 Broadway was also Tally’s New Broadway, it must have been given that name after the Tally’s New Broadway in the 500 block was closed. I have no idea when that latter event took place, though.
I typed “southeast corner” at the beginning of that first comment. I meant southwest corner, of course. The corner location was occupied by Owl Drug Company, beginning at latest in the early 1920s, and it was still there in the 1960s. I was in the store many times.
Addition: The library also has a picture of the building which occupied this site before the Norton Block was built. The corner store of this building, which would have been 601 S. Broadway, was occupied by a saloon. (The library mistakenly identifies the picture as having been taken in 1911, but other information there indicates the likely year to have been 1906.)
There was another Broadway Theatre nearby, however. Another picture at the library shows Tally’s New Broadway Theatre in the 500 block of South Broadway, on the east side, just north of 6th Street. The location is easily identified by the sign on the wall of the building in the background, which was the Hayward Hotel, at the southwest corner of 6th and Spring. The library identifies this picture as having been taken in 1909, and it seems accurate in this case.
This raises some question about the claim that the Broadway Theatre at 428 South Broadway was Tally’s New Broadway. If it was, then it must have taken that name after the Tally’s New Broadway in the 500 block was closed. This Tally’s New Broadway is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The 6 story building at the southeast corner of 6th and Broadway was originally called the Norton Block, and was completed by 1908. I have seen it pictured in old postcards. The L.A. Public Library has photos of it. Here is a full view from the 1920s, before the art deco style remodeling. Here is a view down Broadway with the lower part of the Norton Block at the right. This picture must have been taken in the late ‘20s, as the Los Angeles Theatre down the block does not yet exist. I think it’s unlikely that this building ever contained a theatre. If there ever was a theatre in the building, it must have occupied only a small part of the ground floor, which is filled with the columns supporting the floors of offices above.
AJG:
The L.A. Library web site is available to everyone, but the articles in various papers and magazines I mentioned above are not themselves available on the Internet. The library’s California Index of the Regional History Database contains only a large number of scanned index cards, some with a brief synopsis of the article content. (Reach the California Index from the main page by placing your cursor ove “Library Resources” and then selecting “Regional History” which will open a page with a link to the Index.) You can also sometimes find a bit of information attached to the historic photos in the library’s Photo Collection.
I think that the L.A.Times does indeed require a fee to access their archives. I’ve never used them, so I don’t know what the fees are (I’d imagine they are fairly steep— most newspapers charge quite a bit for that service), nor do I know how far back they go. The Times itself goes back to the 19th century, but their offices were blown up in 1910 and earlier issues may have been lost.
I tried entering both “Helen Wolf” and “Helen DeWolf” in the California Index search box, but there is no mention of her. There aren’t even very many mentions of Sid Grauman, and most of those have to do with the Chinese Theatre.
I’m not sure where you might find the information you’re looking for about your family. If you do a Google search on “vaudeville” you’ll get a load of results, and there are probably some sites that could at least give you some pointers about possible sources of information.
My main interest in theaters is the buildings themselves, especially those around Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley, where I grew up. I have some memories of theatres there which I decided to contribute to this site, and then I discovered that I could dig up a bit more information about them by poking around on the Internet.
A book titled Before the Nickelodeon, by Charles Musser (University of California Press, 1991) Gives the Grand Theater’s seating capacity as 1311 (as of 1896, two years after it became the first Los Angeles home of the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit), giving as its source Julius Cahn’s Official Theatrical Guide (New York, 1896.) This seems about right, judging from pictures I’ve seen of the theatre’s interior. It was a good-sized house, with two balconies.
Musser’s book also reveals that on July 6th, 1896, the Grand was the scene of the first theatrical exhibition of moving pictures in Los Angeles, when several short Edison films were shown, fresh from their west coast premier at the San Francisco Orpheum. The projectionist at this event was none other than William S. Porter, who would later go on to become one of the first successful directors of silent films.
