Vista Theatre (Los Angeles) facts for kids
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Lou Bard Playhouse
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| Address | 4473 Sunset Drive Los Angeles, California |
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| Coordinates | 34°05′54″N 118°17′13″W / 34.0984°N 118.2869°W |
| Owner | Quentin Tarantino |
| Operator | Vintage Cinemas |
| Type | Egyptian |
| Capacity | 400 |
| Construction | |
| Opened | October 9, 1923 |
| Reopened | 2022 |
| Architect | Lewis A. Smith |
Vista Theatre is a historic single-screen movie theater in Los Angeles, California, located in Los Feliz on the border with East Hollywood.
History
Vista Theatre opened on October 9, 1923, as a single-screen theater. In addition to screening films, the theater also showed vaudeville acts on stage. Originally known as Lou Bard Playhouse on opening day in 1923, the cinema played the film Tips starring Baby Peggy. The original seating capacity in the auditorium held space for 838 seats. The owners later removed every other row to allow for increased legroom, reducing the number of seats to 400.
It is one of the remaining historic structures from the 1920s, when Hollywood was first built up and began attracting residents to its new suburban homes from areas near downtown Los Angeles and East Los Angeles, which, at the time, were middle and wealthy class sections of Los Angeles.
The theater is a local landmark. It was renovated to play new release movies, and retains its historic architecture. The theater's forecourt features cement handprints and footprints of notable film figures.
The Vista has drawn many famous actors and directors to attend, host, or sometimes surprise audiences at screenings of their films there. Anne Hathaway, Taika Waititi, Lupita Nyong'o, John Cho, Zoë Kravitz, Chris Hemsworth, and Tessa Thompson have attended screenings of their films at the Vista since 2018.
In July 2021, director Quentin Tarantino revealed that he had purchased the theater. Tarantino plans to operate a cafe and arcade that will offer wine and beer.
In popular culture
The "Walls of Babylon" scenes from D. W. Griffith's film Intolerance (1916) were filmed on the site before the theater was constructed, and the completed theater first appeared in the film The Crooked Web (1955). The theatre later appeared in the film True Romance (1993), as the place where Clarence and Alabama first meet. The Vista also appears in the made-for-television film Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt (2003).
The Vista appears in the nighttime portions of the music video for Pharrell Williams's 2013 song "Happy", from the film Despicable Me 2.
On December 15, 2021, the Vista appeared in a new official music video for George Harrison's 1970 song "My Sweet Lord", directed by Lance Bangs and created as part of the ongoing 50th anniversary campaign for Harrison's album All Things Must Pass (1970).
