Ken: It was the other El Capitan, the one on Vine Street north of Hollywood Boulevard, which was the venue for Nixon’s “Checkers” speech. At that time, the Hollywood Boulevard El Capitan was called the Paramount and was exclusively a movie house.
Ken: The first of those three photos certainly dates from the period just after the old State Normal School was demolished and just before the library was built. Fifth Street has not yet been connected between Grand and Flower. It looks as though it was under construction at the time the picture was taken. You can see that the hillside that later became the location of the big concrete wall has been partly graded.
Temple Baptist Church still owned the building at the time the second photo was taken, so they must have approved of the big Alka-Seltzer sign on the roof. It was the Philharmonic that was the tenant in the building.
Though it doesn’t look like it today, when Pershing Square was rebuilt following the construction of the underground garage the landscaping was quite pleasant. The large grassy section in the center featuring two fountains was off limits to the public, but the perimeter of the park featured both an inner and an outer walkway. The outer walkway was lined with planters whose walls were of a good height for sitting, and the inner walkway was lined with benches overlooking the central lawn, some of the bearing the quaint sign “Reserved for Ladies”. The place was busy all the time and, though many of the park’s regular denizens were of sorts thought by suburbanites to be unsavory, I was there many times and never felt in the least bit threatened by any of them (though I did frequently get panhandled and asked if I’d found Jesus yet.)
The planting was mostly tropical, with palms, banana trees and ferns, and the whole perimeter was quite lush and well shaded. This tropical landscape was lost to a bland renovation in the mid-1960s which was instigated by the administration of Mayor Sam Yorty, a resident of the San Fernando Valley who disliked the liveliness of downtown and did his best to destroy as many of its amenities as possible.
The Times Theatre was located in the auditorium of the Friday Morning Club, a womens' organization. The auditorium opened on Monday, May 5th, 1924, and was for several years a popular venue for plays, lectures and musical performances. It was used for club functions as well.
I’ve been unable to find during which years the Times Theatre operated, but it had long been closed by 1977, the year in which the building was sold by the Friday Morning Club to Milt Larsen and was converted into the not-for-profit Variety Arts Center, dedicated to preserving historic forms of live entertainment such as Vaudeville.
The five story Italian Renaissance style building was designed by the Los Angeles architectural firm of Allison & Allison. In addition to the large auditorium, it contains a smaller theatre (apparently never used as a movie house) and various meeting and club rooms. The building was declared a city monument in 1978, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
In 2004, the building was purchased by the Anshutz Entertainment Group, the company which is building the massive L.A. Live entertainment complex a few blocks farther south on Figueroa Street. For now, the theatre remains dark while the company studies options for reuse of the venue.
Ken: I found that they’ve given the Winter-Hunt site a new URL, but it’s to no avail. The text pages display, but clicking on the thumbnail photos still brings up nothing but the same thumbnails on individual pages.
Here is a photo of Amarillo’s Esquire Theatre, from the Amarillo Public Library web site. There is information about the theatre on that page, too, but some of it it doesn’t match the information on this CT page. The address is given as 1808 South Washington, and the seating capacity is listed as 763. The date of the grand opening is given as October 24, 1947.
Also, it’s always a good idea when using BBS code to hit the “Preview” button first instead of the “Submit” button, and then test the link before submitting the post, to make sure it’s been set up right and that it actually works! I didn’t do that just now, and ended up using the wrong URL for my link! Here’s the right link to the CNET forum page: BBS Code.
This is not a duplicate listing. Jackson and Sutter Creek are two different cities. Whether or not the Jackson Ratto was later renamed the Jackson Theatre has not yet been established. A Jackson Theatre did exist in Jackson, but it is not listed at Cinema Treasures, and I haven’t found an address for it.
There were also Ratto Theatres in Ione and Plymouth and, from 1912 to 1919, the original Sutter Creek Ratto Theatre was located in a building (still extant) across the street from the theatre’s present location, so there were a total of five known Ratto Theatre locations altogether.
I’ve never met any of the Rattos, so I don’t know exactly how their name is pronounced. In Italy, it was probably pronounced more like “Rah-toh” and with the “R” trilled, but in California it might very well have ended up being pronounced Rat-oh.
