A TMC headline. Production has wrapped on Avalon, director Barry Levinson's latest treat cooked
up for TriStar. The comedy drama centers on five immigrant brothers who make their way
in America. Like many of Levinson's films, this one was also shot in his native Baltimore.
Most people walking along Broadway in downtown Los Angeles are on their way to somewhere
else, not Hillsman Wright. For him, today's Broadway is a street of hidden treasures.
Hidden treasures that take Hillsman Wright back to another time. In the 1920s and 30s,
Broadway was the West Coast theater district and the place where many major films premiered.
We have to remember the period here was a depression and nobody had much money and the
only escape and enjoyment they ever really had was coming to the movie house or to see a live
show where for a quarter they could forget their cares and they would have surroundings
that were comparable to what the king of Persia had. But since the 1940s, Broadway has fallen on
hard times. People began going to theaters in the suburbs, ignoring downtown, ignoring the once
great palaces. Now several theaters may be sold to developers and demolished. Hillsman Wright says
in other parts of the country, preserving landmark theaters is a part of basic city planning,
but not in the movie capital. And in the absence of that planning, our group, the Historic Theater
Foundation came into being and basically we're determined to keep this issue in front of the
public. Now since the beginning, the Los Angeles Historic Theater Foundation has operated on no
budget, relying entirely on the efforts of volunteers. Not anymore. It's only fitting that
on this night, the LAHTF receives a major corporate grant. Here at the site of another major refurbishment,
the LA St. James's Club. We have people preserving movie theaters. I'm preserving movie songs that
have been heard for a long time. It was the night Hillsman Wright had been waiting for. Certainly
the large check made him happy, but more than that, he was grateful the entertainment community
showed up to support the theaters on Broadway. The history that's housed there is phenomenal. I think
that they would not be preserved. It would be criminal. I love empty churches. I can feel all
the prayers that have ever been said there and an empty theater is like that too. Today there's
some encouraging news from downtown. Thanks in part to lobbying by the LAHTF, the Mayan Theater
will be preserved as it was in its glory days. It's becoming a nightclub, but the intricate
original design remains intact and the United Artists Theater, built in 1927 in the Spanish
Gothic style per the request of Mary Pickford, this great theater was recently bought by a
ministry for weekend services. During the week, the church will allow live performances and films.
Hillsman Wright thinks audiences will come. The exhibitors are beginning to realize that the
theater does make a difference and we think that it's a very hopeful sign for these theaters on
Broadway. There are frescoes on the walls of the United Artists Theater, frescoes which capture
the early history of film and its first big stars. Hillsman Wright feels relief this grand piece of
history will endure, at least for now, yet there's more to it than that. I guess the other feeling is
a little sadness realizing that theaters like this will probably never be built again. Reporting
in Hollywood for the Movie Channel, I'm Peter Jones. She was born in a thunderstorm in Lowell,
Massachusetts, this wide-eyed daughter of a humorless New England patent attorney and his
amateur photographer wife. Ruth Elizabeth Davis was sent to boarding school when her parents
divorced and it was there that the precocious seven-year-old learned the power of performance.
Pretending to have been blinded in a fire, she saw the effect it had on her friends and teachers and
knew she was destined to be an actress. Thirteen years later, New York Times theater critic Brooks
Atkinson saw her on the Broadway stage and called her an entrancing creature who plays in a soft,
unassertive style. Obviously, he in the world had yet to see the real Bette Davis. Universal's
talent scout said she wasn't sexy enough to be a star but signed her anyway. Publicity wanted
to rename her Bettina Dawes and she was known around the lot as the Little Brown Rim. After
small parts in long-forgotten movies, the chance to star opposite Leslie Howard in Somerset Moms
of Human Bondage looked like a last chance. All of the bitterness she felt at that discouraging
time in her life poured into her work. Life magazine called it probably the best performance
ever recorded on the screen by a US actress.
You know what you are? You gippy leg monster. You're a cripple, a cripple, a cripple.