The Metropolitan Theatre pages: history | exterior views | Broadway entrance | lobby areas | auditorium | stage | projection booth |
The throw was the longest in the city, 160 feet. And also rather steep -- over 20 degrees. Grauman didn't repeat his Million Dollar booth experiment of nestling the booth into the front of the balcony to get a better projection angle. Here it was in the more conventional location at the top of the balcony.
A section of the Metropolitan from the September 1923 issue of The Building Review. The plates section has twelve full page photos plus drawings and plans. In addition, five small photos are included with the article "Pioneers." Also in the issue is "The Metropolitan Theater - A Digest From the Local Press." There's a continuation of the Press Digest on page 36. It's on Internet Archive.
One trade magazine report noted that the booth originally had Powers projectors. An article in the February 10, 1923 issue of Exhibitors Herald reported that the conductor and organist each had a "synchrometer" that was hooked to the projectors so they could vary their tempi accordingly.
The booth layout. It's a detail from a plan in the September 1923 issue of The Building Review that's on Internet Archive.
It's way up there. This c.1926 Mott Studios view from the stage is in the California State Library collection.
A detail from the Mott Studios photo.
A look at the ports in 1939. It's a detail from a Dick Whittington Studio photo in the USC Digital Library collection.
The Metropolitan's booth after installation of Western Electric sound equipment. Note the turntables behind the projectors -- they were equipped for both sound-on-film and Vitaphone sound-on-disc.
Thanks to John Conning of Moviemice.com for the photo. The site is a treasure trove of photos, drawings, and schematics for early Vitaphone and other Western Electric sound gear. And thanks to Kurt Wahlner for spotting the photo. Visit his GraumansChinese.org site for everything that's known about that more famous Grauman theatre,
Projection equipment writer F.H. Richardson paid a visit to the booth as part of a visit to several L.A. theatres in 1930. We get his report in the November 8, 1930 issue of Exhibitor's Herald-World. It's on Internet Archive.
The Paramount goes stereo: In 1953 the theatre got a four channel stereo installation for Warner's "House of Wax," playing in 3-D and WarnerPhonic stereo sound. Sound for the three stage channels was on a separate dubber.
VistaVision at the Paramount: "White Christmas" opened at the Metropolitan in horizontal VistaVision on October 28, 1954 after a premiere on the 27th at the Warner Beverly Hills. Film Historian Jack Theakson, in a comment on a post on the Motion Picture Technology Facebook page, asserts that both the Paramount and the Warner were on the list of initial installations of the special Century 8 perforation horizontal projectors for the process in an ad for Peerless Hy-Candescent lamphouses.
Larry Davee of Century Projector Corporation notes in "The Horizontal VistaVision Projector," an article reproduced on Martin Hart's great site American Widescreen Museum, that of the first six hand built prototype projectors two went to Radio City Music Hall, two went to the Warner and two went to the Paramount lot. The assumption is that the two shipped to the studio ended up at the Paramount downtown. These initial machines were without soundheads -- the sound was synched via separate film on two dubbers. Scroll down on the Warner Beverly Hills page for more about the process. In 1955 the Paramount/El Capitan in Hollywood got an installation of the machines for several films. There are some links for information about the process on the Film and Theatre Technology Resources page.
Head projectionist Earl Hamilton in the booth September 14, 1960. He'd been on the job 38 years. The theatre was demolished in 1962. It's a Los Angeles Examiner photo in the USC Digital Library collection.
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