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Cozy Theatre

320 S. Broadway Los Angeles, CA 90013 | map |


Opened: The theatre opened in 1927. It's in the 1928 city directory. The Cozy was in a 1906 vintage building across the street from the Million Dollar. It was just south of the Central Theatre, 314 S. Broadway. Thanks to Nathan Marsak for this detail from a photo taken during LBJ's 1964 visit. He has it along with other photos of the occasion on his Noirish Los Angeles post #32465.

Architect: The building known as the Blackstone Building (318-322 S. Broadway) was designed by  Robert Brown Young. He's on the July 17, 1906 building permit along with P.M. Johnson as contractor. Blackstone Dry Goods was the initial tenant; later they moved to 9th & Broadway. It's unknown who designed the conversion of the retail space into a theatre.

The cornice was removed from the building around 1950 and floors four and five were removed in 1971. Thanks to Noirish Los Angeles contributor Tovangar2 for researching the building permits. See the Noirish post #27790 for more data on the building.

Seating: 350 initially, 403 was the count at the end.



 
A section of a 1931 insurance map from the Los Angeles Public Library's collection showing the Cozy and Central theatres. Note that the map gives a 1907 date for the building the Cozy was in, here seen in orange. Thanks to ace theatre explorer Michelle Gerdes for the photograph. 
 
In the 1937 city directory Harris P. Anderson was listed as the manager. One William Parlier was also working there in some unspecified position. In 1940 there wasn't a manager listed but Robert Pashoian was listed as a cashier. In 1941 Harvey I. Levenson was the manager. In 1942 Harvey was still there and Raymond Edwards was listed in the directory as assistant manager. 
 
The Cozy as a poster distribution center:  
 
 
A Cozy stamp on the back of a lobby card from the obscure 1937 Universal mystery "The Westland Case" that's in the collection of Chris Ellis of London, Ontario. Sean Ault comments: "I remember there was a store that had a ton of photos and posters with that back-stamp on La Cienega just south of Santa Monica on the west side of the street."
 
 

The front of the lobby card that's in the Chris Ellis collection. He has the story about the Cozy Theatre and the poster business: 
 
"The theatre is famous in movie poster collecting circles as it served as sort of a mini secondary distribution center of posters. These were issued for the most part prior to National Screen Service when most studios did their own distribution. My understanding is that whoever ran the Cozy bought rather than rented the posters from the poster exchanges. They purchased more than one set of posters rather than a single one and then rented them out to other local theatres. They ended up in the theatre basement or whatever until someone found them and recognized their value and sold them into the collector markets in the 1960s. 
 
"As a whole these posters have become widely dispersed amongst collectors and the cache would be worth huge amounts of money today. Posters from that theatre cache can be recognized as they have the theatre's rubber stamp on the back. I collected lobby cards for years and often made up sets from individual cards as dealers are prone to break up the sets and sell cards individually. For several late 1930s titles whenever I got cards from the same set for a particular movie, often from dealers all over the USA and Canada and years apart, they still all had the Cozy Theatre stamp which indicates that source was a major one for many surviving cards for those particular films!" 

Chris notes that Bruce Hershenson of the site emovieposter.com is a major dealer in posters and has discussed the Cozy as well as the poster distribution business in some of his newsletters over the years. Chris sends along this article written by Bruce in 1998 and reviewed and updated by him in 2011: 
 
"Movie posters were distributed by the National Screen Service (NSS) through 'poster exchanges' beginning in 1940 (NSS had been in existence since 1925, but it seems they primarily produced trailers)...

"Before NSS - Each film studio maintained its own offices (or exchange) in every major city. The studios would send the films and posters to all the exchanges and from there they would go to the surrounding theaters. The big city theaters would just go to the exchange and pick up the films and posters right before they would show them (for big films they would order extra posters in advance of the opening, both to have previews of coming movies, and to have extra time to create an elaborate display for major movies).

