Mayan Theater

Last updated
Mayan Theater
Mayan Theater Los Angeles California.jpg
Exterior of venue (c.2010)
Mayan Theater
Address1038 South Hill Street
Los Angeles, CA 90015-1614
Location Downtown Los Angeles
Coordinates 34°02′28″N118°15′32″W / 34.041028°N 118.259005°W / 34.041028; -118.259005
Capacity 1,700
Current use Nightclub
Construction
OpenedAugust 15, 1927 (1927-08-15)
Architect Stiles O. Clements
Website
Official website
Reference no.460

The Mayan Theater in Los Angeles, California is a landmark former movie palace and current nightclub and music venue.

Contents

History

The Mayan Theater opened in August 1927 as a performance arts theater specializing in musical comedy. [1]

Leon Hefflin Sr. rented out the Mayan Theater downtown Los Angeles to produce the Sweet N' Hot, "Greatest Negro All Star Musical to Hit Coast." His business partner was Curtis Mosby, and the featured performer was Dorothy Dandridge. [2] The show had a run of eleven weeks and was reported as going to New York. [3] It closed to rave reviews and was covered by 20 different newspapers all over the country.

From 1971 to 1989, the theater was owned by pornographic filmmaker Carlos Tobalina. [4] [5] In the 1980s, the theater showed pornographic films. [6]

The theater has been a location in many films, including Sally of the Scandals , [7] The Bodyguard , Save the Tiger , Unlawful Entry , Rock 'n' Roll High School , and A Night at the Roxbury . It also featured in the eighth episode of the first season of GLOW .

In 1990, the Mayan Theater, with most of its lavish ornament intact, became a nightclub and music venue. It is designated as a Historic Cultural Monument. [8]

In 2022, Daft Punk also streamed a video recording of a show at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles from their 1997 Daftendirektour.

Architecture and design

Designed by Stiles O. Clements of Morgan, Walls & Clements, the façade of the Mayan Theater includes stylized pre-Columbian patterns and figures designed by sculptor Francisco Cornejo. [1] This was his major work. [9]

The Mayan Theater is a prototypical example of the many ornate exotic revival-style theaters of the late 1920s, Mayan Revival in this case. The well-preserved lobby is called "The Hall of Feathered Serpents," the auditorium includes a chandelier based on the Aztec calendar stone, and the original fire curtain included images of Mayan jungles and temples. [10]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Movie palace</span> Type of movie theater

A movie palace is any of 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 opening every year between 1925 and 1930. With the advent of television, movie attendance dropped, while the rising popularity of large multiplex chains in the 1980s and 1990s signaled the obsolescence of single-screen theaters. Many movie palaces were razed or converted into multiple-screen venues or performing arts centers, though some have undergone restoration and reopened to the public as historic buildings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">El Capitan Theatre</span> Cinema in Hollywood

El Capitan Theatre is a fully restored movie palace at 6838 Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, United States. The theater and adjacent Hollywood Masonic Temple is owned by The Walt Disney Company and serves as the venue for a majority of the Walt Disney Studios' film premieres.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pellissier Building and Wiltern Theatre</span> Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument

The Pellissier Building and adjoining Wiltern Theatre is a 12-story, 155-foot (47 m) Art Deco landmark at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue in Los Angeles, California. The entire complex is commonly referred to as the Wiltern Center. Clad in a blue-green glazed architectural terra-cotta tile and situated diagonal to the street corner, the complex is considered one of the finest examples of Art Deco architecture in the United States. The Wiltern building is owned privately, and the Wiltern Theatre is operated by Live Nation's Los Angeles division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Broadway (Los Angeles)</span> Department stores list in Los Angeles

Broadway, until 1890 Fort Street, is a thoroughfare in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The portion of Broadway from 3rd to 9th streets, in the Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles, was the city's main commercial street from the 1910s until World War II, and is the location of the Broadway Theater and Commercial District, the first and largest historic theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). With twelve movie palaces located along a six-block stretch of Broadway, it is the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stiles O. Clements</span> American architect

Stiles Oliver Clements was an architect practicing in Los Angeles and Southern California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Million Dollar Theater</span> Spanish Colonial Revival movie palace

The Million Dollar Theatre at 307 S. Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles is one of the first movie palaces built in the United States. It opened in 1917 with the premiere of William S. Hart's The Silent Man. It's the northernmost of the collection of historical movie palaces in the Broadway Theater District and stands directly across from the landmark Bradbury Building. The theater is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Fillmore Detroit</span> Multi-use entertainment venue in Detroit

The Fillmore Detroit is a multi-use entertainment venue operated by Live Nation. Built in 1925, the Fillmore Detroit was known for most of its history as the State Theatre. It is located near the larger Fox Theatre in the Detroit Theatre District along Woodward Avenue across from Comerica Park and Grand Circus Park. The Fillmore Detroit features a theatre with a Grand Lobby and three levels of seating, as well as the State Bar & Grill which has a separate entrance and is open when the theatre is not hosting events. The Detroit Music Awards are held annually at The Fillmore Detroit in April. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olympia Theatre (New York City)</span> Former theater complex in Midtown Manhattan

The Olympia Theatre, also known as Hammerstein's Olympia and later the Lyric Theatre and the New York Theatre, was a theatre complex built by impresario Oscar Hammerstein I in Longacre Square, New York City, opening in 1895.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Broadway Theater District (Los Angeles)</span> United States historic place

