That's right, boys and girls, it's time for another season of Last Remaining Seats, one of my favorite things about Los Angeles. If you've been keeping up with this long-winded blog, you'll know that Last Remaining Seats is a movie series put on for six weeks every May and June by the Los Angeles Conservancy, the local nonprofit that dedicates every fiber of its volunteer soul to preserving, protecting, restoring, and otherwise promoting historic commercial and residential buildings and neighborhoods throughout the eighty-eight municipalities that make up the County of Los Angeles. With such a vast purview, the Conservancy's got all kinds of programs and projects going on at any given time, from restoring a particular historic residence to trying to save a historic commercial building from demolition. My favorite Conservancy initiative, as I've said in previous posts, is Bringing Back Broadway (BBB), the aim of which is to do just that: Revive the Broadway district in downtown Los Angeles. The stretch of Broadway from Third Street down to Ninth is home to no less than a dozen movie palaces built before World War II. It's the single largest concentration of pre-WWII movie theaters in the country. Yes, L.A.'s Broadway was supposed to be the cinematic version of New York's Broadway, and for a long time it was. But for whatever reason--shifting demographics, the suburban explosion--Broadway L.A. started going downhill in the seventies or thereabouts. You've still got plenty of shops, some storefront churches and what have you, but quite a bit of it is derelict. Not surprisingly, the BBB program will take some time.
Last Remaining Seats is the Conservancy's way of promoting BBB while shining the spotlight on these gorgeous old theaters. When they show these old classic flicks, every Wednesday usually starting in mid/late May through June, they typically use the three most fully restored theaters: Los Angeles, Million Dollar, and Orpheum. The Palace Theatre is also fit for duty, but they haven't screened anything there since I became a member in early 2008 after reading the cover story about them and Last Remaining Seats in Westways, the magazine for the Southern California Auto Club.
Up to this point, I've only ever gone to these things by myself, which is what makes tonight extra special. My mom came with me! She lives in North Carolina and is visiting me the second half of May. Usually she visits me in August. Indeed, from 2001 to last year she never missed an August (I've lived in L.A. since '98). She retired earlier this year on her sixty-fifth birthday after twenty-five years of steadfast service to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. For the last thirteen of those years she was the personnel manager. No, not one of the personnel managers, THE personnel manager for the entire university. Yes, it's just as daunting as it sounds, which is why there was never a good time of the year for her to visit. August was relatively calm, nestled as it is between the summer sessions and the fall term, but that didn't stop the work from piling up. Every August for the past decade, it's been the same routine: She abandons her station for ten days to visit me....and then flies back to the suck fest backlog. But now she's retired! The icing on the cake is that her state pension and social security add up to a few ducats more than what she made during the rat race. Yes, you read that right: She's taking in more retired than she was as a working stiff. Pretty cool, huh? We should all be so lucky.
At any rate, since she's retired, we decided she could visit during the second half of May instead of waiting for the ceremonial ten days in August. We were already pondering this visit last August when she was here and I was starting to get theater brochures in the mail. At this point, after twelve years in L.A., I've attended shows at my fair share of the city's venues. You only have to go once to end up on their mailing list. And since most theater seasons are structured like school years, from September to June, that makes August a busy month for my local USPS carrier. And it's become a ritual for my mom over the years during her August visits to peruse and salivate over the brochures while bemoaning the lack of such culture in her area. That said, though, her area of North Carolina, called the Triangle (Chapel Hill along with Durham and the state capital of Raleigh) is doing much better than when I lived with her in the late eighties (my middle school years). That they can't compete with L.A. just makes the Triangle part of a large club. A lot of the best actors live here. Lots of people move here to attempt a career on the boards, not to speak of film and TV. So of course we've got a ton of theaters here. Anyway, when Mom was here last August, she looked over all the brochures and saw several shows she was interested in seeing, all being staged in May. We didn't iron out anything, it was just talk at that point.
When I visited her during the holidays four months later, we sat back down to take another look and decided the second half of May would be ideal. By the time she goes home next week, we'll have seen four plays at four different theaters. One of the plays was this past Sunday: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying at the Freud Playhouse on UCLA campus. When not being used by the students, Freud Playhouse is home to the Reprise! theater company led by Jason Alexander (George Costanza from Seinfeld). In fact, that one guy from Seinfeld who played J. Peterman, John O'Hurley, was in the production. He was a stitch as J.B. Biggley, the boss man who heads the World Wide Wicket Company. Rudy Vallee played him in the movie we saw tonight. This was the first time we saw John O'Hurley on stage, but it should've been the second. When Mom was here last August, we saw Spamalot downtown at the Ahmanson. John O'Hurley was cast in one of the main roles. I forget which one. It was either the role played by Eric Idle or Tim Curry in the original Broadway production. Unfortunately he was sick the day we went. We forgot about that soon enough, though. Spamalot was a side splitter. If it comes to a playhouse near you, get ye there post haste.
