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Downloaded from
YTS.BZ

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(film whirring)
(timer beeping)

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(inspirational orchestral music)

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.BZ

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- Theaters are magic.

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You go into a theater and I
don't care if it's a small,

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little local one in your
hometown or something

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as grand as Radio City Music Hall.

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When you're in the music
hall and the lights go down,

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it becomes intimate

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and fascinating and magical.

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- So many people identify movies with some

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of the best times of their lives.

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They remember their first dates.

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They remember their first
time out with their family,

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their first time they went
to see a movie about being

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a doctor, being a politician,
being an astronaut.

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(inspirational orchestral music)

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- There's something about
seeing those stories

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on screen and you get
a chance to understand

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other cultures, other
experiences, other places.

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- We may never live those
fantasies or those lives

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of the people we're watching,
but we do it vicariously.

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- You are giving people a complete escape

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from their ordinary lives.

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From the moment you walk into
the lobby: plush carpeting,

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gilded leaf-work on the
walls and on the ceilings,

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magnificent chandeliers,
decor from different periods

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of art and architecture around the globe.

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This at a time when most people,

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most Americans, didn't have
the opportunity to travel.

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- They were places where
the rich and the poor

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could rub elbows.

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- They built these palaces
to be the Disney of the day,

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so that you walk in off the
street and you forget all

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of the troubles and all
of the things that you had

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going on in your life
because you're surrounded

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by this magnificent building.

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(soft orchestral music)

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- I remember coming here as a child

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and just being completely
amazed and taken aback

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by the ornate beauty of the building.

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- When I first started my job

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at Theater Historical Society, it was kind

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of eyeopening for me to
learn that the places

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that I went to to see
Broadway touring shows

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with a symphony were
actually buildings that were

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built as movies palaces.

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- Toward the end of World War I up

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through the Depression,
which is the early '30s,

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there was just a boom.

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That's the only way to
describe it: a boom that led

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to the building of
enumerable movie palaces.

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Not theaters but palaces,
and ones you can visit today

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and still see and still enjoy a movie in.

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It seems so incredibly lavish.

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You wonder how anybody
could conceive of them

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or why they would build
such structures just to go

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to the movies.

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(soft piano music)

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As Marcus Loew, the famous
showman and businessman said,

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"We don't sell tickets to movies.

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We sell tickets to theaters."

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- I first came

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into the Rialto Theater
when I was probably

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eight years old.

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My mom was making an effort
to educate me in old movies,

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so we'd go to Chaplin movies
and Buster Keaton movies

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and the Rialto was a revival house.

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(soft piano music)
(birds chirping)

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- When I was growing up,

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I always knew that my
great-grandfather had owned

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a movie theater chain.

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It was called the
Butterfield Theater Company.

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And I wasn't super familiar with it,

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but I knew that my mom
growing up never had to pay

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to go see a movie.

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And I just remember thinking oh my god,

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like I wish that had been me.

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- I have a great memory of going

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to the Ziegfeld Theater in
New York when I was a kid.

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We were actually living

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in Charleston, South Carolina
and I was always going

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to mall multiplexes and it was "Gandhi."

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It's the kind of movie
that had intermission.

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It was people dressed up.

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It was fancy bathrooms.

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It's the kinda thing that
sticks with you forever.

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- I went to see "Gone With the Wind"

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in the Redford Theater in
Detroit, Michigan when I was

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in grad school.

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- Sir, you are awfully kind.

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- I'm not kind. I'm just tempting you.

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- I've seen "Gone With the
Wind" probably hundreds

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of times in my life.

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But there's something completely different

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about seeing that movie on a big screen,

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the organ playing and you're
in a room with 1,200 people.

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- I don't even remember
the movies that I saw,

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but I was entranced by
the building itself,

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by all the scary character
faces in the walls, darkness,

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the color, the intensity,
the sorta musty smells.

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- And you come out and it had gotten dark,

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so the marquee was lighted
up and the sidewalk

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is twinkling with the
little crystals of mica

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they would put in it.

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There was a magic going on there,

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which I took for granted
of course as everybody did.

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They were part of life.

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(soft inspirational music)

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- Movies are one of
the United States' most

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important cultural contributions.

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It's how we've broadcasted
our culture around

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the world and how we've
made that association

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between the United States and Hollywood

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is through the movies.

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So it's a very very important national

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and cultural legacy, right?

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But we don't actually
preserve the movie theaters.

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So those are some of our most

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important cultural landmarks.

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And yet when it comes time
to economic development

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or redevelopment of the city
or real estate development,

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someone's come in and
take out a whole block

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to do something.

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People don't ask those kinds of questions.

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And so you have all these
cities around the country

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where there's just nothing left.

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You can go to cities
where they've torn down

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every movie theater they've had.

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So we can assume it's just
an entertainment venue

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or we can actually recognize
that it actually was

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a vibrant center of city life.

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- Some of the first films
to be shown and promoted

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in a big way in the
1890s were prize fights.

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But that was an event and
it was an event that was

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very successful and they
went from city to city

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and rented out big existing auditoriums.

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This long before the nickelodeon

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or the little storefront theaters.

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So they were really the
beginning of what movies could be

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and eventually did become.

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When the movie business actually got going

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in the early 20th century,

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with Thomas Edison and
everyone else involved,

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the early films were first not projected.

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They were shown on you know,
little eyepiece viewers.

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- [Man] Where you would drop a penny in,

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you get a 30-second reel
of film on a kinetoscope.

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- These little cards
that would flash in front

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of you on a little viewer
and you'd crank this thing

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and it made you put a
coin in or something.

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They were in these little parlors,

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like an arcade in a way.

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They're all lined up against the wall.

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(energetic piano music)

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- This is like Automatic
Vaudeville run by a man

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named Adolph Zukor and other people around

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the country began to open up
these penny arcade parlors.

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And it was the first kind
of chain store, if you will,

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build-out of the moviegoing experience.

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- People like Thomas Edison and others,

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rivals and people who were ripping off

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Thomas Edison's patent
made a short, short film.

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And eventually, some of them had stories.

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- There was Thomas Edison with
his kinetoscope I believe,

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and then there were the
Lumiere brothers in France.

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The two technologies kind
of evolved around the same

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time and they were competing.

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And so one nickelodeon
would show Lumiere products

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and then somebody else would show using

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the Edison projector.

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- We all know about "The
Great Train Robbery" in 1903.

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May not have been the very
first film to tell a story,

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but it's one of the first
to use up a whole 10

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to 15-minute reel documenting
a story and making

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it seem pretty realistic.

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And then someone had the
idea that projecting them

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meant you could show
a lot of people a film

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at the same time.

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- What was beginning to
work was actually having

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seats set up and a projector
in the back and making

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it a public experience
of going to the movies.

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- [Leonard] Folding chairs
were brought into storefronts.

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I mean, it was as simple as that.

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- I grew up in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, which many

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say is the birthplace of the
commercial movie theater.

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So in 1905, a gentleman named

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John P Harris and his business partner,

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Harry Davis, they said,

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why don't we take the
projector down the street

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to a storefront that we have,

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put a screen on the wall and 96 chairs

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and we'll show films continuously.

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They charged a nickel.

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They called it a nickelodeon.

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- It came from the word nickel
meaning American currency.

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You know, then it usually
cost a nickel to get

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into one of these things
and then odeon which means

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an indoor environment.

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- A lot of scholars
consider that to be sort

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of the flashpoint because
within a few years of that,

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people were opening
nickelodeans like crazy.

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(soft comical music)

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it was kind of the Wild West.

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It was something of a free-for-all.

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Anybody who had access to a
camera and film could make

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a film and anybody who could set up chairs

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and a projector could show a film.

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(soft comical music)

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- Famously, Loew's began this way.

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It was originally called
People's Vaudeville Company,

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and Marcus Loew, when he went to visit one

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of his penny arcades in
Cincinnati, he went across

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the river to Covington and
he saw a man projecting

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movies onto a screen.

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So he went back to his
penny hippodrome and he took

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the second floor and converted
it into a movie theater.

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That was the changeover
that began to happen

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where you would accompany
the films with music

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and you could feed off of the crowd.

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So falls worked better,
humor worked better,

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comedy worked better.

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- Sometimes there would
be someone standing behind

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the screen giving voice to actors,

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sometimes a singer in a little side stage.

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Often, almost always as a
matter of fact, a piano player,

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that was an art in itself.

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The piano player had to be
really good at improvising.

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- This was a national trend.

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You know, it gets a lot
of celebrated coverage

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in New York and Chicago
and cities like that.

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But it was national.

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It was regional.

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It was even rural.

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Cincinnati, Covington, Charleston, Dallas,

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small towns in Iowa.

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People began to wanna
watch movies everywhere

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and it began already by 1907

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when "Harper's Weekly" referred
to it as nickel madness.

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It was a national and
soon global phenomenon.

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And then suddenly a saturation point.

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There were so many
nickelodeons everywhere.

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- The Warner brothers also started

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in the Pittsburgh area
and they opened a little

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theater called the Cascade
outside of Pittsburgh.

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They ran that for a few
years but then they thought,

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oh wait a minute, the money
is more in making movies.

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And many people in those
early days felt they could

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make money off the movies,

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but they had to deal
with the patents folks

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and Thomas Edison.

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And that's why a lot
of the production moved

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from the East Coast to New York and then

255
00:11:27,130 --> 00:11:29,523
Chicago, they moved out to the West Coast.

256
00:11:30,410 --> 00:11:32,340
(train bell chiming)

257
00:11:32,390 --> 00:11:34,930
- Of course D. W. Griffith
entered the scene at the end

258
00:11:34,980 --> 00:11:39,980
of the first decade of movies
and gave more rhythm, tempo,

259
00:11:40,020 --> 00:11:43,380
purpose, pace and dramatic clarity

260
00:11:43,430 --> 00:11:46,770
to the storytelling
and hired very talented

261
00:11:46,820 --> 00:11:49,880
and very camera-friendly
actors like Mary Pickford.

262
00:11:49,930 --> 00:11:51,390
(soft intriguing music)

263
00:11:51,440 --> 00:11:53,640
There was no such thing as a movie actor.

264
00:11:53,690 --> 00:11:55,290
They had to come from some place.

265
00:11:55,340 --> 00:11:57,540
Most of them came from
the stage: people like

266
00:11:57,590 --> 00:11:59,830
Lillian and Dorothy Gish.

267
00:11:59,880 --> 00:12:01,850
Some of them had circus training.

268
00:12:01,900 --> 00:12:05,330
Charlie Chaplin was part of
a famous music hall troop.

269
00:12:05,380 --> 00:12:07,680
In England, they called
vaudeville music hall.

270
00:12:08,860 --> 00:12:11,120
That's when Mack Sennett
heard about this young fellow,

271
00:12:11,170 --> 00:12:14,120
Charlie Chaplin, and
signed him to a contract

272
00:12:14,170 --> 00:12:16,023
and that was at the end of 1913.

273
00:12:18,210 --> 00:12:19,740
- And there was an entire segment

274
00:12:19,790 --> 00:12:21,800
of African-American
vaudeville entertainers

275
00:12:21,850 --> 00:12:23,650
that would travel the country just going

276
00:12:23,700 --> 00:12:26,623
in that circuit of African-American
vaudeville theaters.

277
00:12:27,800 --> 00:12:31,450
- And there were quite a
few black filmmakers in like

278
00:12:31,500 --> 00:12:35,550
the early 1900s such as
Oscar Micheaux and that part

279
00:12:35,600 --> 00:12:40,100
of our heritage isn't celebrated
as much as it should be.

280
00:12:40,150 --> 00:12:41,790
- [Man] Some of the movie
theaters that we think

281
00:12:41,840 --> 00:12:43,080
of as palaces were actually

282
00:12:43,130 --> 00:12:44,380
originally vaudeville theaters.

283
00:12:44,430 --> 00:12:47,190
- Vaudeville houses that I've noticed have

284
00:12:47,240 --> 00:12:49,910
a much higher ceiling.

285
00:12:49,960 --> 00:12:53,460
The balcony is a lot
steeper and that's so people

286
00:12:53,510 --> 00:12:55,420
on stage and the people
on the balcony could see

287
00:12:55,470 --> 00:12:56,650
the people on the stage and people

288
00:12:56,700 --> 00:12:58,240
on the vaudeville performers,

289
00:12:58,290 --> 00:13:01,660
their voice could reach
up to the upper portions

290
00:13:01,710 --> 00:13:02,543
of the balcony.

291
00:13:03,400 --> 00:13:06,300
- Vaudeville theater, you
had a desire for intimacy

292
00:13:06,350 --> 00:13:07,363
with the stage.

293
00:13:08,310 --> 00:13:11,360
There was an attitude of see and be seen.

294
00:13:11,410 --> 00:13:13,660
You'd tell a vaudeville house
from a strictly movie house

295
00:13:13,710 --> 00:13:15,710
because the vaudeville house has box seats

296
00:13:15,760 --> 00:13:18,560
on the side and sometimes
on the main floor as well.

297
00:13:18,610 --> 00:13:21,300
The people sitting in the
box didn't have the finest

298
00:13:21,350 --> 00:13:22,270
view of the stage,

299
00:13:22,320 --> 00:13:24,980
but everybody in the
audience could see them,

300
00:13:25,030 --> 00:13:27,080
which they cherished.

301
00:13:27,130 --> 00:13:29,800
- This particular building
that we're in was built

302
00:13:29,850 --> 00:13:32,130
before the movie theater era,

303
00:13:32,180 --> 00:13:34,410
so this was built for live performance.

304
00:13:34,460 --> 00:13:37,300
A movie theater house
is bigger in that way.

305
00:13:37,350 --> 00:13:38,530
It's longer and narrow.

306
00:13:38,580 --> 00:13:39,960
It's easier to see the screen.

307
00:13:40,010 --> 00:13:42,310
(soft orchestral music)

308
00:13:42,360 --> 00:13:45,200
- The vaudeville circuit built
a number of these houses.

309
00:13:45,250 --> 00:13:47,350
They would travel from
city to city to city.

310
00:13:47,400 --> 00:13:50,703
One of our local vaudeville
companies was Finch and Marco.

311
00:13:51,760 --> 00:13:53,980
Finch and Marco was based downtown.

312
00:13:54,030 --> 00:13:56,290
They had a studio in Hollywood area.

313
00:13:56,340 --> 00:13:58,460
They sometimes worked with
Sid Grauman and sometimes

314
00:13:58,510 --> 00:14:00,280
were competition, but they would do

315
00:14:00,330 --> 00:14:01,910
what they called ideas,

316
00:14:01,960 --> 00:14:04,080
what Sid Grauman would call prologues.

317
00:14:04,130 --> 00:14:06,580
The individual vaudeville acts turned

318
00:14:06,630 --> 00:14:10,370
into these really programmed
dramatic large shows.

319
00:14:10,420 --> 00:14:12,060
- There were attempts
at feature length films

320
00:14:12,110 --> 00:14:13,750
in the early 1910s.

321
00:14:13,800 --> 00:14:15,840
Sarah Bernhardt made a
famous five reel film

322
00:14:15,890 --> 00:14:17,880
about Queen Elizabeth,
one of her famous roles

323
00:14:17,930 --> 00:14:18,713
from the stage.

324
00:14:18,763 --> 00:14:21,630
The Italians made films
like "Cabiria," which were

325
00:14:21,680 --> 00:14:24,420
imported here by a handful of theaters.

326
00:14:24,470 --> 00:14:26,810
And then D. W. Griffith
famously started becoming

327
00:14:26,860 --> 00:14:29,550
more ambitious in trying
slightly longer films,

328
00:14:29,600 --> 00:14:31,887
then slightly longer and eventually making

329
00:14:31,937 --> 00:14:33,490
"The Birth of a Nation."

330
00:14:33,540 --> 00:14:36,583
So everybody realized that's
where things were heading.

331
00:14:38,200 --> 00:14:41,040
- Movies were considered
third-rate entertainment.

332
00:14:41,090 --> 00:14:43,710
Maybe the top entertainment
would of course be opera,

333
00:14:43,760 --> 00:14:45,530
play, classical music.

334
00:14:45,580 --> 00:14:47,850
Somewhere below there and
maybe the second rung might

335
00:14:47,900 --> 00:14:49,610
be the vaudeville house.

336
00:14:49,660 --> 00:14:52,210
(soft orchestral music)

337
00:14:52,260 --> 00:14:55,900
The movies in the early
1900s were primarily

338
00:14:55,950 --> 00:14:58,220
for the lower middle classes.

339
00:14:58,270 --> 00:14:59,160
- Bit by bit,

340
00:14:59,210 --> 00:15:02,960
as movies established
themselves and started

341
00:15:03,010 --> 00:15:07,060
to shed their tawdry
reputation as being kind

342
00:15:07,110 --> 00:15:09,340
of low-class entertainment, people thought

343
00:15:09,390 --> 00:15:11,720
about the idea of building what today

344
00:15:11,770 --> 00:15:15,070
we call purpose-built (chuckles) theaters.

345
00:15:15,120 --> 00:15:19,297
And that became you know, a whole new era.

346
00:15:21,830 --> 00:15:24,420
- As you move into the
1910s, the movie business

347
00:15:24,470 --> 00:15:25,850
really began to boom in terms

348
00:15:25,900 --> 00:15:27,180
of the movie exhibition business.

349
00:15:27,230 --> 00:15:28,673
Let's start with an example.

350
00:15:29,520 --> 00:15:33,273
If you look at Roxy in the 1910s,

351
00:15:33,323 --> 00:15:35,040
you can see the progression

352
00:15:35,090 --> 00:15:37,610
of movie palaces by his own career.

353
00:15:37,660 --> 00:15:41,300
The showmen were people
who lived for their own

354
00:15:41,350 --> 00:15:42,680
persona that they created.

355
00:15:42,730 --> 00:15:44,033
They created a brand.

