A CELEBRATION OF L.A.’S MOVIE PALACES

When Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights” premiered downtown at the 1931 opening of the Los Angeles Theater at 615 S. Broadway, even the theater lobby--trimmed in gilt and featuring a crystal fountain--sparkled like city lights.

In the ‘30s, going to the movies meant entering a setting so elegant that the escapism on screen extended to the theater itself. The Los Angeles, designed by architect S. Charles Lee, 87, was fashioned after Versailles, with mirrors, marble columns and trompe l’oeil murals.

“It was a popular concept of the time,” Lee explained in an interview. “We made people with 20 cents to spend feel like they owned the palace.”

On four consecutive Wednesdays beginning at 8 tonight at the Orpheum (842 S. Broadway), the Los Angeles Conservancy will offer that experience to modern filmgoers with “The Last Remaining Seats,” a series of classic films presented in four of the 10 grand old movie palaces that still operate downtown.

A six-block section of Broadway, containing 12 movie houses built between 1910 and 1932, is the only theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, said Gregg Davidson, assistant to the executive director of the conservancy.

With the recent closures of two of those theaters, the Globe at 744 S. Broadway and the Tower at 802 S. Broadway, more downtown movie palaces have shut their doors in the last six months than in the last 55 years, Davidson said. Both theaters are being converted, the Tower into a dance club and the Globe into a swap meet. The conservancy hopes to encourage what Davidson calls “reversible conversions”--the Tower, he said, can be restored as a theater in the future, but the Globe has been gutted and can never be a theater on the same scale again.

Uncertainty about the future of the remaining theaters and a desire to reawaken public awareness to their existence fostered “The Last Remaining Seats.” The series echoes a similar program, “The Best Remaining Seats,” which was presented by the American Film Institute in the summer of 1979 and featured 10 vintage Southern California movie houses, including one in Santa Barbara.

Another concern of the conservancy, Davidson said, is that home video is luring away some of Broadway’s clientele. The movie houses now cater to a largely Latino audience, offering a mixed fare of Mexican features and action-oriented American movies. Six of the movie palaces downtown play Spanish-language films and two others show American movies with Spanish subtitles. But the recent influx of Spanish-language films on home video and the affordability of VCRs are depleting the audience, Davidson said.

But Bruce Corwin, president of Metropolitan Theaters, which owns and operates the movie houses on Broadway and donated the use of the Orpheum, Palace, United Artists and Los Angeles theaters for the conservancy evenings, emphasized that the theaters are far from being fading relics.

“It’s not a deteriorating area at all,” Corwin said. “It’s an area that’s in constant flux and constant change. . . . When video becomes less of a toy, business will improve.”.”

“The Last Remaining Seats” opens at the Orpheum (842 S. Broadway) tonight with a screening of Buster Keaton’s silent comedy “Steamboat Bill Jr.” The theater was chosen because of its restored Wurlitzer organ, which can simulate more than 14,000 orchestral sounds. Gaylord Carter, an organist who played during the era of silent films, will provide the accompaniment. Also scheduled are “Billy Blazes, Esq.,” a Harold Lloyd short; vintage newsreels and a cartoon.

A live stage show and rare film clips of vaudeville acts will be the offering next Wednesday at the Palace (630 S. Broadway). Milt Larsen of the Magic Castle and Variety Arts Center will emcee.

On July 29, “The Taming of the Shrew,” Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’ only movie together, is slated to screen at the United Artists (933 S. Broadway), the theater they helped finance. The UA was the only flagship theater built by a studio in the downtown area.

The series will conclude Aug. 5 at the Los Angeles Theater with a gala reception and a scheduled guest appearance by architect Lee following a screening of “Dames,” with musical numbers staged by Busby Berkeley.

All programs begin at 8 p.m.; doors open at 7:15 p.m. Tickets may be purchased in advance by writing to the Los Angeles Conservancy, 849 S. Broadway, Suite M-22, Los Angeles 90014. Subscription tickets to all four shows are $35; individual tickets are $10 each and $12 at the door. Tickets to the closing-night reception are $10.