"Theaters in smaller towns would often receive their films via Greyhound bus, which back then serviced just about every town in the country. The films would be in containers that would have the posters (often just one or two one-sheets and a set of lobby cards) tucked in a pouch on the outside of the container. Most theaters would show a film for 3 or 4 days (as part of a program that might include 2 features, a cartoon, a newsreel, and possibly a serial chapter!), and then send it on (via bus) to the next theater. Often the theater manager would put the film on a late night bus right after his last showing and it would arrive at the next theater the following morning, in time to be displayed for that night's show. The film might go by bus through a circuit of many theaters before returning to an exchange. After the film returned to the exchange, it would go back out to other theaters, and often the posters had to be replaced, as they were torn and tattered from being put up and down several times.

"This more than anything explains why posters from before 1940 are extremely rare. Theater owners couldn't give their posters to collectors, no matter how hard they begged, because they were needed at the next theater. This whole system of having to deal with each studio separately might sound very inefficient, but remember that in the 1920s and 1930s many theaters were owned by the studios and so only showed that studio's product, and most of the independents would only get their films from a couple of studios, so it wasn't that complicated.

"But if all the posters were returned with the films, how are there any posters at all from before 1940? For one thing, one type of poster, window cards (14" x 22") were bought in quantities by an individual theater and (after they added their name and play dates to the top) distributed to store windows around town, and those were given away after the film was done playing. Another way they survive is in the backs of old picture frames, for framers would often use window cards (obtainable free) as backing boards. But as to other posters, a huge amount of the posters known come from other countries, for those did not have to be returned to the U.S., because the value of the posters was less than the cost of the postage to return them. There have been huge finds of pre-1940 U.S. posters in Canada, Columbia, and many other countries.

"In addition there have been some great finds in the U.S., such as the Cozy Theater Collection in Los Angeles. This was a theater that maintained its own exchange of posters from the early 1930s to the 1950s for distribution to Los Angeles theaters. In 1968 the theater owner offered his entire collection of posters (containing tens of thousands of posters and lobby cards, and hundreds of thousands of stills) for sale for $25,000, and it was hard to find a buyer! At today's prices, the collection would sell for millions of dollars.

"Other than the huge finds (which probably account for 90% of the pre-1938 posters known), posters also are sometimes found in one other main way. In the 1910s and 1920s (and to a lesser extent in the 1930s), builders would often look for material to put within the walls of buildings (or under the floors) to serve as insulation... The vast majority of pre-1938 posters known were found in one of the above ways. Very rarely a theater owner... might order extra posters to keep, or someone who had access to posters might keep a particular poster as a keepsake, but by and large absolutely everybody who handled posters viewed them as disposable advertising, much like newspapers...

"I am not understating the rarity of pre-1938 posters when I say that for at least a large number of films not a single poster or lobby card is known, and for many others only lobby cards or window cards are known. It is very unusual to find a film from before 1938 from a major studio on which more than ten copies of a one-sheet is known. (Posters from lesser studios are often found in large quantity because when the studio goes out of business they often have hundreds of copies of each poster on hand. Sometimes a huge supply of specific posters have been discovered, and you can recognize these titles because they come up for sale over and over). But these are the rare exceptions!

"After 1940 - The system of every studio maintaining its own supply of posters in every one of its branch offices became very cumbersome, and in 1940, National Screen Service created a centralized system for distributing movie posters, and some studios signed up immediately, and others (like Columbia and many smaller ones) did not sign up for years. Warehouses (called poster exchanges) were set up in most major cities across the U.S., and each studio contributed its posters from the last couple of years to get it started. Exchanges definitely had posters from 1937-39 in abundance, but nothing like the quantities they would have of post-1940 material. The exchanges had virtually nothing from before 1937, which explains the vast rarity difference between pre-1937 and post-1940 material.

