Mar 06, 2012 | 09:58
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Jan 19, 2012
Archive screens film classics in historic downtown movie palace
Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in "His Girl Friday."
For decades, the city’s vibrant theater district, operating day and night, was the place to go for first-run films. But urban decay and suburban movie multiplexes took their toll: By the late 1990s, all of the theaters had been shuttered. And those that avoided the wrecking ball did so by making it into the National Register of Historic Places’ Broadway Theater and Commercial District.
Today, a decade of downtown revitalization has breathed new life into the area, with several theaters reopening as rental venues for music acts and other entertainment. But when it comes to revisiting the big-screen movie palace experience, there’s only one act in town: UCLA Film & Television Archive on Broadway, a lively weekly series of screenings of movie classics.
The series was launched in October in partnership with the Million Dollar Theater on 3rd and Broadway, currently the only downtown venue showing movie classics on an ongoing basis. Listed on the National Register, the theater was the first L.A. venue of impresario Sid Grauman — namesake of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
The Million Dollar Theater's Spanish Baroque-style auditorium got a fresh coat of paint in 2008 over whitewashing that dated from the venue’s brief stint as a church.
The 2,345-seat theater opened in 1918 with a star-studded debut that included Cecil B. DeMille, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. Seen as a backdrop in films like "Blade Runner," the theater sits right across the street from the historic Bradbury Building — the city’s oldest remaining commercial building, dating back to 1893 — and is just steps away from L.A.’s bustling Grand Central Market.
With its appeal to a growing audience of downtown workers and dwellers, the series helps fulfill archive Director Christopher Horak’s goal of bringing the rich cinematic resources of the country’s second-largest archive of its kind to an audience far beyond Westwood.
The archive launched the new Wednesday-evening series with a pairing of "The Blues Brothers" (1980) with "Neighbors" (1981). So far, it has screened 26 films, most as double features, among them, rock operas "Tommy" (1975) and "Jesus Christ Superstar" (1973) just before Christmas, and "His Girl Friday" (1940) with "It Happened One Night" (1934) earlier this month.
Director Christopher Horak wants to share the archive's rich resources with a wider audience.
"I want our programming to be for all Angelenos," the director said. "From the beginning I’ve always thought we need to find another space to ‘spread the love.’"
The Westside is being well-served by the archive’s offerings at the Billy Wilder Theater, located at the UCLA Hammer Museum. Audiences are drawn to the innovative, year-round programming, from the annual Iranian Film Festival to the ambitious retrospective of Spencer Tracy films now showing.
But as a Pasadena resident, Horak added, "I’ve heard from many people on the Eastside who — given traffic patterns, especially rush hour — just don’t have the strength to get to the Westside." As word of the downtown venue spreads, Horak hopes to see his Eastside neighbors make the short trek there. "It’s just a 12-minute drive from Pasadena to downtown."
Horak happened upon the Million Dollar Theater two summers ago during the downtown film festival, Last Remaining Seats, presented each year in historic movie houses by the nonprofit Los Angeles Conservancy. He had already begun to consider the possibility of using one of those theaters as a second venue for the archive when, serendipitously, he met Robert Voskanian, manager of the Million Dollar Theater, who had been keeping that venue afloat primarily through rental to Latino organizations doing Spanish-language programming.
Voskanian invited Horak to tour the Spanish Baroque-style venue, which in 2008 had been refurbished with new marble flooring and repair of the proscenium’s stone archway. The interior also got a fresh coat of colorful paint over whitewashing dating from the venue’s brief stint as a church.
The theater's exterior was designed in the ornate Churrigueresque architectural style.
One aspect of the theater’s architecture that Horak found particularly appealing is its projection booth, which is set at the front of the lower balcony.
"Most movie palaces had the projection booth way up at the top and back," he explained, "so the 'throw' [of the film image] is at a steep angle and about three times as far from the screen. Here, the throw is very short, and you get a lot more light on the screen — so you get a much better image because it’s brighter."
The less-steep projection angle also corrects for what’s known as the "keystoning" effect that was commonly seen in old movie theaters: the image is no longer a perfect rectangle by the time it reaches the screen.
"Being a film archive, the quality of the film projection is really important to us," said Horak.
Programming at the Million Dollar Theater, at least for starters, is distinct from the archive’s Westwood offerings. "The Billy Wilder Theater is a very different space — an art space in an art museum where we do very much repertory-style programming," said Horak, "whereas downtown, we’re in what used to be a longtime-operating commercial venue. And we also want to speak to the audience that lives downtown."
So the series consists of "modern classics," from vintage 1920s films to popular films from the 1970s – films that audiences during those eras actually could have seen at venues like the Million Dollar Theater. Many of the films are available on DVD, said Horak. "But a lot of them are really worth seeing again on a big screen." Take, for instance, the spectacular "Lawrence of Arabia," which the archive screened last November. "You really don’t want to watch that on your TV screen," Horak said.
The program’s audience is still small – perhaps 200 people on a typical night. But Horak has already noticed a few "regulars" showing up.
"It’s a huge theater that’s a challenge to fill, but it’s fine if we can get a nice little audience downstairs right now," said Horak, who is confident that the program will flourish, especially given downtown’s continuing influx of new residents and businesses.
And while the Million Dollar Theater could use several million dollars to return it to its original glory, Horak said, its ornate architecture and storied history make it the perfect place to showcase the archive’s meticulously restored films.
"Most people don’t even remember what movie palaces look like because they haven’t been operating for at least two generations," he said. "As an archivist, I find the theatrical experience really important, too."
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For more information and a complete schedule, see the UCLA Film & Television Archive on Broadway website.
