Los Angeles’ old movie palaces on vintage postcards
Some remain, some are long gone and one was never built. Here are some vintage postcards depicting the old movie palaces of Los Angeles.
The back of this vintage postcard reads: “This world-famous theatre is the scene of some most spectacular Premieres. In the cement paving of the forecourt prominent stars, both past and present, have left their hand and footprints as mementos to their admiring public.” (Patt Morrison / Los Angeles Times)
The stars — at least those of the searchlight variety — really did shine brighter in Hollywood. (Patt Morrison / Los Angeles Times)
Sadly, this domed theater was never built on Hollywood Boulevard. (Patt Morrison / Los Angeles Times)
7th and Hill is now the heart of the Jewelry District downtown. The building with the beautiful rounded corner was the Pantages before it was the Warner Bros. Theatre. (Patt Morrison / Los Angeles Times)
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You can make out the Los Angeles Theater on Broadway in this nighttime street scene. The back of the postcard, postmarked in 1944, says Broadway is “aglow with brilliant lights. The many attractive shops, theatres and dates afford great interest of visitors of the Southland.” At one point, there were a dozen theaters along six blocks of South Broadway. (Patt Morrison / Los Angeles Times)
Three other theaters bore the Orpheum name before the fourth with its glowing neon marquee. This vintage postcard shows what is now called the Palace Theatre on South Broadway, built in 1911. (Patt Morrison / Los Angeles Times)
The Liberty Theatre once stood at 3rd and Main streets downtown. The message on the back of this vintage postcard, dated Feb. 16, 1910, hints at trouble ahead: “Ma and I still keep this place up. When Ma goes home, it will go bankrupt,” the correspondent pens in a neat cursive. (Patt Morrison / Los Angeles Times)
Clune’s Broadway Theatre was the “peer of any moving picture theatre in America,” the back of this vintage postcard said. (Patt Morrison / Los Angeles Times)
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A postcard with a postmark of July 1911 shows the College Theatre at 5th and Hill, declaring it “The Handsomest Theater in the World.” (Patt Morrison / Los Angeles Times)
On Main Street, the original L.A. Belasco opened in 1904, lavishly praised by The Times as “not gaudy but [having] refined brilliance.” Eight years later it closed down, to be reopened as the Republic, combining stage and film shows, and at last recast as the Follies, a burlesque/slapstick house destroyed in 1974. This pre-1914 postcard that bears a notation of “Made in Germany.” When World War I started, the U.S. could no longer patronize German lithographers. (Patt Morrison / Los Angeles Times)
South Main Street was chockablock with early legitimate theaters, years before the movies arrived. The Burbank — a project of the same man, the dentist David Burbank, whose name adorns the city of Burbank — was taken over by stage impresario Oliver Morosco, and in time became a burlesque house before it was taken down in the early 1970s. It’s seen here around 1905 on a scanned photo. (Patt Morrison / Los Angeles Times)
