by Paul R. Spitzzeri
One of the more remarkable aspects about the transformation of downtown Los Angeles in the early 1920s, during another of its many growth and development booms, peaking in 1923 when Homestead owner Walter P. Temple inaugurated his Temple City project, was the burgeoning building of “movie palaces.”
These elaborate theaters, often part of a larger commercial structure, had cavernous auditoriums, seating well into the thousands, with patrons gawking at external and internal decorations of great intricacy and ornateness, while the amenities and equipment became increasingly sophisticated.
The escapism of the entertainment on screen and stage was enhanced by the environment of these edifices, with a string of these venues ending with the completion of the Los Angeles Theatre in 1931, as the Great Depression, shattering the sense of unending prosperity of the Roaring Twenties, headed toward its nadir.
When, however, the featured object from the Museum’s collection for this post, the program of the Orpheum Circuit’s Hillstreet Theatre, was issued for the week of 2 March 1925, no one attending any of the shows offered daily from 12:45 to 11:30 p.m. could have imagined that distressing future. Instead, optimism abounded and confidence continued to lead Angelenos and Americans broadly that prosperity was assured for the foreseeable future.
The Hillstreet was built as part of the Junior Orpheum Circuit, with that theater chain, among a few that had a pervasive presence throughout the nation’s performance venues, offering vaudeville acts that played the higher-priced, first-class theaters first and then returned for that “junior circuit” of “popular priced” venues.
It was in April 1920 that Monroe Lathrop, columnist for the Los Angeles Express, reported, in the paper’s edition of the 9th, that,
The magnificent playhouse which the Orpheum syndicate proposes to build at Hill and Eighth streets has already been named. It will be called the “Hill-Eighth” [in keeping with the firm’s policy of naming theaters after the streets intersecting at the locations] . . .
The further information is given out that the Los Angeles and San Francisco palaces of amusement, which will be among the largest vaudeville houses in the world, will be part of a chain of seven in the great cities of the country to be grouped under the name of the “Junior Orpheum Circuit.”
The State-Lake in Chicago proved to be such a success that the company decided to replicate the model in Kansas City, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and New York City, as well as the two Golden State metropolises. Managing Director Martin Beck told the press that the name of the Angel City theater was not fully decided upon because “full title to the property has not yet been acquired.” General Manager Mort Singer explained that the junior concept involved the fact that “acts will play first the regular Orpheum circuit and then double back on the Junior” version with no reserved seats, while he concluded that, “patrons will be assured of more than three hours of high-class entertainment.”
It was seven months before the next news was reported, with the Express of 19 November, informing readers that “ground will be broken in January for the $1,600,00[0] Hill street theater,” a new name being adopted. It was added that the 12-story, height-limit venue was to have 175 feet of frontage on Hill and not quite 160 on 8th, as well as 120 on Olive Street, which was the next block to the west. The account added that,
Through an unusual design combining an auditorium and office building, the structure will contain a central theater seating 4000, with offices arranged to face Hill, Eighth and Olive streets.
The building will have entrances on all three sides, as well as large exits on each street. Due to its peculiar design the auditorium will be wide and shallow, thus bringing hundreds of seats closer to the stage.
With concrete and steel as its main construction material, the edifice was to have terra cotta facing. Two days later, the Los Angeles Times reported that “plans . . . have been completed, the general contracts for the work have been awarded and the construction of the building will be started in the near future.”
The architect was G[ustave] Albert Lansburgh (1876-1969), born in what is now Panama and then part of Colombia and raised in San Francisco. He earned a degree from the University of California at Berkeley and then studied at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris. He returned from Europe just a month after the earthquake and fire that ravaged San Francisco and was very busy designing new buildings. He worked on that city’s Orpheum Theatre and was known for his efforts in this area, designing some 50 of these.
Lansburgh told the press that he was in town “for the purpose of submitting the working drawings” to the city’s building inspector before a permit could be issued, though general plans were approved “and the details of construction are now under consideration.” The Times added that the structure was considered eight stories, would cost $1.5 million, with five ground-floor stores each on Hill and 8th, with the main lobby accessed from a corner entrance shown in renderings.
