Hollywood Bowl Easter Rites Shut Out Again

For the fifth consecutive year, the Hollywood Bowl Easter sunrise service--a celebrated annual event since 1921--has been shut out of the Bowl by construction projects.

Early this year, heavy rains dashed any hopes to ready the outdoor theater for the return of the service known for celebrity narrators, soloists and big-name clergy. And renovation work expected to be undertaken each winter in order to preserve the May-to-October season of concerts and special events may prevent the service’s return for as many as three more years, a Bowl spokeswoman said Friday.

A retired Lutheran minister who often takes part in the service expressed doubt that the event will be able to bounce back.

“It will be tough and cost dollars we do not have,” said the Rev. Harry Durkee of Burbank, a former pastor of Hollywood Lutheran Church, referring to expenses for such things as promotion, programs and stagehands.

But producer-publicist Norma Foster, who directs a scaled-down 6 a.m. sunrise service at the Women’s Club of Hollywood with an ongoing group of volunteers, contended that enough hoopla can be generated--in some future year--for the event’s now-suspended 75th anniversary.

“We will invite back all the stars, major clergy and choirs who have appeared in the service in the past,” she said.

Entertainers who have appeared in sunrise services at the amphitheater in Cahuenga Pass include Charlton Heston, Rhonda Fleming, Robert Stack, Mickey Rooney, Shirley Jones and Robert Guillaume. The clergy include Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the Rev. Robert H. Schuller and then-Hollywood pastor John Lloyd Ogilvie, now U.S. Senate chaplain.

The service peaked in popularity in the 1940s, when attendance reached 30,000 in at least two years. The crowds comprised fewer than 20,000 worshipers in the 1960s, including one year when construction moved the service to the Hollywood High School football field. The turnstile count for the 1980 service was 11,894, and crowds dipped below that in ensuing years.

The 73rd annual service in 1993 was the last at the Bowl. The 74th annual Easter rites were at Hollywood United Methodist Church.

Since then, despite scaled-down services at the women’s club, the appellation “75th annual” has been held in abeyance until the return to the Hollywood Bowl.

Inquiries about the service are made every spring, especially from people who remember rising in the predawn hours, packing coffee to fight off the April or late March chill and taking seats facing a large, lighted cross on the other side of the Hollywood Freeway.

“Having Christians of all denominations gather at the Bowl to worship as the sun rises on Easter morning was a very moving experience,” said Paul Tamburelli, who now lives in the Phoenix area and is visiting relatives this weekend in Los Angeles.

“I had hoped to duplicate those memories for my wife and three teenage children,” he said.

Hollywood Bowl officials “want to have the Easter sunrise service back,” said Vanessa Butler, associate publicity director for the Bowl. But the holiday comes in April or March, which does not give construction crews enough time to finish their work unless it is an exceptionally dry winter, she said.

Some other venerable Easter sunrise services are still available in scenic outdoor settings, usually starting at 6 or 6:30 a.m.

The 89th annual Mt. Rubidoux Easter sunrise service--atop a hill near Riverside--calls itself the nation’s oldest. But sponsors of the Red Rock Canyon service north of Mojave insist they deserve that title, conducting what they say is their 91st this year.

The 73rd annual Mt. McGroarty sunrise service near Sunland and Tujunga provides predawn transportation from Foothill Boulevard and Hillhaven Avenue to take worshipers up the 2,000-foot mountain.

Oceanside services organized by community church groups include rites at Morro Bay and at the west end of the Santa Monica Pier.

Many large cemeteries hold sunrise services with the help of local clergy groups. More than 7,000 people are expected to attend 6 a.m. services at the Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks at Glendale, Hollywood Hills, Cypress, Covina Hills and Long Beach.

A sunrise service in the form of an Easter musical drama will be performed for the fourth year at Vasquez Rocks by members of three Agua Dulce churches.

Many, though not all, sunrise services feature evangelical and charismatic ministers and choirs whose churches have kept the traditions alive, often along with local Kiwanis Clubs.