Curtain Falls on Press Club Theater Home

The lack of an audience once again is forcing the storied property at 600 N. Vermont Ave. to drop the curtain, making way for a new owner, a new use and a new era.

For 26 years, from 1933 to 1959, that site housed the Theatre Mart, home of the long-running musical version of “The Drunkard,” a stage romp that encouraged everyone to hiss and boo the bad guy with the stove-pipe hat.

Since 1960, the venerable, rambling frame-and-stucco structure has been the home of the Greater Los Angeles Press Club. It was described as an easy transition by the unkind, who said it just meant a new cast.

Now, after a 28-year stay, the Press Club has become a victim of dwindling membership, very few joiners from among the baby boomers and a generation of far more serious minded news folk.

This factor appears quite commonly in other press clubs throughout the nation and, generally, among all fraternal organizations. The young crowd today, unlike the pattern of their elders in the media, does not stop off at the club to have a drink, discuss the day’s events, to gossip and/or to “avoid the rush hour traffic.” If they go someplace, it’s most likely to their health club or straight home? But not, obviously, to this watering hole.

On June 10, the club will leave its patio-shaded quarters. Unlike the Theatre Mart, it will continue its activities in as yet unannounced quarters.

Escrow on the $1.34-million, 1-acre property is in its final stages and the site’s new role will be a Korean cultural center and restaurant, drawing from the area bounded by Vermont, Western and Melrose avenues and Olympic Boulevard, dominated by Korean businesses.

But with the June 7 primary election just ahead, prudent club officials, headed by President Jay Rodriguez, vice president of corporate information at NBC, arranged for a lease-back with the new owner, Susie Lee & Associates, so that revenue from the many expected press conferences would not be lost.

Through the years, the club has become the city’s primary site for press conferences and announcements, ranging in importance from the sublime to the ridiculous, but nevertheless a public forum for just and unusual causes, attracting the famous and the infamous but almost always, newsworthy.

Rodriguez said that negotiations are under way to move into temporary quarters in or near Hollywood and that the move will be announced in early May.

Member and public services will be expanded at the new headquarters, with professional seminars for writers and technicians, in addition to its continuing series of journalism profession meetings.

Rodriguez envisions the new permanent facility housing the latest audio and video equipment, including microwave and satellite transmission devices, as well as workshop and conference rooms and a private dining room and, of course, as always, a bar.

The Vermont Avenue home of the club is its third. Its beginnings were at the Case Hotel, opposite the Herald-Examiner, at 11th and Broadway. On June 13, 1947, it became formally established there as 800 would-be members crowded into the fourth floor quarters. Today, the former hotel serves as the Peace Corps Building.

The club’s second home had been at the Ambassador Hotel, during that establishment’s heyday. It remained there from 1951 until the hotel needed more space, and in 1960 the club relocated to the Theatre Mart with great fanfare and amid civic proclamations.

One of the club’s greatest moments took place on June 14, 1948 when President Harry S Truman appeared at the Coconut Grove of the Ambassador, along with his wife and daughter, to celebrate the club’s first anniversary. The club took credit after that fall’s national election for the Democratic candidate’s upset victory over the heavily favored Republican candidate for president, New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey.

The national exposure given the underdog President by the club, a parade through downtown and a “school’s out” holiday in Truman’s honor did the trick, the club claimed later. Entertainment was provided, according to a luncheon program, by Kathryn Grayson, Dinah Shore, Red Skelton and a Press Club fixture, Manny Harmon and his orchestra.

Later, at the Hollywood Palladium the talent-laden celebration continued with dancing to the music of Harry James and entertainment--according to the first edition of the club’s annual 8 Ball Final of June 14, 1948--by Abbott and Costello, Eddie Cantor, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy Durante, Betty Garrett, Lena Horne and Trio, Van Johnson, Peggy Lee and the Dave Barbour Quartette, Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, Danny Thomas and Marie Wilson. The show was produced by Mervyn LeRoy.

Prior to the club’s move into the Theatre Mart, the playhouse had staged more than 9,400 performances, from 1933 to October, 1959 when the melodrama gave way to the advent of television as small theaters and movie houses lost their audiences to the new magic small screen and a nation become glued to television sets.

But on June 29, 1960, the fourth estate came to the rescue. Heads of the city’s four metropolitan newspapers--The Times, the Examiner, the Herald-Express and the Mirror-News--cut a symbolic ribbon made of newsprint to dedicate the new home of the Greater Los Angeles Press Club.

Now, its future is in limbo, but it has great hopes and a rejuvenated board of directors and an energetic president. Helping guide the way in its real estate transaction were David P. Rolapp, Studio City realtor; realty attorney Grace N. Mitsuhata of the Bryan, Cave, McPheeters & McRoberts law firm, and S.J. Heritage Inc. of Northridge, representing the buyer.

But it has withstood very proudly all the major earthquakes of our time. As a home away from home for many hard-liners in the business, it will be missed sorely but most of the bar-side tales are probably better left untold.