The book quotes the almost giddy description of the event which was published by the Los Angeles Times:[quote]
“The theatre was darkened until it was as black as mid-night. Suddenly a strange whirling sound was heard. Upon a huge white sheet flashed forth the figure of Anna Belle Sun [sic ], whirling through the mazes of the serpentine dance. She swayed and nodded and tripped it lightly, the filmy draperies rising and falling and floating this way and that, all reproduced with startling reality, and the whole without a break except that now and then one could see swift electric sparks. Then the picture changed from the grey of a photograph to the color of life and next came the fairy-like butterfly dance. Then, without warning, darkness and the roar of applause that shook the theatre; and knew no pause till the next picture was flashed on the screen. This was long, lanky Uncle Sam who was defending Venezuela from fat little John Bull, and forcing the bully to his knees. Next came a representation of Herald Square in New York with streetcars and vans moving up and down, then Cissy Fitzgerald’s dance and last of all a representation of the way May Irwin and John C. Rice kiss. Their smiles and glances and expressive gestures and the final joyous, overpowering, luscious osculation was repeated again and again, while the audience fairly shrieked and howled approval. The vitascope is a wonder, a marvel, an outstanding example of human ingenuity, and it had an instantaneous success on this, its first exhibition in Los Angeles. A representation of Niagara Falls is now on its way [from the] East, where it was first exhibited only two weeks ago, and this will be added to the bill on Thursday evening.”[/quote]
The Los Angeles Herald of July 14th noted that at least 20,000 people attended the Grand during the first week of this exhibition, and that perhaps a further 10,000 had been turned away for lack of space.
A Los Angeles Times article of August 27th, 1972, mentioned that the Fox Covina had first opened on June 29th, 1969 and that at that time it seated 814. The 1972 article was headlined “Covina to get new showplace” and probably announced the expansion of the house into a triplex. The theatre was located in the Oak Tree Plaza shopping center, and was operated by National General Cinemas.
As for the Monrovia, I haven’t been able to find any references to it by that name. The California Index of the Regional History database on the L.A. Public Library web site contains references to several theatres in Monrovia, some of which may not have been built. The earliest references are to a 900 seat brick theatre to have been built on East Lemon Street in 1911. The architect named for this theatre was Herbert Alban Reeves.
There are also references to a theater planned in 1923, to be financed by Marco Hellman, and to be located at the corner of White Oak (probably an earlier name of Foothill Boulevard) and Encinitas Avenue. I don’t know if either of these projects was actually built.
There is also a single mention of a theatre planned by a Mr. F.C. Thompson, announced in the April 15th, 1921 issue of Southwest Builder and Contractor. No address, architect or theatre name is given.
At least three theatres besides the Lyric (which opened as the Lyric) are mentioned by name in the database. They are the Myrtle, the Mission, and the Colonial. No details are given about the first two, (though I suppose we can assume that the Myrtle was on Myrtle Avenue), but the Colonial existed before 1921, as the first reference to it is from that year, when Southwest Builder and Contractor of April 22nd announced that it was being remodeled. The Colonial was mentioned again in the L.A. Times of February 21st, 1926, on the occasion of its sale to a new owner, and again in the Times of March 21st that year, when plans for another remodeling were announced.
I don’t know if any of this will be of any help, but I’m now several hundred miles from Monrovia myself, and must depend on the scant references available on the Internet for my information.
The oldest reference to the Lyric Theatre I’ve seen is the announcement of the plans to build it which appeared in the January 3rd, 1925 issue of the Los Angeles Times. The L.A. Public Library’s photo database has an early picture of the Lyric, with the notation that it opened on October 22, no year given, but I think we can safely assume that it was 1925, as the Times of May 3rd, 1925 reported that the contract for construction had been let.
The Times of February 10th, 1971 lists the Lyric Theatre in the Independent Theatres section of their movie guide, so the successor company of Fox Theatres had dropped it by then.
The Leimert Theatre building included shops along the street frontage. The dry cleaning establishment occupied part of that commercial space. The photograph is not dated, but looks to be from a few decades ago (the style of the signage looks about 1970s), so there’s a good chance that the cleaners is now gone, too.