On our way to the movie tonight, I decided to take Mom to my favorite watering hole in all of Los Angeles: Ye Rustic Inn in Los Feliz. I have to admit I was vacillating about taking her there. It ain't exactly Spago. Or even The Cheesecake Factory. It's a hole in the wall in one of those nondescript stripmalls that seem to exist outside of time. The ceiling's low, the lighting's shitty, and the jukebox is jammin' with the best selection of tunes of any bar I've ever been to. It's just a really fun place. The vast majority of the barkeeps are young women aspiring to be actresses. Read: They're all adorable. Oh yeah, the drink selection is pretty good too. And the food menu's got great variety considering it's just a bar. Indeed, if you ever make it there, try the Buffalo wings. I work with this guy from Buffalo, and he's one of the daintiest, pickiest eaters I've ever known. Team lunches always promise drama when he comes along. His home town is of course the birthplace of the eponymous wings. And he says that Ye Rustic Inn has hands down the best wings of anyplace outside Buffalo. Considering his picky taste plus the fact that he visited many a spot during his touring musician days back in the eighties and nineties, that is extremely high praise. Mom and I got there just before Happy Hour, hence the vacant booth right in front of the bar. We decided to go the sampler route: Six wings, a few cheese sticks and some other stuff. If you're ever there and you want a hearty meal, try the Myrtle burger, named after the woman who founded Ye Rustic. I had that the first time I went there about five years ago. Taking Mom to Ye Rustic wasn't as awkward as I thought. She's a pretty cool and laid back kat. In hindsight my vacillation seems kind of silly.
So with our bellies full, we took the surface streets from Ye Rustic to downtown. It was the first time I'd taken this route, but I knew Wilshire Blvd. was south of Ye Rustic, and once you're on that, it's a straight shot east into downtown. We parked in that garage beneath Pershing Square, right in the heart of downtown. Since tonight's screening was at the Los Angeles Theatre, the closest Last Remaining Seats theater to Pershing Square, the L.A. Conservancy had volunteers outside the parking structure handing out validation stickers to slap on our parking machine tickets so that we'd only have to pay five dollars instead of the usual weeknight flat fee of six sixty. Not a huge difference, I know, but the Conservancy tries.
The Los Angeles Theatre is my favorite theater on Broadway. So far, anyway. A bunch have yet to be restored, but of the few that have been, this one's tops. It doesn't look like much from the outside. It's got a tall, thin, townhouse-type facade with glittering gold and red signage. But when you walk in, as the below photos attest, it's like, "Whoa!" Los Angeles is actually the "newest" of the twelve Broadway "cinema playhouses," as they were called in the beforetimes. It opened in January 1931 with the Chaplin movie City Lights, and when you go in, one of the first things you see on the wall is a photo of Charlie himself attending the City Lights premiere with Albert Einstein of all people. No joke. They're the last people you'd expect to be pals. Anyways, back to the jaw-dropping lobby, the first thing that strikes you about it are those grand, gargantuan chandeliers, right out of a period movie. You've also got mirrors, that crystal fountain up on the second level, and a sunburst motif that supposedly alludes to Louis XIV, France's so-called Sun King. The restrooms downstairs are humongous. If only all movie theater restrooms were that big. That might be another reason I prefer the Los Angeles over the other Broadway theaters. The other ones have much smaller restrooms. Lines are inevitable. Hey, this might be a fine point to you, but you're not the one with the micro bladder.
When the Los Angeles originally opened, it had all kinds of interesting features that hadn't been heard of before and for the most part haven't been heard of since. I'm guessing that's because movies just aren't the big events they obviously were in the thirties, so why spend all that money on something like an electric sign outside the auditorium that tells you how many vacant seats are left? Although I have to say that sounds incredibly convenient. I mean, even today I think people would appreciate knowing, as they hurry into the auditorium with their 'corn and soda pop, how packed the place is so they can brace themselves (or not) accordingly. That lower level where the restrooms are used to have a playroom for the kids, and what is now the ladies' room used to be much more posh, with sixteen private "compartments," as they used to say, each one finished in a different marble. You believe that? Another world back then, kids. But wait, it gets better. Let's say you had to get up to relieve yourself in the middle of a show. Have no fear, movie fan, because when you descended to that super lounge below, a periscope-type apparatus projected the film onto a smaller screen so that you could catch the action on the way to and from the restroom. Is that not awesome or what? Again, like the seat vacancy sign, that would be so bloody handy today. But I reckon that type of thing would only work in a single-screen theater. How the heck would you handle that in today's zillion-screen gigaplexes?
