Page 32 - July 2017 inLeague and Conference Program

ConferenCe theAtre tours

pre-conFerence historic theatre ramBle
sunDay, July 16, 2017
sponsoreD By:

Theatre at Ace Hotel

Los Angeles, CA

Excerpted from the Theatre at Ace Hotel website...
Broadway was the movie capital of the world in
the pre-talkie era. During the Jazz Age, the neon
stretch of the Broadway Theater District rivaled
its New York namesake — a strip where a dozen
temples of cinema played host to screen starlets
and matinee kings, and film royalty premiered their
latest reels nightly to audiences of thousands. It's
where, in 1927, a group of visionary iconoclasts from
Hollywood's Golden Age erected the home of United
Artists, the film studio whose acumen and rebellious
Photo by Wendell Benedetti
Courtesy of Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation ingenuity helped to reshape the American cinematic
landscape.
United Artists studio and theater was the vision of silent movie starlet Mary Pickford, who — together
with Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and DW Griffith — dreamt of forming an independent
production house outside of the established Hollywood studio system. With the help of architect C.
Howard Crane and Los Angeles architectural firm Walker & Eisen, the group erected the United Artists
Theater and its adjacent tower — the tallest building in all of Los Angeles upon its completion.
Though it changed hands frequently over the following decades, the United Artists Theater stayed
active as an arts venue until 1989, including a long stint as a Spanish-language movie house, and
later as the broadcast site for televangelist Dr. Gene Scott. Following a meticulous restoration of the
then-vacant movie palace, Ace cut the ribbon on The Theatre at Ace Hotel in February of 2014 —
and we've been doing our best to honor the maverick spirit of its founders ever since.

The Wiltern
Los Angeles, CA

Excerpted from The Wiltern's website...
Originally built in 1931 in Los Angeles, the Wiltern was designed by architect Stiles O. Clements of
Morgan, Walls & Clements, the city's oldest architectural firm. The Wiltern Theatre was originally
designed as a vaudeville theater and initially opened as the Warner Brothers Western Theater,
the flagship for the theater chain. In 1956, the building and theater were sold to the Franklin Life
Insurance Company of Springfield, Illinois. The Los Angeles chapter of the American Theater Organ
Enthusiasts worked to restore the theater's 37-rank Kimball pipe organ, reputed to be the largest one
in Los Angeles at the time, and held recitals there through the late 1960s and into the mid-1970s.
Through the intervention of a group of local preservationists, the group saved the complex from
being demolished on two occasions in the late 1970s when the owners filed for demolition permits.
(The preservation of the Wiltern was one of the Los Angeles Conservancy's first victories in its fight to
preserve the architectural heritage of the City.)

PAGE 30| INLEAGUE League of Historic American Theatres