More pages on the Warner Grand: lobby areas | auditorium | stage + basement | booth |
The News: Since 2019 the city has been planning a renovation with SPF Architects compiling a big wish list. There's been lots of confusion, secrecy and chaos. Nobody seems to be able to talk about what the scope of work actually is, when the building department will be done reviewing the plans, what the bidding process will be like and when construction will start. There has been discussion of an insane two-year shutdown. One concern is that it'll end up like the city's Vision Theatre project in Leimert Park -- not fully funded at the beginning and then subject to years-long delays, and closure, between phases.
The mess is described in "Warner Grand Theatre's Future Obscure," Greggory Moore's April 14, 2023 article for the site Random Lengths News. Donna Littlejohn followed up with "Temporary Goodbye is coming soon for San Pedro's popular Warner Grand Theatre," her April 19 Daily Breeze article. Thanks to Ann Hubbell Tompkins for spotting these stories. Grand Vision Foundation is planning an "early farewell event" on June 10. In an April 21 Breeze update it was noted that the theatre will stay open until at least December 31.
Opened: January 20, 1931 as the Warner Bros. Theatre with "Goin' Wild" with Joe E. Brown as the initial attraction. It's reported that Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Blondell were among those attending the premiere. Jack Warner called it the "Castle of Your Dreams." He sent his son Jack Warner, Jr. to the opening. The facade of the Warner, especially when lit at night, is an impressive big city sight in generally low-key San Pedro. It's owned by the City of Los Angeles and managed by Lee Sweet. Photo: Bill Counter - 2013
Website: www.grandvision.org | events | photo gallery | restoration | tech specs - 2008 pdf |
Seating: 1,598 at one time, now 1,523.
Architect: B. Marcus Priteca, who also did the Warner Huntington Park (opening November 19, 1930) and Warner Beverly Hills (opening May 19, 1931). Plus over 100 other theatres. Interior decoration was by Anthony Heinsbergen. The contractor was Lange & Bergstrom, Inc. of Los Angeles. Priteca's other Los Angeles theaters include the downtown Pantages (1920, later renamed the Warner Downtown), the Hollywood Pantages (1930) and the Fine Arts in Beverly Hills (1937).
Warner Brothers was riding high in 1930 with their profits from Vitaphone releases and embarked on a big expansion program across the country. Exhibitors were worried but Warners tried to calm them by saying that existing relationships weren't in jeopardy as they were just building new houses where their films weren't getting good play. The first two new houses in the project for the L.A. area were announced in February 1930. This was the front page coverage in the February 5 issue of the San Pedro News-Pilot:
Somehow the theatre didn't end up very "Italio-Spanish." Thanks to Mike Hume for locating the article. A smaller article with similar information also appeared in the February 5 issue of the L.A. Times. Mike notes that the News-Pilot is accessible online via UC Riverside and the California Digital Newspaper Collection. Access is free, but you may need to set up an account: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/
The three Warner neighborhood houses to be designed by E. Marcus Priteca [sic] were featured in this article appearing in the April 5, 1930 issue of Motion Picture News. It's on Internet Archive if you wish to expand it for easier reading.
That Italo-Spanish exterior look seen in the rendering for the Huntington Park theatre was later modified to become very deco, although then they would have called it "modern." Thanks to theatre explorer Mike Hume for locating the article. Visit his Historic Theatre Photography site for news of his latest investigations. And don't miss his page on the Warner Grand.
"Designs For Various Cities Shown - To the upper left is depicted the Warner Brothers Theater at Wilshire Boulevard and Reeves Drive in Beverly Hills, to be started this month. To its right is shown the Fox Pantages Theater at Hollywood Boulevard and Argyle, the opening date for which has been set for the 29th inst. To the lower left is the Fox Theater soon to be built on Greenleaf avenue, Whittier, while Warners' San Pedro project is pictured at the lower right. In the center is the Fox Wilshire Theater now being erected at Wilshire Boulevard and Hamilton, Beverly Hills. Completion is scheduled for September."
The illustration appeared in the May 4, 1930 issue of the L.A. Times. This article appeared on the same page:
The new Fox theatres mentioned for Wilshire Blvd. at Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills and in Huntington Park never happened. Fox broke their lease on the theatre in Whittier and it opened as an independent called the Wardman, named after its owner. The article was a find by Mike Hume.
The groundbreaking was in June 1930. Thanks to Jeff Bridges for locating this item from the June 18 issue of the L.A. Times:
"Warner Brothers will break ground today for their new $500,000 theater on Sixth street, near Pacific avenue, San Pedro. Jack Warner, son of the vice-president in charge of production, will wield the shovel and Leslie Mott, president of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce, will speak for the community. A number of film folk will be introduced by M.A. Silver, general manager of Warner Brothers' Theater chain, including Loretta Young, Grant Withers, Claudia Dell, Irene Delroy, Walter Pidgeon and Leon Janney. The site runs 150 feet along Sixth street and extends back 125 feet. The building will have an auditorium seating 2000 persons, and will contain six stores and twelve offices. Lange & Bergstrom, Inc. of Los Angeles, is general contractor."
