Loew’s, the parent company of MGM, opened the Loew’s State Theatre on one of the most prime (i.e. most highly trafficked) intersections in America: where Broadway meets 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles. It opened in 1921, and this photo was taken across the street in 1922. The movie playing there at the time was a flapper comedy called “Gay and Devilish” but it’s the banner at the top — PAGEANT OF PROGRESS AND INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION — that has me wondering what sort of new gadgets and inventions were on display.
** UPDATE ** – Poster for California’s Pageant of Progress and Industrial Exposition 1922:
Trey C. said: “As a passionate avocational historian and collector of World’s Fair and Exposition ephemera— this immediately sent me down my favorite kind of rabbit hole! Apparently, the PAGEANT OF PROGRESS INDUSTRIAL EXPOSITION took place at the LA Memorial Colosseum between August 16th and September 9th of 1922.”
Trey also found this commemorative coin:
Advertisement for the Pageant of Progress and Industrial Exposition in the San Pedro Daily Pilot, August 10, 1922.
This is how the Loew’s State Theatre building looked in May 2024. The cinema is a church now, but the building looks like it’s in pretty good shape.
And this is the striking asbestos curtain at Loew’s State Theatre
Big summer! In July, the Prosperity Special of 22 new 2-10-2 locomotives delivered from Baldwin to Southern Pacific had arrived to be on display in the Exposition Park area. Then this pageant followed shortly at Memorial Colloseum right by there. Then it’s back to school kiddies. Meanwhile, the core center of Hollywood is rapidly shifting east toward Vine Street.