After it closed as a theatre, for many years the Leimert was operated as a regional assembly hall by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They restored the theatre, the only major alteration being the replacement of the “Leimert” sign on the tower with a sign that said “Watchtower,” referring to their official organization, The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. I’m not sure if they still use the building or not, but I’m doubtful that it has been converted into a dry cleaning plant.
The pictures to which you linked above do not depict this Meralta Theatre on 1st Street in Los Angeles, but rather the Meralta Theatre in Culver City. There was a third Meralta Theatre, in Downey. All three of the theatres were originally owned by two sisters, Pearl Merrill and Laura Peralta of Culver City. The name of the theatres was derived from the combination of parts of their surnames.
A small picture on this page at Roadside Peek shows the giant cone sign which sits atop what they claim was once the Currie’s Ice Cream Parlor in Montebello. Does it look familiar? Currie’s had shops all over Los Angeles. I well remember their “Mile-High Cones.”
There is indeed some confusion. I’ve never seen this particular picture before, but there is no doubt that the New Broadway it pictures is not the Broadway Theatre near 4th Street. However, the theatre pictured is not between 6th and 7th Streets. It is north of 6th Street. In the background of this picture, you can see the Hotel Hayward, located on the southwest corner of 6th and Spring. Tally’s New Broadway must therefore have been located either on part the large lot where the Arcade Building was later built, or immediately south of it.
I guess this puts the early history of the Broadway Theatre at 428 Broadway back up in the air. Ken Roe’s information above about Tally’s Broadway Theatre at 833 S. Broadway is correct, however. But you are right about there being no Cinema Treasures entry for the New Broadway near 6th Street.
Also a bit odd: Tally’s Broadway was opened at the end of 1909, but this picture of the New Broadway is also dated 1909, which suggest that the New Broadway was at least as old as the Broadway. I wonder, then, why Tally called it New?
The Rosemary Theatre seen in the 1918 movie mentioned in the comment above was not the same building as the Fox Rosemary Theatre. The original Rosemary Theater was located at 6 Ocean Park Pier. It escaped destruction in a fire that swept the pier in 1915, but by 1921 a new Rosemary Theatre had been built, at 2946 Ocean Front Promenade. This newer theatre was itself lost in the fire which completely destroyed the pier in 1924, as well as the adjacent Dome Theatre. The event is described at this web page. The Fox Rosemary Theatre was built following that fire.
Incidentally, the second Rosemary Theatre was located across the Promenade from the site of an earlier theatre called the Wonderland, which was listed in a 1915 directory of Ocean Park as being at 2939 Ocean Front Promenade. I’ve found no later listings of the Wonderland Theatre, so it may have been gone before the second Rosemary was built. There was also another Rosemary Theatre located a mile or so south, on Ocean Front Walk in Venice. I have found listings for that theatre from 1927 to 1933. It was gone by 1936.
The address of the Dome Theatre as listed in telephone directories of the early ‘30s was 3014 Ocean Front Promenade.
An aerial view of the spectacular 1924 conflagration which destroyed both the original Dome theatre and the adjacent amusement piers can be seen at this page.
You can download a free PDF file of the Uptown’s 80th anniversary calender, which features close-up pictures of a dozen of the theatre’s sculptured decorations, from the web site Friends of the Uptown. There’s also a good Links page at this site.
There is a fairly detailed history of the Uptown, with a few small pictures, on this page of Jazz Age Chicago.
The Chicago Uptown is well represented on the web. A Google search on Uptown Theatre Chicago will fetch many links.
I don’t know enough about the software you use to run this site to know if this would be of any use to you, but you might consider using Brad Fitzpatrick’s open-source memcached system to speed things up. I’ve been using LiveJournal, where memcached was first launched, for about four years, and the improvement in the site’s functionality was astonishing when memcached was adopted.
ken mc: I don’t know if this particular movie is available on DVD. There are a couple of DVD compilations of Lloyd’s movies available, but I don’t think that “Safety Last” is among those included. I’ve heard that a Harold Lloyd boxed set, with about a dozen features and many shorts, is due out in November, from New Line Home Video, and this movie may be included in that collection. I haven’t been able to find details about it, though.
