In the heart of Hollywood, on Hollywood Boulevard, just down the block from the fabled corner of Hollywood & Vine, stands the Pantages Theatre. It’s a fitting location: The Pantages has become one of the greatest landmarks of Hollywood, signifying both its glorious past and its exciting future, as the rebirth of this city of dreams takes centerstage in the Southland real estate economy.
The Pantages has a history as grand and diverse as the stage and screen fare that has been drawing audiences for the better part of the past century. These days, the theatre is one of Los Angeles’ leading homes of legitimate theatre. In the past, it has been a movie house, with live vaudeville acts between features, and the site of numerous gala premieres and “spectaculars.” For ten years, the Pantages Theatre was the home of the glittering Academy Awards presentations.
The Pantages came to life on June 4, 1930 under the leadership of the great impresario, Alexander Pantages, as part of the Fox Theatre chain. The opening program, hosted by Master of Ceremonies Al Jolson, featured MGM’s The Floradora Girl, starring Marion Davies; an edition of Metronome News; a Walt Disney cartoon, Slim Martin, “the Maestro of Mirth and Melody,” conducting the Greater Pantages Orchestra; and a Fanchon and Marco stage piece, The Rose Garden Idea.
Alexander Pantages, a Greek immigrant, began his career by producing shows for Yukon miners during the Klondike Gold Rush. He created and managed the largest individually owned Vaudeville circuit with theatres spanning the Western United States from Seattle to San Diego and from Minneapolis to Memphis.
The opening night audience couldn’t have been more impressed by the show than they were by the theatre. Alexander Pantages had conceived of this movie palace, the last built to bear his name, as a fitting monument to his position in the entertainment industry. Although the Wall Street Crash occurred between groundbreaking and completion, no expense was spared in its construction. The cost of the Pantages Theatre itself, not counting the considerable expense of theatrical and projection equipment, was $1.25 million.
Pantages himself missed the opening of his Hollywood Theatre, as he was in jail serving a sentence for rape. In one of the most sensational trials of the time, Pantages was accused of raping an underage woman in the second floor office of his Downtown theatre (at Seventh and Hill). The conviction was later overturned. Later, on her deathbed, that woman confessed to having been paid to set up Pantages.
From beginning to end, the Pantages was designed for maximum audience comfort. Over 40% of the interior space was devoted to public areas, lobbies, lounges and restrooms. One of the first movie houses built after the advent of talking pictures, the Pantages Theatre boasted the most elaborate sound equipment anywhere in the world. For the first time, sound could be “channeled,” either from a film’s soundtrack or from remote sources, to the public areas of the building.
The building’s original design called for a 12-story office building to rise above the theatre structure, but this concept was never built. The existing Pantages Building, however, was built to the specifications of that original concept, and could still support the proposed tower. In 1938, due to the great fame and popularity of the Pantages Theatre, Max Factor had his heart set on acquiring the building and completing the 12 stories to house his ever-expanding business. Though he even went so far as to have Pantages architect B. Marcus Priteca develop a fully-realized drawing of how the structure might look, including a towering deco spire adorning the building’s corner at Hollywood & Argyle, that plan never came to fruition.
Mixed bills of movies and stage companion pieces continued for the first two years of the theatre’s life by its managers, Rodney and Lloyd Pantages. At that time, the Fanchon and Martin live stage prologues were dropped, occasionally being replaced by locally produced extravaganzas. Other sorts of entertainment proved the theatre’s versatility: in 1940, for example, the Los Angeles Philharmonic played at the Pantages from January-April, featuring such conductors as Leopold Stokowski and such soloists as Sergei Rachmaninoff and Fritz Kreisler.
Howard Hughes, through RKO Pictures, acquired the Pantages as part of his national chain of movie houses in 1949. A contractual stipulation ensured that the name of its builder would be retained and thus it entered the decade of the 1950s as the RKO Pantages. Hughes even set up his own office upstairs. During that decade, the Pantages played host to Hollywood’s most spectacular annual event, The Academy Awards. The famous gold statuettes were handed out to fortunate winners each year from 1949 to 1959.
