Carthay Circle Theatre
Encyclopedia
Movie palace
A movie palace is a term used to refer to the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opened every year between 1925 and 1930.There are three building types in particular which can be subsumed...
s of Hollywood's Golden Age
Classical Hollywood cinema
Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s.Classical style is...
. It opened at 6316 San Vicente Boulevard
San Vicente Boulevard
San Vicente Boulevard is a major northwest-southeast thoroughfare located in the western portion of the Metropolitan Area of the U.S. city of Los Angeles, California....
in 1926 and was considered developer J. Harvey McCarthy's most successful monument, a stroke of shrewd thinking that made a famous name of the newly developed Carthay
Carthay, Los Angeles, California
Carthay is a residential district in the Mid-City West region of Los Angeles, California.-Geography and transportation:Carthay is bordered by the Miracle Mile District on the north, Picfair Village on the south, Beverly Hills on the northwest, and the Fairfax District on the northeast...
residential district in the Mid-Wilshire
Mid-Wilshire
Mid-Wilshire is a district in the City of Los Angeles, California. It is part of the Wilshire region.It mostly encompasses the area bounded by La Cienega Boulevard to the west, Melrose Avenue to the north, Hoover Street to the east and the Santa Monica Freeway to the south, although some...
district of Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
.
Design
The exterior design was in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, with whitewashed concrete trimmed in blue, with a high bell towerBell tower
A bell tower is a tower which contains one or more bells, or which is designed to hold bells, even if it has none. In the European tradition, such a tower most commonly serves as part of a church and contains church bells. When attached to a city hall or other civic building, especially in...
and neon sign
Neon sign
Neon signs are made using electrified, luminous tube lights that contain rarefied neon or other gases. They are the most common use for neon lighting, which was first demonstrated in a modern form in December, 1910 by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show. While they are used worldwide, neon signs...
that could be seen for miles. The architects were Carleton Winslow
Carleton Winslow
Carleton Monroe Winslow , also known as Carleton Winslow Sr., was an American architect, and key proponent of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture in Southern California in the early 20th Century....
and Dwight Gibbs. The auditorium itself was shaped in the form of a perfect circle set inside a square that fleshed out the remainder of the building. The iconic octagonal tower was placed in the front corner spandrel
Spandrel
A spandrel, less often spandril or splaundrel, is the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure....
space left between the circle and the square. The auditorium's cylinder
Cylinder (geometry)
A cylinder is one of the most basic curvilinear geometric shapes, the surface formed by the points at a fixed distance from a given line segment, the axis of the cylinder. The solid enclosed by this surface and by two planes perpendicular to the axis is also called a cylinder...
-shaped wall was raised up above the roof line, to create a parapet
Parapet
A parapet is a wall-like barrier at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony or other structure. Where extending above a roof, it may simply be the portion of an exterior wall that continues above the line of the roof surface, or may be a continuation of a vertical feature beneath the roof such as a...
visible from the outside that resembled a circus tent. "Simple, massive and dignified, the building stands out for its intrinsic beauty," raved The Architect and Engineer. Pacific Coast Architect wrote that it was a theatre "masked as a cathedral".
There was a drop curtain that featured an homage to the pioneer Donner Party
Donner Party
The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who set out for California in a wagon train. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada...
, which perished crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
busts
Bust (sculpture)
A bust is a sculpted or cast representation of the upper part of the human figure, depicting a person's head and neck, as well as a variable portion of the chest and shoulders. The piece is normally supported by a plinth. These forms recreate the likeness of an individual...
of Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
leaders and photographs of Lillie Langtry
Lillie Langtry
Lillie Langtry , usually spelled Lily Langtry when she was in the U.S., born Emilie Charlotte Le Breton, was a British actress born on the island of Jersey...
and other 19th century actors adorned the lounges and lobbies. Paintings of historic scenes forty feet tall graced the walls.