The Rattos were among a large number of Italian families that were part of the cosmopolitan wave of immigrants settling in the Sierra foothills in the years after 1849. Amador County in particular attracted many Italian immigrants, and at one time Italians were the largest single group in the area. They remain numerous today.
Ken: I didn’t think anyone would ever unearth a picture of the Times Theatre,a nd that it was gone forever. But then, I didn’t know that the Times Theatre was actually located in the Friday Morning Club building, and thus was one and the same with the Variety Arts Center. Apparently neither did William when he posted this theatre, or he wouldn’t have listed it as being “closed, demolished”. The listing definitely needs an update. Thanks for digging up this happy news.
I’d say that the Times/Variety Arts has a bright future, being located in the new entertainment district that appears to be forming along south Figueroa Street. Now that we know it is the building of the Friday Morning Club, it seems likely that we could even find the name of the architect in the California Index at the L.A. Library web site.
ken: I’d say that’s definitely the same building. As the Capitol opened in 1912, and the USC archive photo is dated only as ca1910, the “circa” could surely cover 1912, the year the Capitol opened. The Silent Era and L.A. Library photos show that there was some remodeling done to the ground floor, though. Maybe the building was originally built for another purpose, and the theatre was put into it a couple of years later.
ken: I think that must be the back wall of the Palace Theatre, which was called the News Palace for a few years in the early 1940s. In fact, the photo which accompanies the Cinema Treasures entry for The Palace shows “Newsreels” on both of the theatre’s blade signs.
ken: You’re right, the view has to be southward. The tall, white building on the left a couple of blocks down is the Story Building on the southwest corner of Sixth and Broadway. The picture must have been taken with a telephoto lens, as all the building facades appear squashed, and you can see all the way to that old hotel on Eleventh Street between Main and Broadway which blocked the view south of downtown because of the bend in the streets.
ken: It’s another case of a mislabeled photo. The view is west along Eighth Street from Broadway, and the theatre is Bard’s Eighth Street, later called the Olympic. stevebob already posted a link to this photo there in a comment on November 30th, 2005 (about halfway down the page.)
ken mc: This is the first time I’ve seen the 1928 pictures to which you linked on December 3rd. The auditorium looks pretty much the same as it did in the theatre’s last years, except I recall the decoration being less noticeable due to it having been repainted mostly in a single shade of off-white (or maybe it was white after the 1947 renovation and it had just accumulated a coat of grime by the early 1960’s.)
The interesting photo to me is the one of the mezzanine area that gave access to the balcony. It was the longest such room in any downtown L.A. theatre, and the only one I recall that followed the curve of the auditorium back wall, and the total effect was very impressive. The renovation in the 1940’s had stripped the ceiling of its elaborate decoration and I believe the wainscoting was removed as well, and the whole space seemed even longer in the streamlined style it then received.
My memory of the details is dim after 40+ years, but I think the lighting had been changed too. I don’t remember those ornate chandeliers being there, and I think there had been some modern indirect cove lighting installed. I hope someday to come across a picture of this room as it looked after the 1940’s renovation.
According to this page, “About the Sutter Creek Theatre”, there were four Ratto Theaters in Amador County, owned by John F. Ratto, a Sutter Creek businessman. They were in Plymouth, Ione, Jackson and Sutter Creek. The only former Ratto Theater known to be still standing is the one which is now the Sutter Creek Theater, built in 1919. The page says that the Jackson Ratto building was destroyed by a fire in 1998.
The Jackson Ratto Theater was located at 149 Main Street (this from a 2006 report on pollution hazards which lists its location as having a leaking underground storage tank.) A small photo of the Jackson Ratto in the 1930’s appears on this page. The building in the photo does not resemble the Amador Theatre in the photo to which ken mc linked just above.
A comment I made here a few days ago has either gone missing or didn’t post to begin with. Luckily, I saved a copy of it elsewhere:
The Regional History section of the California Index at the L.A. Public Library web site contains a card referencing an article in the July 1, 1920 issue of The Venice Vanguard which names a Mr. Melvin P. Ogden as the “Opening manager of the new California Theater at Venice.”
