2nd Suspicious Fire in a Year Damages Vacant Hollywood Theater

For the second time in about a year, part of a vacant Hollywood landmark theater--the home of radio studios and later of television’s “Merv Griffin Show”--burned under suspicious circumstances, fire officials said Sunday.

No one was hurt in the 5 p.m. Saturday fire, but the Trans American Video Celebrity Theater on Vine Street and Selma Avenue sustained $150,000 in damage. On Jan. 14, 1996, firefighters extinguished a suspected arson fire that caused $500,000 damage to the large two-story complex. Saturday’s blaze was extinguished in 40 minutes, said city Fire Department spokesman Jim Wells.

The theater, built in the late 1920s or early ‘30s, included offices where Sammy Cahn and Irving Berlin once wrote songs, said Hollywood historian Greg Williams. The complex has become a refuge for transients. It was unclear whether this factored into the fires, officials said.

Griffin bought the property in the late 1970s from a business group headed by the late Sammy Davis Jr., Williams said. He sold the theater in 1986 in a deal that included the sale of his game shows “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!”