Interesting backstory about Mom's connection to How to Succeed in Business. She actually got to see the original Broadway production back in the early sixties. It was a smashing success and ran for several years. Mom's dad, the grandfather I never knew, died in September 1962. How to Succeed in Business opened about a year before, so she must have seen it in that window. Certainly not after her dad died. The family pretty much went to shit after that (more on that some other time, some other place). Anyway, tonight when we were at Ye Rustic, Mom said that their trip to New York to see the Broadway show was her introduction to the East Coast. They had such a great time that they came back just a few months later to see I Can Get It for You Wholesale, another successful Broadway show that starred an unknown nineteen-year-old named....Barbra Streisand. And just to show you that Mom's dad did okay for himself, on both of those trips they stayed at the St. Regis. You ever stay there? Unless you've got money to burn, probably not. What's more, Mom's family was from L.A., which makes such a trip all the more ambitious. I've been to the St. Regis a couple times to have drinks in the King Cole Bar on the ground floor. It's funny, the first time I went there, in 2005 or thereabouts, I had no idea the place had been Mom's East Coast home away from home. I only heard of it thanks to the James Bond novel Live and Let Die (1954). The plot of the novel, which bares only a skeletal resemblance to the 1973 film (Roger Moore's first outing as Bond), is roughly divided into thirds, and that first third sees Bond staying in New York to investigate the Harlem gangster Mister BIG. Well, when he arrives in New York at the beginning, he holes up in a top-floor suite at the St. Regis. After freshening up, he heads down to the ground floor to have drinks in the King Cole Bar with his American spy pal Felix Leiter. When I read that scene, I knew I had to get to the King Cole Bar somehow, someway.
Interesting how life brings you full circle, isn't it? Mom was tickled to death at seeing the play again as well as the film, both in the same week, back in her hometown. And the gravy, ladies and gentlemen? Before the movie started tonight, there was a Q&A up on the stage with the two leads from the movie: Robert Morse and Michele Lee. And conducting the interview was Matthew Weiner, the brain behind the TV show Mad Men. That makes sense, right? One of the reasons that show's all but critic proof is due to how well it evokes the sixties, the same era as How to Succeed in Business. Not that I would know. Neither my mom nor I have ever watched Mad Men, but it's cool the Conservancy got Matthew Weiner to host tonight's event.
I forgot to mention that the Conservancy started a new initiative this year called the Sixties Turn 50. They set up a whole website for it and everything, separate from their main laconservancy.org site. Tonight before the show, when I went down to use the restroom, I noticed over in that area between the men's and ladies' rooms, that spacious plot of wood flooring that was originally the kids' play area, the Conservancy's Modern Committee (or Mod Com, as they call it) had a bunch of tables set up with various pamphlets and brochures plugging the Sixties Turn 50. Standing around like robotic Conservancy volunteer greeters were those black kiosks, each with a flatscreen monitor looping footage of various sixties architecture around L.A. County. Last fall the Mod Com put on a sixties tour in L.A.'s South Bay area. I kind of wish I'd gone now after seeing the Mod Com's setup tonight. The tour was called "It's a Mod, Mod, Mod, Mod City." I love that. Extra props for alluding to a popular movie...from the sixties! Anyway, the tour, as I later read in a recap in the Conservancy newsletter, took folks to sixties gems such as St. Jerome Catholic Church, the LAX Theme Building (I've always wanted to go in there!), IBM Aerospace HQ, The Proud Bird Restaurant, Imperial Terminal Flight Path Learning Center & Museum, and Northrop Grumman Space Park Campus. These were among the buildings being looped on the kiosks. Bravo to the Mod Com! It really was an impressive setup and a great use of all that space downstairs.
When the lights went down at 8pm, the first item on the program, as always, had Conservancy head Linda Dishman come out and welcome everyone and give a special thanks to the sponsors, the companies and wealthy individuals who sponsored both tonight as well as the Last Remaining Seats series as a whole. After that, she invited Matthew Weiner out to the stage to interview him for a few minutes.
The man in charge of one of the most popular shows on TV today, Matt Weiner is a humble, unassuming guy. He's in his mid forties and balding. He smiles easily, but you can tell he's a smart, serious guy as well. Linda asked him a bit about his background and particularly his interest in conservancy. Matt said that, while he's originally from Baltimore, he did a good bit of his growing up in L.A. When he was eleven (in 1976, the same year I was born), his family left Baltimore and settled in L.A.'s Hancock Park neighborhood. That right there tells me his parents must've done okay for themselves. He didn't mention what they did for a living, but Hancock Park is a beautiful historic neighborhood created in the 1920s by an oil magnate named George Hancock. It's 4400 acres of land George inherited from his dad, who in turn bought up the land when it was part of the larger Rancho La Brea. I know this thanks to the book Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles by Valley native--and sometime Book Fest attendee--Kevin Roderick. Hancock Park really is a gorgeous neighborhood. It's one of those neighborhoods you've probably seen in a movie or TV show, with those manicured lawns and palm trees lining the broad streets in perfect symmetry against the clear blue sky and, if you're facing north, the Hollywood sign off yonder. But seeing it on screen doesn't do it justice. When you're in L.A., it's definitely worth a drive-through and a look-see. Matt credited his growing up in Hancock Park with his interest in preserving historic architecture. It was during those years that he watched a lot of historic structures around L.A. fall into disrepair and decay. I reckon that makes some sense, sad as it is. The Conservancy wasn't founded until 1978, and of course it took them a while to find their legs. Until they came along, L.A. didn't have an organization to protect its history.