356
00:15:44,920 --> 00:15:46,150
You could rely on the
fact that if you went

357
00:15:46,200 --> 00:15:49,340
to a Grauman theater that
night or Roxy theater

358
00:15:49,390 --> 00:15:51,500
or something put on by
Balaban and Katz or certainly

359
00:15:51,550 --> 00:15:53,920
with Finch on Marco, even
if the film wasn't good,

360
00:15:53,970 --> 00:15:55,740
the evening was gonna be great.

361
00:15:55,790 --> 00:15:59,750
In 1913, in February in New
York, the Regent Theater opens

362
00:15:59,800 --> 00:16:01,400
and it's the first purpose-built deluxe

363
00:16:01,450 --> 00:16:02,520
motion picture theater.

364
00:16:02,570 --> 00:16:04,260
It actually was not a success,

365
00:16:04,310 --> 00:16:07,100
so Roxy was brought in
to essentially upgrade

366
00:16:07,150 --> 00:16:09,663
its capabilities and
certainly its revenues.

367
00:16:10,860 --> 00:16:12,850
By the time you get to The Strand in 1941,

368
00:16:12,900 --> 00:16:15,610
they thought we'll open The
Strand for a few months.

369
00:16:15,660 --> 00:16:17,460
We'll have people come for
movies and then we'll go

370
00:16:17,510 --> 00:16:18,293
to musical comedy.

371
00:16:18,343 --> 00:16:20,710
We'll do live theater like we had planned.

372
00:16:20,760 --> 00:16:24,030
Well, The Strand was a
huge hit of 3,000 seats,

373
00:16:24,080 --> 00:16:27,390
so they never returned it
to its original intent.

374
00:16:27,440 --> 00:16:28,510
It stayed a movie theater.

375
00:16:28,560 --> 00:16:31,310
The critics are writing
about the elaborate cars

376
00:16:31,360 --> 00:16:32,760
and dress and people were coming,

377
00:16:32,810 --> 00:16:35,530
that it's become fanciful for all classes.

378
00:16:35,580 --> 00:16:38,710
Then you have the Rialto,
which was opened in 1916,

379
00:16:38,760 --> 00:16:41,047
the Crossroads of the
World, 42nd and seventh,

380
00:16:41,097 --> 00:16:42,820
its a huge success.

381
00:16:42,870 --> 00:16:46,810
The Regent, the Strand, the
Rialto and the Rivoli from 1913

382
00:16:46,860 --> 00:16:49,100
to 1917, even just in the small area

383
00:16:49,150 --> 00:16:50,800
of New York, you can see that this area,

384
00:16:50,850 --> 00:16:53,900
there had always been
dominated by legitimate theater

385
00:16:53,950 --> 00:16:57,010
was suddenly being taken
over more and more by movies.

386
00:16:57,060 --> 00:16:58,080
That's what lead to the confidence

387
00:16:58,130 --> 00:17:00,480
of Messmore Kendall and
Edward Bowes had in opening

388
00:17:00,530 --> 00:17:02,113
up the Capitol Theater in late 1919.

389
00:17:02,163 --> 00:17:05,760
This is a 5,300 seat
theater that they opened

390
00:17:05,810 --> 00:17:07,493
without any studio backing.

391
00:17:10,270 --> 00:17:12,750
So to have gone from a
theater when you were hoping

392
00:17:12,800 --> 00:17:16,930
the Regent would do well at
2,000 seats, to 5,300 seats

393
00:17:16,980 --> 00:17:19,760
expressly for movies
shows you that meteoric

394
00:17:19,810 --> 00:17:23,443
rise of movie theaters from
that period from 1913 to 1919.

395
00:17:24,610 --> 00:17:27,470
The Capitol was the
really beginning in a way

396
00:17:27,520 --> 00:17:30,270
of that sense of scale the 20s brings you.

397
00:17:30,320 --> 00:17:32,820
It's not to say there weren't
many many other theaters,

398
00:17:32,870 --> 00:17:34,160
the Grauman's Million Dollar here

399
00:17:34,210 --> 00:17:36,840
in Los Angeles, Central Park and Chicago.

400
00:17:36,890 --> 00:17:38,790
But there is something
about the Capitol opening

401
00:17:38,840 --> 00:17:42,850
at the very end of the 1910s
that just is a signpost

402
00:17:42,900 --> 00:17:45,030
of what's going to be coming in the 1920s.

403
00:17:45,080 --> 00:17:46,583
(soft orchestral music)

404
00:17:46,633 --> 00:17:50,530
- Balaban and Katz was
a chain that got started

405
00:17:50,580 --> 00:17:52,370
on the southwest side.

406
00:17:52,420 --> 00:17:55,690
The first theater was gonna
be the Central Park Theater.

407
00:17:55,740 --> 00:17:58,660
This was 1917.

408
00:17:58,710 --> 00:18:02,320
The second theater was
the Riviera and it became

409
00:18:02,370 --> 00:18:06,780
so successful that Barney
said, oh, it's gotta be bigger,

410
00:18:06,830 --> 00:18:07,830
bigger and bigger.

411
00:18:07,880 --> 00:18:10,400
And it became the Tivoli Theater.

412
00:18:10,450 --> 00:18:14,313
It was 3,600 seats.

413
00:18:15,540 --> 00:18:18,860
He said, okay, let's do another theater.

414
00:18:18,910 --> 00:18:21,840
Let's do it downtown and
make it our headquarters,

415
00:18:21,890 --> 00:18:24,710
and that was the Chicago
Theater, which opened

416
00:18:24,760 --> 00:18:26,653
the same year, 1921.

417
00:18:28,530 --> 00:18:31,360
The money was just flowing in,

418
00:18:31,410 --> 00:18:33,870
so they talked with Rapp and Rapp.

419
00:18:33,920 --> 00:18:37,710
Just build us the biggest,
most extravagant theater,

420
00:18:37,760 --> 00:18:40,210
and it became the Uptown.

421
00:18:40,260 --> 00:18:44,315
(soft orchestral music)

422
00:18:44,365 --> 00:18:46,410
- In 1920, Roxy was brought back

423
00:18:46,460 --> 00:18:49,170
to New York to reopen
the the Capitol Theater.

424
00:18:49,220 --> 00:18:52,970
He was the director of
presentations from 1920 to 1925.

425
00:18:53,020 --> 00:18:54,270
And one of the things that he pioneered

426
00:18:54,320 --> 00:18:56,800
at the Capitol Theater
was the transmission

427
00:18:56,850 --> 00:19:00,060
of his stage shows and his own performers

428
00:19:00,110 --> 00:19:03,630
over WEAF, which later became part of NBC.

429
00:19:03,680 --> 00:19:04,500
But when Roxy left,

430
00:19:04,550 --> 00:19:06,840
he did leave so he could
start his own theater,

431
00:19:06,890 --> 00:19:07,903
the Roxy Theater.

432
00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:13,790
And not only that it was
gonna be named for him

433
00:19:13,840 --> 00:19:15,970
which of course was a
nice moment if you have

434
00:19:16,020 --> 00:19:16,960
a famous nickname,

435
00:19:17,010 --> 00:19:19,500
but it was because he
had that kind of draw.

436
00:19:19,550 --> 00:19:22,450
They needed his name and
his track record to create

437
00:19:22,500 --> 00:19:25,080
all the money he needed
for what would then be

438
00:19:25,130 --> 00:19:26,853
the largest movie palace in the country.

439
00:19:26,903 --> 00:19:29,950
That theater opened on March 11th, 1927,

440
00:19:30,000 --> 00:19:34,423
with again almost 6,000
seats, and it was a sensation.

441
00:19:36,330 --> 00:19:39,130
It was kind of the peak of
the movie palace moment.

442
00:19:39,180 --> 00:19:41,070
There were three conductors.

443
00:19:41,120 --> 00:19:45,150
There were three different
organs, massive Kimball organs.

444
00:19:45,200 --> 00:19:47,670
There were stage shows, they were ballets,

445
00:19:47,720 --> 00:19:49,420
they were operettas.

446
00:19:49,470 --> 00:19:53,180
There was every manner of
entertainment on that stage,

447
00:19:53,230 --> 00:19:55,430
even the integration of
live performance backed

448
00:19:55,480 --> 00:19:57,480
by a motion picture projection in addition

449
00:19:57,530 --> 00:19:58,860
to the feature film.

450
00:19:58,910 --> 00:20:02,120
But Roxy himself was never
satisfied with anything.

451
00:20:02,170 --> 00:20:05,980
And so as the years went
on from '27 and '28 to '29,

452
00:20:06,030 --> 00:20:08,190
he began to look for a challenge.

453
00:20:08,240 --> 00:20:10,580
He was plucked away by the Rockefellers

454
00:20:10,630 --> 00:20:13,320
and by RCA and RKO for a new project,

455
00:20:13,370 --> 00:20:15,790
which would be two theaters
opened at the same time

456
00:20:15,840 --> 00:20:17,170
at the new Rockefeller Center.

457
00:20:17,220 --> 00:20:20,400
He had always integrated
live performance and movies.

458
00:20:20,450 --> 00:20:23,230
And now here in 1932,
Radio City Music Hall was

459
00:20:23,280 --> 00:20:25,060
only going to be a place
for live performance,

460
00:20:25,110 --> 00:20:26,920
a kind of elevated vaudeville.

461
00:20:26,970 --> 00:20:29,540
And RKO Roxy Theater
which was 3,500 seats,

462
00:20:29,590 --> 00:20:32,670
was going to be a place
for movies with of course

463
00:20:32,720 --> 00:20:34,530
its famous Roxyettes, which he had had

464
00:20:34,580 --> 00:20:36,225
since the original Roxy.

465
00:20:36,275 --> 00:20:39,510
(upbeat music)

466
00:20:39,560 --> 00:20:42,227
(shoes tapping)

467
00:20:43,080 --> 00:20:48,080
- When Radio City Music Hall
opened December 27th, 1932,

468
00:20:48,170 --> 00:20:51,110
SL Rothafel was his name
and everybody called

469
00:20:51,160 --> 00:20:54,560
him Roxy and the music hall
was basically his idea.

470
00:20:54,610 --> 00:20:56,020
It had the Rockettes.

471
00:20:56,070 --> 00:20:56,980
It had a ballet company.

472
00:20:57,030 --> 00:20:59,480
It had a singer, a chorus of singers.

473
00:20:59,530 --> 00:21:01,573
It had a full symphony orchestra.

474
00:21:02,720 --> 00:21:04,350
That's what was on stage.

475
00:21:04,400 --> 00:21:06,270
It had costume designers, set designers.

476
00:21:06,320 --> 00:21:09,600
It had a full costume shop
up on the eighth floor

477
00:21:09,650 --> 00:21:11,520
where they made all the costumes.

478
00:21:11,570 --> 00:21:14,780
In the basement was a full scenic studio.

479
00:21:14,830 --> 00:21:18,130
Everything was made there.

480
00:21:18,180 --> 00:21:20,140
He wanted Radio City Music Hall to be

481
00:21:20,190 --> 00:21:23,980
the Showplace of the Nation
and that's the name it got.

482
00:21:24,030 --> 00:21:25,680
And he didn't want films,

483
00:21:25,730 --> 00:21:28,690
he wanted just stage presentations.

484
00:21:28,740 --> 00:21:32,510
And so that's what they
did on opening night

485
00:21:32,560 --> 00:21:33,930
and it was a bomb.

486
00:21:33,980 --> 00:21:37,720
It was a serious, horrible bomb.

487
00:21:37,770 --> 00:21:41,920
And so Roxy

488
00:21:43,260 --> 00:21:45,250
exited the theater that night

489
00:21:46,110 --> 00:21:49,910
in a stretcher and went into the hospital

490
00:21:49,960 --> 00:21:52,100
at three o'clock in the morning.

491
00:21:52,150 --> 00:21:54,733
And so the board of directors went,

492
00:21:55,810 --> 00:21:57,320
the only way we're gonna
make this thing work

493
00:21:57,370 --> 00:21:58,780
is to put movies in here.

494
00:21:58,830 --> 00:22:01,240
And "The Bitter Tea of
General Yen" starring

495
00:22:01,290 --> 00:22:03,650
Barbara Stanwyck was the first film.

496
00:22:03,700 --> 00:22:08,700
It opened January 11th, 1933,

497
00:22:08,950 --> 00:22:12,260
and that's all they wrote.

498
00:22:12,310 --> 00:22:14,963
It became the most famous
movie palace in the world.

499
00:22:16,550 --> 00:22:18,500
- The reason they were able
to build great theaters

500
00:22:18,550 --> 00:22:22,540
like this was that they were
owned by the movie studios

501
00:22:22,590 --> 00:22:25,120
who developed the product
that was shown in them.

502
00:22:25,170 --> 00:22:28,070
- The people who ran the
movie studios and ran

503
00:22:28,120 --> 00:22:29,990
the film companies,
many of them were known

504
00:22:30,040 --> 00:22:31,680
in part because they named their companies

505
00:22:31,730 --> 00:22:35,927
after themselves: Marcus
Loew of course, had Loew's.

506
00:22:35,977 --> 00:22:37,560
- MGM was a division of a company

507
00:22:37,610 --> 00:22:38,780
called Loew's Incorporated.

508
00:22:38,830 --> 00:22:40,570
Well Loew's was a movie theater company,

509
00:22:40,620 --> 00:22:44,210
so Loew's ran the theaters
and built and operated

510
00:22:44,260 --> 00:22:47,513
the theaters that just
happened to show MGM movies.

511
00:22:48,570 --> 00:22:49,560
- Marcus Loew built five

512
00:22:49,610 --> 00:22:51,950
Wonder Theaters in New York,
all opened at the same time,

513
00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:53,250
one in each borough.

514
00:22:53,300 --> 00:22:55,297
One missed. The one in Staten
Island never got built.

515
00:22:55,347 --> 00:22:56,713
It was in Jersey City.

516
00:22:58,010 --> 00:22:59,120
- [Leonard] Fox, the same.

517
00:22:59,170 --> 00:23:03,690
William Fox was a hard-driving
man who built a large

518
00:23:03,740 --> 00:23:05,023
Fox theater chain.

519
00:23:06,040 --> 00:23:07,870
- Fox didn't build that many theaters,

520
00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:09,510
but they were glorious ones

521
00:23:09,560 --> 00:23:12,810
in Detroit, in St. Louis and
Brooklyn and San Francisco.

522
00:23:12,860 --> 00:23:14,670
Grandest of the grand and they would show

523
00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:15,620
their own product.

524
00:23:16,490 --> 00:23:19,190
- RKO Radio Pictures was
kind of a conglomerate

525
00:23:19,240 --> 00:23:21,470
for its time because
it was built of several

526
00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:24,270
components: The Keith/Albee
vaudeville theater

527
00:23:24,320 --> 00:23:27,460
circuit and the Orpheum theater circuit

528
00:23:27,510 --> 00:23:29,960
and the Radio Corporation
of America or RCA run

529
00:23:30,010 --> 00:23:31,133
by David Sarnoff.

530
00:23:32,200 --> 00:23:33,470
Warner Bros of course,

531
00:23:33,520 --> 00:23:35,980
which also swallowed up the first national

532
00:23:36,030 --> 00:23:38,140
picture company from the silent era,

533
00:23:38,190 --> 00:23:40,947
had a buying spree of movie
theaters in the late '20s

534
00:23:40,997 --> 00:23:41,973
and early '30s.

535
00:23:43,800 --> 00:23:44,583
- [Ross] But in many cases,

536
00:23:44,633 --> 00:23:45,416
there were companies like

537
00:23:45,466 --> 00:23:48,250
Paramount, so Adolph Zukor's
name was a little less-known.

538
00:23:48,300 --> 00:23:51,180
- Zukor presided over various combinations

539
00:23:51,230 --> 00:23:53,580
of companies that became Paramount,

540
00:23:53,630 --> 00:23:56,370
and Paramount owned its
own chain of theaters.

541
00:23:56,420 --> 00:23:57,780
- They used the theaters, for instance,

542
00:23:57,830 --> 00:24:00,290
to actually understand their audience.

543
00:24:00,340 --> 00:24:03,350
Before there were Gallup
and research groups set up,

544
00:24:03,400 --> 00:24:05,300
you know, Fox could phone
a movie theater operator

545
00:24:05,350 --> 00:24:07,758
in Oakland and say, "How's
my movie gonna play up there?

546
00:24:07,808 --> 00:24:09,000
What do you think?"

547
00:24:09,050 --> 00:24:10,800
(soft orchestral music)

548
00:24:10,850 --> 00:24:13,520
- Columbia didn't own its own theaters.

549
00:24:13,570 --> 00:24:16,000
Universal didn't own its own theaters.

550
00:24:16,050 --> 00:24:19,180
So they were dependent mostly
on independent theaters,

551
00:24:19,230 --> 00:24:22,200
mom and pop theaters, smaller theaters,

552
00:24:22,250 --> 00:24:25,720
and occasionally lucked
out and had a film that was

553
00:24:25,770 --> 00:24:28,840
so appealing or created such demand,

554
00:24:28,890 --> 00:24:30,340
they got into the bigger theaters.

555
00:24:30,390 --> 00:24:32,670
- They were identifiable
brands and they brought

556
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:34,310
you a certain kind of film.

557
00:24:34,360 --> 00:24:39,360
From the 1910s through the
1940s, many of the best

558
00:24:39,930 --> 00:24:42,940
deluxe first-run movie
theaters in the country were

559
00:24:42,990 --> 00:24:47,620
run by Warner Brothers,
Fox, RKO, Loew's, Paramount.

560
00:24:47,670 --> 00:24:50,163
So they constrained a lot of trade.

561
00:24:53,310 --> 00:24:55,450
- The other type of theater
you had that was built

562
00:24:55,500 --> 00:25:00,500
you know, in the early
1900s, in the 19-teens was

563
00:25:00,710 --> 00:25:02,930
the neighborhood-style theater.

564
00:25:02,980 --> 00:25:05,130
- I call this a neighborhood movie palace.

565
00:25:05,180 --> 00:25:09,380
To me, it's got the same
romance and the same

566
00:25:09,430 --> 00:25:12,090
elegant details, but
it's on a smaller scale.

