In the heyday of radio, one of the more enduring shows was the Lux Radio Theatre, which featured one-hour versions of films, often starring the original actors. The show ran from 1934 to 1955, first in New York but in 1936 moved to Hollywood, where it ran in the CBS Radio Playhouse at 1615 N. Vine Street, which you can see in this 1941 photo. Next door was the popular Al Levy’s Tavern. Fire swept through Al Levy’s in 1941 so I’m guessing this photo was probably taken early in the year. The theater has gone through several incarnations and is now the Ricardo Montalban Theatre.
I found this 1948 photo on the Lux Radio Theatre Wikipedia page. It was really just a bunch of people on stage. The real show unfolded in the minds of the listeners at home.
And here are what audience tickets looked like:
How that theater looked in April 2019:
I remember the whole family siting around the radio listening to lux presents hollywood. I think it was on Sunday or Thursday evenings.in the 1940s in Winnipeg canada.
You even got it as far away as Winnipeg!
Love old radio shows, Lux Radio Theatre being among my favorites. For the most part, they took popular movies & condensed them down to hour long broadcasts with the original stars. Read somewhere stars were paid $5,000 (circa 1940) which is more like $93,000 today.
Never thought about show having it’s own building. Amazed still exists as theater seeing adjacent highrises.
I read somewhere that the stars got paid up to $5000 per show. I’d imagine that only the A-listers got that payday. It probably helped to overcome those live-to-air nerves!
I grew up with reruns, on LPs in the seventies. Now of course one can stream them online. I still like the way Fibber McGee and Molly worked their sponsor, Johnson and Johnson, into the show as a recurring character; In that format, Fibber McGee and his wife Molly were usually at home, and people “dropped in”, had a short chat, and then left after a few minutes. The J&J guy would show up (I forget his name) and often even Molly, who was usually the reasonable one, would get exasperated at his spiel for floor wax.