Even though Mad Men is set in New York, Matt said he shoots quite a bit of it in L.A. That's not exactly rare. CSI New York is shot entirely in L.A., the Valley specifically. That was why Gary Sinise agreed to do it. The producers wanted to shoot in New York, but Lieutenant Dan didn't want to be away from his family for big chunks of the year. CSI Miami, meanwhile, is mostly shot in Long Beach. So Matt's shooting here isn't unprecedented or anything, but it's nonetheless a very conscious decision on his part to support his adopted hometown's economy. He did share a New York shooting story, though. When he shot the Mad Men pilot in 2006, he used a building on Lexington St. When they returned the following year to shoot the rest of the first season, that building had been demolished. Suffice it to say he was indignant, not just from a producer's standpoint, but from the standpoint of someone who cares more and more about historic preservation as he gets older. I loved what he said when Linda asked him what the message of Mad Men was: "Stop tearing shit down." That got a lot of applause and no mistake.
Okay then, that brings us to the next item on tonight's bill before the movie started: Matt Weiner interviewing Robert Morse and Michele Lee. Matt and Robert already have a strong, friendly rapport from Mad Men. I didn't know until tonight that Robert Morse is on that show. He's been in nearly every episode apparently. For someone turning eighty next May, he sure has a lot of energy. He's still sort of like his character from How to Succeed, all smiling and friendly, but with a shade of mischief. I'm not sure why I say he's mischievous, although that gap-toothed grin sure doesn't help. He talked a little about how he fell into acting, and he certainly fell in early. He saw a play when he was a wee tot and knew acting was his calling. He studied with Lee Strasberg when he was still in high school(!) before scoring his first theatrical role in On the Town when he was eighteen. The only film work worth mentioning from those early years are roles that carried over from his theatrical gigs, playing a character he himself originated in the play on which the movie was based. We're talking flicks like The Matchmaker (he played Barnaby Tucker) as well as Say, Darling, Take Me Along and, of course, How to Succeed in Business. This is why Mom was so tickled to see him in person tonight and why tonight completes a circle of sorts. She saw him when he originated the role of J. Pierpont Finch, the role for which he won the first of his two Tonys (the second one didn't come until about thirty years later, for playing Truman Capote in Tru).
While Robert Morse is an East Coaster born on the New York stage, Michele Lee is L.A. born and bred. She's about ten or so years younger than Robert and looks even younger than that. Although I couldn't tell looking at her (Mom and I were only a few rows from the stage), I have a feeling she's had some work done. I could be wrong, she might just have awesome genes, but someone pushing seventy doesn't usually look so pretty. At any rate, she's definitely got class. While Robert's got the whole playful imp shtick going on, Michele is very composed and mature with a dynamite smile. Like Robert, she starred in the original Broadway version of How to Succeed. Unlike Robert, though, she didn't get her part until about a year into the run, after the original Rosemary dropped out. So Mom didn't get to see Michele Lee on stage. Another difference between her and Robert is that she didn't do much formal acting study. She said the best education she ever got was understudying Rosemary that first year and then playing Rosemary for the rest of the run. "Broadway was my education," she said. Her reprisal of the Rosemary character for the film was her film debut. She was in her mid twenties at that point, and there was no looking back. Her bread and butter didn't come from film, though, but from TV. She worked with legends like Danny Kaye and Dick Van Dyke. She even had her own eponymous show for a year or so in the mid seventies. But it was in the late seventies, when Michele was in her late thirties, that life, and TV, changed forever with the debut of a nighttime soap called Knots Landing. I never watched a single episode during its time on the air, and that's no small feat. You try avoiding one of the most popular shows on primetime that starts when you're three and ends a year before you graduate high school. Wow, that's hard to wrap my brain around. It was a spinoff from Dallas, another popular primetime soap from my youth. I'm not sure why they spun it off Dallas since Knots Landing, from what I've gathered, had virtually no connection in terms of plot or anything. The title refers to the setting, a coastal California town that's a fictional version of Malibu or some such place. It follows a bunch of couples and their various trials and tribulations. One of the couples is related to the Ewings from Dallas, and that's pretty much where the connection begins and ends. See what I mean? What was the point of the Ewing connection? Marketing purposes so people would watch the show? Dallas was pretty popular, after all. That "who shot J.R.?" episode still has some of the highest ratings TV's ever seen. Anywho, suffice it to say I didn't appreciate seeing Michele Lee remotely as much as my mom did, or as much as the older TV buffs in the audience. Michele Lee's a TV legend thanks to Knots Landing.
