by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The enormous growth of the film industry during the Roaring Twenties was reflected in so many ways, including the delivery of the product to consumers at often increasingly lavish “movie palaces” as the more ornate theaters were known. There was also a good deal of fluidity in the ownership of many of these venues, including when studios became more involved in them. The highlighted object from the Homestead’s holdings for this “That’s A Wrap” post is the third edition of “Screen News and Programs of the California and Miller’s Theatres” combined with the 16th edition of the 4th volume of “Loew’s State Newsette and Program” and issued on 20 December 1924 by West Coast Theatres, Inc.
Some previous posts here have discussed aspects of the history of West Coast, but we’ll add that it was formed in early November 1920 through the merger of the widespread interests of three Jews. Adolph Ramish (1862-1944), a native of Grass Valley in the northern gold country of California came to the Angel City in the 1880s and was previously a merchant who co-owned a truck and transfer company. He became a contractor and built and operated the Belasco and his own Adolphus theatres, and also was deeply involved in local oil interests.
The others were the Gore brothers, Michael (1878-1953) and Abraham (1884-1951), who were born in Kaunas, Lithuania, then part of Russia, and migrated with their parents to America in 1888 and resided in Chicago, before coming to Los Angeles in the early years of the 20th century and getting into the theater business.
Joining the trio was another Jew, Sol Lesser (1890-1980), who hailed from Spokane and spent much of his early life in San Francisco, where he worked for a plumbing company when the great earthquake and fire destroyed the business in April 1906 and then at his father’s nickelodeon theater before he started his own distribution business at 17 years of age. After moving to Los Angeles, he became a producer and then acquired some theaters.
West Coast planned to build the “First National Cinema Palace” at Broadway and Mercantile Place, though this project was abandoned and the well-known Arcade Building was constructed on the site and eastward to Spring Street instead. By late 1924, West Coast controlled well over 100 theaters, including the California and Miller’s venues formerly owned by Fred A. Miller and Loew’s State Theatre. Miller’s Theatre, on Main north of 9th Street, opened in November 1913 and the California debuted just north at Main and 8th on Christmas Eve 1918, while the Loew’s venue was established on Broadway and 7th Street by Metro Pictures owner Marcus Loew to show his studio’s films and welcomed its first patrons in fall 1921.
The feature at Miller’s for the week of 20 December 1924, following a “Miller’s Topical Review and Magazine” on “Interesting and Timely Events of World-Wide Interest” and a comedy called The Rubberneck in a series by Hal Roach, was Louis B. Mayer’s The Silent Accuser, co-written and directed by Chester M. Franklin for Metro-Goldwyn (the producer would soon be added to what became MGM) and which had as a featured performer, Peter the Great, a German shepherd who was trained at the Berlin police academy before being sent to Hollywood, but, in 1926, the canine was killed in a dispute between his owner and another man and damages of $125,000 awarded by a jury were later rejected because the amount was considered more appropriate in the case of a human.
In any case, Peter starred as the sole witness to a murder who, miraculously, assists his owner (played by Raymond McKee, who performed in over 170 films, including a comedy series from Mack Sennett during 1926-1928) in escaping for prison after he was wrongly convicted of the crime. The scenes of the break included the dog fooling the warden to get access to his master’s cell, transmitting messages between his owner and his girlfriend (Eleanor Boardman, best known for her role in husband King Vidor’s 1928 masterpiece, The Crowd), and keeping guards at bay, were considered “truly remarkable” by a reviewer with Motion Picture World. This unnamed critic also marveled at action scenes as the dog went after the actual killer (Earl Metcalfe, whose busy career was cut short when he died in an airplane accident in 1928) through canyons, valleys and rivers as “too vivid and absorbing for verbal description.”
The program at Loew’s included seven performances, including a pictorial news segment; a Pathé Review of Memphis, Tennessee; a short Lige Conley comedy called Pigskin; the theater’s Music Masters presenting a fantasia called “The Evolution of Dixie;” a scene from “The Folies Bergere” by Fanchon and Marco as one of their famed “Ideas” called “A Romance of Jazz”; and a comedy based on Los Angeles Record editor Ted Cook, whose “Cook-Coos” column was later quite popular and appears to have been the source for the phrase “youth is wasted on the young.”
The feature was a Mayer production for Metro-Goldwyn called The Dixie Handicap, which follows the story of a Kentucky family in financial ruin, but whose colt ends up, against all odds, winning a $50,000 purse in a race. While the picture starred Claire Windsor, a top star at the time, and Lloyd Hughes, who played many leading roles over a 20-year career through the late 1930s, the horse did not get billing. The movie also included a white actor, Otis Harlan, performing in blackface as a servant.
