Downtown LA's Mohican haircut by Bill Kay

Downtown Los Angeles is a graveyard at weekends - with one exception. While office blocks slumber and the cafes and newsstands that serve their worker ants are shuttered, one street bustles with the roaring engines of buses and trucks, and the steady chatter of eager, alert shoppers.
LA's Broadway is a provincial shadow of its progenitor in New York. But, ever since the rich folk abandoned Bunker Hill for Beverly Hills more than 50 years ago it has been reclaimed by the Mexican-Americans who founded and named the city. They keep it busy on a Saturday when, apart from the wonderful public library and a few Starbucks, the rest of downtown is dead. It is as if the district has had a Mohican haircut, with a bushy middle and bald sides.
And among the rows of shops selling souvenirs, clothes, electronics, large-screen televisions and DVDs, a dozen faded, once-grand buildings stand proud, like so many dowager duchesses at a fiesta. They are one of the saddest sights in America: Broadway LA's theatres.
Today I joined the LA Conservancy weekly tour of the theatres. As it is booked solid two months ahead, there is plenty of interest in what has happened to these architectural relics and why.
The tour begins promisingly enough at the Million Dollar Theatre on the corner of 3rd Street, now given over largely to Latin singing stars but still preserved in a condition that would be recognised by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and the many film giants who attended its premieres.
From there, however, the tour sinks into a depressing succession of theatres darkened or converted irrevocably to one form of retail or another. The best-preserved we saw, the State on the corner of 7th Street, is now leased by a Portugese religious group. Some, such as the Orpheum, burst into life occasionally for a one-off show and they are all available for conferences, movie shoots, weddings or whatever legitimate purpose can justify the hire fee.
The saddest was undoubtedly the original Pantages at 534 Broadway. The Pantages name lives on in a highly successful Hollywood theatre that has hosted the Oscar ceremonies and, currently, the hit show Wicked. The Latino manager of the TV store politely showed us through to his store room, which was the auditorium of this 1910 building. A walkway has been built between the tiered rows where seats used to be. The walkway leads up on to the stage, which still has the remnants of lighting and curtains. The proscenium arch and balcony are intact. It is possible to picture the old vaudeville singers, dancers and comedians doing their turns in front of an audience which could not have numbered more than 1,000. In its later years it fell foul of 24-hour film shows, when hobos would pay the nickel entry fee just for somewhere cheap to sleep at night. Next to the Pantages, later renamed the Arcade, is the former Clune's, which became the Cameo and is in a similar state.
The contrast with New York is stark. There, the theatre district has 39 active auditoria. LAs has 17, none operating full-time. Another 14 have been demolished.
The virtual collapse of Broadway LA as an entertainment centre is normally blamed on Sid Grauman, who opened the Million Dollar but a few years later whipped the rug from under Broadway by opening the Egyptian and the Chinese theatres in Hollywood, backed by film premieres that had tremendous headline-grabbing razzmatazz. But Broadway's is also closely linked to downtown's transformation from a wealthy residential area to one that is almost entirely commercial, bar some lofts and apartments. Less publicised but just as tragic has been the closure on the street of a string of huge department stores, now totally overtaken by the modern shopping malls.
A succession of plans have been advanced for the revival of downtown and in particular Broadway, but it is hard to see a future for the theatres unless thousands more people move into the area to live. That will require a transformation that would take a minimum of ten years and cost billions of dollars, quite apart from raising the political snakepit of having to drive out the Mexican-American retailers and their customers. It is, I fear, a lost cause.
The former League of American Theatres and Producers is now known as simply the Broadway League - and that does not embrace LA's Broadway. Life has moved on.