Premieres
The theatre hosted the official premierePremiere
A premiere is generally "a first performance". This can refer to plays, films, television programs, operas, symphonies, ballets and so on. Premieres for theatrical, musical and other cultural presentations can become extravagant affairs, attracting large numbers of socialites and much media...
s of The Life of Emile Zola
The Life of Emile Zola
The Life of Emile Zola is a 1937 American biographical film about French author Émile Zola. Set in the mid through late 19th century, it depicts his friendship with noted painter Paul Cézanne, and his rise to fame through his prolific writing, with particular focus on his involvement in the Dreyfus...
(1937), Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet (1936 film)
Romeo and Juliet is a 1936 American film adapted from the play by Shakespeare, directed by George Cukor from a screenplay by Talbot Jennings...
(1936), Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's first animated feature length film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
(1937) and Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
(1939), among many other notable films. For Disney's Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
(1940), the most elaborate audio system in use at the time, Fantasound
Fantasound
Fantasound was a stereophonic sound reproduction system developed by the engineers of Walt Disney studios for its 1940 animated film Fantasia, the first commercial film to be released in stereo. Fantasound led to the development of what is known today as surround sound.-Origins:Walt Disney's...
, a pioneering stereophonic
Stereophonic sound
The term Stereophonic, commonly called stereo, sound refers to any method of sound reproduction in which an attempt is made to create an illusion of directionality and audible perspective...
process, was installed at this theatre.
For the glamorous world premiere of MGM's Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette (1938 film)
Marie Antoinette is a 1938 film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starred Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette...
(1938), with Norma Shearer
Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...
and Tyrone Power
Tyrone Power
Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...
, the gardens around the theater were restructured and enhanced to resemble the landscaping of the Palace of Versailles
Palace of Versailles
The Palace of Versailles , or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. In French it is the Château de Versailles....
. In the 1930s and '40s, props from the sets of such premiered films as The Great Ziegfeld
The Great Ziegfeld
The Great Ziegfeld is a 1936 musical film produced by MGM. A fictionalized biography of Florenz Ziegfeld from his show business beginnings to his death, it showcases a series of spectacular musical productions. The film includes original music by Walter Donaldson and Irving Berlin...
(1936), The Good Earth
The Good Earth (film)
The Good Earth is a film about Chinese farmers who struggle to survive. It was adapted by Talbot Jennings, Tess Slesinger, and Claudine West from the play by Donald Davis and Owen Davis, which was in itself based on the 1931 novel of the same name by Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S...
(1937), Captains Courageous (1937) and Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
(1939) were displayed on the grassy median
Central reservation
On divided roads, such as divided highways or freeways/motorways, the central reservation , median, parkway , median strip or central nature strip is the area which separates opposing lanes of traffic...
of McCarthy Vista, from Wilshire Boulevard south to San Vicente Boulevard. The premieres were red-carpet events, with the stars of the motion picture arriving in limousines at the entrance to the covered walkway to the theater south from San Vicente and cheered by hundreds of fans in bleachers there, accompanied by searchlights scanning the sky. Only Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre is a movie theater at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. It is on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame.The Chinese Theatre was commissioned following the success of the nearby Grauman's Egyptian Theatre which opened in 1922...
in Hollywood also had such elaborate premieres in that era.
Decline
By the 1960s the Carthay was considered obsolete, overshadowed by modern cinemas; its customer base had also been sapped by suburbSuburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...
anization. The theater was demolished in 1969; today, two low-rise office buildings and a city park occupy its former site.
Plans have been made to build a replica of the theatre in the entry plaza of Disney California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, however, Disney currently has no plans to build an actual theatre inside the building. A smaller replica of the facade already exists as a gift shop at Disney's Hollywood Studios
Disney's Hollywood Studios
Disney's Hollywood Studios is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort. Spanning 135 acres in size, its theme is show business, drawing inspiration from the heyday of Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s...
.