This space, 3,200 square feet in size, was to have a terra cotta finish, and access provided to the main and mezzanine sections of the 4,000-seat auditorium, the latter to have a women’s parlor, playroom for children, smoking rooms “and other conveniences for the use of patrons.” It was also remarked that,
The auditorium, stated Mr. Lansburgh, will be finished in a novel manner, the entire architectural plan, both exterior and interior, following the Spanish picturesque style. A modern air-cooling and heating system will be installed, and a fine pipe organ has been ordered . . . for installation as soon as the building is completed.
The general contractor was McDonald and Kahn while the structural steel was to be provided by Llewellyn Iron Works, while local sources were to supply other building materials. The Times added that agents William May Garland and William W. Mines secured, for Beck and associates, the property from a quintet of owners, including those with longstanding Angel City names like Preuss and Schumacher. Right away, a bond issue was undertaken by the Orpheum Theater & Realty Company, which arranged for a closed first mortgage with serial gold bonds amounting to $1.5 million and paying 7% interest to investors.
It took longer to get city planning approval than anticipated, this hardly a surprise, with final plans given the go-ahead “after a searching investigation” in early March with Lansburgh, as reported by the Express in its edition of the 11th, returning to San Francisco “to put the final touches on the specifications and plans, and has hopes that the new house will be open and ready for operations by Thanksgiving.” Excavation was underway and steel in process of fabrication.
There were further delays in finishing the edifice and even a one-day move back from 19 to 20 March because of challenges in arranging for the transport of vaudeville performers from Fresno, but at least the opening was held, though without the highly publicized and attended festivities that often took place for these kinds of venues.
The Los Angeles Record of the 20th reported,
To the already splendid group of theaters established in this city was added another today when the Hillstreet theater of the Junior Orpheum circuit at Eighth and Hill street opened its doors to the public.
Without any preliminary ceremony or formal dedication exercises the house was opened for the entertainment and amusement of theatergoers of this city . . .
The new house is a revelation in beauty and comfort and is said to be the very last word in theatrical construction. Many new and attractive features have been incorporated in its construction, such as elevator service to the balcony for patrons, a nursery and playroom for children, spacious and comfortable seats easily accessible, a mezzanine foyer and other innovations.
Jumping ahead nearly three years, we come to the featured program for the week of 2 March 1925, which included note that movies were shown at 1, 4:30, 8, and 10:30 p.m., while vaudeville performances were at 3, 6:30 and 9. Admission ranged from 15 cents for children attending Monday through Saturday (and ten cents more on Sundays and holidays) to bargain matinees weekdays for 35 cents, evening and Saturday matinees at half a dollar and the premium Saturday nights, Sundays and holidays costing 65 cents.
The organist was George Walsh and Allen Hall, hired at the time of opening, was the conductor of the Hillstreet Tiny Symphony. As for the entertainment, there was an International News newsreel, an Aesop’s Fables offering and the second chapter of the short Flying Fists by Benny Leonard, born Benjaimin Leiner, the world’s light heavyweight champion boxer for several years running and considered one of the greats of his era. The featured film was Lend Me Your Husband, released in June 1924 and produced by C.C. Burr, formerly of Paramount Pictures and also a director, while Associated Exhibitors was the distributor and who president Arthur Kane soon left to take the helm at Universal Pictures.
Associated was taken over at the end of 1926 by Pathe Exchange, which later was acquired by RKO Pictures—this formed early in 1928 with the Orpheum Circuit joining other theater chains and companies like RCA with the initials standing Radio Keith Orpheum. Not surprisingly, the theater became known as the RKO Hillstreet in 1929.
Lend Me Your Husband was one of those legions of Roaring Twenties pictures with a female character being a wild living society denizen who was engaged, but had an affair with a married gent who was hardly on the up-and-up. Moreover, the lover was also seeing the society girl’s best friend on the side—this was the kind of racy plot that led to the development of morality codes within a decade.
