by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Sid Grauman (1879-1950) had a remarkable career as an impresario of movie theaters in Los Angeles culminating in the world-famous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, which opened in spring 1927 in Hollywood and is among the most well-known structures in the Angel City. The Indianapolis native, who, like another theater magnate, Alexander Pantages, spent some of his earlier years in Canada during the Yukon Gold Rush before joining his father David in opening a vaudeville theater in San Francisco and the two had a colorful and challenging career during the first couple of decades of the 20th century.
In 1917, the Graumans came to Los Angeles and made a deal with Adolph Zukor, later the head of Paramount Pictures, in which he acquired their San Francisco venues in exchange for helping them get started in the City of Angels. In February of the following year, the pair, with Zukor’s assistance, opened the Million Dollar Theatre on Broadway and 3rd Street, which the great site, Los Angeles Theatres, called “the first real movie palace on Broadway,” which grew to have a string of them as part of what is now known as the Broadway Theatre District.
In 1919, the Graumans acquired the Rialto Theatre, several blocks to the south near 8th Street and which was opened two years prior by John A. Quinn. The venue was remodeled by the same architect, William Lee Woollett, who designed the Million Dollar, and Zukor helped finance the work. Once the work was completed, the Rialto opened in November with Sid Grauman writing Zukor that it was “prettiest little house [theater] in America.”
After David Grauman died in 1921, his son completed the Grauman’s Egyptian in Hollywood, which made its debut in October 1922, taking advantage of the craze for all things Egyptian during the era when King Tut’s tomb was discovered. Working with Hollywood’s preeminent developer, Charles E. Toberman, Sid Grauman oversaw the $800,000 venue, which recently reopened after a major renovation by new owner Netflix.
Nearly three years after first consideration, in late January 1923, Grauman opened the Metropolitan, which spans part of a block along Broadway, Hill Street and 6th Street with a main entrance on the latter and a secondary one on Hill. It was advertised as “the most magnificent theatre edifice in history” and a key figure in its construction was Frank Garbutt, who was involved with Union Oil Company and was a vice-president of Famous Players Studio, sold to Zukor and Paramount.
Later in 1923, Grauman sold his downtown theaters to Zukor, under the Famous Players-Lasky name and which already had a half-interest in the venues, with the Metropolitan later renamed the Paramount. As noted above, the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre was then built, with partners including the famed actor couple Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks and Joseph Schenck, all of United Artists, along with Toberman. Stock was held by Grauman, United Artists (which also included Charles Chaplin and director D.W. Griffith) and West Coast Theatres, Inc. This last company, which owned a great many venues in greater Los Angeles and the coast and then was purchased by William Fox, acquired the Egyptian from Grauman, just after the Chinese theater opened. The latter ended up as a Fox West Coast theater.
The highlighted object from the Museum’s holdings for this post is the 18 February 1923 edition of Grauman Theaters Magazine, with one short feature concerning Cecil B. DeMille and beginning with the observation that “the motion picture world pays homage” to the director and producer “for he holds a record of scoring a sure-fire hit with every production he gives to the screen.” After stating that DeMille’s parents were playwrights, while “his boyhood was spent in the intellectual atmosphere that enriched his own dramatic talents,” the article called him “an artist and psychologist, as well as a director.”
What was meant by the second part of that statement was that he possessed a knowledge of what filmgoers wanted and that this characteristic “amounts to genius” as “this broad understanding of humanity” was the base material on which “he builds his film castles.” From his “Gothic study” at the Lasky Studio, DeMille developed his film ideas which “thrill and delight” with “Give the world beauty!” offered as an apt slogan for his oeuvre. The impresario was quoted as telling the publication,
Everyone wants beauty, is groping for it. The desire is greater than the means of gratification and I am convinced that the forte of motion pictures should largely be to supply this demand. It will serve as an influence toward making life and its routine, happier and better.
The featured DeMille picture showing at the Rialto was “Adam’s Rib,” a Famous Players-Lasky production released by Paramount, with Jeanine McPherson as screenwriter (she worked on 30 of DeMille’s films and is generally accounted to have been one of several of his lovers outside his marriage). The picture was a marital comedy with some complicated plot points—one lengthy online review goes into the details—but the publication kept its comments confined largely to a few elements.
One is that it is said that the director “brings to the screen the most beautiful woodland scene ever screened,” this alone considered a “cinema triumph at the top,” but it was also noted that there were innovations and novelties, including “a new lighting process,” which the review observed was called DeMille’s “Rembrandt” method. This was deemed by the Grauman magazine “to advance the great art of motion pictures another degree toward that ultimate perfection for which he is striving.” Later in 1923, DeMille would film his epic “The Ten Commandments,” which was probably the apex of his long career.
Also mentioned on the same page was the incomparable organ playing of Roy Medcalfe, featured at the Wurlitzer in the Million Dollar Theatre, with Fairbanks saying that he had no peer, while actor DeWolfe Hopper (who was recently divorced from his fifth of six wives, actor and future gossip columnist Hedda Hopper) proclaimed that Medcalfe was so good that “I forgot all about watching myself on the screen.” There was also note that filming was to start soon on “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife” starring Gloria Swanson, who was the last of the spouses, though it was reported that “the entire film fraternity has ben combed for the most beautiful girls” for the others. Paramount produced a second version with Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert fifteen years later.
In a section called the “Paramount Weekly News Letter,” it was noted that a remake was underway of DeMille’s 1915 “The Cheat” starring Fannie Ward, previously a stage actor, and Sessue Hayakawa (though protests by Japanese Americans about his “bad guy” character led the director to change the name and nationality [Burmese] of the character for a reissue three years later).