A front page photo appearing in the January 19, 1931 issue of the San Pedro News-Pilot. In addition to a story with the photo giving minute details about the next day's opening, twelve full pages inside the issue were filled with congratulatory ads and dozens of news stories about every detail of the theatre and its operation. Articles included discussion of exciting topics such as "Sound is Perfect in New San Pedro Theatre," "Ushers Train for Two Weeks," "It's Your Theatre Says Warner Head For This District" and "Plenty of Air for Warner Patrons."
The cover of the January 20, 1931 opening night program. Thanks to Michelle Gerdes for rounding it up for display at a Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation tour of the theatre. It's in the collection of the San Pedro Bay Historical Society.
This review of the opening appeared in the January 21 issue of the San Pedro News-Pilot. The article's conclusion:
The
new theatre got a big spread with nine photos in the Better Theatres section of the July
4, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Herald. The article, "The Warner in San Pedro" is on Internet Archive.
Several
articles have noted that it was the first theatre equipped for sound in
the South Bay area but that can't be true. 1931 was pretty late. Maybe
it was the first South Bay theatre built after the arrival of sound. By this time Fox West
Coast had been running sound features for several years at their nearby Cabrillo and Strand theatres.
Stage:
The Warner got a stage with flying capability with a 65' high grid. The
original rigging was replaced with a new counterweight
system in 2007. All the
dressing rooms are in the basement, an area not built out in 1931. The stage is very wide
and shallow: 50' proscenium width (32' high) but a stage depth of only 20'8". They've made the facility more usable with a stage extension out
beyond the original apron. The stage is 80' wall to wall. See the stage + basement page for more data.
Pipe Organ: It never got one. The nice empty chambers are used for storage.
Film
equipment: The booth has a pair of Norelco AAII 35/70mm projectors and a RCA 16mm machine. Digital is done with a portable unit from the front of the balcony. See the booth page for more details. The
screen is 21' x 48'.
A 1939 Warner Brothers ad. Thanks to Ken McIntyre for adding it as a comment to a post on the Photos of Los Angeles Facebook page.
The theatre finally started prospering during World War II with lots of
employment nearby at the port, the shipyards, and other military
locations. Evidently Warner Bros. got out of operating the theatre sometime prior to the end of 1941 and it was still not back in the circuit in 1948.
A July 1942 ad for the Warners neighborhood houses with the San Pedro venue absent. Not listed in this ad are the two first run houses that Warners had at the time, the Warner Hollywood and the Warner Downtown. Sometime after 1948 the Warner San Pedro was again part of the circuit.
In 1953, as a result of the Federal consent decree splitting studios from their theatre chains, Warner Bros. split their business into two firms with existing stockholders ending up with shares in both companies. Warner Bros. remained the film production and distribution company. The theatres ended up with the new Stanley Warner Corporation -- Stanley Corp. being the name of a largely east coast theatre chain the Warners had purchased in 1927.
In the city directories it's been listed under all sorts of variations of the Warner name including Warner Bros. (1932), the Warner Bros. San Pedro Theatre (1937), the Stanley Warner San Pedro Theatre (1956), the Warner Theatre (1957) and the Stanley Warner Theatre (1959).
The
Stanley-Warner combine eventually grabbed the RKO circuit theatres as
well, becoming RKO-Stanley Warner in 1967. Pacific
Theatres took over the southern California theatres in the chain in
1968, becoming the Warner San Pedro's new operator and, presumably,
owner. New operators took over in 1974 and the theatre had a run as
a Mexican film house under the name Teatro Juarez. It's unknown if
Pacific ran the house right up to the 1974 transfer or not.
The theatre closed in December 1975, with the operators reporting difficulties getting financing for new equipment and other upgrades. The other downtown theatre, the Strand, then closed in January 1976. Both theatres were discussed in the San Pedro News Pilot on January 17 with the article "San Pedro
left with no movie" and again on January 19 with the editorial headed
"Theatres die." Both articles are reproduced at the bottom of the page about the Strand Theatre.
Arnulfo Estrada, a Wilmington grocer, bought the theatre in 1980 and ran it himself, still as the Juarez with Spanish language product. After having problems with violence and vandalism he leased it for a ten year term beginning in early 1983 to South Bay Theatre, Inc., a
group headed by Raymond Howell and Clay Colbert. They changed the name to the
Warner Grand, started a refurbishment program, and ran
classics, organ concerts, and other programming. It was the first English language programming in San Pedro since 1976. Howell had previously
managed the Chinese for Fox West Coast. Estrada noted that they folded after ten months and forfeited their lease deposit. "They couldn't control the crowds" reported Sonny Singh, who ended up managing the theatre in 1984.