Additionally, the same index contains cards indicating that the California was designed by David D. Smith. A card referencing Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of 1/23/1920 says that “D.D. Smith, Venice, has a contract… for the erection of a brick theater building… corner of Ocean Front Walk at Zepher Avenue (sic)….” Zephyr Court appears on the oldest map I have of the area as running eastward from Ocean Front, just north of Windward. Owners of the theater are named as C.G. Parkhurst and George J. Cleveland.
Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of 2/27/1920 says “D.D. Smith has prepared plans and will superintend the construction of a theater and store building on the site of the scenic railway on Ocean Front Walk…the building will be 106 by 175 feet… and will seat 1500… cost about $50,000….” The exaggerated seating capacity was characteristic of construction announcements in the era, but the timing is good and the location accurate for the un-named theatre in question to be the California.
The Venice Theatre mentioned in the time-line to which I linked in my previous comment must have been a different building, though it was undoubtedly nearby.
ken mc: My guess would be that the Belasco photo you linked to on September 19 is the one that the library mis-dated. It looks earlier than 1920. For one thing, everything looks too tidy for Main Street in 1920.
The three story building with arched portico and Venetian detailing which appears in most of the linked pictures above is the St. Mark Hotel, which was on the northeast corner of Windward Avenue and Ocean Front Walk. So, the theatre was on the beach side of Ocean Front Walk a little way north of Windward. The entrance to the original Venice Pier (demolished in 1946) was at the end of Windward Avenue.
ken mc: I don’t recall ever having seen a picture with the Music Hall sign on the Tower.
Looking at that picture, I suddenly realized that almost all the buildings in it were then less than thirty years old. Everything looks so shiny! A lot of the buildings in the Bunker Hill project are now older than most of the buildings on that stretch of Broadway were in 1946. I wish I had a clearer memory of seeing downtown at that time, but I was only a rug rat, and about the only thing I remember clearly from the late 1940’s is those old two-color traffic signals with the “stop” and “go” arms that would pop up, accompanied by the ringing of a bell.
IH- This is interesting: A Google image search turned up a single small photo of a Bill Robinson Theater, though it’s only a night shot of the marquee. I don’t know which Bill Robinson Theater it is, but when I right-clicked on the image to save it, the file name displayed was “BillRobinsonTheaterLAll”, which suggests that it is probably the second of that name in L.A., in which case (if my surmise is correct) the picture probably does depict the Casino.
The picture is on this page of the web site of the Western States Black Research and Educational Center.
Muskogee’s Trans-Lux Inflight Cine Theatre (its original name) was designed by architect John J. McNamara. He also designed a Trans-Lux Inflight Cine Twin Theatre in South Daytona, Florida.
I do remember the name Continental, but I was pretty sure that no theatre with that name was on Santa Monica Boulevard. But I also have a vague memory, from way back in the early 1960’s, of a theatre called the Continental which was on the north side of either Melrose or Beverly. The Encore was on the south side of Melrose.
In any case, if this entry actually pertains to the Encore Theatre after it was renamed, then it’s a duplicate entry and needs to be removed. Eventually, I’m going to come across that 1963 issue of the L.A. Times Sunday Calendar section I have somewhere, and see if the earlier Continental Theatre is listed in it.
The Wikipedia article to which Lost Memory links above is in error when it says that the Elgin was the first twin cinema in North America. The Alhambra Theatre in Alhambra, California was given a second auditorium in 1941.
The Wikipedia article is also apparently wrong when it gives a date of 1957 for the addition of a second auditorium to the Elgin Theatre. According to this article in the Canadian Magazine “Take One”, Nat Taylor created his first twin cinema in 1948.
The 2004 obituary of Nat Taylor in the University of Manitoba’s newspaper says that Taylor was operating a twin cinema in Ottawa “by 1948”. While the Elgin is not specifically named in either of these articles, it does seem likely that it is the theatre to which they refer.
In the section titled “The Lincoln Theatre” on this page about historic entertainment venues in the Central Avenue district of Los Angeles, the Savoy Theatre is mentioned, but its address is given as 5326 Central Avenue. The source is cited as “The Central Avenue District Directory” (no date of publication given.)
Ken: It was the other El Capitan, the one on Vine Street north of Hollywood Boulevard, which was the venue for Nixon’s “Checkers” speech. At that time, the Hollywood Boulevard El Capitan was called the Paramount and was exclusively a movie house.
