Preacher Scott Rents Theater in L.A. for Church

Gene Scott, the flamboyant TV preacher who lost millions in an attempt to buy the old “Jesus Saves” church in Los Angeles two years ago, has signed a 10-year lease that will bring him back downtown--into the classic United Artists theater.

The agreement, with an option to buy, was signed by Scott last week with Bruce Corwin, president of Metropolitan Theaters and president of Miracle on Broadway, a nonprofit corporation seeking to revive a stretch of downtown Los Angeles for business and entertainment activity.

“A church is a splendid use for the theater,” said Corwin, adding Tuesday that he invited Scott to consider the move. The building has been closed recently, except for some stage shows from Mexico, he said.

The financial arrangements were not made public.

An aide to Scott said Tuesday that the TV preacher did not know when he will occupy the ornate, 1,800-seat building, which was built in 1927 by actors Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin to be the flagship theater of United Artists.

To his cheering congregation Sunday at Wescott Christian Center in Glendale, Scott said his previous “false start” to bring a large church presence downtown was consistent with the biblical history of “God’s people.” His associate claimed that Scott has a constituency of about 15,000 households in the greater Los Angeles area who attend his services at least occasionally.

Scott, whose long discourses are seen on Channels 30 and 56 locally, regularly amazed casual viewers years ago when he excoriated various state and federal government agencies with whom he had disputes and exhorted audiences for hours to contribute to his legal defense and to his ministry.

In 1986, he appeared to solve the plight of the downtown Church of the Open Door, which was moving to Glendora, by buying the one-time fundamentalist bastion and adjoining hotel building on Hope Street near the downtown library.

But after paying a $6.5-million deposit on the $23-million purchase, Scott stopped payments and tried to void the deal, citing a 1919 deed declaring that the church could be used only for religious purposes, in particular a fundamentalist Christian approach. A lawsuit citing such restrictions was dismissed as baseless in 1987 in Los Angeles Superior Court, however.

In another aspect of the case, another Superior Court judge denied Wescott Christian Center a refund of the nearly $7-million deposit in 1988; the ruling has been appealed.

The Church of the Open Door eventually sold the property to a developer, and the Renaissance-style building--noted for its twin neon “Jesus Saves” rooftop signs--has been demolished.

On Sunday, Scott hinted to his congregation that he would erect something on top of the theater building that could be seen “from the Harbor and Santa Monica freeways.”

He said the architecture, and especially the interior of the theater, makes the old Hope Street church “look like the barn that it was.”

“Every major church downtown has fled this great city,” Scott said, “and I rallied the people who listened to me and I have never dimmed in my conviction that a way must be provided to keep God’s presence in the heart of the city.”

Church leaders say Scott is partially right. Over the last 15 years, St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, Temple Baptist Church, First United Methodist Church and the Church of the Open Door sold out because of financial pressures to maintain their buildings for dwindling congregations.

However, the Methodist congregation stayed downtown, moving several blocks south, and the Roman Catholic presence downtown has remained, primarily with St. Vibiana Cathedral, Our Lady Queen of Angels in the Plaza and St. Joseph’s Parish in the Garment District.