Daniel Sharma leased the theatre from Estrada on a month-to-month basis beginning in December 1983. At one point he tried running English language features but that experiment only lasted a bit more than a week. Sonny Singh, his manager, noted that "...much of the action takes place off-screen. Fighting and vandalism are common occurrences when the theater shows teen-oriented American flicks...theatre employees were assaulted and abused on more than one occasion. For $3 a seat, who needs it?"
The problems the theatre faced were discussed in "S.P. cinema fans driven out of town," a February 2, 1984 News Pilot article by Steve Hirano. Inasmuch as both the Juarez and the San Pedro Drive-In were running only Spanish language features, moviegoers looking for English language features had to go to Torrance or Long Beach. "Downtown San Pedro movie theater faces major obstacles" was another article in the same issue:
These are from the clipping file at the San Pedro Bay Historical Society collection. Thanks to Michelle Gerdes for taking photos of them.
New owners in 1986 and again in 1991 left the venue adrift. In January 1996 it was purchased by the City of Los Angeles for $1.2 million. In "City looks to private operator to run San Pedro's Warner Grand Theatre," a February 21, 2016 Daily Breeze story by Donna Littlejohn, she discussed the
city's interest in getting an outside operator to run the Warner. There were no offers from promoters to take on
the theatre. Ms Littlejohn had the update in a November, 2016
Daily Breeze article: "Theater benefactors stand ready to expand, promote San Pedro's Warner Grand."
The benefactor mentioned was the Grand Vision Foundation, the official "Friends" group for the Warner that was organized in 1995 to save the theatre. Over the last two decades they have done significant fundraising for various restoration projects and also promote frequent events at the theatre. They also operate the Annex, a black box house down the block. On several occasions they have asked the City to
let them run the theatre. Again they expressed their
desire to manage the building -- but evidently not on the terms that
were being asked.
A 2019 look at what SPF was thinking about for the basement lounge. It's one of four renderings on a page about the project on the SPF:architects website. An update was featured on pages 44 and 45 of the January 2021 issue of "San Pedro Today." It's on Issuu.
A June 2019 Easy Reader News story discussed "Love the Lobby," Grand Vision Foundation's fundraising campaign to restore the area to its 1931 look. The campaign is also detailed on Grand Vision's restoration page. The site also has articles about a 2019 lighting system revamp and the sound system upgrade done in 2019 and 2020.More exterior views:
1931 - Another opening week view. It was one of nine photos with "The Warner in San Pedro," an article in the Better Theatres section of the July 4, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Herald. It's on Internet Archive. "The facade, finished in white stucco, restrainedly embellished with cornice and plaque patterns pressed into the material."
1931 - A look at the boxoffice from the Los Angeles Public Library collection. A version of the Dwyer photo also appears in the July 4, 1931 issue of Motion Picture Herald.
1934 - Miss Dare in the ticket lobby. It's a photo from the Grand Vision Foundation collection that appears on the photo gallery page of their website.
1936 - The Warner running "Mysterious Crossing," a December Universal release. It's a photo in the Los Angeles Public Library collection.
1937 - Looking east down 6th St. from Pacific toward the Warner in a photo from the the Los Angeles Public Library. The last streetcars ran on those tracks in 1934.
1958 - "No Time For Sergeants" was an April release. It's a photo from the Grand Vision Foundation collection that appears on the photo gallery page of their website.
1980 - The Warner as the Teatro Juarez. It's a photo taken by Chris Shaw. Thanks to his
son Robert Shaw for sharing the shot as part of a 144 photo San Pedro set on the South Bay/Los Angeles Days of Old California Facebook page.
1982 - Thanks to the now-vanished American Classic Images website for the June photo.
1983 - The theatre closed, again. It's a view from the American Classic Images collection. The building on the corner burned in November 2015.
2002 - A photo from the website Seeing Stars. They also have a 2006 photo in their The O.C. Filming Locations page. Also check out the Hollywood Movie Palaces section. The City of Los Angeles has owned the building since 1996.
2013 - The vertical as seen from one of the balcony exits. The marquee and vertical got stripped down and repainted in original colors in 1996. Thanks to Sandi Hemmerlein for her photo. Don't miss her two "Avoiding Regret" photo essays on the Warner. You'll find more photos, a history of the building, and lots of information about her exploration of the theatre. There's one on the public spaces, "Open to the Public," and one on the non-public areas, "Behind Closed Doors."
2016 - A facade view by Steve Milner. It's in a set of seven photos taken in April that he posted on the SoCal Historic Architecture Facebook page.
In "Remote Control" (Vista, 1988) with Kevin Dillon the lobby of the
Warner is turned into a video store. "Worth Winning" with Mark Harmon,
Madeline Stowe and Lesley Ann Warren (Fox, 1989) also used the Warner.
