Hitching Post Theater, Hollywood Boulevard, 1946
With the Western being such a popular genre of movie, I guess it was inevitable that a theater that showed only Westerns should come along. In Los Angeles, that was called The Hitching Post (you can see it on the left hand side of the photo) and it was a small theater on Hollywood Boulevard, a few doors down from the corner of Hollywood and Vine and opposite the Pantages Theatre. This photo was taken in 1946 with the double bill was “Heading West” and “Thunder Town” both of which starred nobody I’ve ever heard of. The Hitching Post opened in 1941 and closed some times in the 1950s, which wasn’t a bad run for a movie house with a narrowly defined audience.
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On Saturday mornings, there would be a line of very small cowboys lined up with their fathers outside the theatre, waiting to get in to watch their heroes on the screen.
Somehow that does not surprise me in the least!
The Crosby kids were delivered by chauffer
Oooooooof course they were!
Martin Turnbull should have done his research better on the Hitching Post Theater. It ran westerns constantly every week and sometimes even had guest cowboy stars like Johnny Mack Brown make personal appearances. The small fry were told to”check their sixguns” in the lobby to prevent noisy disruptions of cap guns during the movie. Incidentally the two films shown in the picture starred famous cowboy stars Charles Starrett as the Durango Kid in “Heading West” and Bob Steele in “Thunder Town.” Martin Turnbull obviously is too young to recall these stars or maybe his Mommy wouldnt let him go to cowboy movies.
My name is Billy. I lived on La Mirada St. in Hollywood down the block from the farmers market on Vine Street. I used to go to the hitching post theater stand in line and check my cap guns into the ticket office. It was nine years old at the time. On Saturday mornings, I would walk with my friend Butch to the hitching Post theater on Hollywood Boulevard across the street from Pantages to watch cowboy movies. It was Such a fun time in my life!
Also my sister and i would go ice-skating at the Polar Palace on Saturdays and Sundays after church. What a wonderful place that was.
Thanks for sharing your memories with us, Billy!