We read about dinner theaters or supper clubs in vintage fiction all the time, but in the real world they’ve gone the way of the passenger pigeon. Above you see a 1950s nighttime photo of the Earl Carroll Theatre, opened by show business heavy hitter Earl Carroll on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. It shared the name but not the exterior look of Carroll’s earlier New York City theater. That one was ensconced in a six story mid-rise brick building. The L.A. version was designed in Streamline Moderne style by architect Gordon Kaufmann.
The theatre opened in 1938 and was an L.A. hotspot for decades, with an interior featuring cut crystal entry doors, a long bar festooned with portraits of movie stars, a gleaming zeon (not neon) accented aluminum statue called the Goddess of Light, and tiers of tables elevated one above the other to give unobstructed views of the stage to more than a thousand diners when the club was at full capacity. In addition, the stage itself had a sixty foot wide, double revolving turntable and staircase, and swings that lowered from the ceiling.
They don’t make ’em like that anymore, as far as we know. Dinner, a musical show, dancing, and a clientele ranging from Hollywood glitterati to folks who’d saved for months to make a night of it—sounds great. It would be cool if the club still existed, and it sort of does, but as a Nickelodeon Studios “entertainment complex,” a place for one-off events and concerts. Not quite the same league. But once upon a time, night after night, it was one of the places to be, and anyone could feel like a star.
