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Location within Los Angeles County | |
Address | 6838 Hollywood Boulevard Hollywood, California 90028 |
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Coordinates | 34°06′04″N118°20′23″W / 34.101111°N 118.339722°W |
Owner | The Walt Disney Company |
Operator | Buena Vista Theatres, Inc. |
Type | Movie palace |
Capacity | 1,100 [1] |
Screens | 1 |
Construction | |
Opened | May 3, 1926 [1] |
Closed |
|
Reopened |
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Architect | G. Albert Lansburgh Stiles O. Clements |
Builder | Charles E. Toberman |
Tenants | |
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | |
Website | |
elcapitantheatre | |
Designated | 1990 [2] |
Reference no. | 495 |
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 (now known as the El Capitan Entertainment Centre) is owned by The Walt Disney Company and serves as the venue for a majority of the Walt Disney Studios' film premieres. [3]
In the early 1920s, real estate developer Charles E. Toberman (the "Father of Hollywood") envisioned a thriving Hollywood theater district. [4] Toberman was involved in 36 projects while building the Max Factor Building (now the Hollywood Museum), Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and the Hollywood Masonic Temple. With Sid Grauman, he opened the three themed theaters: Egyptian (1922), El Capitan (1926), and Chinese (1927). [5]
Barker Bros. Furniture Emporium took up the rest of the building in the 1920s. [5]
El Capitan, dubbed "Hollywood's First Home of Spoken Drama," began presenting live performances on May 3, 1926, with Charlot's Revue starring Gertrude Lawrence and Jack Buchanan. [4] El Capitan continued presenting live theater for a decade, with over 120 productions including such legends as Clark Gable and Joan Fontaine. [4]
By the late 1930s, El Capitan felt the economic effects of the Depression, showcasing fewer and fewer productions. [1] This period saw a cycle of experimentation with entertainment. In an effort to boost attendance at the theater, its management attempted to lure revues, road shows and benefits.
Despite these efforts, business was faltering, and the theater then began showing movies. [1] When Orson Welles was unable to locate a theater owner willing to risk screening Citizen Kane , he turned to the El Capitan, and in 1941, Citizen Kane had its world premiere there. The theater then closed for one year [1] as Paramount Pictures purchased the theater. [6]
The building was remodeled in the modern style, [7] with the decor covered with curtains and removing the box-seat balconies. [1] The theater reopened in 1942 as the Hollywood Paramount Theater. Its inaugural film presentation was Cecil B. DeMille's feature Reap the Wild Wind . [1]
The theater remained the West Coast flagship for Paramount Pictures until the studio was forced by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the antitrust case U.S. vs. Paramount Pictures, et al. to divest itself of its theater holdings. After this, the Hollywood Paramount was operated by United Paramount Theatres for some years, then by a series of other companies, culminating with ownership by the Pacific Theatres Circuit in the 1980s.
