The Warner Grand Theatre Celebrates her 90th Birthday, How She Survived and Her Fate Turned Around By Liz Schindler Johnson
The Warner Grand Theatre Celebrates her 90th Birthday, How She Survived and Her Fate Turned Around
By Liz Schindler Johnson
A longer version of this article appeared in the January 2021 issue of San Pedro Today Magazine
On January 20, 1931, Warner Brothers opened their magnificent, 1500-seat San Pedro Theatre to a star-studded crowd with back-to-back sold out shows. The crowd included Warner Bros. stars Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Blondell.
Join Grand Vision Foundation on January 23, 2021, for a celebration of the Warner Grand's 90th Birthday; a virtual, livestream event featuring music by Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys performing the vaudeville and ragtime hits of the 1920s & ‘30s plus a cocktail/mocktail demo.
Tickets can be purchased with or without a Party Package. Packages include cocktail/mocktail ingredients, birthday cake and party favors. Follow along with our local mixologist to make delicious Prohibition-era refreshments. Packages will be available for pickup. Proceeds will benefit Love the Lobby, Grand Vision’s Campaign to restore the Warner Grand Theatre’s historic lobbies. See grandvision.org or call (310) 833-4813 for details and tickets.
It was NOT always a given that the theater would survive to see its 90th birthday and enjoy a community celebration. Here is the story of how the Theatre came to be and how it escaped the fate of so many old movie palaces that were torn down during the 20th century.
THE EARLY YEARS
In 1929, Warner Bros. Studio announced that it would build six theaters in the Los Angeles area, including the Warner Bros. San Pedro Theatre. When the stock market crashed later that year, the number of theaters was halved. Luckily, San Pedro still got its theater, along with Beverly Hills and Huntington Park.
The groundbreaking ceremony took place on June 18, 1930 with Jack Warner Jr. tossing the first shovelful of dirt. Construction took less than a year and the Theatre opened to great fanfare. Through World War II, the Theatre thrived. The area’s more than a hundred thousand war workers flocked to San Pedro’s many theaters including Warner’s to enjoy what we would later call the “Golden Age” of the movies.
After WWII, the Paramount Consent Decree of 1948 dealt a major blow to the industry by requiring movie studios to divest themselves of their theaters. By 1952, half of the movie theaters in Los Angeles had closed. Without the backing of the whole studio machine, San Pedro’s Warner Theatre began a steady decline. Movie palaces were never designed to be sustainable on their own.
HARD TIMES FOR MOVIE PALACES
Warner’s biggest competitor, the Fox Cabrillo, was demolished in 1958. The 1960s were a hard time for movie palaces everywhere. The rise of television meant that the theaters had to compete with millions of smaller screens.
By the 1970s, many downtown San Pedro buildings were in extreme disrepair. City leaders drew up redevelopment plans and leveled old Beacon Street, including the Globe Theater on 6th & Palos Verdes. The Warner Theatre hit an all-time low when it was sometimes occupied by adult film distributors or boarded up.
In 1978, Arnulfo Estrada, a Wilmington businessman, purchased the Theatre from Pacific Theaters to show Spanish language films and replaced the Warner marquee with “Juarez Theatre.” The Juarez showed horror movies that sometimes attracted a dangerous element. Fights broke out and one of Estrada’s sons was stabbed.
BECOMING THE WARNER GRAND
In 1984, former Mann’s Chinese Theater manager Ray Howell bought the theater from Estrada. He planned to attract community audiences by featuring children’s movies and performing arts events. His first act was to restore the Warner name to the marquee, naming it the Warner Grand Theatre.
Soon, he was showing classic movies and stage performances. He brought in big names like Chaka Khan, magician Doug Henning and the Ramones, and rented the theater for movie shoots with stars like Patrick Dempsey and John Turturro.
Despite these efforts, he closed the doors in 1989 and sold the Theatre to one-hit-wonder musician and owner of the Killer Shrimp restaurants, Lee Michaels.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?