567
00:25:12,140 --> 00:25:14,480
- Some of them were very modest affairs,

568
00:25:14,530 --> 00:25:16,150
but they still offered
the experience of going

569
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:19,020
into a nice place and
sitting down comfortably

570
00:25:19,070 --> 00:25:22,440
and watching a movie on a
screen bigger than life.

571
00:25:22,490 --> 00:25:26,660
There was a tremendous appetite,
a hunger for movie-going.

572
00:25:26,710 --> 00:25:30,850
And people in the '20s,
'30s and '40s, even drifting

573
00:25:30,900 --> 00:25:33,640
into the '50s used to go
to the movies sometimes two

574
00:25:33,690 --> 00:25:35,510
or three times a week.

575
00:25:35,560 --> 00:25:38,550
People would've come to
see their favorite stars:

576
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:41,037
Douglas Fairbanks in films like

577
00:25:41,087 --> 00:25:43,987
"The Mark of Zorro," "The Black Pirate,"

578
00:25:44,037 --> 00:25:46,010
"The Thief of Bagdad."

579
00:25:46,060 --> 00:25:47,917
Mary Pickford in films like

580
00:25:47,967 --> 00:25:50,970
"Little Annie Rooney" and "Sparrows."

581
00:25:51,020 --> 00:25:54,020
Charlie Chaplin in "The
Kid," "The Gold Rush"

582
00:25:54,070 --> 00:25:55,620
and "The Circus."

583
00:25:55,670 --> 00:25:57,970
The list goes on and on and on.

584
00:25:58,020 --> 00:26:02,090
And studios got into
the business of building

585
00:26:02,140 --> 00:26:04,380
and developing stars.

586
00:26:04,430 --> 00:26:08,610
- The star system was
born in the late 1900s,

587
00:26:08,660 --> 00:26:10,920
early 1910s as you begin to have

588
00:26:10,970 --> 00:26:13,590
Florence Lawrence and Mary
Pickford and Charlie Chaplin,

589
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:16,690
these became national stars
and the national stardom meant

590
00:26:16,740 --> 00:26:20,770
collecting, collecting fan
magazines and photographs.

591
00:26:20,820 --> 00:26:22,720
- There was merchandising.

592
00:26:22,770 --> 00:26:24,940
People think merchandising
is a modern phenomenon.

593
00:26:24,990 --> 00:26:27,900
Oh to look back at what
you could buy or get

594
00:26:27,950 --> 00:26:32,420
as a giveaway or a premium
in the teens and '20s

595
00:26:32,470 --> 00:26:33,760
featuring all of these stars.

596
00:26:33,810 --> 00:26:35,850
(soft orchestral music)

597
00:26:35,900 --> 00:26:37,530
I collect stuff like that.

598
00:26:37,580 --> 00:26:40,440
I keep finding more of it
and more and more and more.

599
00:26:40,490 --> 00:26:42,780
Whatever you wanna call
it, cigarette cards,

600
00:26:42,830 --> 00:26:47,830
collector cards, souvenir
stamps, souvenir spoons.

601
00:26:48,590 --> 00:26:50,790
(chuckles softly)
Anything you can think of.

602
00:26:53,010 --> 00:26:56,950
Movie stars were our heroes, our heroines,

603
00:26:57,000 --> 00:27:01,033
our idols and that hasn't
changed all that much.

604
00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:05,510
- Each of the studios
would have under contract

605
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:10,270
a stable of stars and
they were assigned parts.

606
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:12,000
They would pretend, ooh yes,

607
00:27:12,050 --> 00:27:15,800
I was looking over a script
and I decided I might do this.

608
00:27:15,850 --> 00:27:18,410
No no, the boss told
'em, you get on stage,

609
00:27:18,460 --> 00:27:19,513
and this is your job.

610
00:27:20,370 --> 00:27:22,820
- Mary Pickford was
very shrewd young woman

611
00:27:24,180 --> 00:27:29,010
and she was possibly the first to realize,

612
00:27:29,060 --> 00:27:30,730
and it came as a great shock

613
00:27:30,780 --> 00:27:34,400
to her that the Famous Players Company run

614
00:27:34,450 --> 00:27:38,020
by her friend and in some ways mentor

615
00:27:38,070 --> 00:27:43,010
Adolph Zukor, was booking dozens of films

616
00:27:44,620 --> 00:27:47,373
to theaters on the lure
of getting her films.

617
00:27:48,860 --> 00:27:50,400
And if they didn't book her film,

618
00:27:50,450 --> 00:27:53,080
they wouldn't get the
other stuff and vice versa.

619
00:27:53,130 --> 00:27:56,100
But her films were the ones
that were really bringing

620
00:27:56,150 --> 00:27:58,880
in the big bucks and the big crowds.

621
00:27:58,930 --> 00:28:01,560
So she renegotiated her deal
with Mr. Zukor and said,

622
00:28:01,610 --> 00:28:04,420
no no no, you can't sell a whole block.

623
00:28:04,470 --> 00:28:05,950
They used to call it block booking.

624
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:08,300
You can't sell a block
of movies on the strength

625
00:28:08,350 --> 00:28:09,200
of my movie.

626
00:28:09,250 --> 00:28:11,750
My movie gets sold individually.

627
00:28:11,800 --> 00:28:13,510
That was a milestone.

628
00:28:13,560 --> 00:28:17,232
Charlie Chaplin renegotiated
as he moved from one

629
00:28:17,282 --> 00:28:19,770
company to another to the
point where he was getting

630
00:28:19,820 --> 00:28:23,840
an unheard of sum of money in
the teens before income tax,

631
00:28:23,890 --> 00:28:24,673
by the way.

632
00:28:24,723 --> 00:28:29,090
And eventually in 1919,
Mary, her future husband

633
00:28:29,140 --> 00:28:32,610
Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie
Chaplin and the great

634
00:28:32,660 --> 00:28:36,310
director PW Griffith
banded together and started

635
00:28:36,360 --> 00:28:39,850
a company called United Artists.

636
00:28:39,900 --> 00:28:42,150
It was not just a name,
it was a philosophy.

637
00:28:42,200 --> 00:28:45,420
They were artists who
united together to sort

638
00:28:45,470 --> 00:28:48,990
of control their own destiny,
control their own finances,

639
00:28:49,040 --> 00:28:51,740
have complete power over
the movies they chose

640
00:28:51,790 --> 00:28:54,640
to make and how they would
be released and distributed.

641
00:28:54,690 --> 00:28:57,100
(soft orchestral music)

642
00:28:57,150 --> 00:29:00,400
In 1926, it's said Mary Pickford traveled

643
00:29:00,450 --> 00:29:02,330
to Europe and saw

644
00:29:02,380 --> 00:29:07,380
some of the Moorish-style
cathedrals in Spain

645
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:08,790
and fell in love with them.

646
00:29:10,670 --> 00:29:12,780
When she returned to Hollywood, she said,

647
00:29:12,830 --> 00:29:15,410
I want a theater that looks like that.

648
00:29:15,460 --> 00:29:17,180
So she was the driving force that created

649
00:29:17,230 --> 00:29:19,280
the theater we're sitting in right now,

650
00:29:19,330 --> 00:29:21,510
which was the flagship of that company

651
00:29:21,560 --> 00:29:24,720
the United Artists Theater
on the corner of what was

652
00:29:24,770 --> 00:29:28,443
then 10th Street, now
called Olympic and Broadway.

653
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:36,720
- Downtown in cities,

654
00:29:36,770 --> 00:29:39,700
there always tended to
be a cluster of theaters.

655
00:29:39,750 --> 00:29:42,950
There would be an MGM
theater and a Loew's theater

656
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:45,530
and an RKO theater because
they were competing

657
00:29:45,580 --> 00:29:47,620
and they wanted to be near each other.

658
00:29:47,670 --> 00:29:50,530
You see many photo, vintage
photo or even a photo

659
00:29:50,580 --> 00:29:54,610
postcard showing a lineup
of theaters on a main street

660
00:29:54,660 --> 00:29:55,493
of a major city.

661
00:29:56,375 --> 00:29:59,708
(soft orchestral music)

662
00:30:06,860 --> 00:30:08,770
- [Ross] Los Angeles is
special because it was

663
00:30:08,820 --> 00:30:10,280
the entertainment capital of the world.

664
00:30:10,330 --> 00:30:12,650
We do have two historic theater districts,

665
00:30:12,700 --> 00:30:14,850
so all the movies were premiering not

666
00:30:14,900 --> 00:30:16,970
in Hollywood but in downtown and there was

667
00:30:17,020 --> 00:30:20,993
over 100 theaters just
downtown LA which is amazing.

668
00:30:23,050 --> 00:30:26,290
And then later, Hollywood came into being.

669
00:30:26,340 --> 00:30:29,160
Sid Grauman built the Egyptian and then

670
00:30:29,210 --> 00:30:32,400
the Chinese and that sorta
put Hollywood on the map

671
00:30:32,450 --> 00:30:34,203
as a place to go see films.

672
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:39,223
- The movie palace,

673
00:30:39,273 --> 00:30:41,630
especially the neighborhood
movie palace became part

674
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:42,463
of the neighborhood.

675
00:30:42,513 --> 00:30:44,023
Often it was named
after sometimes a street

676
00:30:44,073 --> 00:30:45,070
that it was on,

677
00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:47,560
sometimes the neighborhood
itself and they always had

678
00:30:47,610 --> 00:30:50,220
a big sign in front and that was the name

679
00:30:50,270 --> 00:30:51,270
of the neighborhood.

680
00:30:52,700 --> 00:30:55,030
- One way to make it a
destination on a main street

681
00:30:55,080 --> 00:31:00,080
of a medium-size town or a
big city was to have a big,

682
00:31:00,500 --> 00:31:03,250
elaborate, brightly-lit marquee and then

683
00:31:03,300 --> 00:31:04,580
what they used to call a blade.

684
00:31:04,630 --> 00:31:05,790
- [Ross] Well the blade
marquee is the vertical

685
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:07,560
one that's attached to
the front of the building

686
00:31:07,610 --> 00:31:10,743
and it's usually just
the name of the theater.

687
00:31:12,180 --> 00:31:15,470
- Chicago had an interesting
situation happen.

688
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:17,760
The theater we're in now called

689
00:31:17,810 --> 00:31:20,490
the Music Box, you see the letters there,

690
00:31:20,540 --> 00:31:22,990
but there's no backplate
behind it just the stroke

691
00:31:23,040 --> 00:31:23,840
of the letters.

692
00:31:23,890 --> 00:31:28,400
Chicago initiated attacks on
the square foot area of signs.

693
00:31:28,450 --> 00:31:30,500
So the theaters rebuilt
them just with the letters

694
00:31:30,550 --> 00:31:32,700
so they'd have a minimum
of square footage.

695
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:38,470
- They usually had a box office.

696
00:31:38,520 --> 00:31:41,040
Many times it was a standalone
little island booth.

697
00:31:41,090 --> 00:31:43,053
Sometimes it was built into a sidewall.

698
00:31:44,180 --> 00:31:45,600
If you're lucky, you had a forecourt,

699
00:31:45,650 --> 00:31:49,380
an outside lobby area
that was off the sidewalk.

700
00:31:49,430 --> 00:31:52,190
Then walk into an interior lobby.

701
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:54,740
And in the 1920s and '30s,
the interior lobby was

702
00:31:54,790 --> 00:31:56,750
really just a congregation space.

703
00:31:56,800 --> 00:31:58,850
There was no concession stands.

704
00:31:58,900 --> 00:31:59,683
- When you walk

705
00:31:59,733 --> 00:32:01,930
into Radio City Music Hall, the first room

706
00:32:01,980 --> 00:32:04,370
that you see is the lobby and they call

707
00:32:04,420 --> 00:32:08,710
it the Grand Foyer, and
it is very dramatic.

708
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:12,310
A secret about that: There
are mirrors three stories

709
00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:15,900
tall and they are backed with gold leaf,

710
00:32:15,950 --> 00:32:18,017
not silver like most mirrors.

711
00:32:18,067 --> 00:32:21,470
And they wanted it that
way so it ensured a soft,

712
00:32:21,520 --> 00:32:23,320
warm glow fell over the guests.

713
00:32:23,370 --> 00:32:27,560
And it does, it has a very unusual,

714
00:32:27,610 --> 00:32:29,430
interesting lighting when you go in there.

715
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:30,620
It's just beautiful.

716
00:32:30,670 --> 00:32:33,803
It's kinda hushes everybody
as a matter of fact.

717
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:36,490
- The rug in the lobby.

718
00:32:36,540 --> 00:32:39,170
That's my favorite part:
the bejeweled flying carpet

719
00:32:39,220 --> 00:32:40,950
as I like to refer to it.

720
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:42,110
I believe it's plastic,

721
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:44,750
but it's textured to
appear as if it's fabric.

722
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:47,540
And of course it's got
glass jewels that shine

723
00:32:47,590 --> 00:32:48,373
whenever the light hit them.

724
00:32:48,423 --> 00:32:50,750
It's sort of similar to the columns.

725
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:52,400
It's a little bit more textured,

726
00:32:52,450 --> 00:32:55,430
but these glass jewels are
throughout the property.

727
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:57,480
The lamps are actually
Tiffany lamps which I did

728
00:32:57,530 --> 00:32:59,140
not realize, so that's pretty cool.

729
00:32:59,190 --> 00:33:00,750
My mom told me that.

730
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:03,110
- The Michigan Theater
was built in the late '20s

731
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:05,180
and that was built as a movie palace.

732
00:33:05,230 --> 00:33:09,310
And so it was modeled
off of the opera houses

733
00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:13,070
of the 1800s and so you've
got this barrel ceiling.

734
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:16,383
Both of the staircases sweep
down in a bit of an arc.

735
00:33:17,730 --> 00:33:20,683
- This lobby is breathtaking, spectacular.

736
00:33:21,580 --> 00:33:23,710
You don't see lobbies like this.

737
00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:25,840
I mean maybe I've seen
them in Europe at some

738
00:33:25,890 --> 00:33:27,250
of the cathedrals.

739
00:33:27,300 --> 00:33:29,670
It's unique to this country.

740
00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:31,910
So this is the money shot.

741
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:33,750
This is the highlight of the building,

742
00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:35,260
but there are others.

743
00:33:35,310 --> 00:33:37,360
- [Man] There is a mezzanine
lobby up the stairs

744
00:33:37,410 --> 00:33:38,600
that would feed the balcony,

745
00:33:38,650 --> 00:33:39,980
Or if it was a bigger theater,

746
00:33:40,030 --> 00:33:42,117
it might feed a mezzanine
level and a balcony.

747
00:33:42,167 --> 00:33:44,910
You might even have three lobbies.

748
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:46,990
And then you have the main auditorium,

749
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:50,373
(soft orchestral music)

750
00:33:52,390 --> 00:33:53,323
the balcony,

751
00:33:57,840 --> 00:33:59,570
and your gallery or it could be

752
00:33:59,620 --> 00:34:01,310
a mezzanine, another balcony.

753
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:03,660
They just had different
names for these parts.

754
00:34:05,810 --> 00:34:08,980
- [Rosemary] It's a very wide open space.

755
00:34:09,030 --> 00:34:12,157
Because of that fabulous
ceiling, it just feels big.

756
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:18,130
- The level of detail
throughout the property

757
00:34:18,180 --> 00:34:20,730
is as I said earlier, it's excruciating.

758
00:34:20,780 --> 00:34:22,910
Like you know, when you
come in here every time,

759
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:24,920
I've owned it for two 1/2
years and every time I come

760
00:34:24,970 --> 00:34:26,940
in here, it's something new that I notice.

761
00:34:26,990 --> 00:34:28,980
And that's just the level
of detail and you know,

762
00:34:29,030 --> 00:34:30,070
they really took their time.

763
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:32,920
And when I first came in
here, I thought that you know,

764
00:34:32,970 --> 00:34:37,640
maybe it was some like
method of 3D printing plaster

765
00:34:37,690 --> 00:34:40,330
that they use because of
the intricacy and the detail

766
00:34:40,380 --> 00:34:41,370
in all of the designs.

767
00:34:41,420 --> 00:34:43,970
But when you look really
closely at some of the stuff,

768
00:34:44,020 --> 00:34:46,220
you can see that it's
actually hand-painted.

769
00:34:46,270 --> 00:34:49,250
So there were people in here
hand painting every facet

770
00:34:49,300 --> 00:34:51,340
of the design, which is just incredible.

771
00:34:51,390 --> 00:34:53,750
I mean I can't even imagine how much labor

772
00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:54,583
that took, you know?

773
00:34:54,633 --> 00:34:56,400
They don't build 'em like this any more.

774
00:34:58,210 --> 00:34:59,410
- These films were all silent.

775
00:34:59,460 --> 00:35:00,770
But pretty early on,

776
00:35:00,820 --> 00:35:03,820
the smart owners of
theaters even storefront

777
00:35:03,870 --> 00:35:06,630
theaters realized that
sitting in silence was not

778
00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:09,543
very entertaining, and
they hired pianists.

779
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:14,310
Eventually, the pianists
became theater organists.

780
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:16,940
And organ companies like Wurlitzer started

781
00:35:16,990 --> 00:35:19,730
manufacturing theater organs specifically

782
00:35:19,780 --> 00:35:21,040
for movie theaters.

783
00:35:21,090 --> 00:35:24,340
(cheerful organ music)

784
00:35:27,140 --> 00:35:31,050
- [Rosemary] The organs played
before and after the film.

785
00:35:31,100 --> 00:35:32,730
- [Man] Organ grills on either side

786
00:35:32,780 --> 00:35:34,680
of the proscenium you'll see some sort

787
00:35:34,730 --> 00:35:36,740
of big ornamental frame.

788
00:35:36,790 --> 00:35:40,320
- There was a Wurlitzer
organ and apparently

789
00:35:40,370 --> 00:35:43,463
that's in some rich guy's
house in California.