Matt's interview with Robert and Michele was the last item on the agenda before they started the movie. Pretty interesting stuff, huh? Events like this make living in L.A. fun. And I'm really happy Mom got to be here to see it. She was tickled beyond words at all the memory lanes she got to stroll down. Speaking of strolling, as we were strolling up the aisle after the show, she tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to our right. There was Robert Morse, smack in the middle of a throng of fans, chatting them up, flashing that signature gap-toothed smile. We slowed a bit, and for a second I thought Mom was going to elbow her way in to get Robert's attention. She didn't in the end. Too many people.
Last Remaining Seats is the Conservancy's way of promoting BBB while shining the spotlight on these gorgeous old theaters. When they show these old classic flicks, every Wednesday usually starting in mid/late May through June, they typically use the three most fully restored theaters: Los Angeles, Million Dollar, and Orpheum. The Palace Theatre is also fit for duty, but they haven't screened anything there since I became a member in early 2008 after reading the cover story about them and Last Remaining Seats in Westways, the magazine for the Southern California Auto Club.
Up to this point, I've only ever gone to these things by myself, which is what makes tonight extra special. My mom came with me! She lives in North Carolina and is visiting me the second half of May. Usually she visits me in August. Indeed, from 2001 to last year she never missed an August (I've lived in L.A. since '98). She retired earlier this year on her sixty-fifth birthday after twenty-five years of steadfast service to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. For the last thirteen of those years she was the personnel manager. No, not one of the personnel managers, THE personnel manager for the entire university. Yes, it's just as daunting as it sounds, which is why there was never a good time of the year for her to visit. August was relatively calm, nestled as it is between the summer sessions and the fall term, but that didn't stop the work from piling up. Every August for the past decade, it's been the same routine: She abandons her station for ten days to visit me....and then flies back to the suck fest backlog. But now she's retired! The icing on the cake is that her state pension and social security add up to a few ducats more than what she made during the rat race. Yes, you read that right: She's taking in more retired than she was as a working stiff. Pretty cool, huh? We should all be so lucky.
At any rate, since she's retired, we decided she could visit during the second half of May instead of waiting for the ceremonial ten days in August. We were already pondering this visit last August when she was here and I was starting to get theater brochures in the mail. At this point, after twelve years in L.A., I've attended shows at my fair share of the city's venues. You only have to go once to end up on their mailing list. And since most theater seasons are structured like school years, from September to June, that makes August a busy month for my local USPS carrier. And it's become a ritual for my mom over the years during her August visits to peruse and salivate over the brochures while bemoaning the lack of such culture in her area. That said, though, her area of North Carolina, called the Triangle (Chapel Hill along with Durham and the state capital of Raleigh) is doing much better than when I lived with her in the late eighties (my middle school years). That they can't compete with L.A. just makes the Triangle part of a large club. A lot of the best actors live here. Lots of people move here to attempt a career on the boards, not to speak of film and TV. So of course we've got a ton of theaters here. Anyway, when Mom was here last August, she looked over all the brochures and saw several shows she was interested in seeing, all being staged in May. We didn't iron out anything, it was just talk at that point.
When I visited her during the holidays four months later, we sat back down to take another look and decided the second half of May would be ideal. By the time she goes home next week, we'll have seen four plays at four different theaters. One of the plays was this past Sunday: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying at the Freud Playhouse on UCLA campus. When not being used by the students, Freud Playhouse is home to the Reprise! theater company led by Jason Alexander (George Costanza from Seinfeld). In fact, that one guy from Seinfeld who played J. Peterman, John O'Hurley, was in the production. He was a stitch as J.B. Biggley, the boss man who heads the World Wide Wicket Company. Rudy Vallee played him in the movie we saw tonight. This was the first time we saw John O'Hurley on stage, but it should've been the second. When Mom was here last August, we saw Spamalot downtown at the Ahmanson. John O'Hurley was cast in one of the main roles. I forget which one. It was either the role played by Eric Idle or Tim Curry in the original Broadway production. Unfortunately he was sick the day we went. We forgot about that soon enough, though. Spamalot was a side splitter. If it comes to a playhouse near you, get ye there post haste.
