Sunbeam Theatre

Listen to Gaylord Carter demonstrate silent movie organ music, along with a vintage theatre photos –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOWOVJiV9cI&NR=1

Is that a 1917 Harley out front? Or a 1916 Indian?

The 5722 address is for the corner office, the U.S. Office Machine Company, one of the last three typewriter repair comapnies in the Los Angeles area. Jess Flores the owner has been there for 40 years or more. Him and his two sons repair and restore vintage typewriters for the public as well as movie production companies.I believe the other address next door is 5720. Inside the typewriter place there is a stairway that cuts off half-way. The theater has been divided up into three storefronts, I believe. The back part of it was leased at one time by Zach De La Rocha of Rage Against the Machine. Jess Flores,used to be one of the sponosrs of the now defunct Highland Park Christmas parade. It looks like most of the facade has also been covered up by cheap tile, plaster and other false fronting. Most of the buildings on Fig have had this happen to them, along with ugly 1950s plastic facades. A few of the business owners, however, are stripping off the false fronts and exposing the orignal brick or tile fronts.

I wonder who won the cow?

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.

Another Highland Park theater that has not been demolished, but merely altered beyond recognition, the Sunbeam was built in 1914 and the architect was A. Lawrence Valk. The Sunbeam was closed in 1925 when it was bought by the owners of the newly opened Highland Theatre and shut down to eliminate competition. The great facade of the building was removed at some point after that. For many years the building housed the offices for the local newspaper, the Highland Park News Herald. In the late 1980s, a small repretory company leased the by then gutted theater portion of the building and reopened it as the “Outback Theatre” for live performances. There were even ambitious plans afoot to recreate the buildings original facade. Alas, the Outback failed in the early 1990s and the theater was again closed. Today the space is used as an artist’s studio and an occasional movie shoot. Maybe someday the Sunbeam, which is located in the Highland Park Historic Preservation Overlay Zone, along with the Highland Theatre and the Franklin Theatre building, can be brought back to it’s glory.