790
00:35:44,410 --> 00:35:48,450
- Because these pipes are
in the walls of the theater,

791
00:35:48,500 --> 00:35:51,830
you could feel the vibration of that organ

792
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:55,280
throughout the entire theater.

793
00:35:55,330 --> 00:35:57,363
And if you were in the dressing room,

794
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:01,950
you could feel it vibrating on the wall.

795
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:04,233
That was very dramatic. It was very cool.

796
00:36:05,260 --> 00:36:07,620
- And then in the great-great-theaters,

797
00:36:07,670 --> 00:36:09,090
there were complete orchestras.

798
00:36:09,140 --> 00:36:11,150
Sometimes symphonic symphony orchestras

799
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:14,533
(soft orchestral music)

800
00:36:16,420 --> 00:36:18,370
all meant to accompany the silent film.

801
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:23,140
- The time that the movie
palaces were created was

802
00:36:23,190 --> 00:36:25,520
a time when people needed an escape going

803
00:36:25,570 --> 00:36:28,510
through the depression,
going through the World Wars.

804
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:30,940
This was a place that
everyone rich or poor could

805
00:36:30,990 --> 00:36:33,830
come and escape those things
and go into another world.

806
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:37,213
(soft orchestral music)

807
00:36:41,600 --> 00:36:42,580
- You didn't live in a mansion.

808
00:36:42,630 --> 00:36:44,230
You didn't live in a palace,

809
00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:46,310
but you could walk to that movie theater

810
00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:49,600
and almost experience what
the rich people experience.

811
00:36:49,650 --> 00:36:51,260
- [Man] When you went into the theater,

812
00:36:51,310 --> 00:36:53,250
the whole atmosphere was yours.

813
00:36:53,300 --> 00:36:55,820
You could live in a small
apartment with a hot

814
00:36:55,870 --> 00:36:57,220
radiator by the window.

815
00:36:57,270 --> 00:36:58,910
But you could enter into
a palace or you could sit

816
00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:00,993
on a throne, it didn't cost very much.

817
00:37:01,910 --> 00:37:03,450
- For less than a dollar,

818
00:37:03,500 --> 00:37:07,333
they could come to a place like
this and feel pampered too.

819
00:37:08,230 --> 00:37:11,040
Uniformed ushers, ticket takers,

820
00:37:11,090 --> 00:37:13,880
people who are trained with
almost military precision

821
00:37:13,930 --> 00:37:17,030
to be courteous and polite
to a guy who maybe was

822
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:18,313
a streetcar conductor.

823
00:37:20,200 --> 00:37:22,180
Everyone was treated well.

824
00:37:22,230 --> 00:37:23,950
That was part of the idea too,

825
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:26,973
that an ordinary person could
come to a place like this.

826
00:37:29,090 --> 00:37:31,000
- We've done some oral history work

827
00:37:31,050 --> 00:37:35,720
with Cherry Balaban Robins
and she is the daughter

828
00:37:35,770 --> 00:37:37,840
of AJ Balaban, who was part

829
00:37:37,890 --> 00:37:39,970
of the Balaban and Katz
chain here in Chicago.

830
00:37:40,020 --> 00:37:42,740
And they built all of the
great movie palaces here.

831
00:37:42,790 --> 00:37:45,210
And she said that her father always said

832
00:37:45,260 --> 00:37:47,870
that everyone that came
in the door was a prince

833
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:50,190
and a princess and they
all paid the same amount

834
00:37:50,240 --> 00:37:52,840
and they all deserve to
be treated like a prince

835
00:37:52,890 --> 00:37:54,050
and a princess.

836
00:37:54,100 --> 00:37:56,150
They wore crisp uniforms.

837
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:57,400
They had white gloves.

838
00:37:57,450 --> 00:37:58,560
They had flashlights.

839
00:37:58,610 --> 00:38:02,250
They had rules and
regulations and training.

840
00:38:02,300 --> 00:38:03,680
They were the frontlines.

841
00:38:03,730 --> 00:38:06,133
They represented the owners and operators.

842
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:08,180
- They were inspected every morning.

843
00:38:08,230 --> 00:38:10,500
They had to get dressed
into their uniforms

844
00:38:10,550 --> 00:38:13,630
and they'd appear in that
beautiful grand foyer.

845
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:15,140
And like the Army,

846
00:38:15,190 --> 00:38:16,620
they would go down and make sure

847
00:38:16,670 --> 00:38:18,670
that they were all properly.

848
00:38:18,720 --> 00:38:20,120
And if they weren't, fix it.

849
00:38:22,340 --> 00:38:23,880
- One of the appeals of
going to the movie house was

850
00:38:23,930 --> 00:38:25,820
that you were treated this
way and that you could go

851
00:38:25,870 --> 00:38:27,510
to an elaborate bathroom.

852
00:38:27,560 --> 00:38:29,600
- A lot of these theaters
had what was known

853
00:38:29,650 --> 00:38:30,680
as the women's powder room,

854
00:38:30,730 --> 00:38:32,310
which was a room directly in front

855
00:38:32,360 --> 00:38:35,363
of the women's bathroom
or the men's smoking room.

856
00:38:36,770 --> 00:38:37,580
- It used to be a treat.

857
00:38:37,630 --> 00:38:40,590
When I was young and my
parents used to take me there,

858
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:41,647
my brother and I would,

859
00:38:41,697 --> 00:38:43,790
"Can we go downstairs to the lounge?"

860
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:46,040
(chuckles) 'Cause we wanted
to go into those rooms

861
00:38:46,090 --> 00:38:49,140
'cause they were just like
something you never saw before.

862
00:38:49,190 --> 00:38:52,523
(soft orchestral music)

863
00:38:54,090 --> 00:38:56,790
And the women's lounge
looks like something

864
00:38:56,840 --> 00:38:59,210
out of a Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers movie.

865
00:38:59,260 --> 00:39:01,917
The men's lounge, there's
a painting in there called

866
00:39:01,967 --> 00:39:03,320
"Men without Women."

867
00:39:03,370 --> 00:39:04,760
It's very Art Deco.

868
00:39:04,810 --> 00:39:09,310
It's got all symbols on
it of manhood: a razor

869
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:10,610
and a pipe and all that,

870
00:39:10,660 --> 00:39:12,890
all the things that men do without us.

871
00:39:12,940 --> 00:39:15,480
- [Man] And there were
dressing tables with mirrors.

872
00:39:15,530 --> 00:39:18,253
They actually supplied
makeup for the ladies.

873
00:39:19,360 --> 00:39:21,320
- Theaters had little
banners on the marquee said,

874
00:39:21,370 --> 00:39:23,470
come on in, it's cool inside.

875
00:39:23,520 --> 00:39:24,373
And it was.

876
00:39:25,270 --> 00:39:27,770
Whether it was the early
process of air cooling

877
00:39:27,820 --> 00:39:29,260
or later air conditioning,

878
00:39:29,310 --> 00:39:32,050
that was your mecca during
a heatwave because not

879
00:39:32,100 --> 00:39:35,060
many houses had air
conditioning in those days.

880
00:39:35,110 --> 00:39:37,860
- What's wonderful about
this era of movie palaces

881
00:39:37,910 --> 00:39:41,070
in the '20s and '30s is the
amazing creativity and design.

882
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:42,640
They were building fantasies.

883
00:39:42,690 --> 00:39:43,473
I like to call

884
00:39:43,523 --> 00:39:46,180
the sort of general architecture
style Hollywood fantasy.

885
00:39:46,230 --> 00:39:48,270
- That's the beautiful thing
about an older art house

886
00:39:48,320 --> 00:39:51,060
is you go in and it
usually has that theme.

887
00:39:51,110 --> 00:39:53,290
- Then you had this
particular type that walked

888
00:39:53,340 --> 00:39:55,880
in and it was like walking
into a Spanish courtyard

889
00:39:55,930 --> 00:39:57,393
or a Persian courtyard.

890
00:39:58,930 --> 00:40:01,720
John Eberson, his style
was like the theater

891
00:40:01,770 --> 00:40:04,160
that we're sitting in
now: a dark-blue ceiling

892
00:40:04,210 --> 00:40:06,160
with twinkling electric stars in it,

893
00:40:06,210 --> 00:40:08,853
a projector that caused
clouds to move across.

894
00:40:10,210 --> 00:40:12,560
- [Man] It looked like a night
sky and around the edges,

895
00:40:12,610 --> 00:40:15,533
it would look like a
small village in Spain.

896
00:40:17,790 --> 00:40:19,940
- John Everson, who's the
architect of this building,

897
00:40:19,990 --> 00:40:23,370
designed it as a study in Moorish revival

898
00:40:23,420 --> 00:40:25,650
architecture and you
can see it in the facade

899
00:40:25,700 --> 00:40:26,483
behind me here.

900
00:40:26,533 --> 00:40:29,160
You know, it's very like courtyardish,

901
00:40:29,210 --> 00:40:32,240
very Moorish, Middle Eastern influenced

902
00:40:32,290 --> 00:40:33,350
and if you look very closely,

903
00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:35,300
there are different parts
around the auditorium

904
00:40:35,350 --> 00:40:36,240
and the lobby.

905
00:40:36,290 --> 00:40:37,350
They're written in English,

906
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:40,370
but they're stylized as Arabic.

907
00:40:40,420 --> 00:40:42,820
There's one behind me and
it says, please be seated,

908
00:40:42,870 --> 00:40:43,653
I beg you.

909
00:40:43,703 --> 00:40:45,170
And then there's several others.

910
00:40:45,220 --> 00:40:46,190
- Another architect

911
00:40:46,240 --> 00:40:48,520
from New York, Thomas W.
Lamb, who probably did

912
00:40:48,570 --> 00:40:51,330
more theaters than anybody
else, was more refined.

913
00:40:51,380 --> 00:40:52,890
He chose the Adams style.

914
00:40:52,940 --> 00:40:56,140
The Adam brothers being
decorators in the 18th century

915
00:40:56,190 --> 00:40:57,540
in England who did a lot of what they call

916
00:40:57,590 --> 00:40:59,110
the great houses over there.

917
00:40:59,160 --> 00:41:01,260
- I don't know why they
would choose these themes.

918
00:41:01,310 --> 00:41:03,390
I think it was just because
they were building so many

919
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:04,880
of these theaters.

920
00:41:04,930 --> 00:41:06,713
- The architects could go wild.

921
00:41:07,860 --> 00:41:10,760
There was a certain drive for novelty

922
00:41:10,810 --> 00:41:14,100
and a tremendous drive for
grandeur and it depended

923
00:41:14,150 --> 00:41:15,570
often who the architect was.

924
00:41:15,620 --> 00:41:18,370
There was a great firm
in Chicago, two brothers,

925
00:41:18,420 --> 00:41:21,080
Cornelius and George Rapp, Rapp and Rapp.

926
00:41:21,130 --> 00:41:24,040
They got enamored of the
Palace of Versailles.

927
00:41:24,090 --> 00:41:25,900
- Rapp and Rapp designed this theater,

928
00:41:25,950 --> 00:41:27,030
the Loew's Jersey, as well

929
00:41:27,080 --> 00:41:29,543
as the Kings and the Uptown in Chicago.

930
00:41:30,765 --> 00:41:34,098
(soft orchestral music)

931
00:41:35,110 --> 00:41:37,240
- And then you have these amazing murals,

932
00:41:37,290 --> 00:41:39,790
many of them by
Heinzbergen and his company

933
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:40,830
and of all styles.

934
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:44,520
So he had things that were very baroque,

935
00:41:44,570 --> 00:41:47,370
very classical, all the
way to the ones that he did

936
00:41:47,420 --> 00:41:50,170
in the Wilton theater
which are streamlined,

937
00:41:50,220 --> 00:41:52,173
deco, geometric shapes.

938
00:41:53,420 --> 00:41:55,750
- The fresco you see
behind me depicts some

939
00:41:55,800 --> 00:41:57,990
of the United Artists
stars of that period.

940
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:00,690
Not just the four founders but
some others like the young,

941
00:42:00,740 --> 00:42:02,393
dashing Ronald Coleman is there.

942
00:42:02,443 --> 00:42:04,550
Rudolph Valetino is there.

943
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:07,900
And when modern audiences
get to see a film

944
00:42:07,950 --> 00:42:12,300
in a theater like this today,
it's a special experience.

945
00:42:12,350 --> 00:42:13,990
Oh my gosh, look at that.

946
00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:17,423
Well 100 years ago, it was
an everyday experience.

947
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:20,950
I can't imagine it either (chuckles)

948
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:23,220
but this is where you
would go on an ordinary

949
00:42:23,270 --> 00:42:26,810
Friday or Saturday night
to see a new movie.

950
00:42:26,860 --> 00:42:31,860
- The big transformation came
with sound movies in 1927.

951
00:42:32,230 --> 00:42:34,020
Al Jolson was there on the screen.

952
00:42:34,070 --> 00:42:34,960
He sang a song.

953
00:42:35,010 --> 00:42:37,200
That hadn't been done before.

954
00:42:37,250 --> 00:42:39,080
- Wait a minute, wait a minute.

955
00:42:39,130 --> 00:42:40,540
You ain't heard nothin' yet.

956
00:42:40,590 --> 00:42:43,080
Wait a minute, I tell ya,
you ain't heard nothin'.

957
00:42:43,130 --> 00:42:44,390
You wanna hear "Toot Toot Tootsie"?

958
00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:46,890
All right, hold on, hold on.

959
00:42:46,940 --> 00:42:49,607
(upbeat music)

960
00:42:50,834 --> 00:42:54,300
♪ Toot toot tootsie, goodbye. ♪

961
00:42:54,350 --> 00:42:55,210
- And people hadn't.

962
00:42:55,260 --> 00:42:57,470
They had not heard
anything yet from a movie.

963
00:42:57,520 --> 00:42:59,670
It was a precious saying that is made

964
00:42:59,720 --> 00:43:00,620
in that one sense.

965
00:43:01,970 --> 00:43:04,553
(upbeat music)

966
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:08,080
Well after the First
World War, people thought

967
00:43:08,130 --> 00:43:10,290
that the prosperity and
the joyous good times would

968
00:43:10,340 --> 00:43:11,740
go on forever.

969
00:43:11,790 --> 00:43:14,110
Eventually the Depression
was gonna come along.

970
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:15,990
Nobody knew that was gonna happen.

971
00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:19,190
- Once you got into the
'30s, that's when it was

972
00:43:19,240 --> 00:43:21,590
getting harder and harder
to be a real success.

973
00:43:22,490 --> 00:43:24,667
- These were very very
expensive buildings,

974
00:43:24,717 --> 00:43:27,500
and they had to pay for all
the upkeep in terms of heat,

975
00:43:27,550 --> 00:43:30,710
electricity, fixing carpets and upholstery

976
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:31,960
and paying staff.

977
00:43:32,010 --> 00:43:34,103
It's an incredibly expensive operation.

978
00:43:35,710 --> 00:43:38,760
When the '30s hit and
the patrons died off,

979
00:43:38,810 --> 00:43:40,510
they were trying to figure out how to keep

980
00:43:40,560 --> 00:43:42,220
these buildings alive.

981
00:43:42,270 --> 00:43:43,770
- [Man] Hollywood suffered
from a series of real

982
00:43:43,820 --> 00:43:46,520
body blows in the late '40s
and into the early '50s.

983
00:43:46,570 --> 00:43:49,433
The first was the US Consent Decree.

984
00:43:50,290 --> 00:43:52,510
- [Man] Paramount was
sued by the government

985
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:54,780
under an antitrust lawsuit and it went

986
00:43:54,830 --> 00:43:56,310
to the Supreme Court and they decided

987
00:43:56,360 --> 00:43:59,393
that these movie studios could
not own theaters any more.

988
00:44:01,210 --> 00:44:03,880
- No longer could MGM count
on its films being shown

989
00:44:03,930 --> 00:44:06,460
in Loew's theaters and taking
money out of one pocket

990
00:44:06,510 --> 00:44:07,710
and putting it in another,

991
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:10,290
which changed the entire
way movies were made

992
00:44:10,340 --> 00:44:11,663
and financed in Hollywood.

993
00:44:12,800 --> 00:44:15,850
Then there was television
and television caught

994
00:44:15,900 --> 00:44:18,440
on pretty darn fast.

995
00:44:18,490 --> 00:44:21,360
By the early 50s, not everybody,

996
00:44:21,410 --> 00:44:23,660
but a lot of people bought television sets

997
00:44:23,710 --> 00:44:25,190
and that became a magnet.

998
00:44:25,240 --> 00:44:27,120
People would gather in
Uncle Joe's apartment

999
00:44:27,170 --> 00:44:29,100
because he had a television set.

1000
00:44:29,150 --> 00:44:30,390
- When that happened, I think,

1001
00:44:30,440 --> 00:44:33,670
that's when theaters started to decline.

1002
00:44:33,720 --> 00:44:37,200
- And then tastes changed
and the streamlined look

1003
00:44:37,250 --> 00:44:40,370
of the '50s and '60s that
was reflected in automobiles

1004
00:44:40,420 --> 00:44:43,050
and other kinds of modern design,

1005
00:44:43,100 --> 00:44:45,390
caused some theaters to
change their marquees.

1006
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:46,480
- Your little reader boards,

1007
00:44:46,530 --> 00:44:49,170
your little rectangular
marquees were replaced

1008
00:44:49,220 --> 00:44:50,720
with angles so that people could see 'em

1009
00:44:50,770 --> 00:44:52,210
as they were driving quickly by.

1010
00:44:52,260 --> 00:44:54,070
Many of the marquees
that have those angles,

1011
00:44:54,120 --> 00:44:55,690
those aren't the original marquees.

1012
00:44:55,740 --> 00:44:57,498
- In the early '20s and you know,

1013
00:44:57,548 --> 00:44:59,710
going into the '30s, you
didn't have concessions

1014
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:00,910
in the movie theater.

1015
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:03,570
In the case of the Michigan,
sometime in the '50s probably,

1016
00:45:03,620 --> 00:45:05,390
is when they added that in and you know,

1017
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:08,060
they started selling popcorn and soda.

