Hollywood Palladium (Los Angeles, California)

USA / California / West Hollywood / Los Angeles, California / Sunset Boulevard, 6215
 theatre, shows, concert hall, movie / film / TV location, music venue
6215 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90028-8704
(323) 962-7600
www.livenation.com/venue/KovZpZAEAlaA/hollywood-palladi...

In October of 1940 the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and its new singer, a skinny 24-year-old New Jersey crooner named Frank Sinatra, welcomed a cheering crowd to opening night at the Hollywood Palladium. Dorothy Lamour was there to snip the ribbon, spangled with orchids, and as Jack Benny, Judy Garland and Lana Turner looked on, hundreds of couples danced the jitterbug on a 11,200-square-foot dance floor made of maple wood.
With its coral and chromium interior, Streamlined Moderne swoops and shimmering chandeliers, the Palladium that night must have seemed like a dreamy refuge in a world that was growing darker by the day. German bombs were falling every night in London, but beneath the searchlights of Sunset Boulevard, all the young lovers were swaying in a Hollywood champagne fantasy.
Still, when Sinatra sang the band's No. 1 hit, "I'll Never Smile Again," how many of those 3,000 couples held each other and fretted about the future?
Flash forward to 2008:
That golden night in 1940 might be difficult to envision for anyone who attended the last shows at the Palladium. In October 2007 British singer Morrissey planned to play 10 nights at the battered and creaky venue, but two of the shows were canceled after a water pipe ruptured and added to the building's already considerable dankness. The club was shuttered and a $20-million overhaul began.
"We ripped the roof off the joint, literally," says the president of California operations for Live Nation, the concert promotion company that signed a 20-year lease and is handling the lion's share of renovation costs. "Our entire goal is to bring the building back to what it was like that first night but also to make it modern."
That back-to-the-future effort means a meticulous revival of architect Gordon B. Kaufmann's original vision along with the installation of modern-day amenities, such as recessed LED lighting with 20,000 possible accent colors, wheelchair ramps, a new concessions area, more bathrooms, a movable stage, steel rigging for elaborate concert productions, etc.
The renovation has not been entirely smooth. There was a union dispute that put a picket line out front, and there was consternation about the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency loan needed by Live Nation's landlord, Newport Capital Advisors, to pay for the exterior remodeling.
The history of the building is like the district around it, long seasons of klieg-light glamour followed by years of a battered, low-rent life. Hollywood got seedy, and the Palladium did, too.
The Palladium means different things to different generations. That happens when you have one building that houses concerts by Glenn Miller and Led Zeppelin, Barbra Streisand and the Who, Ray Charles and the Ramones; it was also the site of "The Lawrence Welk Show" during its hugely popular run in the 1960s. It was from the Palladium that Betty Grable purred to homesick GIs during her weekly wartime radio show and that Lucille Ball and Sinatra handed out Emmy Awards in the 1960s.
In the 1970s, the venue started to lose some of its luster, but was still the place where Paul McCartney, Willie Nelson, the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt all came to pick up their Grammy Awards.
The Palladium was also home to proms, glittery fundraisers and ballroom affairs, with John F. Kennedy and at least five other presidents or presidents-to-be passing through its doors to work the room in a very different sort of dance. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was feted there after he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. The Palladium has been the place where fashion models strutted the catwalk, wrestlers jumped from the top rope and car-show exhibitors brought their sedans.
Back in the 1930s, the Palladium was the vision of movie producer Maurice M. Cohen, who aspired to open the largest dance floor in town and one that basked in the star power of Hollywood.
The property was the site of the original Paramount lot. Its top-notch talent made it a common ground for celebrities and tourists, the place that was regal enough for Rita Hayworth, Tyrone Power and Lana Turner but also cheap enough for their fans. In the 1940s, the cover was $1 and dinner cost $3.
It was the Big Band Era and the Palladium was the magic place, the dance floor where everyone came together.
After the golden era, the grand old hall was getting scruffier. In 1964, a jazz festival turned ugly when the performers, angry with the promoter, stomped offstage right before the surly crowd started throwing bottles. It was a hint of the venue's edgier future. For rock and punk fans coming up in the 1980s, the Palladium was a bare-bones hub, albeit with vintage chandeliers.
Live Nation hopes the restoration will tilt some of the live-music scene back toward Hollywood after the opening of the Nokia Theatre in downtown Los Angeles by rival AEG.

Artist's rendering, courtesy of Live Nations, shows how the renovated Palladium is expected to look by early 2009.
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Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Palladium
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Coordinates:   34°5'54"N   118°19'27"W

Comments

  • save this place. It is threaten for demolition.
  • It is actually getting refurbed
  • Lawrence Welk filmed his TV shows here and this is the place where the Blues Brothers filmed the interiors for the "palace Hotel Ballroom" concert for the movie.
This article was last modified 2 years ago