Curtains or Happy Endings? : Old Theaters Are Endangered, but Admirers Hope for a Rescue

On screen at the Orpheum Theatre, the chariot race from the 1926 silent film “Ben-Hur” was a thrilling mix of heroics and editing tricks. Timed to the action, an organist blasted away on the Wurlitzer. An estimated 1,700 moviegoers, filling even the high balcony of the enormous, gilded movie palace, cheered as the MGM classic whipped to its climax.

Anyone stumbling upon that lively scene Wednesday night might have assumed that all was fine with the 68-year-old Orpheum and other chandelier-stuffed theaters built nearby in Downtown Los Angeles during the vaudeville era. But that impression would be sadly mistaken.

The “Ben-Hur” screening was part of a June festival aimed at saving the endangered theater district along and near Broadway. Only four of the remaining 15 theaters--the Orpheum, Palace, State and Olympic--still show films, and those four reportedly fill on average just 6% of their seats. The other auditoriums are either closed or have been converted, with care or violence, to churches, swap meets, jewelry marts and a nightclub.

Decay and demolition seem constant threats to these fantasized versions of Mayan temples, French palaces and Spanish haciendas, dipped in marble, silk and mirrors. Still, an extraordinary amount of attention is focused this week on those theaters’ glorious past, troubled present and uncertain future.

“The question is how do you keep people coming to the theaters if they are afraid of coming Downtown?” asked Mary Margaret Schoenfeld, executive director of the League of Historic American Theatres, which is holding its annual convention this week in Los Angeles. “You can have great buildings but if people are not going to sit in them, you’re out of luck.”

Her organization of theater operators is inspecting the Broadway district and offering suggestions for its use. Many conventioneers also are attending the “Remaining Last Seats,” the five-night film festival sponsored by the Los Angeles Conservancy at the Orpheum and other Downtown theaters.

In a more controversial step, the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) this week partly unveiled a study recommending that three theaters form a new Latino-oriented entertainment zone along Broadway between 6th and 8th streets. The plan suggests that a largely untapped market of Latino consumers would attend live concerts at the Los Angeles, support live theater at the Palace and embrace a high-tech sports bar at the State.

The cost of the three renovations would total about $20 million, presumably from private entertainment companies eager to court the large Latino population, CRA officials said. Many details remain to be worked out and the full report is to be released next month.

All that attention was welcomed by Bruce Corwin, president of the Metropolitan Theatres Corp., which operates or owns the majority of the Broadway theaters. But Corwin remains skeptical of anything but an expensive neighborhood overhaul, emphasizing security, cleanliness and cheaper parking. Two months ago, his company closed the Los Angeles, a theater whose 1931 faux Versailles design by S. Charles Lee is considered unrivaled in lavishness.

“Nobody cares more about those theaters than we do. We have suffered and sweated and tried to keep those places alive,” Corwin said in a telephone interview. Any revival “is going to take somebody with deep pockets who is willing to gamble.”

Schoenfeld’s league reports success nationwide in reviving theaters that similarly suffered from television, multiplexes, suburbanization and the fear of crime in old downtowns. In Los Angeles County, recent good news stories include the Alex in Glendale, restored as a performing arts center; the El Capitan in Hollywood, spruced up as a showcase for Disney films; and the Wiltern, the Art Deco movie palace in mid-Wilshire now revitalized as a concert hall.

What makes Downtown Los Angeles different is the astonishing number of theaters that were left between 3rd Street and Olympic Boulevard even after middle-income and white audiences moved to Hollywood, Westwood and exurbia. Only New York’s Times Square has more, and a campaign there, involving the Disney company, seeks to turn abandoned and porno theaters into family venues. Like Times Square, Los Angeles’ Broadway struggles with the image of being a dangerous place at night, an image that theater boosters and Los Angeles police contend is unwarranted.

“This is the home of the movie industry. So of all the areas in the United States, Los Angeles should value these buildings. But then again, Los Angeles has so many more,” said Marian Milligan, an official of the Elsinore Theater, a 1926 movie theater in Salem, Ore., that is a performing arts center. She and other conventioneers said the goal should be to save the best, not to rescue all.

Milligan and about 150 colleagues walked Broadway the other day and toured seven theaters’ interiors. “We hope by having all these people in our town who have realized their impossible dreams, some of their success will rub off on Los Angeles,” said Hillsman Wright, an activist with the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation, whose members were guides.

The visitors seemed both dazzled and saddened by what they saw.

The Orpheum, the 2,200-seat house built for vaudeville, appeared to be in good shape and retains such fantastical details as lobby chandeliers decorated with half-dressed bronze maidens; the Orpheum shows first-run movies with Spanish subtitles. However, the nearby 1927 Tower, used only as a filming location, looked battered.

The visitors were pleased at how televangelist Gene Scott has scrubbed the 1927 United Artists and converted it into a church, retaining murals of early movie stars like theater builder Mary Pickford. And they liked how the Mayan, a former porno house, has been turned into a successful nightclub. But they gasped at the former Warner Bros. theater, now a Hill Street jewelry mart, with the 1920 proscenium and balcony still visible.

In a presentation to the league, CRA consultants conceded that their district plan would provoke debate, particularly the proposed sports bar at the State, with a boxing ring, wide-screen videos and virtual reality games. But they stressed that more traditional uses do not appear profitable and that any physical changes could be reversed.

A new assessment district is to raise street cleanup and improvement funds from local businesses, and city government may pitch in some more. But Charles Loveman, a principal of Kosmont and Associates, the plan’s main author, stressed that private industry would have to manage the theaters and pay for their rehabilitation.

“Is it feasible?” Loveman asked about the plan. “Yes. Will it be difficult? Yes. Will it be worthwhile? Yes.”

Although audience members did not dispute the proposed new uses, some took exception to the plan’s Latino orientation, saying it might further ethnic segregation.

“I feel I’ve been told to stay on the Westside where you belong,” one white woman angrily declared before quickly leaving the meeting. “What about the melting pot? What about the tossed salad?” CRA officials said the theaters’ venues and audience would be open to all, but that a Latino flavor was logical given location and demographics.

Some conventioneers went on to see “The Final Curtain: Endangered Movie Palaces of Downtown Los Angeles,” a photo exhibit by Robert Berger and Anne Conser, which runs at 777 S. Figueroa St. through July 29. And most attended “Ben-Hur,” in the series that will show “Destry Rides Again” on Wednesday at the State and “The Bank Dick” June 29 at the Orpheum.

In the enthusiastic “Ben-Hur” audience Wednesday night was Marita Grabiak, a movie script supervisor who lives in Culver City. “It’s a very exciting feeling to be watching this the way it was watched 70 years ago,” said Grabiak, sitting in the balcony with her husband and two young children. “It’s as if the happiness of 70 years sort of saturated into the walls and is still here.”