The Loew’s State Newsette portion of the artifact promoted, for the next week’s slate of programs, the film So Big, based on an Edna Ferber novel that won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1925 and which was an attempt to broaden star Colleen Moore’s range beyond the “flapper” roles that won her renown, such as in 1923’s Flaming Youth. In So Big, she played a widower who successfully ran a farm but had to rescue her budding architect son, named “So Big” when a baby and played by Ben Lyon, future husband of silent star Bebe Daniels, from scandal and to reunite him with a girl, played by Phyllis Haver, who loved him.
The promotion included breathless praise for Moore as “how mighty and grand” her role was “in its sweep of human expressions—its story of unconquerable courage—its message as inspiring, as heart-touching, as fearless and true as the movements of events upon the sands of time.” Moreover, the newsletter asserted “it is a surprising role for the young star . . . nothing could be more remote from the gay and giddy flapper of yore.” Yet, audiences were not ready to exchange one characterization for another and Moore returned to light comedies with her trademark bobbed haircut and bubbly personality.
At the California, was yet another Mayer picture for Metro-Goldwyn called The Bandolero, which sought to capitalize on the popularity of Spanish-themed pictures starring the likes of Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino and which starred Pedro de Cordoba, a French-Cuban actor from New York City who was more at home on the stage than in movies, but who had a long career in film, including talkies, until his death in 1950. As the lead character, de Cordoba played a Spanish officer turned bandit chieftain who kidnaps the son of the nobleman who killed his wife, but finds the young man and his daughter in love and he tries to stop the romance until a bullfight and near death to the former brings the requisite happy ending.
The bill also included a review of events like at Miller’s as well as a Hal Roach short, this one starring Our Gang (The Little Rascals.) Also presented at the theater was a musical program with an orchestra led by Carli D. Elinor, a Romanian conductor at several Angel City theaters and arranger and composer for many well-known films including the controversial The Birth of a Nation, Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, and F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise, though he later was a bit actor.
For the upcoming feature at the California, Sandra was the first “above the title” billing for Barbara La Marr, often known as the “Girl Who Is Too Beautiful” and whose personal life was factually and fictionally associated with her as a prototypical “vamp.” Known for her hard-partying ways and heavy drinking, La Marr was also accused of rampant drug use, though a biographer has vigorously disputed the claims. In any case, the character played by the star, as described by the publication, was “a woman with a restless heart” who seeks love in Europe where “she meets with novel experiences,” before she “returns to her home town and there she discovers love, right on her own doorstep” with her waiting and patient husband, played by Windsor’s husband, Bert Lytell.
Elsewhere, the newsletter notes that Sandra was “an absorbing study in human nature” as the character “is invested with a dual personality—one woman content with commonplaces of home and domesticity; the other a restless, diversion-seeking type who believes that happiness lies beyond the bend in the winding road.” It was also declared that the film was “a drama from the page of live, moving about and always [featuring its characters] acting as human beings and not puppets of the screen.”
La Marr, deemed “exotic” and “fascinating,” was a co-writer, having written scripts before becoming an actor, but Sandra did poorly in reviews. Within a year, her alcoholism and she developed tuberculosis and nephritis and she died at age 29 at the end of January 1926. Louis B. Mayer’s wife was so taken by La Marr that, when he found an Austrian actor, Hedwig Kiesler, he renamed her Hedy Lamarr, who went on to be a major star in the 1940s, as well as co-inventor of a frequency hopping system that later was important for mobile phones, WiFi and GPS.
Other portions of the publication include mention of a much-deserved vacation for violinist and leader of the Loew’s State Music Masters, George Lipschultz, who, however, died in 1932 at just age 39, as well as the attractions slated for the New Year at the venue. These included The Greatest Love for All, a rare example of a writer, director, producer and star combination as George Beban handled all these roles; Love’s Wilderness, starring Corinne Griffith, another major star of the era; and Inez from Hollywood with Anna Q. Nilsson, Mary Astor (in an early role for the 18-year old) and veteran stage actor and troupe leader as well as long-time film character actor Lewis S. Stone.
As other posts here have noted, William Fox purchased, in July 1925, the interest of Ramish in West Coast and eventually took over the enterprise, known as Fox West Coast Theatres, with the publication NOW issued by the company, headed by Harold B. Franklin, and featuring eye-popping cover art. Fox’s overambitious plans for his studio and empire ended badly for him by the early 1930s, with 20th Century Pictures merging with Fox and the disgraced impresario imprisoned for perjury for his attempt to bribe the judge in his bankruptcy case. A holding company called National Theatres, formed during Fox’s downfall, took over management of the venues and a complicated history followed from there as the great Los Angeles Theatres blog summarizes on its Fox West Coast page.
We have a couple more “Screen News” issues as well some “NOW” editions in the Museum’s collection, so we’ll look to feature those in upcoming “That’s A Wrap” posts providing more insight into aspects of the burgeoning film industry during the Roaring Twenties, so be sure to keep an eye out for those.