VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF ARTS CENTER LIFE

For most of its 63 years, the downtown Variety Arts Center was known as the Figueroa Playhouse, home to the Friday Morning Club. It hosted such vaudeville and Hollywood superstars as Ed Wynn, Dick Powell and Clark Gable.

Today, rock ‘n’ roll has taken over.

The marquee on the five-story, Italian Renaissance-style building at 940 S. Figueroa St. is devoted to acts with such colorful names as the Hoodoo Gurus, Jello Biafra, Thelonious Monster, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Feelies.

Brendan Mullen, the 30-ish Scotsman who also books Club Lingerie and has been an innovator on the rock club scene here since the late ‘70s, began overseeing shows at the theater last fall. Overcoming some early unsuccessful concerts and motivated by what he calls the “challenge of contemporizing the center,” he finally began to convince acts and their fans to take the room seriously. Seated in the cozy W. C. Fields Bar on the fifth floor recently, Mullen discussed his experiences between phone calls from band managers.

“It was an uphill climb to convince the agents that we were a real, ongoing venue and that there would be adequate sound, lights and acoustics,” said Mullen, whose title at the building is musical events coordinator.

“A lot of agents don’t want to send acts to an unknown room. Some are afraid that by the time the act arrives in town on a tour the room may be closed. Establishing credibility at the (record) labels was also important. Warner Bros. was one of the first to give the seal of approval. I had to make them realize that people would actually show up. . . .”

There was also, he said, the matter of the neighborhood.

Although sprinkled with a handful of theaters, nightclubs and art galleries, downtown is still viewed with apprehension by some. They think of the area as a crime-infested danger zone.

“I was working against the stigma of downtown L.A.,” said Mullen, who works with local promoters Goldenvoice and Pacificoncerts in staging shows at the center. “But it’s not really a bad neighborhood. The area around the theater is well-lighted. There is security and the police patrol all the time.”

There was certainly no cause for alarm last weekend as the Feelies, a seminal post-punk rock group from New Jersey, and Hugo Largo, a New York quartet specializing in ethereal lullabies, played the center’s upstairs, 600-capacity ballroom (the bigger acts--like Julian Cope, who appears Wednesday, play the 1,000-seat theater on the ground floor).

As the young, orderly crowd waited for the doors to open early in the evening, the only annoyance was a few panhandlers working the line for small change.

After the Feelies delivered their pulsating, rhythmic rock, the band’s fans filed out of the theater and the room was turned into a dance club called Performance, which presents a different theme every Saturday night.

All this may not be exactly what the nonprofit Society for the Preservation of Variety Arts had in mind when it purchased the building in 1977. Keeping with the tradition of the old owners, the Friday Morning Club (a women’s group), the society began producing musicals like “An Evening with Buddy Ebsen and Friends,” in addition to magic shows such as “It’s Magic.” Today, comedy and vaudeville shows still attract new and old fans.

But things had been rocky for the Variety Arts Center in recent years. The society was behind on mortgage payments and filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. But according to society president Milt Larsen, new owners will buy the property in a few months, and the center will continue under debt-free new management. Larsen, 56, says the new owners (whom he refuses to name) “will pour money into the building and continue renovations.” Moreover, they will not change the present format.

That means that rock ‘n’ roll will continue to co-exist with the traditional acts. In addition to the concerts, poets and performance artists now perform in the first-floor Masquers Tavern.

After booking bands at Hollywood’s Club Lingerie in the morning, Mullen grabs some lunch, jumps in his car and heads down to the Variety Arts Center.

“There’s no problem doing both jobs,” he said. “I just have to get up a little earlier.” So far the result has been positive. But Mullen isn’t satisfied.

“I want people to come in for one price and be able to see the Ragtime House Orchestra play in one room and a band like Jane’s Addiction in another.”

Larsen, who said he will remain active in center activities, expects few changes in the present concept. For $90 annual dues, society members receive discount prices on events including the concerts, spoken-word performances by local poets, and shows by aspiring comedians in the Ed Wynn Comedy Lounge. In addition, “A Night at the Music Hall,” a good-natured, British-style vaudeville revue, is staged Friday and Saturday nights in the building’s 99-seat Masquers Theatre.

You’d think that some of the society’s 3,000 members--most of them of a different generation from the new audience--might recoil at the thought of fashion-conscious young people rollicking through the building’s plush, Gothic interior.

But Larsen (who also co-owns the Magic Castle in Hollywood), likes the new look of the place he refers to as the “Disneyland of the arts.”

“The young people are the future here,” he said. “This is the only place in town that caters to both the young and old. I’m not that old, but I’m also not tuned into 20-year-olds. I wanted Brendan here because he is tuned into what’s happening now. One day, I want this place to have everything from Shakespeare to rock ‘n’ roll.”