Glockner's Automatic Theatre
262 S. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90012
262 S. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90012
3 people
favorited this theater
Showing 13 comments
The Electric/Lyric/Glockner building (I think) may be viewed in this image:
http://jpg2.lapl.org/pics26/00047646.jpg
Thank you so much. I could not decipher the name on the LADBS building permit.
The third partner was Joseph Sturm. The February 10, 1910, issue of The Nickelodeon had this item:
(E.J. Tally was the brother of Thomas Tally, of Tally’s Electric Theatre.) However, according to Bill Counter’s web site Historic Los Angeles Theatres, when the Liberty opened in early 1911 it was operated by the partnership of Kaiser, Sturm & Hughes, so Tally had apparently dropped out of the partnership by then. Also according to Counter, Sturm had been a partner with Kaiser in the Wonderland Theatre at 315 S. Main Street (listed both at Counter’s site and at Cinema Treasures under its later name, the Jade Theatre.)Oh, sorry, just three theaters. The Plaza Theater was on N Main
So there were four theaters on the east side of the 200 block of S Main? That sure sounds a lot more fun than what’s there now.
Do you know who the third partner was for the Liberty, besides Kaiser and Tally? Thx
tovangar2: The 1910 project at 266 S. Main was the Liberty Theatre.
The LA Department of Building and Safety’s permits are now online http://ladbs.org/LADBSWeb/online-building-records.jsf. One can search by address. There is a permit for a “motion picture theater” dated March 10, 1910 by architect Albert C Martin for owners “Kaiser, [indistinct] and Tally. The address given is 266-268 S Main. The dimensions were 30' X 140'
The Electric Theater had its name changed to the Lyric when they added “refined vaudeville” acts to augment the motion pictures. An LA Times advertisement from July 20, 1903 lists the new name, with T.L. Tally identified as manager. According to some sources Tally sold his theater around this time and spent the next year on the road, presenting a print of “The Great Train Robbery” around the country. So the Electric appears to have been exclusively a motion picture theater for a little over a year, from on or about April 17, 1902 until on or about July 20, 1903.
Here’s a photo of a 1908 LA city directory. This was posted by another user in the discussion of the Optic Theater. Here, the Lyric Theater is listed, so it was already going by the Lyric at that date, and had not yet become Glockner’s. Didn’t seem to be Talley’s Electric Theater for very long.
View link
As the site of the first motion picture theater, this location should definitely be hailed as a landmark.
A new garage for the LAPD motorpool is being built on the site. As a concession to the neighborhood residents, some retail stores are being placed on the street front. A nice brass plaque commemorating the location’s history would fit nicely on the building.
Right now, it’s just a broken old sidewalk. Recognition of the site’s history would add more to the neighborhood, maybe even more business for the Imaginasian Center across the street.
Everything on this side of the block between the cathedral and 3rd Street has been bulldozed.
Here is something from the classifieds:
(April 5, 1902)
FOR SALE-BUY SOMETHING TO MAKE money with, selling out a prices to please anyone, phonographs, kinetoscopes, picture machines, projectoscopes, electric fans, electric motors, reostat, fine oak record cabinet; sheet music 5 cents per copy. TALLY’S, 262 S. Main st.
This almost sounds like one of us….
(Jan. 5, 1949)
HELP! HELP!
May I call to your notice a two-story brick building at 262 S. Main St., close to the northeast corner of 3rd and Main. The ground floor has been remodeled to house several stores. Between them a narrow stairway ascends to the second floor which is occupied by the “Veterans' Hotel.” The faded baroque facade of brick is ornamented with scrolls and lions' heads. But what i want to know is-what does it mean when at the second-floor level the masonry says:
Wm. Glockner’s Automatic Theater.
This suggests something which could have come between variety and movies. I cannot verify this for nothing remains of the theater. There is no clue, neither footprints in the cement sidewalk, nor dainty slippers suitable for drinking champagne, nor black lace drawers to dance the can-can in. Perhaps had I searched for an alley and a stage door, I should have learned something. Can some Times reader explain this mystery?
STEWART McKEE, Los Angeles.