During the silent era, Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre was a majestic movie palace where Hollywood’s biggest stars premiered their films. The year it opened in 1922, the Egyptian opened Douglas Fairbanks’ iconic “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” It launched Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” in 1923 and Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” in 1925. Situated in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard, only a few blocks from Grauman’s other movie palace, the Chinese Theatre, the Egyptian showcased all the opulence and splendor that was filmmaking.
In the ensuing decades, the Egyptian changed alongside its location, adding and subtracting pieces of the theater — columns were torn down and a glass facade added and taken away — but the majesty of showing one’s film there never diminished.