Photo: DTLA Weekly
Welcome back to our “Downtown Decoded: The Amazing History of our beloved DTLA Theater District” series. This month we revisit the life and times of the old Warner Theater, which celebrates its 104th birthday this week!
💡Note to readers: the following article mentions “Pantages” in multiple forms. However, the Old Warner Theater is not to be confused with today’s Pantages Theater in the heart of Hollywood. At their peak, the Pantages’ owned upwards of 80 theaters in the early 1900s, many of which often carried the company name, and have gone through sales and rebrands since then.
A Diamond in the Past
Photo: G. O'Graffer (Flickr)
In downtown Los Angeles, on the corner of West 7th Street, the Downtown Jewelry Exchange looms over a bustling street. The marquee sign above the entrance displays a diamond-shaped motif. On closer inspection, the diamond obscures the former Warner Bros logo emblem, a hint at the building’s theatrical past.
The building’s facade is ornate and baroque in design, with the theater’s interior gratefully remaining intact. The auditorium’s mural and the Corinthian columns flanking either side of the stage are echoes of the movie palace that once was.
A Dynasty is Born
Alexander Pantages ran away from his family at only nine years old while on a business trip with his father in Cairo, working on a ship as a deckhand. After two years at sea, he worked building the Panama Canal until contracting malaria, forcing him to seek out a less tropical climate. He came to the US in the 1880s before joining the Klondike Goldrush, in the Yukon Territory. In Dawson City, he joined forces with one Kitty Rockwell as a business and romantic partner. Together they operated a small theater known as the Orpheum.
Pantages returned to the US, where he opened the Crystal Theatre, the first of 30 theaters by 1920 that formed the “Pantages Circuit”. The theaters showcased long-term acts, featuring stage performances and films. Pantages himself became a renowned vaudevillian impresario.
Most people nowadays think of New York as the bastion of theater in the early 1900s, but the theater scene in Los Angeles was also booming. As the second destination for the renowned “Orpheum Circuit” at the beginning of the 20th century, Los Angeles was a thriving destination for theater-goers.
On August 16, 1920, the Pantages Theatre (the Old Warner’s original name) first opened its doors in Downtown Los Angeles.
Prolific theater architect B. Marcus Priteca was enlisted as the chief designer, having been the designer of choice for most of the Pantages theaters since 1911. He employed a neo-classical style that paid tribute to the Pantages family’s Greek heritage. The theater became Pantages’ showcase theater and serves as home to his offices in Downtown Los Angeles.
The Pantages Theatre saw great success until 1929 when it caught the interest of Joseph Kennedy. Kennedy, the founder of RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum), was looking for additional reach for his theater circuit and approached Pantages with an offer to buy the Pantages Theatre Circuit, an offer which was initially declined. Seven months later, however, a career-destroying scandal would bring Alexander Pantages and his dynasty to irreparable ruin.
Trial, Conspiracy and a change of guard
In 1929, a 17-year-old dancer by the name of Eunice Pringle accused Alexander Pantages of sexual assault. Pantages denied these claims, stating that he had been framed, with lawyers determining that the story was likely a fabrication, given several inconsistencies. Although Pantages was eventually found innocent in court, the case damaged his reputation beyond repair and he was forced to sell his theaters. Years later, Eunice’s (unconfirmed) deathbed confession would go on to implicate Joseph Kennedy as the scandal’s instigator, supporting a widely speculated theory that this was done as a means to force Pantages to sell him the theaters he had declined to do less than a year prior. It is worth noting that these events also occurred amid the Wall Street crash of 1929, with Pantages having already sold several theaters by that point.
While RKO eventually purchased several Pantages theaters, this property was sold to Warner Bros. In September 1929, the newly redecorated theater was rebranded and opened as the Warner Bros Downtown Theatre.
Photo: Water & Power
The new Warner Bros theater moved away from its vaudevillian roots to focus solely on film, with its new Vitascope and Vitaphone projected films. While studios were beginning to experiment with widescreen films, the Warner Bros theater only showed one feature on 65mm film (“A Soldier’s Plaything” in December 1930). By the 1950s, the Warner Bros theater would continue to go through a few more ownership changes, including a merger between RKO and the Stanley-Warner Corporation (without Joseph Kennedy’s involvement), then briefly owned by Metropolitan Theaters, before becoming the Warren’s Theatre and finally closing in 1960.
The Old Warner Today
After a brief stint as a Downtown Los Angeles church, the theater became the Jewelry Exchange in 1978, which it remains today. While it is common for many old theater buildings to be gutted and repurposed as retail spaces, maintaining only their exterior facade, it is a fortunate wonder that The Old Warner remains intact both inside and outside today. We are hopeful that in the future, we may see this property returned to its original splendor as a working theater.
Photo: PLACESIAM, Atlas Obscura
Want to be part of the movement to bring your DTLA theater district back to life? Check out our master plans to learn about how you can help restore DTLA to a vibrant district, uplifting theater and invigorating our local economy by 2028!