1018
00:45:08,110 --> 00:45:10,330
- [Man] The movie palaces were downtown.

1019
00:45:10,380 --> 00:45:12,550
After the Second World
War, people began to move

1020
00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:14,070
into the suburbs.

1021
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:16,100
- The American dream is
to have your nice little

1022
00:45:16,150 --> 00:45:19,280
house and yard and your car.

1023
00:45:19,330 --> 00:45:20,840
People left the cities.

1024
00:45:20,890 --> 00:45:23,030
- And then the baby boom happened.

1025
00:45:23,080 --> 00:45:25,370
So the industry responded very smartly.

1026
00:45:25,420 --> 00:45:26,830
They developed drive-in theaters.

1027
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:28,380
You could put the kid in
the backseat and you could

1028
00:45:28,430 --> 00:45:29,470
watch the movie.

1029
00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:32,410
- This was just one blow
after another to the way

1030
00:45:32,460 --> 00:45:36,050
they had done business
as usual for decades.

1031
00:45:36,100 --> 00:45:37,390
- People did go to the movies.

1032
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:40,760
The attendance was pretty much
cut in half in those years.

1033
00:45:40,810 --> 00:45:42,950
Hollywood didn't quite know what to do.

1034
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:45,160
Bunch of crazy guys in New York came up

1035
00:45:45,210 --> 00:45:47,160
with a system called Cinerama which came

1036
00:45:47,210 --> 00:45:49,010
out of World War II, a training device

1037
00:45:49,060 --> 00:45:50,850
that trained aerial gunners.

1038
00:45:50,900 --> 00:45:53,180
They converted it into three
panels on a curved screen,

1039
00:45:53,230 --> 00:45:55,680
a regular curved screen and
it became very immersive.

1040
00:45:55,730 --> 00:45:57,630
(soft orchestral music)

1041
00:45:57,680 --> 00:45:59,090
They tried selling this to Hollywood.

1042
00:45:59,140 --> 00:46:01,106
Everybody came out and
looked at it and was

1043
00:46:01,156 --> 00:46:02,750
pretty impressed with it.

1044
00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:03,773
But my god, you know?

1045
00:46:03,823 --> 00:46:05,560
Your three projection booths,

1046
00:46:05,610 --> 00:46:08,310
you got all this film and a
giant screen you gotta put

1047
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:09,143
in and all this stuff.

1048
00:46:09,193 --> 00:46:11,110
It became impractical for them.

1049
00:46:11,160 --> 00:46:13,683
So they just kinda walked away from it.

1050
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:19,790
And then when Cinerama hit
in 1952, it went gangbusters.

1051
00:46:19,840 --> 00:46:21,910
I mean literally a movie
playing in a movie theater

1052
00:46:21,960 --> 00:46:24,450
for three years straight you know

1053
00:46:24,500 --> 00:46:25,685
and you can't get tickets.

1054
00:46:25,735 --> 00:46:27,910
(chuckles) That reserved seat.

1055
00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:30,440
That's the shock that hit Hollywood.

1056
00:46:30,490 --> 00:46:34,270
It stayed pretty successful
for about 12 years or more.

1057
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:36,860
The immersive part of
Cinerama sound is the fact

1058
00:46:36,910 --> 00:46:39,700
that sound would follow
something on the screen,

1059
00:46:39,750 --> 00:46:43,180
so it almost had an extra
dimension of realism.

1060
00:46:43,230 --> 00:46:46,750
As Lowell Thomas would say,
It was more real than real.

1061
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:48,380
Cinerama hit so hard.

1062
00:46:48,430 --> 00:46:50,440
Hollywood knew they had to do something.

1063
00:46:50,490 --> 00:46:51,273
- That's when they developed

1064
00:46:51,323 --> 00:46:53,560
CinemaScope and stereophonic sound.

1065
00:46:53,610 --> 00:46:55,620
- [Announcer] Celebrities
and the man in the street

1066
00:46:55,670 --> 00:46:57,820
crowd Hollywood's famous
boulevard to attend

1067
00:46:57,870 --> 00:46:58,680
the CinemaScope premiere

1068
00:46:58,730 --> 00:47:01,220
of How to "Marry A
Millionaire," the first romantic

1069
00:47:01,270 --> 00:47:03,623
comedy to be filmed in
the new miracle medium.

1070
00:47:04,510 --> 00:47:06,080
- [David] They came up with CinemaScope.

1071
00:47:06,130 --> 00:47:07,890
They started shooting
"The Robe" and it became

1072
00:47:07,940 --> 00:47:09,433
a big success as well.

1073
00:47:10,700 --> 00:47:13,790
- These were all invented
with the specific purpose

1074
00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:15,850
of drawing people out
of their homes and back

1075
00:47:15,900 --> 00:47:17,280
into movie theaters.

1076
00:47:17,330 --> 00:47:20,420
If you wanted to show
wide-screen CinemaScope, you had

1077
00:47:20,470 --> 00:47:23,030
to somehow widen your
theater, your proscenium.

1078
00:47:23,080 --> 00:47:24,783
If you wanted to hear stereophonic sound,

1079
00:47:24,833 --> 00:47:27,360
you had to have a porous screen.

1080
00:47:27,410 --> 00:47:30,110
That's when the silver
screens started to disappear.

1081
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:32,650
- Paramount came up with
something called VistaVision.

1082
00:47:32,700 --> 00:47:34,640
Then there was Technirama, Technoscope.

1083
00:47:34,690 --> 00:47:36,890
There's all these various
wide-screen scopes

1084
00:47:36,940 --> 00:47:38,580
and ramas all over the place.

1085
00:47:38,630 --> 00:47:40,370
But it was expensive
for theaters to do that.

1086
00:47:40,420 --> 00:47:43,270
This is in the '50s, so
people were starting to come

1087
00:47:43,320 --> 00:47:45,255
back to the movies again.

1088
00:47:45,305 --> 00:47:47,820
But theaters really evolved
and did lots of stuff

1089
00:47:47,870 --> 00:47:48,960
you know, in the '50s.

1090
00:47:49,010 --> 00:47:50,620
Maybe even in early '60s.

1091
00:47:50,670 --> 00:47:51,690
You could win plays.

1092
00:47:51,740 --> 00:47:53,110
There was a bingo night.

1093
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:54,490
There was always something going

1094
00:47:54,540 --> 00:47:56,000
on at the local movie theater.

1095
00:47:56,050 --> 00:47:58,500
I can remember in the '50s,
they had cartoon shows

1096
00:47:58,550 --> 00:48:00,530
for kids where you'd have like you know,

1097
00:48:00,580 --> 00:48:02,350
30 cartoons or something, you know?

1098
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:04,180
Big extravaganza on a Saturday.

1099
00:48:04,230 --> 00:48:05,880
And of course parents
loved that because all

1100
00:48:05,930 --> 00:48:07,510
the kids were down at the movie theater.

1101
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:09,530
They can go off and do
what they wanted to do

1102
00:48:09,580 --> 00:48:12,200
because the babysitter movie
theater was gonna cover

1103
00:48:12,250 --> 00:48:14,660
'em with all the Tom and Jerry
cartoons they could handle.

1104
00:48:14,710 --> 00:48:17,020
(lion roaring)
(cheerful orchestral music)

1105
00:48:17,070 --> 00:48:20,050
(Tom meowing)

1106
00:48:20,100 --> 00:48:21,780
- I can remember goin'
to the Alger Theater.

1107
00:48:21,830 --> 00:48:25,230
I think the admission was 12
cents on Saturday afternoon.

1108
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:28,140
Five cartoons, three serials
and a guy's dressed up

1109
00:48:28,190 --> 00:48:31,880
in tin foil martians or
whatever they might be

1110
00:48:31,930 --> 00:48:33,087
and the sound of,

1111
00:48:33,137 --> 00:48:36,480
"Yay," coming from the
audience every few seconds

1112
00:48:36,530 --> 00:48:38,840
as something significant happened.

1113
00:48:38,890 --> 00:48:42,600
- 3D in the '50s was an
interesting thing and king

1114
00:48:42,650 --> 00:48:45,190
of the gimmicks was
William Castle who came up

1115
00:48:45,240 --> 00:48:48,270
with all kinds of things:
Emergo, Illusion-O, all

1116
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:51,160
these various things that
were kind of cheap tricks,

1117
00:48:51,210 --> 00:48:53,900
but they were fun cheap tricks.

1118
00:48:53,950 --> 00:48:55,287
One of 'em was with the movie

1119
00:48:55,337 --> 00:48:57,970
"The Tingler," a Vincent Price movie.

1120
00:48:58,020 --> 00:49:00,030
They would have these old aircraft parts

1121
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:01,910
that had vibrators on 'em
and they would put 'em

1122
00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:03,750
under bunch of seats in the auditorium.

1123
00:49:03,800 --> 00:49:05,290
At a certain point in the movie,

1124
00:49:05,340 --> 00:49:08,260
these would kick in and
they'd vibrate and you'd get

1125
00:49:08,310 --> 00:49:11,370
a jolt, or skeletons flying
from the balcony down

1126
00:49:11,420 --> 00:49:13,600
towards the stage.

1127
00:49:13,650 --> 00:49:15,090
A guy named Hans Laube invented

1128
00:49:15,140 --> 00:49:16,940
something called Scentovision.

1129
00:49:16,990 --> 00:49:19,550
And so they decided to come
up with a scenario based

1130
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:20,770
on an old detective novel.

1131
00:49:20,820 --> 00:49:23,950
And they added all these
smell elements to the film

1132
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:26,010
so that they could pump
them into the theater.

1133
00:49:26,060 --> 00:49:28,720
And how they did that was
a bunch of little vials

1134
00:49:28,770 --> 00:49:30,960
that would hit and it'd
go through a tube and come

1135
00:49:31,010 --> 00:49:33,700
out on almost every other
seat in the theater.

1136
00:49:33,750 --> 00:49:35,310
That's all part of showmanship.

1137
00:49:35,360 --> 00:49:37,760
They were thinking outside
the box every minute.

1138
00:49:39,060 --> 00:49:41,940
Now roadshows were
usually extra-large movies

1139
00:49:41,990 --> 00:49:44,040
like "Lawrence of Arabia,"
"Mutiny on the Bounty."

1140
00:49:44,090 --> 00:49:45,610
Those were real event movies.

1141
00:49:45,660 --> 00:49:46,880
If you wanted to see that movie,

1142
00:49:46,930 --> 00:49:48,830
you had to drive to the
big city and there'd be

1143
00:49:48,880 --> 00:49:51,060
an overture to begin with
to get you in the mood

1144
00:49:51,110 --> 00:49:51,893
for the movie.

1145
00:49:51,943 --> 00:49:53,970
And then the lights would
dim slowly as the music

1146
00:49:54,020 --> 00:49:56,460
is building towards its crescendo and then

1147
00:49:56,510 --> 00:49:58,280
the curtains would open
with perfect timing

1148
00:49:58,330 --> 00:50:00,630
and the MGM lion would growl.

1149
00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:03,263
(lion roaring)

1150
00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:06,920
You almost got goosebumps
because they took the time

1151
00:50:06,970 --> 00:50:08,233
to do that right.

1152
00:50:11,920 --> 00:50:15,010
- Go into the mid to late
1960s, you have a period

1153
00:50:15,060 --> 00:50:17,360
of racial division, social division.

1154
00:50:17,410 --> 00:50:20,800
(somber piano music)

1155
00:50:20,850 --> 00:50:22,890
(crowd shouting)

1156
00:50:22,940 --> 00:50:26,033
- Some of the cities continued
to thrive, others did not.

1157
00:50:29,790 --> 00:50:30,573
And in many cities,

1158
00:50:30,623 --> 00:50:33,360
the downtown areas
became somewhat deserted.

1159
00:50:33,410 --> 00:50:35,640
In some cases, rundown.

1160
00:50:35,690 --> 00:50:39,190
(somber orchestral music)

1161
00:50:40,900 --> 00:50:42,760
People were known for
patronizing the stores

1162
00:50:42,810 --> 00:50:44,610
that have been there
because there was equivalent

1163
00:50:44,660 --> 00:50:45,773
out in the suburbs.

1164
00:50:49,580 --> 00:50:52,893
- Retail, as well as
entertainment, killed the theaters.

1165
00:51:02,700 --> 00:51:05,650
- The movie theater that
was popular in 1938 is now

1166
00:51:05,700 --> 00:51:08,160
you know, hardly gets anybody
in it but bums and stuff

1167
00:51:08,210 --> 00:51:09,430
to get warm.

1168
00:51:09,480 --> 00:51:11,410
There was a point where someone told me

1169
00:51:11,460 --> 00:51:13,960
in Los Angeles in one of
the theaters where a lot

1170
00:51:14,010 --> 00:51:15,860
of bums would come in 'cause
you could get in for like

1171
00:51:15,910 --> 00:51:17,440
a dollar or something, you know.

1172
00:51:17,490 --> 00:51:19,080
They'd be urinating on the floor.

1173
00:51:19,130 --> 00:51:19,913
And at the end,

1174
00:51:19,963 --> 00:51:21,116
the cleaning crew literally took hoses

1175
00:51:21,166 --> 00:51:23,390
and just watered down the whole floor

1176
00:51:23,440 --> 00:51:24,560
for the next day's show.

1177
00:51:24,610 --> 00:51:26,893
I mean that's how bad
it got in some cases.

1178
00:51:30,240 --> 00:51:32,320
(siren wailing)

1179
00:51:32,370 --> 00:51:34,190
- You've also got the elevation of crime.

1180
00:51:34,240 --> 00:51:36,190
And even if it isn't
an elevation of crime,

1181
00:51:36,240 --> 00:51:38,750
it's a notion that crime is elevating.

1182
00:51:38,800 --> 00:51:41,693
That sort of sets the stage for the 1970s.

1183
00:51:45,640 --> 00:51:48,080
- The city was a mess during that time.

1184
00:51:48,130 --> 00:51:49,760
It was hard to get tourists to come in

1185
00:51:49,810 --> 00:51:52,700
because the city became
dangerous to some people.

1186
00:51:52,750 --> 00:51:54,710
I lived there, so I
was sort of used to it.

1187
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:58,500
But there were certain
sections in that area

1188
00:51:58,550 --> 00:52:01,950
that you didn't go to.

1189
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:04,430
- People ask me you
know, "How was the block?

1190
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:06,160
Were people gettin' robbed all the time?"

1191
00:52:06,210 --> 00:52:08,230
And it's like well there's not really much

1192
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:09,537
goin' on out there.

1193
00:52:09,587 --> 00:52:12,110
I mean the jerk chicken
store across the street

1194
00:52:12,160 --> 00:52:13,548
is closed and you know,

1195
00:52:13,598 --> 00:52:15,410
there are a couple other
buildings across the street

1196
00:52:15,460 --> 00:52:17,270
that you know, were once
functioning when the theater

1197
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:19,660
was open but are now closed.

1198
00:52:19,710 --> 00:52:21,600
There are communities like the south side

1199
00:52:21,650 --> 00:52:23,290
of Chicago across the nation.

1200
00:52:23,340 --> 00:52:25,830
But of course, this is
one of the larger examples

1201
00:52:25,880 --> 00:52:30,880
of what happens when there
is strategic disinvestment

1202
00:52:31,550 --> 00:52:32,760
in a community.

1203
00:52:32,810 --> 00:52:37,810
And unfortunately, the Regal sort of was

1204
00:52:38,550 --> 00:52:40,140
on the backend of all of that.

1205
00:52:40,190 --> 00:52:41,850
- The theaters had to change.

1206
00:52:41,900 --> 00:52:44,170
That's the way it goes:
everything changes.

1207
00:52:44,220 --> 00:52:46,990
And so moving away from some
of the first-run product,

1208
00:52:47,040 --> 00:52:48,893
they had to go to other programming.

1209
00:52:51,460 --> 00:52:53,790
- Some of them became what
they called grind houses

1210
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:56,730
as they did on 42nd
Street in New York City.

1211
00:52:56,780 --> 00:52:59,410
(funky jazz music)

1212
00:52:59,460 --> 00:53:01,290
Some of them stayed open
all night attracting

1213
00:53:01,340 --> 00:53:02,923
a somewhat seedy audience.

1214
00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:13,490
Some of them showed blaxploitation films

1215
00:53:13,540 --> 00:53:15,200
because they weren't gonna be shown

1216
00:53:15,250 --> 00:53:16,943
in the suburban theaters.

1217
00:53:25,150 --> 00:53:29,270
- Which are kinda huge success
between say 1971 and 1975.

1218
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:30,650
You've got martial arts films,

1219
00:53:30,700 --> 00:53:31,640
which are increasingly coming

1220
00:53:31,690 --> 00:53:34,100
over from Asia and also
being homegrown and then

1221
00:53:34,150 --> 00:53:36,990
you have even hybrids,
mixing of all those,

1222
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:38,980
so soon there's a difference in terms

1223
00:53:39,030 --> 00:53:41,800
of even the content the
movie theaters are showing.

1224
00:53:41,850 --> 00:53:43,720
- People could live
vicariously through that too

1225
00:53:43,770 --> 00:53:45,320
because you know, there's
the villain again.

1226
00:53:45,370 --> 00:53:46,200
There's the bad guy.

1227
00:53:46,250 --> 00:53:47,150
There's Bruce Lee.

1228
00:53:47,200 --> 00:53:51,110
(intense music)
(Bruce Lee vocalizing)

1229
00:53:51,160 --> 00:53:52,660
So it did work for a while.

1230
00:53:52,710 --> 00:53:54,780
- The art house is growing,
independent film is growing.

1231
00:53:54,830 --> 00:53:56,580
You have people who are
going to film schools

1232
00:53:56,630 --> 00:53:57,940
and they're interested in seeing art films

1233
00:53:57,990 --> 00:53:59,890
and European films, avant-garde cinema,

1234
00:53:59,940 --> 00:54:03,160
experimental cinema,
independent films, global films.