"For each new release in 1940 (from the participating studios), the printers put National Screen Service (NSS) numbers on the bottom right of every poster. For 1940 (and part of 1941) only, they used a first number that began with 40, followed by a slash mark and more numbers (for example 4011/524). The "40" referred to 1940, and the rest of the numbers referred to in what order the poster had been printed, to make it easier for people to find the posters when stored in a large warehouse (many films had similar or the same titles).

"At some point in 1941, the simplified the code to be just "41", followed by a slash mark and three numbers (for example 41/245). This was unfortunate, for in the present day it has resulted in many new collectors assuming that they had a limited edition poster (in the previous case, #41 out of an edition of 245)! This system continued all the through the late 1980s, and makes identifying the year of 1940-1989 posters extremely easy. It also makes identifying re-issues simple, for they would put the re-issue year in the NSS number and put a big capital "R" in front of it. So in the above example, if the 1941 film, NSS #41/245, was re-issued in 1954, it would have a new number such as R54/621.

"It appears certain that each exchange received a huge number of each poster (at least hundreds). I say this for two reasons. One is the economics of full-color printing are such that once you get the presses rolling, it is very cheap to keep on printing, and it is much more expensive to reprint items. It just would not make sense to print less than say five or ten thousand of a full-color item. Second, when exchanges were bought out in the 1960s (see below), it was not at all uncommon for a single exchange to have well over 100 of a single item, even after years of distributing that item. Of course there was not an even distribution of items, but I think it fair to say that for most items that were in exchanges, hundreds of each survive today.

"I also think it fair to say that for most pre-1937 items less than ten of each survive today (with the exception of those few items that were found in huge quantities, as noted above). In the 1940s, the studios would often charge a rental fee to the theater, which would return the poster after using it (hence the warning that has frightened collectors for years, beginning 'This poster is the property of National Screen Service...'). At some point NSS realized that it was easier to just print more posters and sell them outright (probably this was due to rising postal rates. I have owned many posters that were mailed folded in the 1940s, without an envelope, and the cost was three cents!)

"I also have brochures from exchanges from the early 1960s, where they offer new one-sheets for 25 cents each, with other prices on other sizes. The brochure might say 1964 and 1965 one-sheets, 25 cents each, 1963 and earlier 15 cents each!... Then in the mid-1960s, some enterprising individuals began to buy the individual poster exchanges... But it didn't take long for the dealers to see that they were rapidly running out of the most popular titles (particularly horror and sci-fi) and they started raising prices on popular titles. The two exchanges that were best organized and sold the most posters to collectors were Theater Poster Exchange in Memphis, Tennessee, and Movie Poster Service in Canton, Oklahoma... Around the time 'Star Wars' came out, dealers started seeing that even brand new posters could quickly acquire collectible value, and some were able to make deals with those who printed movie posters, and they began printing huge numbers of extra posters that were sold directly to a very few dealers..."
 
Thanks, Chris!


The theatre in the 50s and beyond:

A laugh riot in March 1950. Thanks to Ken McIntyre for locating this for a thread about the theatre on the Photos of Los Angeles Facebook page. 
 
 

A great map from the 50s showing many downtown theatre locations including the Cozy and the Central. It was reproduced on a page about the area around the Subway Terminal Building on a great site by Tom Wetzel that has now vanished.

In its final decades as the Cozy it was a triple feature grind house operation. The theatre was still open in 1964 but closed sometime before 1968. 
 

On October 8, 1969 it reopened as the Astro Theatre, initially with an adult film policy. Thanks to Mike Rivest for locating this October 11 ad.  Visit his site: Movie-Theatre.org 

By December 1969 the Astro had gone back to a triple feature grind policy. In January 1970 it was running Spanish language features. By January 1971 they were back to a grindhouse operation. In April that year their listing in the Times said "Closed for remodeling." Metropolitan Theatres ended up running it in 1973 and 1974 with Spanish language features. Thanks to Ken McIntyre for the research.

Closing: The theatre space was converted to a restaurant in 1977 with Charles A. Ham as the architect for the conversion. Thanks to Noirish Los Angeles contributor Tovangar2 for the data.

