a Mighty Wurlitzer then and now

When Louise Brooks' first film first played in San Francisco, it was at the Granada Theater at 1066 Market Street. The Street of Forgotten Men opened there on August 8, 1925 and played for a week. (Seven days was a typical run for a first run film in a big city during the Twenties.) The film received very good reviews in the local press.

The Granada Theater was an opulent, Andalusian-style movie palace. It was part of Publix, a chain of movie theaters allied with Paramount - Famous Players Lasky. As a result, all but two of Brooks' Paramount features opened in San Francisco at the Granada. The films which showed there were

The Street of Forgotten Men (Aug. 8-14, 1925)
The American Venus (Jan. 9-15, 1926)
A Social Celebrity (Apr. 24-30, 1926)
It’s the Old Army Game (May 29 – June 4, 1926)
Love Em and Leave Em (Jan. 8-14, 1927)
Evening Clothes (Mar. 19-25, 1927)
Rolled Stockings (Aug. 13-19, 1927)
City Gone Wild (Nov. 5-11, 1927)
Canary Murder Case (Feb. 8-14, 1929)

The Granada was a real old fashioned movie palace. When it opened in November of 1921, it had an operating staff of 122 people! In addition to its opulent interior, the Paramount also boasted a 4 manual, 32 rank Wulitzer organ. It was, at the time, the largest such instrument in the United States. When the Granada changed names in 1931 - the theater was renamed the Paramount - the organ remained. And, as a matter of fact, the theater's Mighty Wurlitzer remained on site till the Paramount closed in April of 1965.

All this is to say that you can hear this very instrument played in the very theater which screened so many Louise Brooks films. (Isn't that kinda time trippy!) On the following webpage, you can listen to a recording of a live 1964 radio broadcast of the Paramount Wurlitzer near the end of its life in San Francisco:

http://www.bayarearadio.org/audio/kpen/kpen_wurlitzer_1964.shtml

If you are interested in learning more about the Granada Theater, follow this link to a webpage on the outstanding Cinema Treasures website. There, you can also find links to interior and exterior images of the theater dating from the 1920's.

Arcadia books

Chances are, you’ve seen Arcadia Publishing books in your local bookstore. They are the photo-filled paperbacks (with often sepia color covers) that document the local histories of communities, business, schools, sports and ethnic groups across the nation. I own a bunch of them, mostly books about the San Francisco Bay Area (where I live now) and the Detroit area (where I grew up). Among my Bay Area books are a couple on the movie theaters of San Francisco and Oakland - each of which have made for interesting reading in local history.

During my December trip to Detroit, I picked up a just published book on Detroit's Downtown Movie Palaces, which has also proved to be quite interesting. In that book, I was able to see images of a few of the theaters where Louise Brooks' films first played in the Motor City. Another recent acquisition is The Chicago Movie Palaces of Balaban and Katz.

I was especially interested in this title because - through my research - I know that all of Brooks' American silent films played in Chicago, and usually at a Balaban and Katz theater. (Balaban and Katz, the dominant theater chain in the Windy City, were also the primary exhibitors of Paramount films in Chicago.) Thus I was not suprised to see The Canary Murder Case (1929) advertised on the marquee of the Uptown theater (as depicted on page 74 of this book).

A few other titles from Arcadia which I hope to check out eventually include Cleveland's Playhouse Square (the cover image depicts a marquee trumpeting the name of Ethel Shutta - Brooks' one time co-star in the Follies), Stepping Out in Cincinnati: Queen City   Entertainment 1900-1960, and South Jersey Movie Houses. I am interested in the history of theaters, and like local history. These books make for great reading.