Free previewStop 6 of Hollywood Walk of Fame Walking Tour: Chinese Theatre to Hollywood and Vine
The Night Hollywood Invented the Premiere
You're on Hollywood Boulevard, standing at the mouth of a long open courtyard that runs back from the sidewalk to the Egyptian Theatre. Look down the length of it to the four massive columns at the far end, each about 20 feet tall, and the painted walls covered in Egyptian figures and hieroglyphs. That courtyard is the whole point of this stop. It was built for a crowd.
The man who built it was Sid Grauman, a showman who had already run a movie palace downtown, and who you met back at the Chinese Theatre. He put up the Egyptian with a developer named Charles Toberman, the same man behind the El Capitan. It took 18 months and about 800,000 dollars, and it opened in 1922, when the whole country had a fever for all things ancient Egypt.
Grauman's problem was simple. Movies opened quietly.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 6 of Hollywood Walk of Fame Walking Tour: Chinese Theatre to Hollywood and Vine (3 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