Status: Currently there's retail space where the theatre once was. The building survives on Broadway but with two stories lopped off the top.

  More exterior views:  


 
1908 - Looking north toward the Bradbury and City Hall with the Blackstone Building, future home of the Cozy Theatre, on the right. Just beyond is the building that would later house the Central Theatre. Thanks to Paul Ayers for locating the photo for a post on the Photos of Los Angeles Facebook page.
 

1929 - A look north toward 3rd with the Million Dollar on the left and, on the right beyond the cafeteria, the Cozy and Central theatres this side of the Bradbury Building. It's a C.C. Pierce photo in the UCLA Library collection. Thanks to James J. Chun for locating it.

 
1929 - A detail from the UCLA photo. Something with Richard Barthelmess was playing at the Cozy. Beyond at the Central Theatre they have a feature with Warner Baxter. The marquee in the foreground is for a Boos Brothers Cafeteria. 
 
 
 
c.1938 - Across 3rd St. it's the Bradbury Building at 304 S. Broadway with the shorter Central Theatre building just beyond. The taller building farther south is the Cozy Theatre building. It's a photo in the Los Angeles Public Library collection taken for the Works Progress Administration. On the far right is a bit of the marquee of the Million Dollar, here still using milk glass letters.  



 
1939 - The 300 block during a fire at the Gray Building, 336 S. Broadway. The building the Cozy is in is that five story building with "Boston..." on the side. The boxy marquee of the Central Theatre can be seen on the building just beyond. Thanks to Cinema Treasures researcher Joe Vogel for finding the newspaper photo. It's on a page from the Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Archive. Scroll down their major incident index page for a link to more data and a page of photos of this fire. 
 

1940s - A look north from 4th St. toward the Cozy, Central and Bradbury Building. The Cozy was playing the 1942 feature "I Married a Witch" with Veronica Lake and Fredric March. Thanks to Ken McIntyre for locating the photo for a post on the Photos of Los Angeles Facebook page.



1955 - Thanks to Eric Lynxwiler for sharing this photo from his collection. It's on Flickr. Note the Central Theatre on the far left.  A version of the photo from Marc Wanamaker's Bison Archives appears on page 23 of the 2008 Arcadia Publishing book "Theatres in Los Angeles" by Suzanne Tarbell Cooper, Amy Ronnebeck Hall and Mr. Wanamaker. The page with the photo is included in the book's preview on Google Books. It's available on Amazon.



 
1964 - Looking south on Broadway toward the Cozy Theatre. The photo was taken during LBJ's visit to Los Angeles. The image at the top of the page is a detail from this. The parking lot beyond the Bradbury is where the Central Theatre had been. Thanks to Sean Ault for spotting the photo on eBay.  See Noirish Los Angeles contributor Ethereal Reality's Noirish post #32956 for this photo and five more from the LBJ visit.
 

1968 - A detail from a photo taken after the the Cozy had closed. The banner on the marquee was advertising the clothing store in the storefront this side of the theatre entrance. Thanks to Sean Ault for spotting this one when it was for sale online. 
 

1968 - A closer look at the entrance from the previous photo. In 1969 the theatre would reopen as the Astro. 
 

c.1970 - A fine view south across the Bradbury Building toward the Astro, running Spanish language product at the time. Thanks to Sean Ault for spotting the photo when it was for sale online.


1973 - A look north toward 3rd St. with the marquee of the the Astro seen this side of the Bradbury. Thanks to Ken McIntyre for finding the photo for a post on the Photos of Los Angeles Facebook page.



1973 - A detail from the previous photo. 



1974 - A look north on busy Broadway toward the Astro, as it was then called. Beyond is the Bradbury Building. The main feature is Zulma Faiad in "La noche de los mil gatos" ("The Night of a Thousand Cats"). Thanks to L.A. transit historian Sean Ault for finding the photo.



