Mayfair Music Hall
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Mayfair Music Hall An English Music Hall-styled vaudeville theater devised and created by entrepreneur Milt Larsen, located in Santa Monica, California, USA.
This theater was designed by Architect Henry C. Hollwedel, and built in 1913 as the Santa Monica Opera House. Shortly after they renamed it the Majestic Theater and featured silent movies and split week vaudeville.
It was remodeled after sound came in in the late twenties.
The theater was rather plain and was modernized during the sixties.
Milt Larsen, John Shrum and Thomas Heric transformed it into a Victorian Music Hall in 1972 and produced British Variety Shows there for 8 years. The ornate boxes and staff work were rescued from the grand old Belmont Theater, a major movie palace adjecent to the famed Bimini Baths at 1st and Vermont in Los Angeles.
Entrepreneur Larsen's full traditional music hall productions featured noted actors and performers like Bernard Fox, Beatrice Kay, Larry "Seymour" Vincent, Mousie Garner, Ian Whitcomb, Eubie Blake, Gene Bell, English entertainer Joyce Howard and other actors and musical stars of the day.
In later years it later became the home for Chicago's Second City and the A LIst Television shows.
In 1974, the theater was used to film the famous "Puttin' on the Ritz" sequence in Young Frankenstein.
The theatre was damaged in the Northridge earthquake, and the owner gutted the building and removed all the ornate decor. Now boarded up, the building can still be viewed along the popular 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica.
[edit] References
Young Frankenstein Final Production Notes, 20th Century-Fox, 1974.
