Until I came across this photo, I had always thought (well, assumed) that the grand theater on the corner of Hill and 7th Streets in downtown Los Angeles had always belonged to Warner Bros. So I was surprised to learn that it was a Pantages vaudeville house from 1920 to 1929, when Warners acquired it. This photo is from 1926, when the Ritz Brothers were appearing in a live show called “Putting on the Ritz” as a support feature for the movie “Marriage License?” This was a full ten years before they made their first feature picture, “Sing, Baby, Sing” for 20th Century-Fox. (Note the horse-drawn delivery van in the bottom right corner.)
This is how the building looked in January 2022. It’s now home to a jewelry store, but hey, at least it’s still there.
Note the Warners logo badge behind the diamond in the center of the marquee.
Oh wow! I didn’t notice it. Do you think that’s what it is? I guess the cheaper option was to just plonk a big diamond on top of it.
I’m amazed that Frank Borzage directed a Ritz Brothers movie. The man who directed some of the great romantic melodramas in Hollywood history (The Mortal Storm, Three Comrades, Moonrise, History Is Made at Night) seems like an odd fit for the Brothers Ritz.
Any idea what purpose, if any, that dome atop the theater building served?
I walked past this building many times when our office was temporarily relocated to the old Title Insurance Building at 4th and Spring during the City Hall earthquake retrofit and general rehab, but I never knew it had been a theater.