2007 - "Tu Musica" in what had been the entrance to the Cozy Theatre. Thanks to Ken McIntyre for sharing his photo.



2010 - The building in its shortened form. Photo: Bill Counter



 
2018 - The building's appearance after some restoration. That squat thing between the Cozy's building and the Bradbury is on the site of the Central Theatre. Photo: Bill Counter
 

The Cozy in the Movies:


In "Footlight Parade" (Warner Bros., 1933) we're set in New York but we get a quick blurry shot of the Central and Cozy theatres as we're speeding down Broadway in a bus rushing performers between theatres. We also get a quick look at the Million Dollar. See the Historic L.A. Theatres In Movies post for that one.



We're looking south on Broadway in "Between Midnight and Dawn" starring Edmond O'Brien and Gale Storm (Columbia, 1950). The Central, nearest us, is playing "The Counterfeiters" (1948) along with "The Black Cat" with Alan Ladd (1941), and "The Gay Cavalier" (1946). The Cozy is running "Mr. Wise Guy" (1942) and "Intrigue" with George Raft (1947) along with some unreadable third feature. See the Historic L.A. Theatres in Movies post for another view looking north where we see the signage for the Million Dollar.



We get a view south on Broadway past the Bradbury toward the Central and Cozy theatres for the finale of "The Killer That Stalked New York" (Columbia, 1950). Evelyn Keyes is up on the Bradbury ledge. She was after her two-timing boyfriend but the real killer is that (gasp!) she has brought smallpox in from Cuba.



Looking down on the Central (below) and the Cozy (at the top) in "The Killer That Stalked New York." The Cozy is running a triple bill with "The Big House" as the main feature. See the Historic L.A. Theatres In Movies post on for several more shots from this sequence. It appears that they used some Main St. locations for several of the closeups on the ledge -- the vertical sign for the Hotel Cecil (640 S. Main) appears in a couple shots.

More information: Head to the page on Cinema Treasures for research by Joe Vogel, Ken McIntyre and other contributors. They have the theatre listed as the Astro.

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2 comments:

  1. This building served as the 2nd headquarters of the LA County Library system after moving from 204 S Broadway in the 1920's. It was internally called "Central" (but not to be confused with LAPL's Central, which was at 530 Hope St). The library system occupied a portion of the basement and floors 3-5 serving as administrative offices (under County Librarian Helen Vogleson) and other support divisions (Branches, Orders, Processing, Property/Transportation, Reference, Work with Children). The 4th floor featured the Teacher's Library - a specialized branch open only to local public school teachers that housed curriculum and professional materials - it closed sometime in the 1960's when all the materials were transferred to the County Superintendant of Schools (which offered to share office space sometime in 1951 when the lease was up for renewal). The 5th floor was the actual Central Library for the County - it was opened to the public for reference services and housed a collection of 400,000 reserve books (most of which were to be distributed to branches as part of a request service) and over 500 periodical subscriptions including backfiles and had a small reading room. The basement and 3rd floor housed the workspaces for the various library divisions. In 1947, a freak elevator failure injured a library employee. In 1951, the County negotiated a new lease that included major improvements to the building for expansion of Library functions, though later on, rats from Grand Central Market were invading the building and making their way into the book stacks, prompting an investigation. A few years later the County considered moving Library headquarters by merging with the LA City library system and the County Law Library (a separate agency) to a piece of County-owned land next to the Stanley Mosk Courthouse that would be shared by the Library, Law Library, and Superintendent of Schools but that never happened as the project was replaced with a new building for the Law Library. In 1973, the Library headquarters moved out of Blackstone to the 9th and 10th floors of the new County Hall of Records (320 W Temple St) where the 9th floor had the Personnel Library (a specialized municipal reference and professional development branch open by appointment to County employees only) and the 10th floor was administrative headquarters under County Librarian Carol Moss. It was after the Library moved out of Blackstone that the 4th and 5th floors were removed as part of the theater's renovation project. Source: John Anson Ford papers (Huntington Library)

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