Hollywood Pantages Theatre

Stand on the pavement and look down first. Brass-edged stars set into pink terrazzo run past your feet, each one carrying a name. Then lift your eyes to the facade above the entrance. Cream stone climbs in ribbed vertical bands, and a tall sign spells out the name in letters built for a city that lived by electric light. This is the Hollywood Pantages Theatre. It stands on Hollywood Boulevard, a short drive over the hills from Burbank, close to the famous corner where the boulevard meets Vine Street.

The name belongs to Alexander Pantages, a Greek-born showman who built a chain of theatres across western North America. He made his fortune in vaudeville, the variety entertainment of the early twentieth century. A single evening might bring singers, acrobats, comedians and trained animals, one act after another. By the late 1920s, Pantages controlled dozens of houses. This building on Hollywood Boulevard was meant to be his crowning palace.

The timing was difficult. The theatre opened in 1930, just months after the stock market crash of 1929. The Great Depression was arriving, and audiences had less money to spend. Pantages himself was also caught up in a sensational court case around the same time, which drew huge press attention. His original conviction was later overturned on appeal. Even so, he soon sold his theatre chain, and this house moved on without him.

The architect was B. Marcus Priteca, who designed many theatres for Pantages over the years. Here he worked in Art Deco, the style of the late 1920s and 1930s known for geometric patterns, sunbursts and strong vertical lines. Some historians call this particular branch Zigzag Moderne, because of its sharp, angular ornament. Look at the facade again and you can see it — the lines push upward, as if the whole building is reaching for the sky.

In fact, it was meant to reach higher. According to accounts of the original plans, the structure was designed to carry an office tower above the theatre. The Depression ended that idea, and the tower was never built. So what you see is a building that stopped partway. Many people walk past without realising that the low, heavy base was meant to support something much taller.

If you can step inside, the contrast is dramatic. The lobby rises into a high space of gold and deep colour. The ceilings carry intricate patterns that look almost like lace made of metal and plaster. Figures and geometric motifs climb the walls. The effect is less like a modern theatre and more like a jewel box made for thousands of people at once. Take a moment to look straight up before you find your seat.

The auditorium itself holds well over two thousand seats. It was built as a movie palace, a theatre that combined film screenings with live stage shows. In the 1930s, a night out could mean a feature film, a newsreel and a live performance on the same programme. The size of the room tells you how many people Hollywood expected to fill it. This was entertainment on an industrial scale.

In 1949, the theatre passed into the hands of Howard Hughes, the aviator, film producer and famously private businessman. Hughes controlled the RKO studio at the time, and the Pantages became part of that empire. Locals like to tell stories about Hughes keeping an office somewhere upstairs. Treat that as a popular tale rather than confirmed history. What is certain is that his ownership brought the building into the centre of Hollywood glamour.

Here is the detail many visitors miss. For roughly a decade, starting in 1950, the Academy Awards ceremony was held in this theatre. Through the 1950s, film stars arrived on this stretch of pavement in evening clothes, under flashbulbs and searchlights. The early years of the Oscars on television were broadcast from this room. When you stand near the doors, you are standing where much of that decade's film royalty once walked in.

After the Oscars moved on, the theatre went through quieter years as a cinema. Like many grand movie palaces, it struggled as audiences shifted to television and smaller screens. Then, in the late 1970s, the building found a new purpose. It was converted into a home for live stage productions, especially touring Broadway musicals. That change probably saved it. Many similar palaces across America were demolished in the same period.

A major restoration around the year 2000 prepared the stage for a large production of The Lion King. Workers cleaned and repaired the decorative surfaces, and much of the original Art Deco colour returned. Since then, the theatre has hosted many big touring musicals, including long runs of shows such as Wicked and Hamilton. For many people in Los Angeles, this is simply where you go to see Broadway without flying to New York.

Now turn back toward the street. Hollywood Boulevard carries a mix of tourists, office workers and theatregoers. The Walk of Fame stars continue in both directions. A Metro station sits close by at Hollywood and Vine, and on show nights the crowds pour out of it toward these doors. Before a performance, the sidewalk fills with people checking tickets and taking photographs under the sign. After the show, the lights of the marquee wash over the same faces.

As you leave, look once more at the facade. Those vertical stone bands were drawn for a tower that never came, by a showman who barely kept his theatre. And yet the building outlived the vaudeville circuit, the movie palace era and the Oscar years. It is still doing the job it was built for. Each evening, it fills with strangers who sit in the dark together and wait for the curtain to rise.