On our way to the movie tonight, I decided to take Mom to my favorite watering hole in all of Los Angeles: Ye Rustic Inn in Los Feliz. I have to admit I was vacillating about taking her there. It ain't exactly Spago. Or even The Cheesecake Factory. It's a hole in the wall in one of those nondescript stripmalls that seem to exist outside of time. The ceiling's low, the lighting's shitty, and the jukebox is jammin' with the best selection of tunes of any bar I've ever been to. It's just a really fun place. The vast majority of the barkeeps are young women aspiring to be actresses. Read: They're all adorable. Oh yeah, the drink selection is pretty good too. And the food menu's got great variety considering it's just a bar. Indeed, if you ever make it there, try the Buffalo wings. I work with this guy from Buffalo, and he's one of the daintiest, pickiest eaters I've ever known. Team lunches always promise drama when he comes along. His home town is of course the birthplace of the eponymous wings. And he says that Ye Rustic Inn has hands down the best wings of anyplace outside Buffalo. Considering his picky taste plus the fact that he visited many a spot during his touring musician days back in the eighties and nineties, that is extremely high praise. Mom and I got there just before Happy Hour, hence the vacant booth right in front of the bar. We decided to go the sampler route: Six wings, a few cheese sticks and some other stuff. If you're ever there and you want a hearty meal, try the Myrtle burger, named after the woman who founded Ye Rustic. I had that the first time I went there about five years ago. Taking Mom to Ye Rustic wasn't as awkward as I thought. She's a pretty cool and laid back kat. In hindsight my vacillation seems kind of silly.
So with our bellies full, we took the surface streets from Ye Rustic to downtown. It was the first time I'd taken this route, but I knew Wilshire Blvd. was south of Ye Rustic, and once you're on that, it's a straight shot east into downtown. We parked in that garage beneath Pershing Square, right in the heart of downtown. Since tonight's screening was at the Los Angeles Theatre, the closest Last Remaining Seats theater to Pershing Square, the L.A. Conservancy had volunteers outside the parking structure handing out validation stickers to slap on our parking machine tickets so that we'd only have to pay five dollars instead of the usual weeknight flat fee of six sixty. Not a huge difference, I know, but the Conservancy tries.
The Los Angeles Theatre is my favorite theater on Broadway. So far, anyway. A bunch have yet to be restored, but of the few that have been, this one's tops. It doesn't look like much from the outside. It's got a tall, thin, townhouse-type facade with glittering gold and red signage. But when you walk in, as the below photos attest, it's like, "Whoa!" Los Angeles is actually the "newest" of the twelve Broadway "cinema playhouses," as they were called in the beforetimes. It opened in January 1931 with the Chaplin movie City Lights, and when you go in, one of the first things you see on the wall is a photo of Charlie himself attending the City Lights premiere with Albert Einstein of all people. No joke. They're the last people you'd expect to be pals. Anyways, back to the jaw-dropping lobby, the first thing that strikes you about it are those grand, gargantuan chandeliers, right out of a period movie. You've also got mirrors, that crystal fountain up on the second level, and a sunburst motif that supposedly alludes to Louis XIV, France's so-called Sun King. The restrooms downstairs are humongous. If only all movie theater restrooms were that big. That might be another reason I prefer the Los Angeles over the other Broadway theaters. The other ones have much smaller restrooms. Lines are inevitable. Hey, this might be a fine point to you, but you're not the one with the micro bladder.
When the Los Angeles originally opened, it had all kinds of interesting features that hadn't been heard of before and for the most part haven't been heard of since. I'm guessing that's because movies just aren't the big events they obviously were in the thirties, so why spend all that money on something like an electric sign outside the auditorium that tells you how many vacant seats are left? Although I have to say that sounds incredibly convenient. I mean, even today I think people would appreciate knowing, as they hurry into the auditorium with their 'corn and soda pop, how packed the place is so they can brace themselves (or not) accordingly. That lower level where the restrooms are used to have a playroom for the kids, and what is now the ladies' room used to be much more posh, with sixteen private "compartments," as they used to say, each one finished in a different marble. You believe that? Another world back then, kids. But wait, it gets better. Let's say you had to get up to relieve yourself in the middle of a show. Have no fear, movie fan, because when you descended to that super lounge below, a periscope-type apparatus projected the film onto a smaller screen so that you could catch the action on the way to and from the restroom. Is that not awesome or what? Again, like the seat vacancy sign, that would be so bloody handy today. But I reckon that type of thing would only work in a single-screen theater. How the heck would you handle that in today's zillion-screen gigaplexes?
Interesting backstory about Mom's connection to How to Succeed in Business. She actually got to see the original Broadway production back in the early sixties. It was a smashing success and ran for several years. Mom's dad, the grandfather I never knew, died in September 1962. How to Succeed in Business opened about a year before, so she must have seen it in that window. Certainly not after her dad died. The family pretty much went to shit after that (more on that some other time, some other place). Anyway, tonight when we were at Ye Rustic, Mom said that their trip to New York to see the Broadway show was her introduction to the East Coast. They had such a great time that they came back just a few months later to see I Can Get It for You Wholesale, another successful Broadway show that starred an unknown nineteen-year-old named....Barbra Streisand. And just to show you that Mom's dad did okay for himself, on both of those trips they stayed at the St. Regis. You ever stay there? Unless you've got money to burn, probably not. What's more, Mom's family was from L.A., which makes such a trip all the more ambitious. I've been to the St. Regis a couple times to have drinks in the King Cole Bar on the ground floor. It's funny, the first time I went there, in 2005 or thereabouts, I had no idea the place had been Mom's East Coast home away from home. I only heard of it thanks to the James Bond novel Live and Let Die (1954). The plot of the novel, which bares only a skeletal resemblance to the 1973 film (Roger Moore's first outing as Bond), is roughly divided into thirds, and that first third sees Bond staying in New York to investigate the Harlem gangster Mister BIG. Well, when he arrives in New York at the beginning, he holes up in a top-floor suite at the St. Regis. After freshening up, he heads down to the ground floor to have drinks in the King Cole Bar with his American spy pal Felix Leiter. When I read that scene, I knew I had to get to the King Cole Bar somehow, someway.