The facade of this theater (which looks like an odd hybrid of Spanish Mission and Art Nouveau) may have been removed in 1933. The July 28th issue of Southwest Builder and Contractor of that year says that architect Clifford Balch was preparing plans for the remodeling of the Sunbeam Theater in Highland Park. I don’t know if this was an aborted attempt to renovate and re-open the theater (given that Balch was a well-known theater architect) or if the remodeling was for the conversion of the theatre into the offices for the newspaper.
Burgundy soda was sold from the soft drink machine at the Garfield Theatre in Alhambra, too. I hadn’t thought about that in ages, but I used to buy it every time I went to a movie there, as that was the only place I knew of where it was available. It had a nice, subtle grape flavor, not as sweet as the concord grape based sodas that were more common in those days, as I recall. Heh. I guess I was a budding wine snob, even at twelve years old. I remember now that I used to wish that I could get burgundy soda outside the theatre, because I thought it would make a great flavor for a float. Thanks for the reminder of a long forgotten delight, Watcher.
ken mc: It turns out that the Tally’s New Broadway Theatre in the picture you discovered is listed on Cinema Treasures, under its final name, the GarnettTheatre, at 554 S. Broadway.
Having seen the 1929 picture of the Arcade Building, I’m sure that Tally’s New Broadway is the Garnett. The lot between the Arcade Building and Silverwood’s store on the corner of 6th Street looks to be about the right size for this theatre.
I’ve never seen the Conservancy’s theatres database, but I’m sure they have had access to a lot of information about the city’s buildings. One reason I can think of for an error is that often, permits were issued for planned buildings and then those plans were never carried out, but the records remain in the city’s files, with no indication that the building wasn’t built. It’s possible that a theatre was planned for this site, but not built, and the Conservancy’s researchers didn’t follow through to find the age of the building which now stands on this site.
If that address is immediately south of the Broadway Arcade Building, then it probably is the Garnett. I think the Arcade Building was completed in 1927, and the theatre would have been its next door neighbor, assuming it was still there by then. Here is a photo of the Broadway end of the Arcade Building dated 1929, showing the commercial building which replaced the theatre next door.
The Los Angeles Public Library photo collection contains a picture (revealed by Cinema Treasures user ken mc, by the way), of Tally’s New Broadway Theatre, clearly showing the location as being in the 500 block of Broadway, on the east side of the street, just north of 6th Street (this can be seen by the presence of a sign in the background on the wall of the Hotel Hayward, which was at the southwest corner of 6th and Spring.) If this theatre at 428 Broadway was also Tally’s New Broadway, it must have been given that name after the Tally’s New Broadway in the 500 block was closed. I have no idea when that latter event took place, though.
I typed “southeast corner” at the beginning of that first comment. I meant southwest corner, of course. The corner location was occupied by Owl Drug Company, beginning at latest in the early 1920s, and it was still there in the 1960s. I was in the store many times.
Addition: The library also has a picture of the building which occupied this site before the Norton Block was built. The corner store of this building, which would have been 601 S. Broadway, was occupied by a saloon. (The library mistakenly identifies the picture as having been taken in 1911, but other information there indicates the likely year to have been 1906.)
There was another Broadway Theatre nearby, however. Another picture at the library shows Tally’s New Broadway Theatre in the 500 block of South Broadway, on the east side, just north of 6th Street. The location is easily identified by the sign on the wall of the building in the background, which was the Hayward Hotel, at the southwest corner of 6th and Spring. The library identifies this picture as having been taken in 1909, and it seems accurate in this case.