1235
00:54:03,210 --> 00:54:05,480
You have the adult films
which are drawing off

1236
00:54:05,530 --> 00:54:08,010
the same kind of importation
of European art films

1237
00:54:08,060 --> 00:54:10,920
which have higher sexual content.

1238
00:54:10,970 --> 00:54:11,753
All of a sudden,

1239
00:54:11,803 --> 00:54:13,120
those are becoming more
mainstream and soon

1240
00:54:13,170 --> 00:54:14,480
the adult film industry figures

1241
00:54:14,530 --> 00:54:16,000
out that they can actually have mainstream

1242
00:54:16,050 --> 00:54:19,390
theatrical films in movie
theaters capped of course

1243
00:54:19,440 --> 00:54:21,917
by the incredible
success of "Deep Throat."

1244
00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:25,430
- [Rosemary] 42nd Street between Broadway

1245
00:54:25,480 --> 00:54:27,860
and Eighth Avenue, all
those fabulous theaters

1246
00:54:27,910 --> 00:54:28,810
that were there turned

1247
00:54:28,860 --> 00:54:31,340
into porno houses and they let some

1248
00:54:31,390 --> 00:54:34,213
of the theaters just go.

1249
00:54:34,263 --> 00:54:37,470
- And then you got into
the revival house era

1250
00:54:37,520 --> 00:54:40,390
and that's when I really
became involved at a lot

1251
00:54:40,440 --> 00:54:41,920
of the historic theaters.

1252
00:54:41,970 --> 00:54:43,750
Best film education I ever got was

1253
00:54:43,800 --> 00:54:45,730
in the Rialto Theater, the Vista Theater,

1254
00:54:45,780 --> 00:54:47,090
the New Art Theater where they were

1255
00:54:47,140 --> 00:54:49,693
just showing classic
movies every single day.

1256
00:54:51,230 --> 00:54:53,470
- Here on Broadway in
Los Angeles, good example

1257
00:54:53,520 --> 00:54:55,740
of what happened to a
lot of these theaters.

1258
00:54:55,790 --> 00:54:58,250
Some of them became
Spanish language theaters.

1259
00:54:58,300 --> 00:55:00,970
- If you've got people that
speak Spanish, then you're there

1260
00:55:01,020 --> 00:55:02,320
to serve the neighborhood.

1261
00:55:07,430 --> 00:55:09,040
But what's really happening overall

1262
00:55:09,090 --> 00:55:13,390
is that the giant movie
palace makes very little sense

1263
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:16,560
in almost all of these
instances because you can't

1264
00:55:16,610 --> 00:55:19,130
pack most of the movie palaces downtown

1265
00:55:19,180 --> 00:55:20,570
with these kinds of movies.

1266
00:55:20,620 --> 00:55:22,890
- In some cases, the
theaters changed hands.

1267
00:55:22,940 --> 00:55:25,700
They were no longer
owned by big corporations

1268
00:55:25,750 --> 00:55:28,250
and a lot of them were
allowed to deteriorate,

1269
00:55:28,300 --> 00:55:31,173
some rather sharply
and some rather grimly.

1270
00:55:32,110 --> 00:55:36,040
(elegant orchestral music)

1271
00:55:36,090 --> 00:55:37,740
A lot of those theaters just closed down.

1272
00:55:37,790 --> 00:55:38,573
They shut down.

1273
00:55:38,623 --> 00:55:40,000
They'd lost their constituency.

1274
00:55:40,050 --> 00:55:42,583
They'd lost their vantage
of a good location.

1275
00:55:50,080 --> 00:55:51,260
- [Man] These are large spaces.

1276
00:55:51,310 --> 00:55:53,510
And if you're not filling
every seat, heating them

1277
00:55:53,560 --> 00:55:55,620
or cooling them, running the electricity

1278
00:55:55,670 --> 00:55:57,583
is very expensive.

1279
00:56:00,090 --> 00:56:01,790
- Just the cost of cleaning this thing.

1280
00:56:01,840 --> 00:56:05,040
All of the ornamentation
collects dirt and dust

1281
00:56:05,090 --> 00:56:07,480
and the marquee with moving parts

1282
00:56:07,530 --> 00:56:10,163
and the electronic circuits
exposed to the weather.

1283
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:13,130
It's not surprising that
those things started

1284
00:56:13,180 --> 00:56:13,963
to fall apart.

1285
00:56:14,013 --> 00:56:15,710
- When the roof was leaking,

1286
00:56:15,760 --> 00:56:17,170
you could put up with
that for another year.

1287
00:56:17,220 --> 00:56:18,707
But they turned on the air conditioning

1288
00:56:18,757 --> 00:56:19,740
and it kinda worked,

1289
00:56:19,790 --> 00:56:22,470
then they went to fire up the
boiler in October and bang,

1290
00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:24,470
it leaked all over the
place and an awful lot

1291
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:25,770
of these theaters closed.

1292
00:56:33,970 --> 00:56:37,190
- We had done one show at
the Grenada Theater in 1973

1293
00:56:37,240 --> 00:56:39,260
on Valentine's Day and
they wouldn't let us do

1294
00:56:39,310 --> 00:56:40,840
another show there, so I started looking

1295
00:56:40,890 --> 00:56:43,160
for another theater to bring our concerts

1296
00:56:43,210 --> 00:56:45,160
to and I came across this one.

1297
00:56:45,210 --> 00:56:48,480
It was owned by the same
company that owned the Grenada.

1298
00:56:48,530 --> 00:56:51,880
We started on Halloween of 1975.

1299
00:56:51,930 --> 00:56:54,040
They were still showing
movies here and they would

1300
00:56:54,090 --> 00:56:57,200
take out a movie whenever
we had a concert.

1301
00:56:57,250 --> 00:56:59,630
Grateful Dead used to
play here all the time.

1302
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:01,540
Bob Marley played here regularly.

1303
00:57:01,590 --> 00:57:05,050
Frank Zappa, Genesis,
Electric Light Orchestra,

1304
00:57:05,100 --> 00:57:08,660
Prince, Rick James, The Kinks.

1305
00:57:08,710 --> 00:57:09,860
When I walked in here that day,

1306
00:57:09,910 --> 00:57:14,010
the bathrooms were barely
functioning and there were

1307
00:57:14,060 --> 00:57:15,590
some other issues.

1308
00:57:15,640 --> 00:57:20,433
So I said to the owner that
you had to close this place.

1309
00:57:21,530 --> 00:57:22,570
It's not habitable.

1310
00:57:22,620 --> 00:57:27,303
It's gonna keep continuing to deteriorate.

1311
00:57:28,300 --> 00:57:30,850
- [Man] When a theater has
been vacant for so long,

1312
00:57:30,900 --> 00:57:33,230
you have a lot of deferred
maintenance is a really

1313
00:57:33,280 --> 00:57:34,550
polite way of saying it.

1314
00:57:34,600 --> 00:57:37,230
Then if you have vandalism,
it gets even worse.

1315
00:57:37,280 --> 00:57:39,120
- A lot of the theaters
that I photographed are

1316
00:57:39,170 --> 00:57:40,990
in pretty rough shape.

1317
00:57:41,040 --> 00:57:44,160
I have put my foot
through a balcony floor.

1318
00:57:44,210 --> 00:57:46,070
I've had to climb over seats to get

1319
00:57:46,120 --> 00:57:48,080
to the production room because the stairs

1320
00:57:48,130 --> 00:57:50,580
are gone completely.

1321
00:57:50,630 --> 00:57:53,370
I've seen balconies that
have completely caved in.

1322
00:57:53,420 --> 00:57:56,480
I've seen ceilings that
have completely caved in.

1323
00:57:56,530 --> 00:57:59,460
I've also seen ones that look
like someone shut them down

1324
00:57:59,510 --> 00:58:03,060
and walked out like two days
before and they're fine.

1325
00:58:03,110 --> 00:58:06,210
I know the Loew's Valencia,
3,000 seat theater

1326
00:58:06,260 --> 00:58:09,040
and they just gave it to a church for $10.

1327
00:58:09,090 --> 00:58:10,530
But I think a church coming into a theater

1328
00:58:10,580 --> 00:58:12,830
and restoring it was the
best option for a lot

1329
00:58:12,880 --> 00:58:14,630
of these spaces.

1330
00:58:14,680 --> 00:58:17,160
- And United Artists, that
was also used as a church

1331
00:58:17,210 --> 00:58:20,440
by Dr. Jean Scott, the televangelist.

1332
00:58:20,490 --> 00:58:22,090
He was a pretty good tenant.

1333
00:58:22,140 --> 00:58:24,530
He ended up putting a lot
of money into restoration

1334
00:58:24,580 --> 00:58:25,580
of the theater.

1335
00:58:25,630 --> 00:58:27,900
Another one that is a successful church

1336
00:58:27,950 --> 00:58:30,240
is the Academy in Inglewood.

1337
00:58:30,290 --> 00:58:33,930
That's an S. Charles Lee
streamlined modern theater.

1338
00:58:33,980 --> 00:58:34,763
Gorgeous theater.

1339
00:58:34,813 --> 00:58:36,330
It's been in continuous use as a church

1340
00:58:36,380 --> 00:58:38,030
and they have really been good stewards.

1341
00:58:38,080 --> 00:58:39,950
They've taken great care of it.

1342
00:58:40,000 --> 00:58:42,653
They've restored elements
of it and it's a beauty.

1343
00:58:43,660 --> 00:58:44,863
The church tenant.

1344
00:58:46,490 --> 00:58:48,540
I wouldn't have thought of it,

1345
00:58:48,590 --> 00:58:50,140
but it was a really interesting use

1346
00:58:50,190 --> 00:58:51,240
for the historic theaters.

1347
00:58:51,290 --> 00:58:53,680
And in some cases very good.

1348
00:58:53,730 --> 00:58:55,960
- But eventually the
single-screen theaters had

1349
00:58:56,010 --> 00:58:58,960
to compete with what was
going on in the suburbs.

1350
00:58:59,010 --> 00:59:01,480
- The new theaters that
came along were multiplexes

1351
00:59:01,530 --> 00:59:04,060
built from the ground
up and they were nice.

1352
00:59:04,110 --> 00:59:06,120
They offered all sorts
of comfort and amenities

1353
00:59:06,170 --> 00:59:08,410
that some of these
older theaters couldn't.

1354
00:59:08,460 --> 00:59:11,020
And what's more, they were
in the right locations.

1355
00:59:11,070 --> 00:59:13,330
But the worst part was
that instead of having

1356
00:59:13,380 --> 00:59:15,870
eight movies playing or 12 movies playing,

1357
00:59:15,920 --> 00:59:18,330
a single-screen theater
would live or die from week

1358
00:59:18,380 --> 00:59:20,010
to week and a lot of them died.

1359
00:59:20,060 --> 00:59:21,970
- Because they weren't
filling these theaters

1360
00:59:22,020 --> 00:59:24,350
with 3,500 seats any more.

1361
00:59:24,400 --> 00:59:27,730
They started to divide these theaters up.

1362
00:59:27,780 --> 00:59:29,330
- [Leonard] Cut the balconies in half,

1363
00:59:29,380 --> 00:59:30,500
made them two screens.

1364
00:59:30,550 --> 00:59:32,790
They cut the main theater
sometimes into three

1365
00:59:32,840 --> 00:59:34,710
or four screens.

1366
00:59:34,760 --> 00:59:36,840
- It ended up making pretty
horrible movie theaters

1367
00:59:36,890 --> 00:59:38,590
because the walls that would divide them

1368
00:59:38,640 --> 00:59:41,660
were four inches thick with
not a lot of sound absorption.

1369
00:59:41,710 --> 00:59:43,820
So you ended up hearing the
explosions in one versus

1370
00:59:43,870 --> 00:59:45,140
the explosions in the other.

1371
00:59:45,190 --> 00:59:46,580
Sight lines were terrible.

1372
00:59:46,630 --> 00:59:47,900
Seats weren't really moved.

1373
00:59:47,950 --> 00:59:49,410
It was a bad experience.

1374
00:59:49,460 --> 00:59:51,600
When the big movies started happening

1375
00:59:51,650 --> 00:59:54,450
in "Jaws" and "Star Wars"
and all of those other

1376
00:59:54,500 --> 00:59:57,190
films started coming out, most
people were already saying,

1377
00:59:57,240 --> 01:00:00,250
I'm gonna go off to the new
multiplexes in the suburbs.

1378
01:00:00,300 --> 01:00:01,750
That's where the parking is.

1379
01:00:01,800 --> 01:00:03,270
That's where the air conditioning is.

1380
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:04,700
That's where it's safe.

1381
01:00:04,750 --> 01:00:07,050
That's where I can go
every hour on the hour.

1382
01:00:07,100 --> 01:00:08,580
And that's where the
investment was falling

1383
01:00:08,630 --> 01:00:09,910
and that's where the banks were lending.

1384
01:00:09,960 --> 01:00:11,480
And it's where the people
who were living who were

1385
01:00:11,530 --> 01:00:14,870
gonna buy the toys fueled the
whole blockbuster industry.

1386
01:00:14,920 --> 01:00:19,270
From 1975 to 1995, they
had this very underwhelming

1387
01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:23,480
kind of basic multiplex
experience which was spare,

1388
01:00:23,530 --> 01:00:27,020
spartan and designed for
efficiency and profit.

1389
01:00:27,070 --> 01:00:28,420
- So these independent
theaters are starting

1390
01:00:28,470 --> 01:00:32,330
to lose traction and they
started to divest themselves

1391
01:00:32,380 --> 01:00:34,180
of a lot of theaters
and they sold them off

1392
01:00:34,230 --> 01:00:37,690
part and parcel.
(somber music)

1393
01:02:44,750 --> 01:02:46,510
- I think the bigger cultural loss

1394
01:02:46,560 --> 01:02:50,330
is the common experience,
the shared experience.

1395
01:02:50,380 --> 01:02:52,790
(soft piano music)

1396
01:02:52,840 --> 01:02:54,300
- [Matt] There'll be less and less movies

1397
01:02:54,350 --> 01:02:56,284
that actually go into
theaters and more and more

1398
01:02:56,334 --> 01:02:59,680
will come out on whatever
streaming platform

1399
01:02:59,730 --> 01:03:00,690
you wanna use.

1400
01:03:00,740 --> 01:03:02,180
- I mean I can sit in my living room.

1401
01:03:02,230 --> 01:03:05,550
15,000 different things I could stream

1402
01:03:05,600 --> 01:03:07,120
in addition to cable.

1403
01:03:07,170 --> 01:03:09,150
But at the core of all of that,

1404
01:03:09,200 --> 01:03:12,820
there's human interaction
that you don't get.

1405
01:03:12,870 --> 01:03:14,900
- There's always things
that you did when you were

1406
01:03:14,950 --> 01:03:17,510
a kid that you remember
for your whole life

1407
01:03:17,560 --> 01:03:19,600
and you carry that good memory with you.

1408
01:03:19,650 --> 01:03:22,640
And I think with theaters, if
the theater is still around,

1409
01:03:22,690 --> 01:03:24,900
you want people to
experience that as well.

1410
01:03:24,950 --> 01:03:27,430
Whether it's a movie or
going to a concert at one

1411
01:03:27,480 --> 01:03:32,230
of these places you know,
fighting to keep them alive.

1412
01:03:32,280 --> 01:03:33,730
I think that's a great thing.

1413
01:03:35,720 --> 01:03:37,840
- Radio City Music Hall
became the most famous

1414
01:03:37,890 --> 01:03:40,530
movie palace in the world
and was successful all

1415
01:03:40,580 --> 01:03:43,520
the way through until all that happened.

1416
01:03:43,570 --> 01:03:47,860
In the mid-1970s, things
started to change completely.

1417
01:03:47,910 --> 01:03:50,420
People that ran it said,
we're losing money.

1418
01:03:50,470 --> 01:03:51,870
We can't get good movies,

1419
01:03:51,920 --> 01:03:55,270
so we're just gonna tear this
down and build a glass box.

1420
01:03:55,320 --> 01:03:56,710
- And after all these years,

1421
01:03:56,760 --> 01:03:59,390
there was a sad announcement
about that music hall today.

1422
01:03:59,440 --> 01:04:00,830
- I'm announcing the closing

1423
01:04:00,880 --> 01:04:05,620
of Radio City Music Hall
at the end of the 1978

1424
01:04:05,670 --> 01:04:08,320
Easter show on April 12th.

1425
01:04:08,370 --> 01:04:09,770
- What else are you gonna do?

1426
01:04:09,820 --> 01:04:11,910
They said, we're gonna close
it after the Easter show,

1427
01:04:11,960 --> 01:04:13,600
so you're all outta work.

1428
01:04:13,650 --> 01:04:18,350
My feeling was they can't
tear this building down.

1429
01:04:18,400 --> 01:04:23,400
So I love this building,
let's try to save it.

1430
01:04:25,300 --> 01:04:28,593
When I called the meeting,
all the employees came.

1431
01:04:30,020 --> 01:04:33,160
I said, "We have nothing to lose.

1432
01:04:33,210 --> 01:04:35,510
We're all gonna be outta
work on April 12th,

1433
01:04:35,560 --> 01:04:37,537
so let's do something."

1434
01:04:40,130 --> 01:04:44,160
And I started the crusade
and serious battle

1435
01:04:44,210 --> 01:04:45,563
to save the theater.

1436
01:04:46,640 --> 01:04:51,080
For us, the passion was
to move forward and do

1437
01:04:51,130 --> 01:04:53,550
something good and save the building.

1438
01:04:53,600 --> 01:04:54,950
You don't know where you're going

1439
01:04:55,000 --> 01:05:00,000
when you start something like
that, and you just keep going.

1440
01:05:00,470 --> 01:05:03,700
We had fabulous people
help us and it was made

1441
01:05:03,750 --> 01:05:05,790
a city landmark and then it was

1442
01:05:05,840 --> 01:05:07,530
on the National Historic Landmark list.

1443
01:05:07,580 --> 01:05:11,130
And it's saved forever, they
can't do anything to it.