Interesting how life brings you full circle, isn't it? Mom was tickled to death at seeing the play again as well as the film, both in the same week, back in her hometown. And the gravy, ladies and gentlemen? Before the movie started tonight, there was a Q&A up on the stage with the two leads from the movie: Robert Morse and Michele Lee. And conducting the interview was Matthew Weiner, the brain behind the TV show Mad Men. That makes sense, right? One of the reasons that show's all but critic proof is due to how well it evokes the sixties, the same era as How to Succeed in Business. Not that I would know. Neither my mom nor I have ever watched Mad Men, but it's cool the Conservancy got Matthew Weiner to host tonight's event.
I forgot to mention that the Conservancy started a new initiative this year called the Sixties Turn 50. They set up a whole website for it and everything, separate from their main laconservancy.org site. Tonight before the show, when I went down to use the restroom, I noticed over in that area between the men's and ladies' rooms, that spacious plot of wood flooring that was originally the kids' play area, the Conservancy's Modern Committee (or Mod Com, as they call it) had a bunch of tables set up with various pamphlets and brochures plugging the Sixties Turn 50. Standing around like robotic Conservancy volunteer greeters were those black kiosks, each with a flatscreen monitor looping footage of various sixties architecture around L.A. County. Last fall the Mod Com put on a sixties tour in L.A.'s South Bay area. I kind of wish I'd gone now after seeing the Mod Com's setup tonight. The tour was called "It's a Mod, Mod, Mod, Mod City." I love that. Extra props for alluding to a popular movie...from the sixties! Anyway, the tour, as I later read in a recap in the Conservancy newsletter, took folks to sixties gems such as St. Jerome Catholic Church, the LAX Theme Building (I've always wanted to go in there!), IBM Aerospace HQ, The Proud Bird Restaurant, Imperial Terminal Flight Path Learning Center & Museum, and Northrop Grumman Space Park Campus. These were among the buildings being looped on the kiosks. Bravo to the Mod Com! It really was an impressive setup and a great use of all that space downstairs.
When the lights went down at 8pm, the first item on the program, as always, had Conservancy head Linda Dishman come out and welcome everyone and give a special thanks to the sponsors, the companies and wealthy individuals who sponsored both tonight as well as the Last Remaining Seats series as a whole. After that, she invited Matthew Weiner out to the stage to interview him for a few minutes.
The man in charge of one of the most popular shows on TV today, Matt Weiner is a humble, unassuming guy. He's in his mid forties and balding. He smiles easily, but you can tell he's a smart, serious guy as well. Linda asked him a bit about his background and particularly his interest in conservancy. Matt said that, while he's originally from Baltimore, he did a good bit of his growing up in L.A. When he was eleven (in 1976, the same year I was born), his family left Baltimore and settled in L.A.'s Hancock Park neighborhood. That right there tells me his parents must've done okay for themselves. He didn't mention what they did for a living, but Hancock Park is a beautiful historic neighborhood created in the 1920s by an oil magnate named George Hancock. It's 4400 acres of land George inherited from his dad, who in turn bought up the land when it was part of the larger Rancho La Brea. I know this thanks to the book Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles by Valley native--and sometime Book Fest attendee--Kevin Roderick. Hancock Park really is a gorgeous neighborhood. It's one of those neighborhoods you've probably seen in a movie or TV show, with those manicured lawns and palm trees lining the broad streets in perfect symmetry against the clear blue sky and, if you're facing north, the Hollywood sign off yonder. But seeing it on screen doesn't do it justice. When you're in L.A., it's definitely worth a drive-through and a look-see. Matt credited his growing up in Hancock Park with his interest in preserving historic architecture. It was during those years that he watched a lot of historic structures around L.A. fall into disrepair and decay. I reckon that makes some sense, sad as it is. The Conservancy wasn't founded until 1978, and of course it took them a while to find their legs. Until they came along, L.A. didn't have an organization to protect its history.
