F E AT U R E
YEARS OF SPECTACLE Celebrating this historic season, the newly published Hollywood Bowl: The First 100 Years—written by Derek Traub and edited by Julia Ward and Robin Rauzi— draws on first-hand accounts and rarely seen photographs to answer the deceptively simple question: What makes the Hollywood Bowl, the Hollywood Bowl? The following has been edited for space and excerpted from the book’s fifth chapter, which explores the venue’s legacy of grand, over-thetop productions.
DANCERS FROM THE 1926 JULIUS CAESAR PRODUCTION POSE IN COSTUME (top) AND PERFORM ON STAGE ( bottom )
36 PERFORMANCES JULY 2022
The Hollywood Bowl—a venue dedicated to music and democracy— ironically was inspired by a play about the fall of a democracy. Although its founders disagreed about many of the details of the Bowl’s origins, to a person, they all cited a spectacular 1916 production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as the event that sparked their dream for an outdoor venue in Hollywood.