None of the principals were particularly well-known or long remembered. Director Christy Cabanne stated as a stage actor, got into films by 1910 and was both a performer and director, though he briefly had his own studio. His career spanned nearly four decades with his last work taking place in 1948. Stars included Doris Kenyon, also a stage actor who did transition from silent to talking films before ending her career in the late Thirties, and Scottish actor David Powell, who, however, died in April 1925 of pneumonia.
With respect to the vaudevillians, they, too, were a fairly anonymous bunch, including Harry Breen, called “The Singing Comedian” and “The Rapid Fire Song Writer;” the duo of Richard Ford and Eileen Van Biene performing “Romance in Crinoline;” Dave Apollon, “The Versatile Artist” with some support for his “BI-BA-BO;” a sketch called “Rolling Stones” by Jessie Redford and William J. Maker; the Wright Dancers, featuring Helen Pachaud, said to be an Iroquois Indian and pictured on the front panel in what was, for the era, a very skimpy costume evoking that purported heritage, in “A Dance Voyage,” and a “Fascinating Equine Novelty”, apparently intended largely for children and featuring a veritable barnyard of live animals, under the heading of “Howard’s Spectacle.”
There was some media promotion of the week’s program, with the Record of the 3rd commenting that, “twinking [sic] feet hold sway on the boards” and that “of the several dancing acts, the Wright Dancers undoubtedly merit headline position” as its members “‘put over’ dance compositions that are marvels of sheer beauty and rhythm.” That “Romance in Crinoline” was such that Van Biene and Ford “made one forget the insistent lure of jazz and long for the ‘good old days’ by the manner in which they presented the ‘songs of yesterday.'”
Apollon and his ensemble performed “a snappy offering of intricate dances and pleasing songs” with the backing of guitar and mandolin praised for helping to “make the songs doubly attractive.” Breen was replaced by Jean Boydell, whose burlesques in the style of Fanny Brice and Trixie Friganza, engendered “a fine crop of laughs with her comic antics.” As for Howard’s Spectacle, “dogs and ponies ‘do their stuff’ capably.”
The Express of the same day offered its terse review, opening with “terpischore rules with an airy hand,” and generally approved of the various performers, though the most excited the unnamed writer got was in referring to Redford and Maker as presenting “a lively little skit” while the instrumental elements in Apollon’s portion “adds to the merit of his acts.” Anita Peters Wright was given kudos for her dances that brought “color, rhythm and grace.”
The Times proved, as usual, to be more loquacious in its assessment. The Wright ensemble “have evolved a unique trip” with dances based on scenes in France, Russia, Spain and Asia, as well as America, with it added that “the spectators are wafted on the wings of the dance.” The paper rose to some purple prose in asserting,
Mercury never traveled faster. Neither did he along his journey have the blandishments, the passion-compelling lure that is exhibited by the eight graceful and pretty young women who interpret the national steps of the various countries. Miss Helen Pichaud, in whose veins runs the wild blood of the Iroquis [sic] tribe, who does, among other notable executions, a leaping number of wondrous beauty, is a featured member of this extraordinary company of dancers.
The score was from the other Wright, Dexter, while tenor Gordon Bennett was also mentioned as introducing, through his singing, each of the dancers. The press also published photos of performers like Redford and Maker, Apollon and a dancer, and Marvel Dobbs of the Wright troupe and whose costume featured feathers from “ostriches from a local ostrich farm,” undoubtedly the well-known Cawston’s, situated in South Pasadena on the border with the Angel City.
Sadly, the Hillstreet and its building only existed for a little more than four decades before they were razed and the attractive and distinctive edifice replaced by a parking structure and commercial building that are of the type that make preservationists and lovers of early 20th century grind their teeth in their sleep. As so often the case, the remarkable Los Angeles Theatres blog has a wealth of information and images about the venue, which should be one of those “movie palaces” that have survived the ravages of time (and urban redevelopment).