Getting the Bowl Rolling : Army of Workers Ready Site for Opening of 70th Season Tonight

Patton Moore, a 41-year veteran of staging Hollywood Bowl concerts, can count the rained-out performances at the Bowl on the fingers of two hands. Yet Monday, the day before the official opening concert, he found himself putting chairs on their sides so they wouldn’t collect rainwater.

Any possibility of a rained-out concert “upsets me to no end,” said Moore, superintendent of operations. “But we keep the positive thought that this will go away. The only time we’ll cancel is if there’s pouring rain at the downbeat at 8:30.”

One show would have been rained out, he recalls, except that the audience was so entranced by the performer, Judy Garland. Even after a steady mist turned to rain, no one left.

“Eighteen-thousand people stayed in that house,” said Moore, sounding amazed and wistful. “Then she sang ‘Over the Rainbow.’ They came unglued. That’s what they’d been waiting for. They just screamed and hollered and clapped. She was one thrilled person.”

The 70th Hollywood Bowl season officially begins tonight at 8:30 with its Gala Opening Concert, featuring violinist Itzhak Perlman and Soviet conductor Yuri Temirkanov leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

By the time the concerts end Sept. 21, about 750,000 people will have clicked through the turnstiles, toted hampers and coolers with sandwiches and wine, waited in long lines at the parking lots and bathrooms and reveled in music under the stars.

On the other side of the turnstiles is stationed an army of about 500 workers, who will run the place like clockwork for 58 of the next 68 nights.

Summer workdays at the Bowl run a continuous 24 hours. During the 9:30 a.m. to noon rehearsals, Bowl General Manager Anne Parsons strolls the arena listening for nuances in the 116-speaker sound amplification system, conferring on a walkie-talkie with Philharmonic artistic director Ara Guzelimian, and the sound technicians backstage.

“That’s basically to prevent us from running up and down,” said Guzelimian. “After 60 concerts, you feel like you’ve been doing stadium steps.”

High school and college students working as ushers and parking attendants check in at mid-afternoon, getting their Bowl-issued sweaters and assignments. A couple of hours before the show, Moore, who oversees the entire operation from his office beneath the shell, starts wandering the grounds, radio in hand, looking for trouble: parking glitches, equipment failures, questions from his team of workers.

Closer to show time, Parsons makes a final swing through the house and backstage. She always takes a last look at the stage from stage right, “almost a superstition,” said Parsons, who came to the L.A. Philharmonic from the Boston Symphony Orchestra/Boston Pops in April and is the first woman to run the Bowl. She greets as many of the performers as she can: “It’s a chemistry in a way, to go around and touch.”

After a concert goes dark, 25 people work from midnight to 8 a.m., picking up 96 cubic yards of trash. They also collect lap blankets, binoculars and once even a mink coat forgotten by audience members.

Many employees consider each other to be family, some having worked together for decades. They share stories as if they were family jokes:

* The time conductor Zubin Mehta wanted cannon blasts for Tchaikovsky and the explosions shattered windows near the stage. “He said, ‘Next year, let’s fake it,’ and laughed,” recalled Moore.

* The time police surveillance helicopters circled the Bowl during a performance, driving conductor Michael Tilson Thomas to snap his baton and storm offstage.

* The time fireworks during the “1812” Overture blew a toilet off a dressing-room wall.

* The 1967 show when Bob Dolan, now stage manager of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, walked in on Mama Cass Elliott and Jimi Hendrix in a dressing-room embrace.

Some employees are family. Dolan’s father is music librarian James Dolan, and sister Kathy is the assistant music librarian. (She keeps extra scores in the back of her car for emergencies, like the night a conductor found himself on stage without any music and facing Isaac Stern.)

This is the seventh decade of preparations for music in the hollow of the Santa Monica Mountains near Cahuenga Pass. The first of the “Symphonies Under the Stars” in July, 1922, included music of Wagner performed on a stage with canvas sides and a wooden back. The steel and cement shell standing today was built in 1929. (“It’s built like a tank,” Moore said.)

Today, the Bowl is owned by the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation and is leased and operated by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It is the summer home of the Philharmonic and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, a ensemble re-created this year. The Bowl concerts essentially subsidize the Philharmonic’s operations; about 43% of the earned income comes from the summer season, according to Stephen Belth, Philharmonic director of marketing and communication.

The summer season includes classical music standards, jazz with names such as Miles Davis and Branford Marsalis, and popular works by Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Henry Mancini (directed by Mancini). A post-season finale even features a movie, “The King and I.”

The Hollywood Bowl “gives a whole new aspect to the image of Hollywood,” said Bill Welsh, president emeritus of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. “It refutes that name of Tinseltown. That’s a whole different world than tinsel--that’s a world of substance.”

“There is something magical about the place,” said Ted Hutman, orchestra manager. “You can’t really help but enjoy the experience of people drinking wine, of performing under the stars.”

Bowl Statistics

Average night’s trash collection: 24 bins (4 cubic yards each).

Average night’s number of bottles of Dom Perignon sold at $115: less than one.

Year-round employees: 40

Summer employees: 510

Total seats: 17,619

Box seats: about 3,000

Bathroom facilities: 116 urinals and 219 toilets

Parking spaces: 3,383

Percent of audience arriving by bus: 36

Patrons (’90 season): 752,919

Average number of patrons during the early ‘70s: about 250,000

Source: Los Angeles Philharmonic