Page 35 - July 2017 inLeague and Conference Program

100 speakers, the super-bright Christie Solaria series digital projectors
delivering crisp, clean images with perfect color, and ultra-realistic digital
3D powered by RealD. The El Capitan Theatre experience often includes
exclusive preshow entertainment, prop & costume exhibits, and many
other fun surprises!

Pantages Theatre

Hollywood, CA

Excerpted from the Pantages Theatre's website...
In the heart of Hollywood, on Hollywood Boulevard, right down the block
from Vine Street, stands the Hollywood Pantages Theatre. It's a fitting
location: The Pantages has become one of the greatest landmarks of
Hollywood, signifying both the glorious past and adventuresome future © Buena Vista Pictures Distribution.
of the world's entertainment capital. All Rights Reserved.
The Hollywood Pantages, which had its Grand Opening on June 4, 1930, has a history as grand and
diverse as the stage and screen fare which audiences have flocked to enjoy there for half a century.
These days it's one of Los Angeles' leading homes of legitimate theatre (the five highest-grossing
weeks in L.A.'s theatrical history were all shows at the Pantages) and a favorite "location" for tv shows,
movies and music videos. In the past, it has
been a movie house, with live vaudeville
acts between features as well as the site of
many gala premieres and "spectaculars."
For 10 years the Hollywood Pantages
Theatre was the home of the glittering
Academy Awards Presentations.

The Hollywood Pantages was primarily a
movie house for several decades. In 1949
came Howard Hughes, acquiring the
theatre through RKO, changing its name
to the RKO Pantages and setting up offices
there. (His upstairs apartment and screening
room are today theatre offices, and Hughes'
ghost is among several rumored to frequent
© Photo by John Linden
the building once the audience leaves.)
Starting in 1953, television cameras brought the Oscars - and Hollywood Pantages Theatre - to
America's living rooms. Its hosts included such notables as Fred Astaire, Danny Kaye, Bob Hope and
Jerry Lewis. Frank Sinatra was honored as Best Supporting Actor in 1954, receiving one of eight Oscars
awarded that year to "From Here to Eternity." Grace Kelly took home her award as Best Actress for
"The Country Girl" in 1955, just a year before she left Hollywood to become Her Serene Highness,
Princess Grace of Monaco.

Pacific Theatres bought the Hollywood Pantages from RKO in December 1967, leading to a
refurbishment and reopening of the theatre sections closed down during the Hughes reign. The
much-anticipated Music Center raised nearly $400,000 there in 1963 at a $250 per seat premiere of
"Cleopatra."

In 1977, the Nederlander Organization came in as Pacific's partner and gave the Hollywood
Pantages another overhaul before re-opening it as a legitimate theatre with "Bubbling Brown Sugar"
in February 1977. When The Nederlander Organization heard that the Walt Disney Company was
seeking a home for its Los Angeles production of "The Lion King", Chairman James M. Nederlander
locked up a Pantages booking by agreeing to a substantial renovation. It was time, thought
Nederlander, to get the theatre looking more like it did in 1930. The theatre was restored to its original
luster in time for the highly-anticipated L.A. Premiere of Disney's THE LION KING.
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