Ever wonder how the movie industry went from five-cent nickelodeons in New York to the glamour of Hollywood, with red-carpet premieres and the highest of artistic aspirations? Or why a certain pagoda-like Hollywood movie theater in whose courtyard rest footprints of actors is one of the most beloved and frequented tourist sites on the planet?
Look no further than the story of Sid Grauman, whose birth 130 years ago will be celebrated this Saturday, March 14, by the American Cinémathèque with a special tour and talk at his other landmark, the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. The event will be led by volunteer Mark Simon, a Grauman aficionado.
Born Sidney Patrick Grauman in honor of his St. Patrick's Day birthday in 1879, Grauman (at left in photo) always said, "I owe my tremendous success to the Man Upstairs," adding, "but having a name that got the Jews and the Irish behind me was what cinched things."
His childhood took him from Indiana to Colorado and then to Alaska, where he sold newspapers to miners, panned for gold and opened a live theater. (Jack London sold tickets for him, and Grauman's tales of Alaskan hardship reportedly inspired scenes in Chaplin's "The Gold Rush.")
But it was in San Francisco that Grauman found his calling, opening the Unique, featuring vaudeville performers such as Al Jolson, Fatty Arbuckle and Sophie Tucker, as well as movies, including the West Coast premiere of "The Great Train Robbery."
By 1906, Grauman had three theaters, but they all were destroyed by the San Francisco earthquake. Undaunted, Grauman set up a tent purchased from an evangelist on the site of the former Unique, with a sign that promised in the event of another temblor, there would be "nothing to fall on you but canvas." He sold 10,000 tickets a day.
A decade later, Grauman, by then "a very high-profile movie exhibitor," sold his San Francisco theaters to Adolph Zukor, the Hungarian Jewish immigrant and former furrier who founded Paramount Studios and who agreed to back Grauman's move to Los Angeles.
On Feb. 18, 1918, Grauman opened the 2,300-seat Million Dollar Theater in downtown Los Angeles, with Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks in attendance to watch William S. Hart's "The Silent Man" (the theater still stands on Broadway).
To lure people to Hollywood, real estate developer Charles Toberman partnered with Grauman to build a movie palace there. (Toberman was also behind the Hollywood Bowl and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.) Grauman seized upon King Tut mania for the design of his 1,800-seat Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
Grauman staged Hollywood's first movie world premiere at the Egyptian in October 1922 (before then all films opened in New York) for Douglas Fairbanks' "Robin Hood," arguably the actor's most successful film.
Ever the showman, Grauman gave the Egyptian a rectangular forecourt -- perfect for stars to walk between the glow of klieg lights and for fans and photographers to accost them as they walked down a long red carpet to the theater's entrance.