This raises some question about the claim that the Broadway Theatre at 428 South Broadway was Tally’s New Broadway. If it was, then it must have taken that name after the Tally’s New Broadway in the 500 block was closed. This Tally’s New Broadway is not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The 6 story building at the southeast corner of 6th and Broadway was originally called the Norton Block, and was completed by 1908. I have seen it pictured in old postcards. The L.A. Public Library has photos of it. Here is a full view from the 1920s, before the art deco style remodeling. Here is a view down Broadway with the lower part of the Norton Block at the right. This picture must have been taken in the late ‘20s, as the Los Angeles Theatre down the block does not yet exist. I think it’s unlikely that this building ever contained a theatre. If there ever was a theatre in the building, it must have occupied only a small part of the ground floor, which is filled with the columns supporting the floors of offices above.
ken mc:
The Capitol in Long Beach is listed on Cinema Treasures under its final name, the Tracy.
AJG:
The L.A. Library web site is available to everyone, but the articles in various papers and magazines I mentioned above are not themselves available on the Internet. The library’s California Index of the Regional History Database contains only a large number of scanned index cards, some with a brief synopsis of the article content. (Reach the California Index from the main page by placing your cursor ove “Library Resources” and then selecting “Regional History” which will open a page with a link to the Index.) You can also sometimes find a bit of information attached to the historic photos in the library’s Photo Collection.
I think that the L.A.Times does indeed require a fee to access their archives. I’ve never used them, so I don’t know what the fees are (I’d imagine they are fairly steep— most newspapers charge quite a bit for that service), nor do I know how far back they go. The Times itself goes back to the 19th century, but their offices were blown up in 1910 and earlier issues may have been lost.
I tried entering both “Helen Wolf” and “Helen DeWolf” in the California Index search box, but there is no mention of her. There aren’t even very many mentions of Sid Grauman, and most of those have to do with the Chinese Theatre.
I’m not sure where you might find the information you’re looking for about your family. If you do a Google search on “vaudeville” you’ll get a load of results, and there are probably some sites that could at least give you some pointers about possible sources of information.
My main interest in theaters is the buildings themselves, especially those around Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley, where I grew up. I have some memories of theatres there which I decided to contribute to this site, and then I discovered that I could dig up a bit more information about them by poking around on the Internet.
A book titled Before the Nickelodeon, by Charles Musser (University of California Press, 1991) Gives the Grand Theater’s seating capacity as 1311 (as of 1896, two years after it became the first Los Angeles home of the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit), giving as its source Julius Cahn’s Official Theatrical Guide (New York, 1896.) This seems about right, judging from pictures I’ve seen of the theatre’s interior. It was a good-sized house, with two balconies.
Musser’s book also reveals that on July 6th, 1896, the Grand was the scene of the first theatrical exhibition of moving pictures in Los Angeles, when several short Edison films were shown, fresh from their west coast premier at the San Francisco Orpheum. The projectionist at this event was none other than William S. Porter, who would later go on to become one of the first successful directors of silent films.
The book quotes the almost giddy description of the event which was published by the Los Angeles Times:[quote]
“The theatre was darkened until it was as black as mid-night. Suddenly a strange whirling sound was heard. Upon a huge white sheet flashed forth the figure of Anna Belle Sun [sic ], whirling through the mazes of the serpentine dance. She swayed and nodded and tripped it lightly, the filmy draperies rising and falling and floating this way and that, all reproduced with startling reality, and the whole without a break except that now and then one could see swift electric sparks. Then the picture changed from the grey of a photograph to the color of life and next came the fairy-like butterfly dance. Then, without warning, darkness and the roar of applause that shook the theatre; and knew no pause till the next picture was flashed on the screen. This was long, lanky Uncle Sam who was defending Venezuela from fat little John Bull, and forcing the bully to his knees. Next came a representation of Herald Square in New York with streetcars and vans moving up and down, then Cissy Fitzgerald’s dance and last of all a representation of the way May Irwin and John C. Rice kiss. Their smiles and glances and expressive gestures and the final joyous, overpowering, luscious osculation was repeated again and again, while the audience fairly shrieked and howled approval. The vitascope is a wonder, a marvel, an outstanding example of human ingenuity, and it had an instantaneous success on this, its first exhibition in Los Angeles. A representation of Niagara Falls is now on its way [from the] East, where it was first exhibited only two weeks ago, and this will be added to the bill on Thursday evening.”[/quote]
The Los Angeles Herald of July 14th noted that at least 20,000 people attended the Grand during the first week of this exhibition, and that perhaps a further 10,000 had been turned away for lack of space.