Even though Mad Men is set in New York, Matt said he shoots quite a bit of it in L.A. That's not exactly rare. CSI New York is shot entirely in L.A., the Valley specifically. That was why Gary Sinise agreed to do it. The producers wanted to shoot in New York, but Lieutenant Dan didn't want to be away from his family for big chunks of the year. CSI Miami, meanwhile, is mostly shot in Long Beach. So Matt's shooting here isn't unprecedented or anything, but it's nonetheless a very conscious decision on his part to support his adopted hometown's economy. He did share a New York shooting story, though. When he shot the Mad Men pilot in 2006, he used a building on Lexington St. When they returned the following year to shoot the rest of the first season, that building had been demolished. Suffice it to say he was indignant, not just from a producer's standpoint, but from the standpoint of someone who cares more and more about historic preservation as he gets older. I loved what he said when Linda asked him what the message of Mad Men was: "Stop tearing shit down." That got a lot of applause and no mistake.
Okay then, that brings us to the next item on tonight's bill before the movie started: Matt Weiner interviewing Robert Morse and Michele Lee. Matt and Robert already have a strong, friendly rapport from Mad Men. I didn't know until tonight that Robert Morse is on that show. He's been in nearly every episode apparently. For someone turning eighty next May, he sure has a lot of energy. He's still sort of like his character from How to Succeed, all smiling and friendly, but with a shade of mischief. I'm not sure why I say he's mischievous, although that gap-toothed grin sure doesn't help. He talked a little about how he fell into acting, and he certainly fell in early. He saw a play when he was a wee tot and knew acting was his calling. He studied with Lee Strasberg when he was still in high school(!) before scoring his first theatrical role in On the Town when he was eighteen. The only film work worth mentioning from those early years are roles that carried over from his theatrical gigs, playing a character he himself originated in the play on which the movie was based. We're talking flicks like The Matchmaker (he played Barnaby Tucker) as well as Say, Darling, Take Me Along and, of course, How to Succeed in Business. This is why Mom was so tickled to see him in person tonight and why tonight completes a circle of sorts. She saw him when he originated the role of J. Pierpont Finch, the role for which he won the first of his two Tonys (the second one didn't come until about thirty years later, for playing Truman Capote in Tru).
While Robert Morse is an East Coaster born on the New York stage, Michele Lee is L.A. born and bred. She's about ten or so years younger than Robert and looks even younger than that. Although I couldn't tell looking at her (Mom and I were only a few rows from the stage), I have a feeling she's had some work done. I could be wrong, she might just have awesome genes, but someone pushing seventy doesn't usually look so pretty. At any rate, she's definitely got class. While Robert's got the whole playful imp shtick going on, Michele is very composed and mature with a dynamite smile. Like Robert, she starred in the original Broadway version of How to Succeed. Unlike Robert, though, she didn't get her part until about a year into the run, after the original Rosemary dropped out. So Mom didn't get to see Michele Lee on stage. Another difference between her and Robert is that she didn't do much formal acting study. She said the best education she ever got was understudying Rosemary that first year and then playing Rosemary for the rest of the run. "Broadway was my education," she said. Her reprisal of the Rosemary character for the film was her film debut. She was in her mid twenties at that point, and there was no looking back. Her bread and butter didn't come from film, though, but from TV. She worked with legends like Danny Kaye and Dick Van Dyke. She even had her own eponymous show for a year or so in the mid seventies. But it was in the late seventies, when Michele was in her late thirties, that life, and TV, changed forever with the debut of a nighttime soap called Knots Landing. I never watched a single episode during its time on the air, and that's no small feat. You try avoiding one of the most popular shows on primetime that starts when you're three and ends a year before you graduate high school. Wow, that's hard to wrap my brain around. It was a spinoff from Dallas, another popular primetime soap from my youth. I'm not sure why they spun it off Dallas since Knots Landing, from what I've gathered, had virtually no connection in terms of plot or anything. The title refers to the setting, a coastal California town that's a fictional version of Malibu or some such place. It follows a bunch of couples and their various trials and tribulations. One of the couples is related to the Ewings from Dallas, and that's pretty much where the connection begins and ends. See what I mean? What was the point of the Ewing connection? Marketing purposes so people would watch the show? Dallas was pretty popular, after all. That "who shot J.R.?" episode still has some of the highest ratings TV's ever seen. Anywho, suffice it to say I didn't appreciate seeing Michele Lee remotely as much as my mom did, or as much as the older TV buffs in the audience. Michele Lee's a TV legend thanks to Knots Landing.
Matt's interview with Robert and Michele was the last item on the agenda before they started the movie. Pretty interesting stuff, huh? Events like this make living in L.A. fun. And I'm really happy Mom got to be here to see it. She was tickled beyond words at all the memory lanes she got to stroll down. Speaking of strolling, as we were strolling up the aisle after the show, she tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to our right. There was Robert Morse, smack in the middle of a throng of fans, chatting them up, flashing that signature gap-toothed smile. We slowed a bit, and for a second I thought Mom was going to elbow her way in to get Robert's attention. She didn't in the end. Too many people.