Ken: The first of those three photos certainly dates from the period just after the old State Normal School was demolished and just before the library was built. Fifth Street has not yet been connected between Grand and Flower. It looks as though it was under construction at the time the picture was taken. You can see that the hillside that later became the location of the big concrete wall has been partly graded.
Temple Baptist Church still owned the building at the time the second photo was taken, so they must have approved of the big Alka-Seltzer sign on the roof. It was the Philharmonic that was the tenant in the building.
Though it doesn’t look like it today, when Pershing Square was rebuilt following the construction of the underground garage the landscaping was quite pleasant. The large grassy section in the center featuring two fountains was off limits to the public, but the perimeter of the park featured both an inner and an outer walkway. The outer walkway was lined with planters whose walls were of a good height for sitting, and the inner walkway was lined with benches overlooking the central lawn, some of the bearing the quaint sign “Reserved for Ladies”. The place was busy all the time and, though many of the park’s regular denizens were of sorts thought by suburbanites to be unsavory, I was there many times and never felt in the least bit threatened by any of them (though I did frequently get panhandled and asked if I’d found Jesus yet.)
The planting was mostly tropical, with palms, banana trees and ferns, and the whole perimeter was quite lush and well shaded. This tropical landscape was lost to a bland renovation in the mid-1960s which was instigated by the administration of Mayor Sam Yorty, a resident of the San Fernando Valley who disliked the liveliness of downtown and did his best to destroy as many of its amenities as possible.
The Times Theatre was located in the auditorium of the Friday Morning Club, a womens' organization. The auditorium opened on Monday, May 5th, 1924, and was for several years a popular venue for plays, lectures and musical performances. It was used for club functions as well.
I’ve been unable to find during which years the Times Theatre operated, but it had long been closed by 1977, the year in which the building was sold by the Friday Morning Club to Milt Larsen and was converted into the not-for-profit Variety Arts Center, dedicated to preserving historic forms of live entertainment such as Vaudeville.
The five story Italian Renaissance style building was designed by the Los Angeles architectural firm of Allison & Allison. In addition to the large auditorium, it contains a smaller theatre (apparently never used as a movie house) and various meeting and club rooms. The building was declared a city monument in 1978, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
In 2004, the building was purchased by the Anshutz Entertainment Group, the company which is building the massive L.A. Live entertainment complex a few blocks farther south on Figueroa Street. For now, the theatre remains dark while the company studies options for reuse of the venue.
Here is a recent photograph of the Friday Morning Club building.
Ken: I found that they’ve given the Winter-Hunt site a new URL, but it’s to no avail. The text pages display, but clicking on the thumbnail photos still brings up nothing but the same thumbnails on individual pages.
Ken: The view in the picture to which you linked is east along Wilshire, and the theatre depicted is the Fox Ritz.
Here is a photo of Amarillo’s Esquire Theatre, from the Amarillo Public Library web site. There is information about the theatre on that page, too, but some of it it doesn’t match the information on this CT page. The address is given as 1808 South Washington, and the seating capacity is listed as 763. The date of the grand opening is given as October 24, 1947.
Also, it’s always a good idea when using BBS code to hit the “Preview” button first instead of the “Submit” button, and then test the link before submitting the post, to make sure it’s been set up right and that it actually works! I didn’t do that just now, and ended up using the wrong URL for my link! Here’s the right link to the CNET forum page: BBS Code.
D'OH!
This is not a duplicate listing. Jackson and Sutter Creek are two different cities. Whether or not the Jackson Ratto was later renamed the Jackson Theatre has not yet been established. A Jackson Theatre did exist in Jackson, but it is not listed at Cinema Treasures, and I haven’t found an address for it.
There were also Ratto Theatres in Ione and Plymouth and, from 1912 to 1919, the original Sutter Creek Ratto Theatre was located in a building (still extant) across the street from the theatre’s present location, so there were a total of five known Ratto Theatre locations altogether.
I’ve never met any of the Rattos, so I don’t know exactly how their name is pronounced. In Italy, it was probably pronounced more like “Rah-toh” and with the “R” trilled, but in California it might very well have ended up being pronounced Rat-oh.