A Los Angeles Times article of August 27th, 1972, mentioned that the Fox Covina had first opened on June 29th, 1969 and that at that time it seated 814. The 1972 article was headlined “Covina to get new showplace” and probably announced the expansion of the house into a triplex. The theatre was located in the Oak Tree Plaza shopping center, and was operated by National General Cinemas.
William:
The Lyric probably opened in 1925. See my comment on it here:
/theaters/2151/
AJG:
As for the Monrovia, I haven’t been able to find any references to it by that name. The California Index of the Regional History database on the L.A. Public Library web site contains references to several theatres in Monrovia, some of which may not have been built. The earliest references are to a 900 seat brick theatre to have been built on East Lemon Street in 1911. The architect named for this theatre was Herbert Alban Reeves.
There are also references to a theater planned in 1923, to be financed by Marco Hellman, and to be located at the corner of White Oak (probably an earlier name of Foothill Boulevard) and Encinitas Avenue. I don’t know if either of these projects was actually built.
There is also a single mention of a theatre planned by a Mr. F.C. Thompson, announced in the April 15th, 1921 issue of Southwest Builder and Contractor. No address, architect or theatre name is given.
At least three theatres besides the Lyric (which opened as the Lyric) are mentioned by name in the database. They are the Myrtle, the Mission, and the Colonial. No details are given about the first two, (though I suppose we can assume that the Myrtle was on Myrtle Avenue), but the Colonial existed before 1921, as the first reference to it is from that year, when Southwest Builder and Contractor of April 22nd announced that it was being remodeled. The Colonial was mentioned again in the L.A. Times of February 21st, 1926, on the occasion of its sale to a new owner, and again in the Times of March 21st that year, when plans for another remodeling were announced.
I don’t know if any of this will be of any help, but I’m now several hundred miles from Monrovia myself, and must depend on the scant references available on the Internet for my information.
The oldest reference to the Lyric Theatre I’ve seen is the announcement of the plans to build it which appeared in the January 3rd, 1925 issue of the Los Angeles Times. The L.A. Public Library’s photo database has an early picture of the Lyric, with the notation that it opened on October 22, no year given, but I think we can safely assume that it was 1925, as the Times of May 3rd, 1925 reported that the contract for construction had been let.
The Times of February 10th, 1971 lists the Lyric Theatre in the Independent Theatres section of their movie guide, so the successor company of Fox Theatres had dropped it by then.
ken mc:
The Fairfax is a different theatre, also still open, and operating as a multiplex, several blocks west of the New Beverly Cinema.
ken mc:
The Leimert Theatre building included shops along the street frontage. The dry cleaning establishment occupied part of that commercial space. The photograph is not dated, but looks to be from a few decades ago (the style of the signage looks about 1970s), so there’s a good chance that the cleaners is now gone, too.
After it closed as a theatre, for many years the Leimert was operated as a regional assembly hall by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They restored the theatre, the only major alteration being the replacement of the “Leimert” sign on the tower with a sign that said “Watchtower,” referring to their official organization, The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. I’m not sure if they still use the building or not, but I’m doubtful that it has been converted into a dry cleaning plant.
ken mc:
The pictures to which you linked above do not depict this Meralta Theatre on 1st Street in Los Angeles, but rather the Meralta Theatre in Culver City. There was a third Meralta Theatre, in Downey. All three of the theatres were originally owned by two sisters, Pearl Merrill and Laura Peralta of Culver City. The name of the theatres was derived from the combination of parts of their surnames.