The Broadway Theater District in the Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles is the first and largest historic theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). With twelve movie palaces located along a six-block stretch of Broadway, it is the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States. The same six-block stretch of Broadway, and an adjacent section of Seventh Street, was also the city's retail hub for the first half of the twentieth century, lined with large and small department stores and specialty stores.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stefanie H. Weill Center for the Performing Arts</span> United States historic place

The Stefanie H. Weill Center for the Performing Arts is a historic theater in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tower Theatre (Los Angeles)</span> Historic site

The Tower Theatre is a historic movie theater that opened in 1927 in the Broadway Theater District of Downtown Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morgan, Walls & Clements</span> Los Angeles architectural firm

Morgan, Walls & Clements was an architectural firm based in Los Angeles, California and responsible for many of the city's landmarks, dating back to the late 19th century. Originally Morgan and Walls, with principals Octavius Morgan and John A. Walls, the firm worked in the area from before the turn of the century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vista Theatre (Los Angeles)</span> Movie theater in Los Angeles

Vista Theatre is a historic single-screen movie theater in Los Angeles, California, located in Los Feliz on the border with East Hollywood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beacham Theatre</span> Movie theater in Orlando, Florida

The Beacham Theatre is a cinema built in 1921 by Braxton Beacham Sr. in the city of Orlando, Florida. The current address of the theater is 46 North Orange Avenue, and it is located at the southwest corner of Orange Avenue and Washington Street. The building's current lack of impressive architecture is offset by its significant cultural history. The Beacham Theatre was considered an important contributing structure when the Downtown Orlando historic district was created in 1980 and the building was granted local landmark status in 1987.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hayworth Theatre</span> Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument

The Hayworth Theatre is a theater and performing arts venue at 2511 Wilshire Boulevard located in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paris Theatre (Portland, Oregon)</span> Historic building in Portland, Oregon, U.S.

Paris Theatre, formerly Third Avenue Theatre and also known as Paris Theater or Ray's Paris Theatre, is an historic building in Portland, Oregon's Old Town Chinatown neighborhood, in the United States. The theatre was constructed in 1890 and opened as a burlesque house. It was later converted to a cinema, then a club and music venue, before serving as an adult movie theater until 2016. The building was a live venue and nightclub until it closed in October 2019.

Leon Norman Hefflin Sr. was a pioneering African-American producer, director, business owner, furniture manufacturer, and entrepreneur. After losing his large and successful manufacturing business in the Depression he rebounded to produce the first and largest outdoor jazz entertainment event of its kind, the "Cavalcade of Jazz," in 1945. Held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, it was part of the Central Ave jazz scene, and showcased over 125 artists over 15 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roxie Theatre</span> Historic movie theater in Los Angeles

The Roxie Theatre is a historic former movie theater in the Broadway Theater District of Los Angeles, California. The venue opened in 1931 as the last theater to be built on Broadway. Architect John M. Cooper's Art Deco design of the Roxie remained the only theater of that style in the downtown neighborhood. In 1978, Metropolitan Theatres converted the space into a Spanish-language filmhouse. Following the Roxie's closure in 1989, the lobby was converted into retail space whereas the auditorium was left intact.

The Belasco Theater is a historic theater in Downtown Los Angeles, California. Opened in 1926, it operated as a playhouse and briefly as a movie theater until its closure in 1950, after which it was used for non-theater purposes. The building was renovated and reopened as a music venue called The Belasco in 2011. Live Nation became its operator in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regent Theatre (Los Angeles)</span> Historic former movie theater in Los Angeles

The Regent Theatre is a live music venue and historic former movie theater in the Downtown section of Los Angeles, California. Opened as the National Theatre in 1914, it is the oldest remaining theater building on South Main Street. Following its initial status as a first-run filmhouse, it began screening second-run programming in the 1920s amidst a widespread decline of the vicinity's entertainment scene in favor of the newer Broadway Theater District. After serving as a grindhouse, the Regent was later converted to an adult movie theater before shuttering in 2000. Upon the completion of renovations, the facility was reopened as a concert venue in 2014; Live Nation became the operator in 2019.

References

  1. 1 2 Los Angeles: Then and Now. San Diego: Thunder Bay Press. 2002. pp. 34–35. ISBN   1571457941.
  2. Reed, Tom (1992). The Black music history of Los Angeles, its roots: 50 years in Black music: a classical pictorial history of Los Angeles Black music of the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's: photographic essays that define the people, the artistry and their contributions to the wonderful world of entertainment (1st, limited ed.). Los Angeles: Black Accent on L.A. Press. ISBN   978-0963290861. OCLC   28801394.
  3. "Sweet 'N Hot Revue Is Heading for New York Stage" Headliner The California Eagle April 6, 1944.
  4. Berg, Nate (May 12, 2016). "Sex, Cash & Suicide: Carlos Tobalina - Carlos Tobalina and His Palisades 'House of Ill Fame'". Palisadian-Post . Retrieved January 15, 2020.
  5. Horak, Jan-Christopher; Jarvinen, Lisa; Gunckel, Colin, eds. (2019). Cinema between Latin America and Los Angeles: Origins to 1960. Rutgers University Press. ISBN   978-1978801257.
  6. Los Angeles Times movie advertisements in the Los Angeles Times
  7. "Studio Briefs". Motion Picture News: 442. February 11, 1928.
  8. "Mayan". Cinema Treasures. Cinema Treasures, LLC. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
  9. Counter, B. "Los Angeles Theatres: Mayan Theatre: history". Los Angeles Theatres. Retrieved 2021-04-26.
  10. "Old Mayan Theater May Retrieve Glory". Los Angeles Times. 1989-06-11. Retrieved 2021-04-26.

Commons-logo.svg Media related to Mayan Theater at Wikimedia Commons