
Sherman Torgan, owner of the New Beverly has passed away. In July 2003, Paul Cullum wrote a feature on Torgan for LA Weekly:
When Sherman Torgan opened the New Beverly Cinema in 1978, there were literally a dozen revival, repertory and non-first-run theaters in greater Los Angeles. There was the Vagabond near MacArthur Park, home of “the Vagabond crowd,” pensioners who flocked to Golden Age programs (now largely on display at the Tuesday matinees at LACMA), and its sister cinema, the Tiffany on Sunset. There was the Four Star on Wilshire, now a Christian Youth Center; the Encore, razed to make way for Raleigh Studios; the Sherman in Sherman Oaks; the Loyola near LAX; the Gary I and II on Santa Monica; and the granddaddy of them all, the Fox Venice, at Lincoln and Venice. Of them all, only the New Beverly remains.
“Before the VCR and before the multiplex, there was this incredible time, a small period from about 1980 to 1983, when a lot of [theaters] were becoming archival houses, because it was so cheap,” says Michael Tolkin, writer-director of The Rapture and The New Age and a longtime New Beverly patron. In both his novel and screenplay for The Player, a studio executive murders a screenwriter in an alley behind the Rialto Theater in South Pasadena after a screening of The Bicycle Thief, but it was more likely the New Beverly he had in mind. “I don’t think I’d ever been to the Rialto except once when they were showing The Bicycle Thief, and that’s why I set it there,” he says. “Otherwise, it probably would have been in the alley behind the Beverly.”
Click here to read the entire article, The Last Picture Show.
Photo above by Ted Soqui
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://mt.laweekly.com/mt-tb.cgi/37342
David Gueringer presents an erotically charged mix of... JOSH "CURIOUSJOSH" REISS
The festival goes back to its roots or does it? BY KARINA LONGWORTH
At Compton BBQ joint, meat is high art. BY JONATHAN GOLD
Full of so much win. BY ERIN BROADLEY
So sorry, Santa Monica. Apologies, Beverly Hills. The jewel you have coveted and negotiated for — billionaire Eli Broad's proposed museum,... More >>
Waiting for Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry to show up last week was like waiting for the glitzy Grand Avenue hotel-shop-condos project... More >>
Last week's cover story on people living in their vehicles ("Living off the Grid: When life takes you out of your house and into your car," by... More >>
Only 26 when she launched the L.A.-based IAMSOUND label in 2006, Niki Robertson had been an A&R talent scout for U.K. label Parlophone and was... More >>
View more photos in Lina Lecaro's "Nightranger Hits the Grammy Scene" slideshow. With a couple exceptions, "music's biggest night" was again... More >>
Friday/February/5Daedelus, Nosaj Thing, Jogger at the Echoplex We've heard rumors that Pasadena bass-head Nosaj Thing may be releasing his... More >>
Dear Mr. Gold: A friend went back to Wisconsin for the holidays and returned with a bounty of cheesy treats. I was introduced to... More >>
When food people visit New York, they may check out what David Chang or Mario Batali are up to, contemplate a fancy French meal and swing by the... More >>
View more photos in Anne Fishbein's "Lazy Ox Canteen" photo gallery.If you are a man who enjoys a little Black Sabbath with his dinner, the new... More >>
As personal assistant to the U.S. ambassador to France, James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) can keep himself in well-tailored suits and keep his... More >>
The further we get from it, the clearer it seems that the Age of the Waves — the '60s and '70s, roughly demarcated — was film... More >>
The rain that sheets down in nearly every scene of Robert Hamer's 1947 It Always Rains on Sunday is as much a psychological phenomenon as a... More >>
Some people have it rough. Born into the East Coast cultural aristocracy in 1913, Mercedes Matter began life as a beloved and privileged... More >>
Asking about the "seeming conflict, or antagonism, between painting's representational function and its self-reflection," the art historian and... More >>
Ginny Bishton is an artist who defies expectations. Or rather, completely dismantles them, leaving their components arranged in neat rows. One... More >>
We present several issues where we highlight our premier clients. Here's the top providers of goods and services in your area.
House of BluesWest Hollywood, CA |
The Magic CastleL.A., CA |
Urth CaffeBeverly Hills, CA |
Comments