stevebob:
A small picture on this page at Roadside Peek shows the giant cone sign which sits atop what they claim was once the Currie’s Ice Cream Parlor in Montebello. Does it look familiar? Currie’s had shops all over Los Angeles. I well remember their “Mile-High Cones.”
ken mc:
There is indeed some confusion. I’ve never seen this particular picture before, but there is no doubt that the New Broadway it pictures is not the Broadway Theatre near 4th Street. However, the theatre pictured is not between 6th and 7th Streets. It is north of 6th Street. In the background of this picture, you can see the Hotel Hayward, located on the southwest corner of 6th and Spring. Tally’s New Broadway must therefore have been located either on part the large lot where the Arcade Building was later built, or immediately south of it.
I guess this puts the early history of the Broadway Theatre at 428 Broadway back up in the air. Ken Roe’s information above about Tally’s Broadway Theatre at 833 S. Broadway is correct, however. But you are right about there being no Cinema Treasures entry for the New Broadway near 6th Street.
Also a bit odd: Tally’s Broadway was opened at the end of 1909, but this picture of the New Broadway is also dated 1909, which suggest that the New Broadway was at least as old as the Broadway. I wonder, then, why Tally called it New?
The Rosemary Theatre seen in the 1918 movie mentioned in the comment above was not the same building as the Fox Rosemary Theatre. The original Rosemary Theater was located at 6 Ocean Park Pier. It escaped destruction in a fire that swept the pier in 1915, but by 1921 a new Rosemary Theatre had been built, at 2946 Ocean Front Promenade. This newer theatre was itself lost in the fire which completely destroyed the pier in 1924, as well as the adjacent Dome Theatre. The event is described at this web page. The Fox Rosemary Theatre was built following that fire.
Incidentally, the second Rosemary Theatre was located across the Promenade from the site of an earlier theatre called the Wonderland, which was listed in a 1915 directory of Ocean Park as being at 2939 Ocean Front Promenade. I’ve found no later listings of the Wonderland Theatre, so it may have been gone before the second Rosemary was built. There was also another Rosemary Theatre located a mile or so south, on Ocean Front Walk in Venice. I have found listings for that theatre from 1927 to 1933. It was gone by 1936.
The address of the Dome Theatre as listed in telephone directories of the early ‘30s was 3014 Ocean Front Promenade.
An aerial view of the spectacular 1924 conflagration which destroyed both the original Dome theatre and the adjacent amusement piers can be seen at this page.
There are quite a few pictures of the Uptown at the theatre’s official web site.
You can download a free PDF file of the Uptown’s 80th anniversary calender, which features close-up pictures of a dozen of the theatre’s sculptured decorations, from the web site Friends of the Uptown. There’s also a good Links page at this site.
There is a fairly detailed history of the Uptown, with a few small pictures, on this page of Jazz Age Chicago.
The Chicago Uptown is well represented on the web. A Google search on Uptown Theatre Chicago will fetch many links.
I don’t know enough about the software you use to run this site to know if this would be of any use to you, but you might consider using Brad Fitzpatrick’s open-source memcached system to speed things up. I’ve been using LiveJournal, where memcached was first launched, for about four years, and the improvement in the site’s functionality was astonishing when memcached was adopted.
ken mc: I don’t know if this particular movie is available on DVD. There are a couple of DVD compilations of Lloyd’s movies available, but I don’t think that “Safety Last” is among those included. I’ve heard that a Harold Lloyd boxed set, with about a dozen features and many shorts, is due out in November, from New Line Home Video, and this movie may be included in that collection. I haven’t been able to find details about it, though.
The facade of this theater (which looks like an odd hybrid of Spanish Mission and Art Nouveau) may have been removed in 1933. The July 28th issue of Southwest Builder and Contractor of that year says that architect Clifford Balch was preparing plans for the remodeling of the Sunbeam Theater in Highland Park. I don’t know if this was an aborted attempt to renovate and re-open the theater (given that Balch was a well-known theater architect) or if the remodeling was for the conversion of the theatre into the offices for the newspaper.