I don’t normally post photos of LA outside the golden era (1927 to 1959) but this was so colorful that I couldn’t resist. Earl Carroll’s theater opened on 6230 Sunset Blvd on December 25, 1938. In 1953 it became the Moulin Rouge, and then in 1966 it became the Hullabaloo Club until 1968, when it became the Kaleidoscope. But then the cultural phenomenon musical, “Hair” landed on the scene and when the time came to open in Los Angeles later that year, the place became—fittingly enough—the Aquarius theater, where the show let the sunshine in for two and a half years. This photo was taken in 1970.
A while back, you ran a post on the Earl Carroll lit up at night and I did a double take, thinking immediately back to the late 70’s.
As a high school senior (?), I went to see a student matinee performance of Zoot Suit at the Aquarius. Zoot Suit had moved to the Aquarius from the Taper and had become quite the rage in LA. For a kid from conservative Orange County, both the colorful building and the story line were definitely outside my normal wheelhouse. The only plays we usually got to see were in the school auditorium or works by Shakespeare (which we were studying in English) at South Coast Repertory when they operated out of an old furniture store on Newport Blvd. in Costa Mesa. That’s quite a step down from the Segerstrom Center where they are today.
I don’t normally post photos of LA outside the golden era (1927 to 1959) but this was so colorful that I couldn’t resist. Earl Carroll’s theater opened on 6230 Sunset Blvd on December 25, 1938. In 1953 it became the Moulin Rouge, and then in 1966 it became the Hullabaloo Club until 1968, when it became the Kaleidoscope. But then the cultural phenomenon musical, “Hair” landed on the scene and when the time came to open in Los Angeles later that year, the place became—fittingly enough—the Aquarius theater, where the show let the sunshine in for two and a half years. This photo was taken in 1970.
A while back, you ran a post on the Earl Carroll lit up at night and I did a double take, thinking immediately back to the late 70’s.
As a high school senior (?), I went to see a student matinee performance of Zoot Suit at the Aquarius. Zoot Suit had moved to the Aquarius from the Taper and had become quite the rage in LA. For a kid from conservative Orange County, both the colorful building and the story line were definitely outside my normal wheelhouse. The only plays we usually got to see were in the school auditorium or works by Shakespeare (which we were studying in English) at South Coast Repertory when they operated out of an old furniture store on Newport Blvd. in Costa Mesa. That’s quite a step down from the Segerstrom Center where they are today.