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| Duke Moore stars in Ed Wood's Final Curtain. |
Following a well-established trend of sci-fi, suspense and supernatural anthology series on television begun in the late-1940s (more than a dozen programs including The Clock [1949], Alfred Hitchcock Presents [1955], and Strange Stories [1956]), Ed Wood, Jr. proposed his own anthology series entitled Portraits of Terror. Only one episode was produced, a 22-minute pilot called Final Curtain that was shot silent with music, narration and sound effects added in post-production. See Blevins (2013), as well as Rausch and Pratt (2015) for plot synopses and additional details. To date, there has been only a limited discussion concerning the Final Curtain filming locations and an incomplete presentation of identifying photographs. My goal is to better document this obscure piece of Wood-work.
The first clues offered after the opening credits of Final Curtain are a view of an unlit theater marquee bearing the word "Dome" (Figure 1) followed by a Free Parking sign including the phrase "Ocean Park Pier" (Figure 2). The Ocean Park Pier (aka Lick's Dome Pier) was a major attraction in Santa Monica's Ocean Park neighborhood featuring rides, shows, exhibits, theaters, dance halls, and concessions to which Los Angeles residents would flock on summer weekends beginning in May 1911 (Figure 3). After a disastrous 1924 fire, Ocean Park Pier was rebuilt with all-new attractions. The 1,600-seat Dome Theatre sat on Ocean Front Promenade a short distance away from the competing 1,450-seat Rosemary Theatre (Figure 4). By 1929, both theaters had been purchased by Fox Studios and were known as the Fox Dome Theatre and Fox Rosemary Theatre.
The Fox Dome's minor place in history is assured as it was one of several theatres where the Mickey Mouse Club fad began. The Santa Monica Ocean Front Promenade and its midway were also popular filming locations (Figure 5) with the Fox Dome appearing in several classic film noirs such as Quicksand (1950), Woman on the Run (1950), and M (1951). By the mid-1950s however, business was declining and the pier was showing its age (Figure 6). The Fox Dome had its last showing in late September 1956. It was gutted and transformed into the Flying Carpet ride in 1957-58 (Figure 7) as part of the new Pacific Ocean Park. Themed around the One Thousand and One Nights folk tales, "flying carpets" suspended on an overhead track took visitors through an Arabian-themed diorama.
Pacific Ocean Park, which opened in July 1958, was a 28-acre amusement park built on the Ocean Park Pier and adjacent properties (Figure 8). Intended to compete with Disneyland, it was modestly successful for several years. Escalating crime, community deterioration, impacts from Santa Monica urban renewal projects, fiscal mismanagement, and low park maintenance all led to massive financial losses by the mid-1960s. The park went bankrupt and closed in 1967; its assets were auctioned off to pay creditors the following year. After it closed and fell into disrepair, the park anchored the Dogtown area of Santa Monica. The dilapidated buildings and pier attracted all sorts of seedy characters, becoming a favorite surfing area and hangout of the Dogtown Z-Boys of 1970s skateboarding fame (Figure 9). Plagued by a series of arson fires from 1969-1974, the ruins were finally demolished in the winter of 1974–75. Other than a few underwater pilings and signs warning swimmers of them, nothing remains of Pacific Ocean Park today (Figure 10).
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| The marquee as it appears in Final Curtain. |
Ed Wood filmed his exterior shot of the unlit Dome Theatre marquee sometime between the theater closing in late September 1956 and the beginning of demolition in mid-March 1957. The portion of the marquee below the word Dome that normally would have featured removable lettering specifying the films being shown is conspicuously blank. Final Curtain appears to take us inside the Dome Theatre for views of its proscenium with a set (Figure 11), auditorium rear wall with projection booth cutouts [indicated by arrows] and flush doorways (Figure 12), overhead lighting (Figure 13), and backstage areas.
As is standard for an Ed Wood movie though, nothing is ever truly what it seems to be. The graveyard that is not really a graveyard, but actually a flimsy set. In this instance, the interior of the Dome Theatre that is not actually the interior of the Dome Theatre. Or of the nearby Rosemary Theatre, for that matter. The prosceniums of the Dome and Rosemary (Figure 14 and Figure 15, respectively) were arched and do not match the peaked proscenium seen in Final Curtain. The Dome's auditorium rear wall was also clearly different with its doorways set deep into the wall, rather than flush with it (Figure 16). Neither does the distinctively ornate Robert E. Power Studios overhead lighting of the Dome (Figure 17) match that seen in Final Curtain. But if Ed didn’t film Final Curtain inside either of these theaters, where did he film it?
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| Ed Wood's unsold TV pilot. |
The unique architectural details shown in Final Curtain make it a certainty that Ed filmed inside the 1,766-seat Forum Theatre at 4050 West Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles (Figure 18). Opened in May 1924, it soon became part of the Warner Brothers Studios empire (Figure 19). Warners sold the Forum Theatre in 1949 and it became an independent theater. In the early 1950s it was remodeled into a traditional stage theater. The Forum then hosted numerous plays and musicals, as well as recording sessions by the Pacific Jazz label (Chet Baker, Art Pepper, Bill Perkins, Hoagy Carmichael and others).
The early 1950s remodeling that transformed the Forum Theatre into a stage venue gave us the features that we see in Final Curtain: the peaked – not arched – proscenium (Figure 20), the distinctive main chandelier and auditorium ceiling pattern (Figure 21), the columned auditorium with flush rear doors and projection booth cutouts leftover from its movie days (Figure 22), and the distinctive doors leading to and from the auditorium (Figure 23). Additionally, we can roughly date when Ed filmed inside the Forum Theatre because the proscenium bears the set used during the September 19 – October 12, 1957 production of the burlesque-comedy A Maid in the Ozarks featuring future Hollywood legend Jack Nicholson (Figure 24). The exact date of the set teardown is not known, but inferential evidence points to December 1957 at the latest.
From 1961-1978 the Forum Theatre was back to being a movie theater and served as the offices and as a test screening house for the 70mm Cinerama film projection process. Its final night of operation was October 17, 1978. The Forum Theatre was then sold and converted into the Living Faith Presbyterian Church (current-day, Figure 25). The exterior of the building and the lobby were left largely intact, but the auditorium was heavily altered with a dropped ceiling; murals were painted over or otherwise covered.
Sources
Sources
- Blevins, Joe, 2013, Ed Wood Wednesdays, Week 4: Final Curtain (1957) / The Bride and the Beast (1958)
- Evening Vanguard (Venice, CA)
- Final Curtain, 1957, E.S. Moore and Associates, 22 minutes.
- Historic L.A. Theatres in Movies (https://theatresinmovies.blogspot.com/2016/11/final-curtain.html)
- Independent (Los Angeles, CA)
- Los Angeles Mirror
- Los Angeles Theatres (https://losangelestheatres.blogspot.com)
- The Los Angeles Times
- Motion Picture News, February 18, 1928.
- Ozarks Law & Economy (https://styronblog.com)
- Rausch, Andrew J. and Pratt Jr., Charles E., 2015, The Cinematic Misadventures of Ed Wood, Albany, GA: BearManor Media.
- Santa Monica History Museum, Bill Beebe Collection.
- Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives, Osterhout Family Collection.
- Valley Times (North Hollywood)