Once-Glamorous Film Palace to Fall to Wrecking Ball

With each blow from the demolition crew’s wrecking ball, a bit of Los Angeles history will come crumbling down this week.

The California Theatre, the beaux-arts movie palace that was once a gem of the city’s downtown theater district, is scheduled to be razed beginning late this week and continuing through September.

News of the theater’s demolition has created a stir among some in the local preservationist community, with angry theater buffs charging that the owners of the 72-year-old building have not tried hard enough to save it.

“This is a good, old building that we think can be restored if the commitment were there,” said Hillsman Wright, whose downtown-based Los Angeles Historic Theater Foundation was unsuccessful in its attempt to have the city designate the theater as a historical landmark.

The owners of the California Theatre--real estate investors and brothers Steve, Mark and Dennis Needleman--contend that they cannot rehabilitate the theater. They said they plan to convert the theater grounds at Main and 8th streets into a parking lot.

“The theater is a health hazard, an absolute detriment to the area, a drug hangout,” said Steve Needleman.

Even if the theater were rehabilitated, Needleman said, the transients, prostitutes and junkies who live in the area around the California would frighten off potential theatergoers.

In many ways, the history of the California reflects the history of the neighborhood around it.

When the theater was built in 1918, the community was alive with recreational activity. Theaters, clubs and nickelodeons lined the streets, offering a variety of diversions.

The California soon became the district’s centerpiece.

Goldwyn Pictures bought the theater in 1919 and hired S.L. Rothaphel, the impresario who would become known to the theater world as Roxy, to run it.

“They were producing their own pictures,” said Jill Dolan, a member of the Historic Theatre Foundation, “so they wanted to feature their own pictures there so they wouldn’t be busts.”

However, after decades of premieres and first-run films, the theater went into a slump. As economic activity in the neighborhood declined, so did the theater’s attendance.

The California became a Spanish-language theater for a while, then was transformed into an adult-movie house.

Finally, unable to turn even a marginal profit, the California closed in 1987.

“There is no way for that theater to do business in that location,” said Bruce Corwin, president of the Metropolitan Theater Corp., which owned the California during the 1970s. “The only thing you can do is move on.”

Wright’s group disagrees. The foundation, which envisions the theater as part of a revived downtown entertainment district, argues that a rehabilitated California Theatre could spur economic growth in the surrounding neighborhood.

“The experience in scores of American cities is that by using these theaters and putting things on stage, people will come back downtown after dark,” said Wright. “They will park their car, eat a meal. Some of them will shop. All of this serves to provide jobs, create a tax base.”

The Needlemans--and even other preservationists--insist that the California could never be a vital part of a local entertainment hub.

Some say that the theater’s physical location would hamper its profitability.

“It is not one of the Broadway theaters,” said Jay Rounds, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy. “Had it been located on Broadway as part of that district, it would have been possible to look at the chance of revitalizing it as a part of that group.

“Efforts were made to find a way to save it, but we haven’t been able to come up with a viable solution. It should come down.”