Customer Reviews

The Last Remaining Seats: Movie Palaces in Tinseltown

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The Last Remaining Seats is simply a feast for the eyes for anyone interested in movie palace architecture. The book includes color beautiful color photographs of the Million Dollar, Los Angeles,Palace, State, Tower and Orpheum Theatres on Broadway as well as the Mayan and Belasco on nearby Hill Street. The Wiltern on Wilshire Boulevard is also featured. The Hollywood theatres included are the Chinese, El Capitan, Egyptian and Hollywood Pacific. Three other theatres include the Rialto in South Pasadena, the Wrner Grand in San Pedro and the Avalon on Catalina Island. Unfortunately, the photographers could not obtain permission to photograph the United Artists, Pantages and Fox Wilshire Theatres. A history of Los Angeles theatres in included in the introductory chapter but the main focus of this book are the photographs which are wonderful. If you are a lover of old theatre architecture, this book is a must.

This 9x11-inch opus is essentially a picture book, but oh, such pictures! The real authors are the photographers who overcame many obstacles to capture the fine color photos which reveal the remaining Los Angeles area movie palaces to a generation accustomed to video games. This is a fine way to open eyes limited to those tiny screens to these elegant examples of the giant screens. The eighty-nine color plates are of high quality -- but such canot be said for the eleven pages of text and the captions which are minimalist. For some reason, neither an architectural historian nor even a movie palace buff was chosen for the writing; instead, the photographers chose a man whose breezy style is more flippant than illuminating. His knowledge of local history constitutes the majority of the words, but one learns little about the buildings themselves (a book may have a local target audience, but it need not be oblivious to the larger scope of its subject especially with so many previous books known to the authors). One could dismiss his Introduction as merely perfunctory, but we cannot dismiss his treatment of the captions, for he could there have told us much more in his 'I-love-white-space' captions layouts. For example: Why does their State Theatre on pages 32 and 34 appear very differently? We are not told within the ample space. Page 48 shows the glorious Crystal Fountain the Los Angeles Th. but we are not told whether it is also a water fountain, as its base makes it appear (a good caption tells what the illustration cannot.) A final example is the photo of the El Capitan Th. on page 85 where an ugly giant beam or steel track is shown directly in front of the proscenium, but the caption makes no mention of it -- as though no one would notice it and so they didn't ask the operator about it. It doesn't take great scholarship, just research to properly cover a subject -- picture book or not. See VIEW CAMERA magazine of Jan/Feb. 1995 for the fascinating story behind this book, but do buy the book before too long for the sake of its color photos; such print runs are short and it is not likely to be available again. Incidentally, it is not mentioned in the book, but its title is a play on: THE BEST REMAINING SEATS: The Golden Age Of The Movie Palace (1961 and later printings available here at Amazon) by the late Ben M. Hall, the prime seminal work in the field, and not to be missed for there resides true writing and scholarship.

I really enjoyed the Last Remaining Seats, because it preserves (in photographs) my beloved Movie Palaces of the Mind. The text could be better; but when it comes to magic, pictures speak a thousand words. The memories I have of the Los Angeles Theater belong to my sister -- but this book makes those memories something I, too, can hold. This isn't history; this is pure joy. Buy Last Remaining Seats. Fall in love with movies the way GOD intended for them to be seen. :)