Historic images courtesy of Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation and the Ricardo Montalbán Foundation.
Live from Hollywood! How Live Theatre Shaped Hollywood Entertainment and Culture by Keldine Hull
T
he Roaring Twenties was in full swing, the height of lawlessness and entertainment when flappers challenged societal norms and the economy boomed. There was a thirst for culture, which led to the rise of live entertainment in Hollywood as theatres lined the streets of Tinseltown. The Music Box theatre, located near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Gower Street, opened its doors to the public, the first of three live theatres that emerged in Hollywood between the years of 1926 and 1927. It was introduced to the public as a vaudeville revue, and stage and movie actor Carter DeHaven had grand plans to bring a sense of the Ziegfeld Follies to Hollywood. His stage manager, who had worked on the Ziegfeld Follies in New York, told a newspaper at the time, “Carter DeHaven has a production which will out-Ziegfeld Ziegfeld.” While DeHaven’s run was short-lived, some of the biggest stars of the time graced the stage of the Music Box, including Clark Gable, who starred alongside Nancy Carroll in the West Coast premier of Chicago. “He was just really getting started,” explains Marry Mallory, well-respected author and motion picture archivist. “So many of the people in the 1930s or ‘40s that were stars actually started on the stage.” Over the next several decades, as ownership changed, the Music Box went through many name changes, from Columbia
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Today’s Montalbán Theater (above) offers live performance and its popular Rooftop Cinema Series. It began as the Wilkes Vine Street Theater in 1927 (bottom), later to become the CBS Radio Playhouse in the 1930s (below left), the Huntington Hartford Theatre in the 1950s and the James Doolittle Theater in the 1960s. Music Box in the 1930s, to the Guild Theatre in the 1940s. In 1985, the Nederlander Organization, in conjunction with Pacific Theatres, renovated the theatre and reopened it as the Henry Fonda Theatre. Mike Hume, who sits on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation (LAHTF), explains why that was such a pivotal moment for Hollywood. “I think what we're seeing there is some early understanding that parts of old Hollywood were worth preserving. I think that's a really notable point in its history, because that's pretty early in terms of preservation becoming something that people cared about.” Hume helped to clear up a persistent rumor that the theatre was named after Henry Fonda because he starred in a show there. “We confirmed that Henry Fonda had never been in a show at this
