Home » Film & TV » Historical Hollywood » Grauman's Movie Palaces

Grauman's Movie Palaces

© Jenny Lynn Higgins

Sid Grauman had always displayed a talent for pleasing the public. While attending a birthday party where the enthusiasm was waning, a ten-year-old Sid began rounding up children with various talents. The resulting show featured a recitation of amusing poetry plus performances by violin and harmonica players who improvised dance music. When the show was done, Sid directed his friends' attention to group games.

The first time young Sid Grauman saw a movie was at the Cinemagraph theatre in San Francisco. He was so intrigued by this new art form that he got a job at the theatre as a jack-of-all-trades. Sid soon realized how profitable the movie business was becoming and decided to try his luck with it. His father agreed to assist him with starting his own movie theatre. Sid named his first venture the Unique and developed a show that was part live-act and part film. The Unique became a great success. Unfortunately, it and Grauman's second theatre - the Lyceum - were both destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

But even a disaster of that magnitude couldn't stop Sid Grauman. A plan devising in his mind, he bought from a minister a big-top tent and enough pews to seat three thousand people. Only a few days after his theatres had been shaken to their foundations, Grauman was showing movies again. A huge banner proclaimed to moviegoers that there was "nothing to fall on you except canvas." Grauman's canvas theatre - where he showed movies for two years - drew 10,000 people a day.

In 1917, Sid Grauman and his father decided to sell the theatres they had built after the 1906 earthquake and move to Los Angeles. On February 18, 1918, the Graumans' first legendary theatre premiered. Originally an office building, the Million Dollar Theatre had been renovated and redesigned in a gothic/baroque style. The theatre sat 2,345 people and was the largest and most extravagent movie palace on the West Coast. Legends such as Cecil B. deMille, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks were in attendance opening night. The feature was the William S. Hart film "The Silent Man", which was shown following one of the famous Sid Grauman Prologues. These prologues were live song and dance shows that were built around and reflected the theme and mood of the film about to be shown. People went to Grauman's theatres as much for the Prologues as for the movies themselves.

The copyright of the article Grauman's Movie Palaces in Historical Hollywood is owned by Jenny Lynn Higgins. Permission to republish Grauman's Movie Palaces in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.