The Rattos were among a large number of Italian families that were part of the cosmopolitan wave of immigrants settling in the Sierra foothills in the years after 1849. Amador County in particular attracted many Italian immigrants, and at one time Italians were the largest single group in the area. They remain numerous today.
Ken: I didn’t think anyone would ever unearth a picture of the Times Theatre,a nd that it was gone forever. But then, I didn’t know that the Times Theatre was actually located in the Friday Morning Club building, and thus was one and the same with the Variety Arts Center. Apparently neither did William when he posted this theatre, or he wouldn’t have listed it as being “closed, demolished”. The listing definitely needs an update. Thanks for digging up this happy news.
I’d say that the Times/Variety Arts has a bright future, being located in the new entertainment district that appears to be forming along south Figueroa Street. Now that we know it is the building of the Friday Morning Club, it seems likely that we could even find the name of the architect in the California Index at the L.A. Library web site.
ken: I’d say that’s definitely the same building. As the Capitol opened in 1912, and the USC archive photo is dated only as ca1910, the “circa” could surely cover 1912, the year the Capitol opened. The Silent Era and L.A. Library photos show that there was some remodeling done to the ground floor, though. Maybe the building was originally built for another purpose, and the theatre was put into it a couple of years later.
ken: I think that must be the back wall of the Palace Theatre, which was called the News Palace for a few years in the early 1940s. In fact, the photo which accompanies the Cinema Treasures entry for The Palace shows “Newsreels” on both of the theatre’s blade signs.
ken: You’re right, the view has to be southward. The tall, white building on the left a couple of blocks down is the Story Building on the southwest corner of Sixth and Broadway. The picture must have been taken with a telephoto lens, as all the building facades appear squashed, and you can see all the way to that old hotel on Eleventh Street between Main and Broadway which blocked the view south of downtown because of the bend in the streets.
ken: It’s another case of a mislabeled photo. The view is west along Eighth Street from Broadway, and the theatre is Bard’s Eighth Street, later called the Olympic. stevebob already posted a link to this photo there in a comment on November 30th, 2005 (about halfway down the page.)
ken mc: This is the first time I’ve seen the 1928 pictures to which you linked on December 3rd. The auditorium looks pretty much the same as it did in the theatre’s last years, except I recall the decoration being less noticeable due to it having been repainted mostly in a single shade of off-white (or maybe it was white after the 1947 renovation and it had just accumulated a coat of grime by the early 1960’s.)
The interesting photo to me is the one of the mezzanine area that gave access to the balcony. It was the longest such room in any downtown L.A. theatre, and the only one I recall that followed the curve of the auditorium back wall, and the total effect was very impressive. The renovation in the 1940’s had stripped the ceiling of its elaborate decoration and I believe the wainscoting was removed as well, and the whole space seemed even longer in the streamlined style it then received.
My memory of the details is dim after 40+ years, but I think the lighting had been changed too. I don’t remember those ornate chandeliers being there, and I think there had been some modern indirect cove lighting installed. I hope someday to come across a picture of this room as it looked after the 1940’s renovation.
A small photo of the Ratto Theatre as it appeared in the 1930’s can be seen on this page.
The Ratto Theatre in Sutter Creek is listed at Cinema Treasures under it’s current name, the Sutter Creek Theatre.
According to this page, “About the Sutter Creek Theatre”, there were four Ratto Theaters in Amador County, owned by John F. Ratto, a Sutter Creek businessman. They were in Plymouth, Ione, Jackson and Sutter Creek. The only former Ratto Theater known to be still standing is the one which is now the Sutter Creek Theater, built in 1919. The page says that the Jackson Ratto building was destroyed by a fire in 1998.
The Jackson Ratto Theater was located at 149 Main Street (this from a 2006 report on pollution hazards which lists its location as having a leaking underground storage tank.) A small photo of the Jackson Ratto in the 1930’s appears on this page. The building in the photo does not resemble the Amador Theatre in the photo to which ken mc linked just above.
A comment I made here a few days ago has either gone missing or didn’t post to begin with. Luckily, I saved a copy of it elsewhere:
The Regional History section of the California Index at the L.A. Public Library web site contains a card referencing an article in the July 1, 1920 issue of The Venice Vanguard which names a Mr. Melvin P. Ogden as the “Opening manager of the new California Theater at Venice.”