Michaels’ song, “Do You Know What I Mean” filled the airwaves in 1971. Twenty-years later, he was actually living in the Warner Grand. He and his girlfriend would use the huge auditorium as their living room, watching movies while eating popcorn. After five years, nothing came of Michaels’ ambitious plans, and he was considering sales to buyers who had no use for a theater.
He asked property owner Gary Larson, who had just purchased the Arcade Building across the street from the theater, if he was interested in buying the Warner Grand.
BIRTH OF A GRAND VISION
Larson felt he was in no position to buy the theater, but as chairman of the San Pedro Revitalization Corporation he knew how important the Warner Grand was to the future of downtown San Pedro.
“If the Warner Grand started up again as a functioning theater, it would draw people, but on the negative side, if something happened to it, it’d be a big black hole for downtown.” Larson recalls, “The fear of the theater being sold to someone who would do irreparable damage led to the revival of the Friends of the Warner Grand.”
The Friends of the Warner Grand was formed back when Ray Howell owned the theater but it quickly disbanded because it was tough to have a support group for a privately-owned company.
The first person that Larson approached about re-grouping was fellow downtown property owner, Alan Johnson, co-owner of Jerico Development. They started exploring how to save the Warner Grand and formed a committee.
“We decided to call ourselves Grand Vision Foundation," explained Larson. "It’s what we needed to imagine the future of the Warner Grand.”
The first part of the "grand vision" was to negotiate a price and a contract with Lee Michaels. They settled on an asking price to buy the theater, but time was running out.
Two very interested buyers were ready to go into escrow – one to convert the theater into a church and the other ready to gut the auditorium for swap meet space. Larson knew he needed to act fast. Michaels gave him just 180 days to secure the funds.
After exhausting other avenues, Larson and Johnson approached L.A City Councilman and life-long San Pedran, Rudy Svorinich, Jr. Svorinich had fond memories of the theater and, like Larson and Johnson, understood its economic importance. He enlisted the help of the Community Redevelopment Agency to secure the property for the City of L.A.
As the story goes, Rudy’s mother Winnie told him he had to save the Theatre. She and Rudy’s father had gone on their first date there. She thought Rudy Sr. was a good catch because he sprung for balcony seats.
Flash forward to January 1996, without an hour to spare, Councilman Svorinich, the City of L.A., Gary Larson, Alan Johnson and the other members of Grand Vision had made their vision a reality – the Warner Grand Theatre was saved.
The City of Los Angeles had purchased the property for $1.2 million with the express purpose of it serving as an anchor for the economic revitalization of downtown San Pedro.
Today the theater is the only one of the three movie palaces built by Warner Brothers in Los Angeles that’s still intact. When the City bought the theater, they assigned their Department of Cultural Affairs to operate it. With help from Grand Vision Foundation, it’s been a working film house and performing arts venue ever since. It’s listed as a City of Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument and is included on the National Register of Historic Places.
But San Pedro’s Warner Grand is hardly a monument. It’s a living and breathing venue, a place where thousands enjoy quality performances annually - many of which are for youth and families. It’s also a place where couples are choosing to get married and organizations hold fundraisers and special events. It’s not just a repository of old stories, but a place where new memories are being made - by the current residents of San Pedro, the Peninsula, greater Los Angeles and beyond.
Liz Johnson, Executive Director,Grand Vision Foundation
Liz Johnson has served as Grand Vision’s Executive Director since 2000, working long hours to save the historic Warner Grand Theatre. Over the past two decades, she has built Grand Vision Foundation into a resilient not-for-profit arts organization that not only serves as the official Friends Group to the Warner Grand Theatre, but also operates The Grand Annex, a live music venue, and Meet the Music, a robust music education program for underserved public schools. Johnson holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA. She is an active community leader and philanthropist in the Harbor Area of Los Angeles. Johnson is proud to serve as a Los Angeles County Arts Commissioner representing the Fourth District. She also sits on the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce board of directors, the board of Crail-Johnson Foundation and the board of The Marine Mammal Care Center-Los Angeles.