Majestic Theatre, Historic theater in downtown Los Angeles, United States.
The Majestic Theatre was a movie house and stage theater in downtown Los Angeles with two curved balcony levels and an orchestra section that held around 1,600 seats total. The building also featured a basement cafe and a drama instruction space on the eighth floor that could hold up to 250 people.
Asher Hamburger commissioned the Majestic Theatre, designed by Edelman & Barnett and built by Mayberry & Parker in 1908 at a cost of $250,000. Oliver Morosco was the lessee, and the first performance on November 23, 1908, was the Shubert production The Land of Nod starring Knox Wilson. After a 1913 scandal involving Lon Chaney's wife Cleva, the theatre lost favour with Broadway and was converted to a moviehouse with a $5,000 Wurlitzer organ. It closed in 1931 or 1933 and was demolished in 1933.
The proscenium mural by Dutch artist Antoon Molkenboer shows Truth, Comedy, and Drama alongside regional figures like a cowboy and Mexican dancer. These images reflected the diverse culture that shaped Los Angeles during that era.
The auditorium sat on the first five floors of an eight-storey reinforced concrete building, with alleys on both sides serving as emergency exits and giving direct access to the stage. The basement, which extended under the sidewalk, held a cafe open to the whole building, plus dressing rooms and a men's smoking room. The top floor's acting school had its own assembly hall for 250 to 300 people.
The eighth floor held an acting school with its own assembly hall, 30 by 68 feet and seating 250 to 300 people. The building's upper three floors projected over the auditorium, an unusual structural feature for 1908. Three exposed concrete trusses, each column carrying up to 750,000 pounds, supported the suspended metal-and-plaster ceiling.
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