History

Alexander Pantages built a cinema and vaudeville circuit that by the late 1920s was one of the two or three largest in the United States, competing directly with the Loew’s and Marcus Publix chains for first-run film product and live performance bookings. His chief architect, B. Marcus Priteca, had designed dozens of Pantages houses across the Pacific Coast and Mountain West since the 1910s; the Hollywood Boulevard flagship was their most ambitious collaboration. Priteca developed an Art Deco vocabulary for the Pantages circuit that was distinct from both the Spanish Baroque of Thomas Lamb and the French Renaissance of Rapp & Rapp—a more angular, geometrically assertive mode that used bronze, terrazzo, and gilded plasterwork in a way that felt native to the California culture of conspicuous innovation.

Alexander Pantages sold the circuit in 1929—before the Hollywood Boulevard theatre opened—following a criminal conviction (later overturned) and financial pressure from the Depression. The RKO Pictures corporation acquired the building and operated it as the RKO Pantages Theatre through the late 1940s and into the 1950s. During this period, from 1950 to 1959, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held its annual ceremony at the Pantages; the building’s glamour, seating capacity, and Hollywood Boulevard address made it the ideal setting for the event. Howard Hughes purchased the building in 1949 and operated it as a first-run cinema until 1977.

Pacific Theatres acquired the building and operated it through the late twentieth century before a conversion to live theatre was completed. Today the Pantages is the primary Los Angeles venue for Broadway touring productions, operated by Nederlander Concerts. Its designation as an LACM and NRHP listing have supported successive restoration campaigns that have maintained the original ornamental programme.