Steve Martin is onstage at the Warner for a 1991 TV special featuring Ricky Jay: "Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women." The footage is included in "Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay" (Kino Lorber, 2012).
Steve Martin and Ricky Jay offstage right at the Warner in a clip from "Learned Pigs..." The dimmerboard we see has been removed and is now in storage. The rigging got replaced with a new counterweight system. See the Historic L.A. Theatres in Movies post on the film for another shot showing more of the dimmerboard.
We pay a visit to the Apollo Theatre in New York in Brian Gibson's "What's Love Got to Do With It?" (Touchstone Pictures, 1993). This story of Tina Turner and her abusive husband Ike stars Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne. We get a quick shot of the actual Apollo exterior but when we go inside we're at the Warner Grand. See the Historic L.A. Theatres in Movies post for several more Warner shots as well as views from the film of the State Theatre, the Academy in Inglewood and Hollywood Playhouse.
The Warner was used as a West Virginia theatre in "Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!" (Dreamworks, 2004). Thanks to Lindsay on the blog I Am Not a Stalker for the screenshot. See the Historic L.A. Theatres In Movies post for more shots from the film featuring the Warner.
The Warner was used for "Illusion" (Illusion Productions, 2004) starring Kirk Douglas as an aging filmmaker. We see a lot of the theatre in the film but it's not a lot of fun. In this shot we get to see the seats covered the three colors of the Mexican flag, from when the theatre was a film house called the Juarez. (Well, sort of yellow rather than white in the center section). See the Historic L.A. Theatres in Movies post for three more Warner shots from the film. Thanks to Robb Hedges for the intel on this one.
The Warner is seen briefly in "Must Love Dogs" (Warner Bros., 2005) with Diane Lane and John Cusak. Here's John coming out of the theatre. See the Historic L.A. Theatres in Movies post for more about the film.
Various areas of the Warner were used as locations for Steven Soderbergh's "The Good German" (Warner Bros., 2006). The scenes of the film theatre we visit (and its booth), however, were done downtown at the Tower. See the Historic L.A. Theatres in Movies post for some shots featuring the Tower.
Early in Peter Segal's film "Get Smart" (Warner Bros., 2008) Anne Hathaway runs into Steve Carrell across the street from the theatre. She's jogging and knocks him over. The film also features Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, James Caan and Terrence Stamp. See the Historic L.A. Theatres in Movies post for shots from several scenes at Disney Hall later in the film.
It's a gangster pic set down south but here we have Ben Affleck and his kid buying tickets at the Warner in "Live By Night" (Warner Bros., 2016). See the Historic L.A. Theatres In Movies post for more shots from the film as well as photos taken during the filming at the Warner.
Diego Calva goes to see "Singin' in the Rain" at the end of Damien Chazelle's "Babylon" (Paramount, 2022). This epic of early Hollywood also stars Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt. The cinematography was by Linus Sandgren. See the Historic L.A. Theatres in Movies post for five more shots from the scene at the Warner as well as views of the film's scenes at the Los Angeles, Chinese, United Artists and Orpheum theatres.
The Warner Grand in Music Videos:
Stephen Russo spotted the Warner as the location for Tesla's "Modern Day Cowboy." It's on YouTube.
More information: See the Warner Grand page on Cinema Treasures for lots of details about the theatre's history. Visit the Cinema Tour page on the Warner for lots of photos by Bob Meza and others. The Warner got a nice bit of publicity with several delicious photos in a June 2014 Curbed L.A. story.
Don't miss Sandi Hemmerlein's two 2013 "Avoiding Regret" photo essays on the Warner. One on the public spaces, "Open to the Public, "one on the non-public areas, "Behind Closed Doors." See Mike Hume's Warner Grand page on his Historic Theatre Photography site. Mr. Arteest has a lovely 72 photo Warner Grand set on Flickr.
Claudia Mullins has a nice set of 21 photos taken in 2017 on the Facebook page Photos of Los Angeles. For more information on historic San Pedro consult the San Pedro Bay Historical Society. The San Pedro Historic Downtown Waterfront organization sometimes offers tours of the theatre, such as during their Summerfest.
The Warner, and lack of San Pedro movie options, was discussed after the theatre closed in 1975 in the San Pedro News Pilot on January 17, 1976 with the article "San Pedro left with no movie" and again on January 19 with the editorial headed "Theatres die." Both articles are reproduced at the bottom of the page about the Strand Theatre.
| Theatres Along the Coast | Downtown | Westside | Hollywood | Westwood and Brentwood | [more] Los Angeles movie palaces | the main alphabetical list | theatre history resources | film and theatre tech resources | theatres in movies | LA Theatres on facebook | contact info | welcome and site navigation guide |
No comments:
Post a Comment