The 1923 version was directed by George Fitzmaurice and starred Pola Negri with the antagonist changed again to an East Indian figure, while eight years later, Tallulah Bankhead starred in yet another remake, but with the seducer an American. Hayakawa reprised his role, though with another name, in a 1937 French version. The magazine offered the view that the new edition “with its splendid cast will undoubtedly duplicate [the] previous success” of DeMille’s original.
Also mentioned, though there seemed to have been an edit that cut mention of the title, was a James Cruze-directed film about a young woman who came to Hollywood to break into pictures and “during her experience she meets practically every famous director and star in Paramount Pictures.” Cruze, however, was looking for a lead “who has never appeared on any screen” and “must be beautiful, young and ingenuous” and was scouring Angel City department stores, while the director wanted other performer new to the silver screen.
The film became “Hollywood,” released in August, and starring Hope Drown, who had several stage credits during the Roaring Twenties but appeared in just this one movie. Also appearing were George K. Arthur, best known as a comedy partner with Karl Dane, but the film, now lost, attracted attention for dozens of cameos of Paramount and other film stars along with others, including “Fatty” Arbuckle, Charles Chaplin, Fairbanks, Pickford, Grauman, William S. Hart, Leatrice Joy, Mary Astor, ZaSu Pitts, Will Rogers, and Swanson.
Appearing at the Metropolitan was “Racing Hearts,” starring Agnes Ayers (the lover of Jesse Lasky, co-producer of the film with Zukor, and star with Rudolph Valentino in 1921’s “The Sheik”) and Richard Dix and which, as the title implied, was largely based on an auto race. The magazine stated, sounding very much like a studio publicity piece, that “Miss Ayers’ driving skill was pitted against some of the most famous racing cars and racing drivers in history” and “the result was the smashing of the fastest speed record made by any member of the film profession” with Ayres supposedly reaching 103 mph, besting a mark by Wallace Reid (who died just a month before the magazine’s publication.) Other parts of the program were organist Henry Murtagh, the theater’s orchestra, a 25-person ballet and Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, a best-selling group through recordings on Victor Records through the early 1930s.
Another Paramount film by Lasky and Zukor in production was “The Rustle of Silk,” which had a British setting a maid who falls in love with her mistress’ husband, a member of Parliament, and whose letters to him are discovered by the wife. These are published by the wife’s newspaper publisher lover, but the maid returns home rather than bring more controversy to her beloved. The magazine reported the filming was moving along well including the previous week’s shooting of dance scenes to provide diversion from the drama. Betty Compson starred along with Conway Tearle, Cyril Chadwick and Anna Q. Nilsson, while director Herbert Brenon was praised for his method, including that “careful rehearsing is one of his strong points.”
The feature at the Million Dollar was “The Ninety and Nine,” starring Warner Baxter as a man wanted for a murder at his fiancé’s house that he didn’t commit and Colleen Moore as a woman in the town to which he fled who tried to help him. Baxter, who went on to win an Oscar for his role as the Cisco Kid in 1928’s In Old Arizona, was feted for being “gifted wit everything which goes to make the greatest of success in filmland” and combined good looks with “the best of acting born of his experience on the speaking stage.” Some of that history, including his work at the Burbank Theatre in Los Angeles before his first starring film role in 1923, was provided, though nothing was said about Moore, who became one of the biggest stars of the Twenties as a prototypical flapper.
At the Egyptian, the feature was Fairbanks’ classic “Robin Hood” with Wallace Beery, Enid Bennett, and Alan Hale co-starring, along with the theater orchestra playing the overture from Giuseppe Verdi’s famed opera, Aida; an organ recital by Frederick Burr Scholl; and a “Nottingham Castle Pageant” produced by Grauman and including the costumes worn in the film. There was an eight-minute intermission in the middle of the feature, during which time patrons were “invited to stroll in the Egyptian Court and inspect” the venue. Also of note was the 45th of Grauman’s Sunday concerts at the Million Dollar, this one for 25 February and called the “Discovery Concert,” with eight violinists from the various theater orchestras, two bands competing for the favor of the audience, Murtagh’s organ playing and the Million Dollar orchestra—all in conjunction with “The Ninety and Nine” as the feature film.
The only byline in the publication was for Maude Cheatham, who wrote on the movie industry for newspapers, film magazines and others, under the heading, “Of Interest To Women.” Her contribution concerned popular songs, as she wrote that “tracing the history” of these “is an enchanting occupation” though often challenging in terms of finding accurate information. Among the pieces Cheatham traced were such chestnuts as “Home, Sweet Home;” “Martha;” “The Lost Chord;” “Yankee Doodle;” “Dixie;” many of the songs of Stephen C. Foster; the national anthem; “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee;” and the latest, the World War I anthem, “Over There.” The writer concluded that “it is the outpouring of the heart during a supreme emotional ecstacy [sic] that gives a song its enduring quality.”
Also of note in publications like these are the advertisements, which paid considerably for the cost, and some of the more notable ones included the promotion of the Sparr Heights subdivision in Glendale; The Reiss System of Health Culture to help those both under and over weight; the photo and art shop, The Korin; the Barker Brothers furniture store; and many more.
While Sid Grauman would soon sell those several downtown theaters, this magazine is a notable artifact concerning his burgeoning enterprises in just a half-dozen years and well before he completed the Chinese Theatre.
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