1444
01:05:11,180 --> 01:05:15,119
Though it doesn't run
films any more which breaks

1445
01:05:15,169 --> 01:05:19,970
my heart, maybe one of
these days it'll come back.

1446
01:05:20,020 --> 01:05:23,150
I think people would get
a kick out of going back

1447
01:05:23,200 --> 01:05:25,043
in there and seeing it so big.

1448
01:05:26,710 --> 01:05:28,950
- I think it would be somewhat
shocking for many of us

1449
01:05:29,000 --> 01:05:32,640
to go to a 5,000 seat
theater to see a movie.

1450
01:05:32,690 --> 01:05:34,430
Very different experience.

1451
01:05:35,450 --> 01:05:38,400
- I worked at the Chicago for a long time,

1452
01:05:38,450 --> 01:05:40,620
testified before the city council.

1453
01:05:40,670 --> 01:05:43,770
The theater organ that's in
there and got it landmark.

1454
01:05:43,820 --> 01:05:45,700
And when the theater was saved,

1455
01:05:45,750 --> 01:05:47,670
we knew that the organ was saved.

1456
01:05:47,720 --> 01:05:50,520
It was just wonderful to
go back in there and see

1457
01:05:50,570 --> 01:05:52,590
all those people that walked in

1458
01:05:52,640 --> 01:05:56,310
and their eyes would open up.

1459
01:05:56,360 --> 01:05:58,010
- And it's also good to see things like

1460
01:05:58,060 --> 01:06:00,510
the Cinerama Dome surviving
because it was goin'

1461
01:06:00,560 --> 01:06:01,578
to be torn down.

1462
01:06:01,628 --> 01:06:03,460
They were gonna keep the
Dome, but they were gonna put

1463
01:06:03,510 --> 01:06:04,850
a Koo Koo Roo chicken or something

1464
01:06:04,900 --> 01:06:07,190
in there and the whole
town fought against it.

1465
01:06:07,240 --> 01:06:08,840
Now the whole town may
not have gone to a movie

1466
01:06:08,890 --> 01:06:11,450
there that often, but when
they saw it was threatened,

1467
01:06:11,500 --> 01:06:14,210
they all got together, put you know,

1468
01:06:14,260 --> 01:06:16,860
practically protest marches and convinced

1469
01:06:16,910 --> 01:06:19,230
the theater company not to do anything

1470
01:06:19,280 --> 01:06:21,600
with the Cinerama Dome.

1471
01:06:21,650 --> 01:06:23,960
And boy, they're glad they didn't.

1472
01:06:24,010 --> 01:06:26,910
- Fortunately, a number
of them survived intact

1473
01:06:26,960 --> 01:06:29,780
and number of them survived intact enough

1474
01:06:30,750 --> 01:06:33,840
that they can be brought
back to their original glory

1475
01:06:33,890 --> 01:06:35,330
and some of them have been.

1476
01:06:35,380 --> 01:06:38,440
- The building was
built in 1927 originally

1477
01:06:38,490 --> 01:06:40,950
as the Avalon Theater and it turned

1478
01:06:41,000 --> 01:06:46,000
into the New Regal Theater
about 60 years later, 1987.

1479
01:06:46,370 --> 01:06:48,460
It was about a 12 million
dollar restoration

1480
01:06:48,510 --> 01:06:51,150
that they had to do, which
is why it's so beautiful.

1481
01:06:51,200 --> 01:06:54,860
The City of Chicago saved this
property by landmarking it.

1482
01:06:54,910 --> 01:06:57,710
Chicago's of course the city
known for its architecture,

1483
01:06:57,760 --> 01:07:00,080
so that designation I
think has really protected

1484
01:07:00,130 --> 01:07:01,850
this building from demolition.

1485
01:07:01,900 --> 01:07:05,210
(soft piano music)

1486
01:07:05,260 --> 01:07:08,480
The FDIC had taken over a
bank which had foreclosed

1487
01:07:08,530 --> 01:07:11,400
on the property and it was newly-listed.

1488
01:07:11,450 --> 01:07:13,890
At the time, my mother
forwarded me an email saying

1489
01:07:13,940 --> 01:07:16,170
that the building was
being offered and I jumped

1490
01:07:16,220 --> 01:07:17,003
right into it.

1491
01:07:17,053 --> 01:07:19,690
I mean I knew that the building
being closed was really

1492
01:07:19,740 --> 01:07:21,273
a blow to the community.

1493
01:07:22,400 --> 01:07:23,700
I'm a private equity investor,

1494
01:07:23,750 --> 01:07:26,220
so I like to figure out how things work

1495
01:07:26,270 --> 01:07:28,010
and how I can make them better.

1496
01:07:28,060 --> 01:07:31,320
In particular with a focus on
doing that for social good,

1497
01:07:31,370 --> 01:07:33,870
and I saw this as an opportunity to really

1498
01:07:33,920 --> 01:07:35,263
revive the neighborhood.

1499
01:07:36,150 --> 01:07:39,330
I think the Regal is the
foundation of the south side

1500
01:07:39,380 --> 01:07:43,060
of Chicago and by
extension, the city itself.

1501
01:07:43,110 --> 01:07:45,337
We had an opportunity to
revitalize the building

1502
01:07:45,387 --> 01:07:47,990
and I think we can turn
around what's happening

1503
01:07:48,040 --> 01:07:49,380
this side of town.

1504
01:07:49,430 --> 01:07:53,900
There are no cultural
entertainment outlets you know,

1505
01:07:53,950 --> 01:07:56,240
basically in this community.

1506
01:07:56,290 --> 01:07:58,240
And since the building has been closed,

1507
01:07:58,290 --> 01:08:00,420
this was a huge economic
engine for the area

1508
01:08:00,470 --> 01:08:03,583
and it really devastated the
surrounding neighborhood.

1509
01:08:07,060 --> 01:08:09,130
We've got about six or
seven million dollars

1510
01:08:09,180 --> 01:08:11,830
and upwards of 10 that
we're going to need to put

1511
01:08:11,880 --> 01:08:14,240
into the building which
fortunately is not as much

1512
01:08:14,290 --> 01:08:15,560
as it could be.

1513
01:08:15,610 --> 01:08:18,310
But that being said, it is
quite a substantial amount.

1514
01:08:18,360 --> 01:08:21,310
Our hope is to reopen the
building to the community

1515
01:08:21,360 --> 01:08:23,800
not just for entertainment purposes,

1516
01:08:23,850 --> 01:08:27,960
but also to culturally
enrich the youth and to give

1517
01:08:28,010 --> 01:08:31,760
them a creative outlet outside of whatever

1518
01:08:31,810 --> 01:08:34,923
it is they might be doing
now which isn't too positive.

1519
01:08:36,550 --> 01:08:38,510
- Restoration can mean many things.

1520
01:08:38,560 --> 01:08:41,100
For instance, the Loew's
Kings in Brooklyn,

1521
01:08:41,150 --> 01:08:44,260
incredible restoration job in most senses.

1522
01:08:44,310 --> 01:08:48,000
But they did add elevators,
they did add cup holders.

1523
01:08:48,050 --> 01:08:50,943
There are certain concessions
that we just have to make.

1524
01:08:52,940 --> 01:08:56,440
- These places that you look
around like we're in today,

1525
01:08:56,490 --> 01:08:58,850
they have a certain kind
of architectural splendor

1526
01:08:58,900 --> 01:09:00,970
that's not easily created with drywall.

1527
01:09:01,020 --> 01:09:04,140
- I salute anybody and
everybody who has a hand

1528
01:09:04,190 --> 01:09:08,110
in saving these great
theaters and finding a way

1529
01:09:08,160 --> 01:09:09,840
to keep them alive.

1530
01:09:09,890 --> 01:09:10,900
It's not enough to save them,

1531
01:09:10,950 --> 01:09:12,710
you have to keep them going somehow.

1532
01:09:12,760 --> 01:09:15,293
We have to find a way to
breathe life into them,

1533
01:09:16,460 --> 01:09:17,500
but it's worth the effort.

1534
01:09:17,550 --> 01:09:18,950
It's really worth the effort.

1535
01:09:19,000 --> 01:09:22,080
Because once you tear it
down, you can't rebuild it.

1536
01:09:22,130 --> 01:09:23,603
Once it's gone, it's gone.

1537
01:09:25,090 --> 01:09:27,160
- Los Angeles Historic
Theater Foundation, it was

1538
01:09:27,210 --> 01:09:30,420
founded in 1987 by a group
of people who were upset

1539
01:09:30,470 --> 01:09:33,870
that within a span of just
a few weeks or months,

1540
01:09:33,920 --> 01:09:36,680
there were three theaters on
Broadway that were closed.

1541
01:09:36,730 --> 01:09:39,050
The theater business
downtown was dwindling,

1542
01:09:39,100 --> 01:09:41,610
but these things were closed
and turned into swap meets

1543
01:09:41,660 --> 01:09:42,620
and turned into retail.

1544
01:09:42,670 --> 01:09:44,500
And it happened so quickly
that there was this sort

1545
01:09:44,550 --> 01:09:45,620
of desperate reaction.

1546
01:09:45,670 --> 01:09:47,540
We need to do something.

1547
01:09:47,590 --> 01:09:49,830
It is the largest movie
palace district in the world.

1548
01:09:49,880 --> 01:09:53,213
(soft orchestral music)

1549
01:09:59,000 --> 01:10:00,680
With 18 standing theaters,

1550
01:10:00,730 --> 01:10:04,220
not all used as theaters but
within a eight-block range.

1551
01:10:04,270 --> 01:10:06,660
It's really an amazing
resource that most people

1552
01:10:06,710 --> 01:10:07,783
don't know about.

1553
01:10:10,060 --> 01:10:11,830
On the top of our watch list right now,

1554
01:10:11,880 --> 01:10:14,360
Hollywood Warner Theater
which was more recently known

1555
01:10:14,410 --> 01:10:17,560
as the Hollywood Pacific
1-2-3 that the owners

1556
01:10:17,610 --> 01:10:19,340
originally came to the community and said,

1557
01:10:19,390 --> 01:10:22,040
we're gonna demolish it
and keep the facade only.

1558
01:10:22,090 --> 01:10:25,990
A number of us said that
wasn't acceptable and we are

1559
01:10:26,040 --> 01:10:28,110
now in negotiations with the owner to do

1560
01:10:28,160 --> 01:10:29,483
a feasibility study.

1561
01:10:31,030 --> 01:10:34,160
Fox Inglewood really really
are interested in making

1562
01:10:34,210 --> 01:10:35,920
that a successful theater again.

1563
01:10:35,970 --> 01:10:37,993
It's been closed for quite a while.

1564
01:10:39,390 --> 01:10:41,910
There's a number of issues
that need to be resolved

1565
01:10:41,960 --> 01:10:45,020
as far as the safety of the
theater and how it could

1566
01:10:45,070 --> 01:10:46,700
be brought back and restored.

1567
01:10:46,750 --> 01:10:49,063
So we're really watching
that one carefully.

1568
01:10:51,260 --> 01:10:53,380
The younger generation
actually sees the value

1569
01:10:53,430 --> 01:10:54,930
and is seeking it out.

1570
01:10:54,980 --> 01:10:58,540
(soft waltz music)

1571
01:10:58,590 --> 01:11:00,890
We are screening more and
more classics than anyone

1572
01:11:00,940 --> 01:11:02,460
could get on Netflix for free.

1573
01:11:02,510 --> 01:11:04,410
They can go and see it in a movie theater

1574
01:11:04,460 --> 01:11:06,313
with 1,000 total strangers.

1575
01:11:07,160 --> 01:11:08,810
And every time they open their theaters,

1576
01:11:08,860 --> 01:11:10,910
they're getting hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds

1577
01:11:10,960 --> 01:11:12,760
of young people that wanna come out.

1578
01:11:13,900 --> 01:11:15,250
And people are coming back.

1579
01:11:15,300 --> 01:11:17,610
My kids' generation are
frequenting these kinds

1580
01:11:17,660 --> 01:11:20,543
of shows because they
want that experience.

1581
01:11:21,400 --> 01:11:23,370
When I started this 30 years ago,

1582
01:11:23,420 --> 01:11:25,130
preservation was a dirty word.

1583
01:11:25,180 --> 01:11:27,400
And if you called yourself
a preservationist,

1584
01:11:27,450 --> 01:11:29,180
you were some radical crazy person.

1585
01:11:29,230 --> 01:11:32,320
- There's something about people who love

1586
01:11:32,370 --> 01:11:35,250
saving buildings, especially theaters.

1587
01:11:35,300 --> 01:11:37,290
- The Theater Historical Society goes back

1588
01:11:37,340 --> 01:11:40,390
to Ben Hall who was a
cultural historian and wrote

1589
01:11:40,440 --> 01:11:43,080
the wonderful book about
"The Best Remaining Seats."

1590
01:11:43,130 --> 01:11:46,340
Book came about in response
to when he looked outta

1591
01:11:46,390 --> 01:11:47,220
the window in his office.

1592
01:11:47,270 --> 01:11:48,770
Straight down, he was looking at the roof

1593
01:11:48,820 --> 01:11:51,190
of the Roxy Theater while
they were demolishing it.

1594
01:11:51,240 --> 01:11:54,823
(elegant orchestral music)

1595
01:11:57,200 --> 01:11:59,720
We've grown to have a significant archive,

1596
01:11:59,770 --> 01:12:02,270
a publication and an annual gathering.

1597
01:12:02,320 --> 01:12:05,100
Our goals are to document and
to celebrate these theaters.

1598
01:12:05,150 --> 01:12:07,110
- I personally believe
that landmark status

1599
01:12:07,160 --> 01:12:08,890
is a really great thing to have.

1600
01:12:08,940 --> 01:12:11,650
Not only does it offer
up certain you know,

1601
01:12:11,700 --> 01:12:13,880
benefits and if you can
get tax credits to help

1602
01:12:13,930 --> 01:12:16,200
offset the costs of restoration.

1603
01:12:16,250 --> 01:12:17,270
Those are wonderful things.

1604
01:12:17,320 --> 01:12:19,190
But it acknowledges you know,

1605
01:12:19,240 --> 01:12:20,980
if you have a plaque on
the front of your building

1606
01:12:21,030 --> 01:12:23,470
that says, this is a landmark structure.

1607
01:12:23,520 --> 01:12:24,780
This place is important.

1608
01:12:24,830 --> 01:12:29,040
Even to the casual passerby,
it adds a little more cachet,

1609
01:12:29,090 --> 01:12:30,440
a little more credibility.

1610
01:12:30,490 --> 01:12:32,590
- A lot of them in New York
City have landmark status

1611
01:12:32,640 --> 01:12:34,240
for the exterior.

1612
01:12:34,290 --> 01:12:36,360
So that means that a group would come in,

1613
01:12:36,410 --> 01:12:38,190
do whatever they want
to the inside as long

1614
01:12:38,240 --> 01:12:39,833
as the facade is preserved.

1615
01:12:41,700 --> 01:12:44,440
- Saving a facade and
destroying the theater,

1616
01:12:44,490 --> 01:12:46,340
it breaks my heart.

1617
01:12:46,390 --> 01:12:48,970
Is it better to keep just the facade?

1618
01:12:49,020 --> 01:12:50,770
I suppose it is,

1619
01:12:50,820 --> 01:12:53,720
but it just makes me
redouble my efforts to try

1620
01:12:53,770 --> 01:12:55,593
to save the theaters that we have.

1621
01:12:58,150 --> 01:13:00,800
A couple of examples of that,
painful to me every time,

1622
01:13:00,850 --> 01:13:03,520
is the Westchester near LAX.

1623
01:13:03,570 --> 01:13:06,800
Big, beautiful towering deco structure.

1624
01:13:06,850 --> 01:13:08,970
They still have the box
office and everything else

1625
01:13:09,020 --> 01:13:10,430
is a medical office inside.

1626
01:13:10,480 --> 01:13:11,773
There's nothing in there.

1627
01:13:13,750 --> 01:13:17,130
Another example is the Golden
Gate in Whittier and it's now

1628
01:13:17,180 --> 01:13:19,683
just the theater building
and it's a CVS Pharmacy.

1629
01:13:22,010 --> 01:13:24,635
Painful to go into when
we see the rows of drugs

1630
01:13:24,685 --> 01:13:26,160
and fluorescent lights.

1631
01:13:26,210 --> 01:13:28,070
But if you look above
the fluorescent lights,

1632
01:13:28,120 --> 01:13:29,967
you can still see the
theater and the organ

1633
01:13:30,017 --> 01:13:31,684
and stuff like that.

1634
01:13:33,070 --> 01:13:35,230
I was in there once
tryin' to take pictures

1635
01:13:35,280 --> 01:13:38,450
and I noticed this little
six year old girl looking up

1636
01:13:38,500 --> 01:13:41,310
at the ceiling with me you
know, while mom was shopping.

1637
01:13:41,360 --> 01:13:43,170
And you know, just
sorta watched as she was

1638
01:13:43,220 --> 01:13:44,310
exploring this theater.

1639
01:13:44,360 --> 01:13:45,143
She was getting it.

1640
01:13:45,193 --> 01:13:46,893
She was seeing what was above.

1641
01:13:50,105 --> 01:13:51,217
And at one point she came over to me

1642
01:13:51,267 --> 01:13:53,970
and she said, "It's creepy."

1643
01:13:54,020 --> 01:13:55,100
And I said, "Yeah, it is."

1644
01:13:55,150 --> 01:13:56,050
She got it.

1645
01:13:56,100 --> 01:13:57,920
She got a feeling for what was

1646
01:13:57,970 --> 01:14:00,210
above the fluorescent theater.

1647
01:14:00,260 --> 01:14:01,043
So in that case,

1648
01:14:01,093 --> 01:14:03,990
maybe it is good to save 'em
in whatever condition we can.

1649
01:14:04,040 --> 01:14:07,460
And maybe someday they can
be brought back as theaters.

1650
01:14:07,510 --> 01:14:09,670
- The Art House Convergence is a resource

1651
01:14:09,720 --> 01:14:11,690
for community-based
mission-driven cinemas.