Additionally, the same index contains cards indicating that the California was designed by David D. Smith. A card referencing Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of 1/23/1920 says that “D.D. Smith, Venice, has a contract… for the erection of a brick theater building… corner of Ocean Front Walk at Zepher Avenue (sic)….” Zephyr Court appears on the oldest map I have of the area as running eastward from Ocean Front, just north of Windward. Owners of the theater are named as C.G. Parkhurst and George J. Cleveland.
Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of 2/27/1920 says “D.D. Smith has prepared plans and will superintend the construction of a theater and store building on the site of the scenic railway on Ocean Front Walk…the building will be 106 by 175 feet… and will seat 1500… cost about $50,000….” The exaggerated seating capacity was characteristic of construction announcements in the era, but the timing is good and the location accurate for the un-named theatre in question to be the California.
The Venice Theatre mentioned in the time-line to which I linked in my previous comment must have been a different building, though it was undoubtedly nearby.
ken mc: My guess would be that the Belasco photo you linked to on September 19 is the one that the library mis-dated. It looks earlier than 1920. For one thing, everything looks too tidy for Main Street in 1920.
The three story building with arched portico and Venetian detailing which appears in most of the linked pictures above is the St. Mark Hotel, which was on the northeast corner of Windward Avenue and Ocean Front Walk. So, the theatre was on the beach side of Ocean Front Walk a little way north of Windward. The entrance to the original Venice Pier (demolished in 1946) was at the end of Windward Avenue.
There is a reference to a Venice Theatre in the year 1908 on this time-line of Venice' history.
ken mc: I don’t recall ever having seen a picture with the Music Hall sign on the Tower.
Looking at that picture, I suddenly realized that almost all the buildings in it were then less than thirty years old. Everything looks so shiny! A lot of the buildings in the Bunker Hill project are now older than most of the buildings on that stretch of Broadway were in 1946. I wish I had a clearer memory of seeing downtown at that time, but I was only a rug rat, and about the only thing I remember clearly from the late 1940’s is those old two-color traffic signals with the “stop” and “go” arms that would pop up, accompanied by the ringing of a bell.
IH- This is interesting: A Google image search turned up a single small photo of a Bill Robinson Theater, though it’s only a night shot of the marquee. I don’t know which Bill Robinson Theater it is, but when I right-clicked on the image to save it, the file name displayed was “BillRobinsonTheaterLAll”, which suggests that it is probably the second of that name in L.A., in which case (if my surmise is correct) the picture probably does depict the Casino.
The picture is on this page of the web site of the Western States Black Research and Educational Center.
Muskogee’s Trans-Lux Inflight Cine Theatre (its original name) was designed by architect John J. McNamara. He also designed a Trans-Lux Inflight Cine Twin Theatre in South Daytona, Florida.
I do remember the name Continental, but I was pretty sure that no theatre with that name was on Santa Monica Boulevard. But I also have a vague memory, from way back in the early 1960’s, of a theatre called the Continental which was on the north side of either Melrose or Beverly. The Encore was on the south side of Melrose.
In any case, if this entry actually pertains to the Encore Theatre after it was renamed, then it’s a duplicate entry and needs to be removed. Eventually, I’m going to come across that 1963 issue of the L.A. Times Sunday Calendar section I have somewhere, and see if the earlier Continental Theatre is listed in it.
The Wikipedia article to which Lost Memory links above is in error when it says that the Elgin was the first twin cinema in North America. The Alhambra Theatre in Alhambra, California was given a second auditorium in 1941.
The Wikipedia article is also apparently wrong when it gives a date of 1957 for the addition of a second auditorium to the Elgin Theatre. According to this article in the Canadian Magazine “Take One”, Nat Taylor created his first twin cinema in 1948.
The 2004 obituary of Nat Taylor in the University of Manitoba’s newspaper says that Taylor was operating a twin cinema in Ottawa “by 1948”. While the Elgin is not specifically named in either of these articles, it does seem likely that it is the theatre to which they refer.
In the section titled “The Lincoln Theatre” on this page about historic entertainment venues in the Central Avenue district of Los Angeles, the Savoy Theatre is mentioned, but its address is given as 5326 Central Avenue. The source is cited as “The Central Avenue District Directory” (no date of publication given.)