After a 50-year stay, Barker Bros. Furniture closed its location in the building in the 1970s. [5] In 1985, Pacific Theatres purchased the theater from SRO Theaters. [6] The building's owners, Nick Olaerts and Thomas L. Harnsberger, had assigned authority for the theater's facade to the Los Angeles Conservancy in exchange for historical building tax credits. [8]
Late in the 1980s, Disney purchased a controlling stake in one of Pacific Theatres' chains, [9] leading to Disney's Buena Vista Theaters and Pacific renovating the El Capitan Theatre and the Crest by 1989. [10] These theaters became Disney's flagship houses. They spent $14 million on a complete renovation of the Paramount, restoring much of the building's original decor as well as the theater's original name. El Capitan reopened in 1991 with the premiere of The Rocketeer . [1]
In 1990, the city of Los Angeles designated El Capitan as a Cultural Heritage Monument. [5] The 1992 National Preservation Honor Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation was bestowed on the restorers of the theater. [11] A Michael Jackson mural was approved by the National Park Service to be placed on the side of the building in December 1992. [12]
After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the building's frame was compromised and the theater had been flooded by its sprinklers and was considered uninhabitable by building inspectors. The owner walked away from the theater leaving the building to its mortgage company, CUNA Mutual Group. [5] CUNA Mutual, having Disney as a continuing tenant, not only refurbished the theater but the office floors above for $10 million. [3] In July 1995, Buena Vista purchased the Lanterman organ from Glendale City Redevelopment Agency. [13]
From the November 18, 1995, Toy Story premiere to January 1, 1996, Disney rented the Masonic Convention Hall, the next-door building, for Totally Toy Story, an instant theme park and a promotional event for the movie. [14] [15] In July 1998, Buena Vista Pictures Distribution purchased the convention hall to continue using it as a promotional venue. [16] A Disney Store location opened next to the theater in the El Capitan Building in 1998. [17]
The $3 million seismic retrofitting was finished in time for the June 21, 1996, premiere of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. [18] The building's full restoration was completed in December 1997, which included the sign tower. The Hollywood Entertainment District, a self-taxing business improvement district, was formed for the properties from La Brea Avenue to McCadden Place on Hollywood Boulevard. The office space's first tenants were TrizecHahn Centers, builders of the 425,000-square-foot development on the other side of the boulevard. [5] In conjunction with the Herbie: Fully Loaded premiere on June 22, 2005, the Disney's Soda Fountain and Studio Store opened up in the El Capitan Building on the ground floor replacing a Disney Store. [17] [19]
CUNA Mutual having leased the building to full capacity placed the building up for sale in 2008 at a price of $31 million. [3] In November 2013, Ghirardelli Soda Fountain and Chocolate Shop co-located with the Disney Studio Store next to the theater in the El Capitan building. [20]
On March 17, 2020, the theatre temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in California. [21] The theatre eventually reopened a year later with a reduced capacity of just 100 seats. The first film shown after its reopening was Raya and the Last Dragon . [22]
Disney Parks opened a theme ride called Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway at Disneyland Park on January 27, 2023. The facade is meant to resemble a movie theater in Toontown called "El CapiTOON Theater" based on the El Capitan.
The theater is built into a six-story office building built in the 1920s. [3] The design featured an exterior done in California Churrigueresque style of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture exterior designed by Stiles O. Clements of the architectural firm of Morgan, Walls & Clements,[ citation needed ] and mixed interior by G. Albert Lansburgh. [1] The interior is a lavish East Indian in the main auditorium, English Tudor in the wood-paneled lower lobby and Italian Baroque on the facade. [1]
The refurbished theater features a large Wurlitzer theatre organ originally installed in San Francisco's Fox Theatre in 1929. [23] Below the theater is a small exhibit space, often used to display props from the films, such as costumes or set pieces.[ citation needed ] Next door is the adjacent Disney's Soda Fountain and Studio Store, where patrons can purchase ice cream themed to the film currently playing in the cinema next door. A wide variety of Disney and movie merchandise is available there. [20]
Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles County, California, mostly within the city of Los Angeles. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios, such as Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures, are located near or in Hollywood.
Grauman's Egyptian Theatre is a historic movie theater located on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Opened in 1922, it is an early example of a lavish movie palace and is noted as having been the site of the first-ever Hollywood film premiere. From 1998 until 2020, it was owned and operated by the American Cinematheque, a member-based cultural organization.
Hollywood Boulevard is a major east–west street in Los Angeles, California. It runs through the Hollywood, East Hollywood, Little Armenia, Thai Town, and Los Feliz districts. Its western terminus is at Sunset Plaza Drive in the Hollywood Hills and its eastern terminus is at Sunset Boulevard in Los Feliz. Hollywood Boulevard is famous for running through the tourist areas in central Hollywood, including attractions such as the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Ovation Hollywood shopping and entertainment complex.
