Local News in Brief : Theater Gets a Reprieve

It was a bittersweet ending Monday when about 200 friends of the Los Feliz Theatre showed up to pay tribute on its closing night. The Laemmle family, which brought art and foreign-language films to Los Angeles in the North Vermont Avenue theater, had lost its lease after 40 years.

But on Tuesday, it sounded like a new beginning.

First, two Los Angeles city councilmen announced a plan to buy the building and convert the theater into a replacement for the Los Feliz Performing Arts Center, which burned in 1985.

But that plan to rescue the landmark theater from its presumed fate as a store or restaurant lost some luster later in the day when the owner of the building said he had signed a deal with a new tenant.

Opening two weeks from today will be “Gone With the Wind,” said the new lessee, Tom Cooper, former owner of the Vagabond Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard. Cooper said he plans to show musicals, classics and foreign films . . . “lots of interesting things.”