The most significant birthday? The series itself is 25 years old!

Linda Dishman, the Conservancy’s executive director, shares her thoughts and feelings with arts·meme.

Says Linda: “It’s interesting that we started Last Remaining Seats to bring attention to the theaters [of Broadway] and now, 25 years later, we see how the neighborhood has blossomed. Where there were once empty buildings, people are now living.”

Separate to the Conservancy’s  celebration is the individual theaters who have survived, god bless ‘em, in a tear down town. The Palace Theater turns 100 years old; its launch date was June 26, 1911.

“The Sunset Boulevard show [at the Palace] is special because we have three screenings, a 10 am, 2 pm, and 7pm show. We sold out the afternoon and the evening screenings within three days, and now the 10 am is sold out too.”

“What started as a great idea has become an L.A. summer tradition,” notes Dishman.

♦  ♦  ♦

LRS film sked here:

_{Orpheum photo:  courtesy Berger Conser Photography}

Like this? We love LRS. Read more:

• Tony Curtis, forever young
• “Peter Pan” at LRS
• Liza with a Z at “Last Remaining Seats”
• Girl Power

Curtis was a real movie star, a huge one, who labored, lived, and loved in old Hollywood. Adieu!

More:

• Dave Kehr’s obituary for Curtis in the New York Times.

Second star to the right … and straight on till morning.

With that lovely language, Peter Pan ‘google-maps’ his Neverland address, informing his new buddy Wendy where he and the tribe of Lost Boys reside.

The fetching 1924 silent-movie version of the J.M. Barrie classic charmed nearly 2,000 adults who poured into the Orpheum Theater last night for the season finale of Los Angeles Conservancy’s great community event, Last Remaining Seats.

Tonic for the troubled soul — that’s how “Peter Pan”‘s sweet-natured story struck this viewer. Silent film music maestro Robert Israel‘s colorful organ accompaniment added rich dimension, illustrating the film’s story line and characters with amusing samplings from Tchaikovsky, Wagner, and Saint-Saens.

The most wondrous sequence, for me, comes when Peter first pops in the children’s open window. He hopes to reclaim his shadow, which Mrs. Darling has wrested from him and folded neatly into a dresser drawer.

[As a kid, raised on the Mary Martin telecast, this idea had me in total shock.]

Retrieving it, he cries: “My shadow won’t stick on!”

Wishing to help, Wendy, in nurturing-mother mode, carefully threads a needle. She then grasps the squirming urchin by his extended foot, and sews on the black body suit, attaching it at the toe. Back in one piece, Peter springs to his feet and erupts into a devilish dance, his shadow leaping in complicity on the bedroom floor beneath him.

The heart-in-throat beauty of this moment, and overhead lighting that casts Peter’s angular shadow are the work of cinematographer James Wong Howe, pictured above.

The fun evening included an oh-wow demonstration of a private collection of vintage movie curtains.

photos: mardecortesbaja.com and don koks

• Even in 1924, Peter Pan wouldn’t grow up
  

I'm very excited to see PETER PAN (1924), the delicious silent film offering of the Los Angeles Conservancy's annual summer film fest, Last Remaining Seats at the Orpheum Theatre Wednesday night. It's the film event of the summer.

The über-gorgeous Anna May Wong plays (an American Indian) Tiger Lily in this early version of the James M. Barrie tale.

An L.A. girl from her birth here in 1905 till her death in Santa Monica in 1961, Wong ranked among early cinema's top exotic beauties. Her screen persona was distinctive and, in retrospect, controversial.  

(To see Anna May Wong hanging out with Marlene Dietrich and German director Leni Reifenstahl, click here.)

In 1935 MGM refused to consider Wong for the leading role in THE GOOD EARTH, instead casting German-born actress Luise Rainer to play O-Lan in "yellow face." The lovely Luise was just honored at last month's TCM fest.

Anna May Wong's story is beautifully told in a documentary that aired in 2008 on Turner Classic Movies.

Another important Chinese-American artist contributing to "Peter Pan" is cinematographer James Wong Howe. We just saw Howe's gritty New York City location shooting in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957) at TCM Fest. I thought the camera work was the film's best element – and that's saying a lot in view of its hard-boiled Clifford Odets dialogue and great performances by its two leading men.

Leonard Maltin, who always does a fantastic job, will host the "Peter Pan" screening at the sumptuous and tasteful Orpheum. Organist Robert Israel will thump on the vintage theater's mighty (original) Wurlitzer.

This theater has 2,000 seats. Repeat: 2,000 seats. Wait till you see the throngs of Angelenos queuing outside this grand remnant of Broadway's prior glory, when the boulevard was home to eleven movie palaces.

Unbelievable kid-style fun for grown ups.

Peter Pan | Los Angeles Conservancy's "Last Remaining Seats" | Orpheum Theatre | Wednesday June 30

Like this?  Read more about Last Remaining Seats:

• Liza in CABARET
• Marilyn & Jane in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES
  

Nothing in our city compares to it as a community event. (Lakers fans may disagree!)

To sit in the faded remains of downtown’s glamorous vintage theaters, chock-a-block with an excited, engaged, clapping, laughing, appreciative audience, watching classic films as they are meant to be projected is a fantastic experience.

This week we enjoyed Bob Fosse’s great genre-busting musical, CABARET, projected on the huge screen of the Los Angeles Theater (Charles S. Lee, 1931) to a capacity crowd of nearly 2,000.

Michael York introduced the film, full of stories praising his director and his leading lady. We then witnessed, in total wonderment, Liza Minnelli’s astonishing talent as Sally Bowles. Truly her father’s daughter!

The home-run event of the summer was Howard Hawks’s comic masterpiece, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), projected on the humongous screen of the vintage Los Angeles Theater (1931) on Broadway in downtown L.A.

Viewed as oversized fleshy Amazons whose umpteen parts miraculously move together, MM and Jane Russell cruise through this nutty film, singing, dancing, and acting in an explosion of girl power you just don’t see any more in film … or in life. Both bombshells give impeccable comic readings of Charles Lederer’s hilarious script, which recounts their travails navigating the male world — getting what they want at every turn. Men are seen as hapless suckers who the clever lasses outmaneuveur repeatedly, while remaining loyal girlfriends to the end.

The killer line comes when La Monroe confronts her suspicious and disapproving (wealthy) father-in-law to be. She states indignantly, “I don’t want to marry your son for his money.”  Big pause, pouty frown, then she clarifies, ”I want to marry your son for your money!” Ba-da-boom!

An appreciative audience of 2,000 at the Los Angeles Theatre howled at lines like this. And then drooled over high-fifties glam accessories like hats, gloves, handbags, shoes, blood-red fingernails, and of course diamonds.

Stand-out costumes include Jane Russell’s black halter-top/capri pant ensemble in which she struts her formidable stuff in ”Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love?”.

And then there’s Monroe, wrapped like a loose burrito in a fuchsia sheath that stays up despite every law of gravity. Did they use glue? Surely the mother of all evening gowns! Rent this movie and start laughing out loud!