The Disney Store is a chain of specialty stores selling only Disney related items, many of them exclusive, under its own name and Disney Outlet. It was a business unit of Disney Consumer Products with the Disney Experiences segment of The Walt Disney Company conglomerate.
The TCL Chinese Theatre, colloquially referred to as Grauman's Chinese Theatre, is a movie palace on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles.
The Walt Disney Studios is a major division of the Disney Entertainment business segment of The Walt Disney Company best known for housing its multifaceted film studio divisions. Founded on October 16, 1923, and based mainly at the namesake studio lot in Burbank, California, it is the seventh-oldest global film studio and the fifth-oldest in the United States, a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and one of the "Big Five" major film studios.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures is an American film distributor within the Disney Entertainment division of the Walt Disney Company. It handles theatrical and occasional digital distribution, marketing and promotion for films produced and released by the Walt Disney Studios, including Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Studios; the Searchlight Pictures label operates its own autonomous theatrical distribution and marketing unit.
Sidney Patrick Grauman was an American showman who established two of Hollywood's most recognizable and visited landmarks, the Chinese Theatre and the Egyptian Theatre.
Ovation Hollywood is a shopping center and entertainment complex in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States.
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.
Hollywood Land is a themed land at Disney California Adventure park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. The area is inspired by the 1930s Golden Age period of Hollywood and hosts attractions themed to this concept, including a backlot of a typical Hollywood studio. The land opened as Hollywood Pictures Backlot with the park in 2001.
Buena Vista Theatrical Group Ltd., doing business as the Disney Theatrical Group, is the live show, stageplay and musical production arm of The Walt Disney Company. The company is led by Thomas Schumacher, Anne Quart, and Andrew Flatt, and is a division of Walt Disney Studios, forming a part of Disney Entertainment, one of the three major business segments of The Walt Disney Company.
Hollywood Masonic Temple, now known as the El Capitan Entertainment Centre and also formerly known as Masonic Convention Hall, is a building on Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, U.S., that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. The building, built in 1921, was designed by architect John C. Austin, also noted as the lead architect of the Griffith Observatory. The Masons operated the temple until 1982, when they sold the building after several years of declining membership. The 34,000-square-foot building was then converted into a theater and nightclub, and ownership subsequently changed several times, until it was bought by the Walt Disney Company's Buena Vista Pictures Distribution in 1998 for Buena Vista Theatres, Inc.
Buena Vista Street is a themed "land" at Disney California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort. Though named for the real-life Burbank thoroughfare that the Walt Disney Studios sits on, the central plaza represents Los Angeles, and specifically the Los Feliz area, in the 1920s when Walt Disney first arrived there. One of the main features is a small-scale replica of the Hyperion Bridge, which was being constructed when Disney stayed in Atwater Village. The replica functions as a working bridge for the resort's monorail system.
Charles Edward Toberman was a real estate developer and stenographer who developed landmarks in Hollywood, California, including the Hollywood Bowl, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, El Capitan Theatre, the Roosevelt Hotel, the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre and the Hollywood Masonic Temple. Toberman, along with H. J. Whitley has been called 'the Father of Hollywood'.
The Carthay Circle Theatre was one of the most famous movie palaces of Hollywood's Golden Age. Located on San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, it opened in 1926 and was demolished in 1969.
The Nimoy Theater, formerly known as Crest, Majestic Crest and Bigfoot Crest Theatre, is a movie theatre located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It was founded as the UCLAN in 1941, and was built for live performances but switched to a newsreel cinema during World War II. Through ownership changes, it has been known at various times as UCLAN Theatre, Crest Theatre, and Metro Theatre. The original 500-seat art deco style theater was designed by Arthur W. Hawes.
Hollywood Boulevard is the name of themed "lands" in various theme parks around the world. The lands, which exist in Disney's Hollywood Studios, at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, near Orlando, as well Parque Warner Madrid in San Martín de la Vega, near Madrid, Spain, draw inspiration from real historic landmark in Hollywood, California.
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