In 1959, Universal Pictures booked Spartacus into the Pantages as a sure-fire, long-run attraction, but only on the condition that the theatre’s capacity be scaled down -- from 2,812 to 1,512 seats. This was accomplished by building a wall around both extreme side sections of seats in the orchestra and by closing the second section of the balcony. Also, sometime during the 1960s, RKO elected to drape over all the exquisite architectural details around the proscenium and side stages. Though restructuring forced the Oscars to relocate, there were still star-studded evenings in store for the Pantages. In 1963, celebrity patrons were treated to a special screening of Cleopatra at $250 per ticket, with proceeds benefiting the construction fund for the new Music Center.
Pacific Theatre, operated by the Forman family, purchased the Pantages from RKO in December of 1967, after having run the theatre for two years on a lease agreement. Pacific briefly closed the house for refurbishing and a general relighting, including removal of the previous draping. The Pantages reopened, refreshed, again taking its place as one of the finest movie houses on the West Coast, and continued business as such for nearly a decade.
In January of 1977, the silver screen went dark for the last time, and work was begun on what would be a new life for the Pantages Theatre. The Forman family’s Pacific Theatres chain joined forces with the Nederlander Organization to bring back live theatre to Hollywood. Among the most influential producers and presenters of live Broadway theatre in the world, the Nederlander Organization lent its monumental expertise to the task and under the combined Nederlander-Forman aegis, the Pantages opened its doors on February 15, 1977 as one of the finest legitimate theatres in California, as patrons flocked to see the national touring company of the smash Broadway hit, Bubbling Brown Sugar. That year, the theatre was restored to nearly its original seating capacity for the Los Angeles engagement of Man of La Mancha, starring Richard Kiley.
From that time until the present, the Pantages Theatre has been the Los Angeles home for scores upon scores of legitimate theatre attractions, most of which have been large scale Broadway musical hits.
In 1981, the Nederlander Organization bailed out the financially-ailing Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, the city’s longtime subscription series for Broadway musical entertainment. While many of these productions continued to light up the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center (now the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County), as available windows for booking shows at those venues became smaller and smaller, the Nederlanders eventually opted to utilize the Pantages to house the LACLO season of shows.
Again and again, the Nederlander Organization proved that the Pantages Theatre could successfully draw big audiences to Hollywood, even given its ever-growing reputation as a less-than-savory neighborhood. In fact, the 1994-95 engagement of La Cage Aux Folles became the longest running legit show in the Pantages Theatre’s history, and broke a number of Los Angeles box office records.
During the early 1990s, however, construction on the Metrorail subway system began to march its way westward along Hollywood Boulevard toward the Pantages Theatre. Some much publicized construction delays and accidents (including the sinkhole collapsing in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard) served to escalate problems of public perception concerning the area surrounding the Pantages Theatre.
On January 17, 1994, the Northridge Earthquake hit. That, in combination with ongoing subway work, accounted for approximately $1.2 million in damage to the Pantages Theatre. Immediate emergency repairs were made to get the theatre into condition to safely host audiences, but further work was required to repair cracks and chipped plaster and paint on the theatre’s famous three-dimensional decorative ceiling.
To restore that piece of the theatre’s history, the Nederlander Organization applied for more than $400,000 in federal earthquake relief grants through Partners in Preservation. Only $100,000 was tentatively approved, prompting preservationists to begin a campaign to “Save The Pantages.” The Nederlander Organization had not intention, however, of allowing any portion of the theatre’s famed interior to be sacrificed.
Over the course of the next five years, theatre management utilized breaks between productions to accomplish intermittent rehabilitation of the ceiling and other public areas of the theatre.
Toward the mid-1990s, much of the subway work had been completed, and the Nederlander Organization seized on a way to let theatre-goers know that the Pantages Theatre was ready to get back into the game. To mirror Hollywood’s “new look,” the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera was itself given an overhaul, and “Broadway/L.A.” was born.
Now entering its 13th season, Broadway/L.A. has presented an impressive 130 theatrical productions, most of which have been staged at the company’s landmark home, the Pantages.
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Pantages Theatre is Center Stage in Hollywood’s Glorious Past and its Exciting Future
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