This weekend, the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation (LAHTF) hosted their first in-person theater tour in more than a year, this time going behind the scenes with an enthusiastic, socially distanced crowd at the Hollywood Legion Theater at the American Legion’s Post 43. Both LAHTF and the Legion Theater have made exceptional strides in pivoting …
And we’re back! Another TCMFF is done and on the books… of course right when I was starting to get into the routine and rhythm of festival life. When the dates for TCMFF 2016 were announced, I’d thought it was incredibly good timing for me—it coincided with the last week of school, so I wouldn’t have to worry …
Frank Sinatra may have been Hoboken’s most famous son, but his long career in the film and music industries meant that he spent much of his life in Southern California. I went on a pilgrimage this past week following his footsteps, hitting both the landmarks of his career, as well as the perhaps even more vital landmarks …
Downtown Los Angeles has seen a lot of change and transformation within this past century—and quite a bit even just in the past few years. The street was home to the first and largest theater and cinema district in the country, including twelve that still exist today. Once considered the main commercial district and center of …
We’re officially a month away from the 20th anniversary of Turner Classic Movies, and to celebrate, the beloved television station has partnered with StarLine to launch a month of bus tours for classic movie fans in Los Angeles. The free, 3-hour ride chauffeurs visitors to a variety of historical film and filmmaking locations around Los Angeles, and runs through the TCM Film Festival in April. The tour celebrates a love of film from nearly every angle, highlighting on-location filming locations, studios, and historical and modern movie theaters, tracing its history from the earliest silent films to the latest CGI blockbusters.
Built in 1930, the Los Angeles Theatre was the last of the great, classic movie palaces constructed in LA’s Broadway theater district, which, at the time, boasted the highest concentration of movie theaters in the world. The area’s expansive growth reflected the public’s near insatiable demand for cinema throughout the early part of the 20th century, and afforded theatrical prominence to downtown LA before theaters like the Chinese, the Egyptian, and the Pantages began to shift moviegoing focus to Hollywood. In 1931, there were a dozen major movie theaters here within a six-block radius, with a combined seating capacity of 15,000.