1652
01:14:11,740 --> 01:14:15,580
I think people have really
begun to value these theaters.

1653
01:14:15,630 --> 01:14:18,830
We've seen an increase in
the number of independent

1654
01:14:18,880 --> 01:14:21,040
movie theaters over the last 10 years.

1655
01:14:21,090 --> 01:14:23,640
A lot of them lay dormant
for a couple years usually

1656
01:14:23,690 --> 01:14:25,530
in the '70s, maybe the '80s.

1657
01:14:25,580 --> 01:14:28,620
And then there would be a
group in town that would

1658
01:14:28,670 --> 01:14:30,560
rally around the theater.

1659
01:14:30,610 --> 01:14:32,990
There's a couple different
types of movie theaters.

1660
01:14:33,040 --> 01:14:35,820
You have the Repertory
House and that's like here.

1661
01:14:35,870 --> 01:14:37,730
We're in the New Bev in Los Angeles.

1662
01:14:37,780 --> 01:14:40,090
So that means that they're
screening titles that are

1663
01:14:40,140 --> 01:14:41,510
not currently first-run.

1664
01:14:41,560 --> 01:14:44,130
But a lot of our theaters
are showing foreign films,

1665
01:14:44,180 --> 01:14:46,493
documentaries, American indies.

1666
01:14:47,340 --> 01:14:49,990
Without a doubt, you have
to have passion to run

1667
01:14:50,040 --> 01:14:51,650
an independent movie house.

1668
01:14:51,700 --> 01:14:56,100
Movies are an important
cornerstone for a community

1669
01:14:56,150 --> 01:14:58,620
and that having a movie
theater space which acts

1670
01:14:58,670 --> 01:15:00,020
as more than just a movie theater.

1671
01:15:00,070 --> 01:15:02,113
It's not just that you're
seeing things on screen,

1672
01:15:02,163 --> 01:15:04,040
it's that you're doing QandAs after.

1673
01:15:04,090 --> 01:15:05,640
It's that you're having conversations

1674
01:15:05,690 --> 01:15:08,130
about the movies out in the lobby after.

1675
01:15:08,180 --> 01:15:10,713
It becomes a community gathering space.

1676
01:15:12,770 --> 01:15:14,450
- The best thing that happened to some

1677
01:15:14,500 --> 01:15:16,050
of these movie palaces is that they became

1678
01:15:16,100 --> 01:15:17,500
performing arts centers.

1679
01:15:17,550 --> 01:15:20,690
They added wings and
dressing rooms backstage.

1680
01:15:20,740 --> 01:15:22,750
And sometimes they tried
to deepen the apron

1681
01:15:22,800 --> 01:15:24,940
of the stage so that
they could accommodate

1682
01:15:24,990 --> 01:15:26,390
touring Broadway shows,

1683
01:15:26,440 --> 01:15:29,303
let's say or concert orchestra or ballet.

1684
01:15:30,310 --> 01:15:33,050
- The key to keeping
these large theaters alive

1685
01:15:33,100 --> 01:15:35,693
and thriving is a multiuse model.

1686
01:15:36,950 --> 01:15:38,510
If you can offer a wide variety,

1687
01:15:38,560 --> 01:15:41,160
whether it's concerts and revival movies

1688
01:15:41,210 --> 01:15:42,460
and special event movies.

1689
01:15:42,510 --> 01:15:44,540
If you can keep that variety going,

1690
01:15:44,590 --> 01:15:46,333
that's how you fill these seats.

1691
01:15:47,390 --> 01:15:50,973
(elegant orchestral music)

1692
01:15:53,350 --> 01:15:55,280
- The remainder of these movie palaces,

1693
01:15:55,330 --> 01:15:57,810
a lot of them have already been saved

1694
01:15:57,860 --> 01:15:59,240
or already been demolished.

1695
01:15:59,290 --> 01:16:00,810
There are very few huge buildings.

1696
01:16:00,860 --> 01:16:02,930
The Uptown Chicago being
one of them where people

1697
01:16:02,980 --> 01:16:05,850
are still desperately
hoping to save what are

1698
01:16:05,900 --> 01:16:08,863
absolutely irreplaceable
architectural structures.

1699
01:16:09,770 --> 01:16:11,550
- You'll never see
something like this again.

1700
01:16:11,600 --> 01:16:13,760
The detail that they put in here.

1701
01:16:13,810 --> 01:16:15,400
The things they thought of.

1702
01:16:15,450 --> 01:16:18,850
This was the nicest
movie palace ever built

1703
01:16:18,900 --> 01:16:22,620
in the country and the architects
even said that you know,

1704
01:16:22,670 --> 01:16:25,423
it's not for today, but for all time.

1705
01:16:29,830 --> 01:16:32,900
It was four million
dollars to build in 1924.

1706
01:16:32,950 --> 01:16:36,210
It's the largest freestanding
theater in the country.

1707
01:16:36,260 --> 01:16:37,710
It has more square feet

1708
01:16:37,760 --> 01:16:40,833
than Radio City, but
Radio City has more seats.

1709
01:16:42,860 --> 01:16:45,240
In 2008 when we purchased the theater,

1710
01:16:45,290 --> 01:16:48,880
if you remember, the
economy started to collapse.

1711
01:16:48,930 --> 01:16:52,430
So we bought it at the
worst possible time.

1712
01:16:52,480 --> 01:16:54,880
I didn't know what we were
gonna do to save the theater.

1713
01:16:54,930 --> 01:16:57,160
I just knew it needed to be saved.

1714
01:16:57,210 --> 01:17:00,543
(soft orchestral music)

1715
01:17:03,500 --> 01:17:06,230
This theater is in
relatively good condition.

1716
01:17:06,280 --> 01:17:10,540
We need to put in all new
mechanicals, all new plumbing,

1717
01:17:10,590 --> 01:17:11,680
all new electrical.

1718
01:17:11,730 --> 01:17:13,320
We need to add elevators.

1719
01:17:13,370 --> 01:17:16,910
We need to clean and restore
the areas that need it.

1720
01:17:16,960 --> 01:17:19,190
Those are the things that we're working on

1721
01:17:19,240 --> 01:17:22,933
and we think it's a 60 to 65
million dollar restoration.

1722
01:17:30,070 --> 01:17:31,680
We're bringing it back
to the way it was built

1723
01:17:31,730 --> 01:17:32,850
and that's what it should be.

1724
01:17:32,900 --> 01:17:35,520
There'll be some minor changes
that need to take place.

1725
01:17:35,570 --> 01:17:36,610
For the most part,

1726
01:17:36,660 --> 01:17:38,660
I'd say it's all gonna be the way it was

1727
01:17:38,710 --> 01:17:40,370
because it was designed so well.

1728
01:17:40,420 --> 01:17:41,363
We can't beat it.

1729
01:17:43,310 --> 01:17:44,630
It's good that we have the original

1730
01:17:44,680 --> 01:17:46,610
architectural drawings
because all we gotta do

1731
01:17:46,660 --> 01:17:48,823
is follow what Rapp and Rapp did.

1732
01:17:52,830 --> 01:17:54,810
One of the most important
things about getting

1733
01:17:54,860 --> 01:17:58,310
the doors open here is this
theater is the catalyst

1734
01:17:58,360 --> 01:18:00,270
for bringing Uptown back.

1735
01:18:00,320 --> 01:18:03,610
So once that's done,
once the theater is open,

1736
01:18:03,660 --> 01:18:07,603
it will spur all kinds of
investment in the neighborhood.

1737
01:18:08,860 --> 01:18:11,170
But we think that it's
perfect for concerts

1738
01:18:11,220 --> 01:18:12,393
and private events.

1739
01:18:13,660 --> 01:18:14,670
This is going to be

1740
01:18:14,720 --> 01:18:17,200
Chicago's music/entertainment district

1741
01:18:17,250 --> 01:18:20,420
because of the other
theaters that are here.

1742
01:18:20,470 --> 01:18:22,460
Right down the street, you
got the Aragon Ballroom.

1743
01:18:22,510 --> 01:18:24,730
'Cross the street, you've
got the Riviera Theater.

1744
01:18:24,780 --> 01:18:27,290
Couple doors down is the
Green Mill and there are

1745
01:18:27,340 --> 01:18:30,000
other theaters and other
properties in the area

1746
01:18:30,050 --> 01:18:33,683
that will go back and
become theaters again.

1747
01:18:35,780 --> 01:18:39,070
- Movie palaces are completely
connected to the community.

1748
01:18:39,120 --> 01:18:40,950
You have generations of the same family

1749
01:18:41,000 --> 01:18:42,460
who will have stories.

1750
01:18:42,510 --> 01:18:44,350
In the Rialto, this happens all the time.

1751
01:18:44,400 --> 01:18:45,577
I have people tell me,

1752
01:18:45,627 --> 01:18:47,680
"Oh, my grandmother went
on her first date here."

1753
01:18:47,730 --> 01:18:50,930
Or, "My parents proposed
after going to the Rialto."

1754
01:18:50,980 --> 01:18:53,340
So you have all of these
memories that are tied

1755
01:18:53,390 --> 01:18:55,960
very closely to a Rialto experience

1756
01:18:56,010 --> 01:18:57,630
or to a theater experience.

1757
01:18:57,680 --> 01:18:59,440
The community needs the
theater just as much

1758
01:18:59,490 --> 01:19:01,420
as a theater needs the community.

1759
01:19:01,470 --> 01:19:04,100
- Culturally, if we lose these places,

1760
01:19:04,150 --> 01:19:06,760
it takes away a sense of identity.

1761
01:19:06,810 --> 01:19:09,700
When you see a building like
a classic movie theater,

1762
01:19:09,750 --> 01:19:12,260
it immediately puts you
and gives you a sense

1763
01:19:12,310 --> 01:19:13,380
of time and place.

1764
01:19:13,430 --> 01:19:16,270
It positions you as part of history.

1765
01:19:16,320 --> 01:19:19,300
It lets you feel the
connectivity between all

1766
01:19:19,350 --> 01:19:21,360
of the people that were there before you.

1767
01:19:21,410 --> 01:19:22,390
- If you think about it,

1768
01:19:22,440 --> 01:19:26,450
things that are coming and
going: trends, passing fads,

1769
01:19:26,500 --> 01:19:27,340
that kinda thing.

1770
01:19:27,390 --> 01:19:29,190
The movies are always going to be

1771
01:19:29,240 --> 01:19:30,810
a destination for people.

1772
01:19:30,860 --> 01:19:33,720
People will always wanna see
movies in the movie theater.

1773
01:19:33,770 --> 01:19:36,160
There may be other
trendy things that pop up

1774
01:19:36,210 --> 01:19:39,530
that are keeping people from
going for a period of time,

1775
01:19:39,580 --> 01:19:41,040
but they always come back to it.

1776
01:19:41,090 --> 01:19:42,840
Just like you always go back to a museum,

1777
01:19:42,890 --> 01:19:45,630
you always wanna go see
the art in the place

1778
01:19:45,680 --> 01:19:47,233
where that art is best viewed.

1779
01:19:48,600 --> 01:19:49,970
- It's more than just caring

1780
01:19:50,020 --> 01:19:51,910
about it because there's
been great personal

1781
01:19:51,960 --> 01:19:54,320
sacrifice that's come
along with tryin' to keep

1782
01:19:54,370 --> 01:19:55,330
this theater up.

1783
01:19:55,380 --> 01:19:57,650
It's something that future
generations should always

1784
01:19:57,700 --> 01:20:01,030
get to see fulfilling the
statement of the architects.

1785
01:20:01,080 --> 01:20:03,093
Not for today, but for all time.

1786
01:20:05,060 --> 01:20:08,560
(gentle orchestral music)

1787
01:20:18,830 --> 01:20:21,873
- So one year when our
daughter Jessie was about nine,

1788
01:20:23,020 --> 01:20:24,220
there was a Laurel and Hardy evening

1789
01:20:24,270 --> 01:20:25,557
at the Los Angeles Theater.

1790
01:20:25,607 --> 01:20:27,790
Now she had seen Laurel and Hardy before,

1791
01:20:27,840 --> 01:20:29,843
so she already liked them.

1792
01:20:30,730 --> 01:20:35,730
But she sat in the theater
and heard over 2,000 people

1793
01:20:36,890 --> 01:20:41,133
rocking with laughter at
these films that night.

1794
01:20:41,970 --> 01:20:43,220
I don't think she's ever forgotten it.

1795
01:20:43,270 --> 01:20:44,850
I know I've never forgotten.

1796
01:20:44,900 --> 01:20:46,480
I mean you can go to
see a funny movie today.

1797
01:20:46,530 --> 01:20:47,690
You can go to see you know,

1798
01:20:47,740 --> 01:20:51,460
a new Melissa McCarthy
movie or The Hangover or any

1799
01:20:51,510 --> 01:20:53,630
kinda modern movie and you can laugh.

1800
01:20:53,680 --> 01:20:56,740
But to be in a theater
with over 2,000 people

1801
01:20:58,240 --> 01:21:01,970
laughing like that is a
pretty amazing experience.

1802
01:21:03,350 --> 01:21:04,860
- I think the future of movie-going

1803
01:21:04,910 --> 01:21:06,840
is in independent cinemas.

1804
01:21:06,890 --> 01:21:08,910
That's where people are
gonna be in 10 years

1805
01:21:08,960 --> 01:21:12,320
because those are the
people that are you know,

1806
01:21:12,370 --> 01:21:13,410
rooted in their community.

1807
01:21:13,460 --> 01:21:16,780
They know the people's names
who come through the door.

1808
01:21:16,830 --> 01:21:19,340
So if you're a theater,
regardless if you're part

1809
01:21:19,390 --> 01:21:21,370
of a large chain or not,

1810
01:21:21,420 --> 01:21:24,193
make sure that you reflect your community.

1811
01:21:26,300 --> 01:21:28,479
- I got involved in the restoration

1812
01:21:28,529 --> 01:21:30,460
of Cinerama films besides
the fact that nobody

1813
01:21:30,510 --> 01:21:33,330
else wanted to touch it was
the fact that I had done

1814
01:21:33,380 --> 01:21:35,830
a documentary about the
history of Cinerama and we had

1815
01:21:35,880 --> 01:21:39,470
to find out some clever
ways to show examples.

1816
01:21:39,520 --> 01:21:41,210
And so when the documentary was over,

1817
01:21:41,260 --> 01:21:43,490
I'm ready to go on with
the rest of my life, right?

1818
01:21:43,540 --> 01:21:46,760
And then the need came up for these films,

1819
01:21:46,810 --> 01:21:47,930
were rotting away in vaults

1820
01:21:47,980 --> 01:21:49,690
and nothing was happening with them.

1821
01:21:49,740 --> 01:21:52,670
So the company that
owns the assets then put

1822
01:21:52,720 --> 01:21:55,070
a certain amount of money
into a couple of tests

1823
01:21:55,120 --> 01:21:57,710
and experiments, took that
on as sort of a you know,

1824
01:21:57,760 --> 01:21:59,250
crusade I guess.

1825
01:21:59,300 --> 01:22:01,750
And now to the point where we've literally

1826
01:22:01,800 --> 01:22:03,943
restored almost all the Cinerama movies.

1827
01:22:06,330 --> 01:22:07,670
- There's where you get
into an interesting thing

1828
01:22:07,720 --> 01:22:09,260
about historic preservation.

1829
01:22:09,310 --> 01:22:10,993
Because a lot of people don't
think well say it's built

1830
01:22:11,043 --> 01:22:13,770
in the '50s and '60s,
it's not old, you know?

1831
01:22:13,820 --> 01:22:17,490
Or it's not a movie palace,
so it's not really important.

1832
01:22:17,540 --> 01:22:19,060
Or you get a fight like

1833
01:22:19,110 --> 01:22:22,960
the Indian Hill Cinerama
which got a landmark status

1834
01:22:23,010 --> 01:22:25,990
from the city, but the
landmark status had no teeth

1835
01:22:26,040 --> 01:22:28,580
and so they tore it down
anyway for a parking lot.

1836
01:22:28,630 --> 01:22:31,260
So you have the National and Westwood.

1837
01:22:31,310 --> 01:22:33,890
You got all these theaters
that were built in the 1960s.

1838
01:22:33,940 --> 01:22:35,490
The Beekman in New York.

1839
01:22:35,540 --> 01:22:37,880
All of whom have been
torn down with nothing

1840
01:22:37,930 --> 01:22:39,870
of the fanfare that the movie palaces get.

1841
01:22:39,920 --> 01:22:42,060
And so you need to understand
all those theaters.

1842
01:22:42,110 --> 01:22:44,020
But if all the theaters are destroyed,

1843
01:22:44,070 --> 01:22:45,830
then how can you go back and look and see

1844
01:22:45,880 --> 01:22:48,890
what it looked like in the
1950s and 60s when people

1845
01:22:48,940 --> 01:22:51,780
left the cities and went
into small towns and rural

1846
01:22:51,830 --> 01:22:53,017
areas and suburban areas and began to go

1847
01:22:53,067 --> 01:22:55,020
to the movie theaters and new places.

1848
01:22:55,070 --> 01:22:57,420
You can't because they're torn down.

1849
01:22:57,470 --> 01:23:00,380
So the preservation
movement is one that needs

1850
01:23:00,430 --> 01:23:02,650
to be focused on movie
palaces but also needs

1851
01:23:02,700 --> 01:23:06,560
to think about do we need
to save a 1970s theater?

1852
01:23:06,610 --> 01:23:07,443
It's a question.

1853
01:23:09,420 --> 01:23:12,700
- I get contacts from people
who are traveling here

1854
01:23:12,750 --> 01:23:15,940
from Europe and they wanna
see our movie palaces

1855
01:23:15,990 --> 01:23:18,660
because it's just an alien,

1856
01:23:18,710 --> 01:23:21,360
it's a foreign thing to them to see wait,

1857
01:23:21,410 --> 01:23:24,950
this was a palace built
just to watch a movie?

1858
01:23:25,000 --> 01:23:28,003
You know, I get such great reactions.