Los Angeles and the movies grew up together, and a natural extension of the picture business was the premium presentation of the product--the biggest, best, and brightest theatres imaginable. The magnificent movie palaces along Broadway in downtown Los Angeles still represent the highest concentration of vintage theatres in the world. With Hollywood and the movies practically synonymous, the theatres in the studios' neighborhood were state-of-the-art for showbiz, whether they were designed for film, vaudeville, or stage productions. From the elegant Orpheum and the exotic Grauman's Chinese to the modest El Rey, this volume celebrates the architecture and social history of Los Angeles's unique collection of historic theatres past and present. The common threads that connect them all, from the grandest movie palace to the smallest neighborhood theatre, are stories and the ghosts of audiences past waiting in the dark for the show to begin.

The Granada circuit was notable for its many large cinemas with distinctive interiors by the Russian-born designer Theodore Komisarjevsky. Its more opulent buildings, like the celebrated Granadas at Tooting and Woolwich in Gothic idiom, have been aptly described as cathedrals of the movies. This history covers individually the cinemas built and opened by the circuit in the 1930s. It also deals with older Bernstein cinemas, some rebuilt as modern Granadas; the Granadas that were proposed and never built; and the acquisition of numerous cinemas. There is a list of films given a special Granada release and of the famous pantomimes. Also featured are reminiscences by former Granada managers, projectionists and executives, a rich array of photographs (some in full colour), and press advertising.

A pictorial history of the movie theater business of the Balaban and Katz Theater Corporation in Chicago.

Most of the time, there is nothing remarkable about a movie theater today; but that wasn't always the case. When the great American movie palaces began opening in the early 20th century, they were some of the most lavish, stunning buildings ever seen. However, they wouldn't last -- with the advent of in-home television, theater companies found it harder and harder to keep them open. Some were demolished, some were converted, and some remain empty to this day. After the Final Curtain: The Fall of the American Movie Theatre will take you through 24 of these magnificent buildings, revealing the beauty that remains years after the last ticket was sold.

You read the sad stories in the papers: another ornate, 1920s, single-screen theatre closes, to be demolished and replaced by a strip mall. That's progress, and in this 20-screen multiplex world, it's happening more and more. Only a handful of the 100 or so neighborhood theatres that once graced these streets are left in San Francisco, but they live on in the photographs featured in this book. The heyday of such venues as the Clay, Noe, Metro, New Mission, Alexandria, Coronet, Fox, Uptown, Coliseum, Surf, El Rey, and Royal was a time when San Franciscans thronged to the movies and vaudeville shows, dressed to the hilt, to see and be seen in majestic art deco palaces. Unfortunately, this era has passed into history despite the dedicated efforts of many neighborhood preservation groups.

Typescript, dated Rehearsal Draft April 7, 2018. Without music. Unmarked typescript of a musical that opened April 8, 2018, at the August Wilson Theatre, New York, N.Y., directed by Casy Nicholaw.

Dallas was the show business capital of Texas and much of the South throughout the 20th century. More than 100 theatres served the city's neighborhoods, and Elm Street once boasted more than 15 vaudeville and movie theatres--second in number to Broadway. The quality of the show houses in Dallas were surpassed by few cities and all major, and most minor, Hollywood studios maintained Dallas offices. Notable names figuring in this history include Margo Jones, "Blind" Lemon Jefferson, Karl Hoblitzelle, Baruch Lumet, Bob Hope, Greer Garson, Linda Darnell, Howard Hughes, Clyde Barrow, Gene Autry, Oliver Stone, Pappy Dolson, Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald, Nicola Rescigno, Don Henley, and Frank Lloyd Wright.