Ryan P. Wilson
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Built as a silent picture movie house in 1926, Carthay Circle Theater had fifteen hundred and eighteen seats, and rivaled Grauman’s Chinese Theater in opulence. From the tile work to the top of the tower, fountains, reliefs, busts, chandeliers, and paintings filled this single screen theater. This monument to Spanish Baroque architecture was the work of A. Dwight Gibbs, who also designed the Mesa Theatre and helped design the Pasadena Playhouse. You can see the Carthay Circle Theater in all of its splendor below in a photograph from the Los Angeles Times photographic archive, the film being shown in the photograph is Life of Emile Zola.
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So, where does Carthay Circle Theater fit into the Disney story? As it turns out, the theater was the venue chosen to host the premiere of Walt Disney’s first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The premiere was such a success that there were, reportedly, thirty thousand people on the streets outside who could not get in to attend the premiere. Bringing the story of Disney and the theater full circle, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ premiere at the Carthay Circle Theater is immortalized in a series of three photographs found behind one of the registers in Once Upon A Time.
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1 comment:
Great story!
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