El Portal Theatre to Celebrate 85 Years

Oct. 5 marks the 85th anniversary of one of North Hollywood’s grandest and most beloved landmarks, the on Lankershim Boulevard.

When you drive by it, as thousands do each day, there’s no mistaking that this is a building with presence. In a city where little is preserved and less is remembered, El Portal stands proudly with the distinction of a legacy that stretches back to the baby days of Hollywood, when this part of North Hollywood, first known as Toluca, was called Lankershim.

In fact, it's because of El Portal that North Hollywood got its name. Before El Portal, the first-ever first-run movie theater in the Valley, the little peach-grove community of Lankershim had no connection to and little knowledge of the movie empires being born just over the hill.

But with El Portal came not only access to the modern world, but also  a swift commercial expansion. Less than a year after El Portal's 1926 debut, the town of Lankershim officially renamed itself as a bridge to Hollywood shimmer, and became North Hollywood. 

“It’s an incredibly magical, historic theater,” said Jay Irwin, who with his partner Pegge Forrest is extending that magic into the future as El Portal’s current theater managers.

Built by the Fox West Coast Theatre chain in 1926, El Portal has hosted movies, vaudeville, burlesque, live theater and even concerts by punk bands.

It almost was demolished for good in the Northridge earthquake of 1994, and sat in rubble, seemingly abandoned, for years. But El Portal is nothing if not a survivor, and was reinvented then as it had been many times before.

“The earthquake tore off the roof,” said Irwin. “It was in ruins. And now look at it, as beautiful as ever.”

Now this neighborhood once called “blighted” by the Los Angeles Times is developing at a fast pace, with El Portal as an anchor now as it has been for decades, sparking the success of many great new bars, restaurants, theaters in the neighborhood.  

It originally opened not as a vaudeville theater, as has often been written, but as a movie palace. Vaudeville did play an important part in the first decades of El Portal, as live acts were used as added incentive to bring people in to see the newfangled silent pictures, starring the first stars of Hollywood, such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy.

In fact, to measure an audience’s response to their films, both Laurel and Hardy were known to frequent El Portal, slipping in after the audience was seated for showings of their own films. Oliver Hardy lived for many years nearby in Van Nuys, golfed at the in Toluca Lake, died in North Hollywood and is buried there at .

Harold Lloyd also used to listen to the laughter of audiences watching his films at El Portal. He and his brother were silent partners in the Shreves Filling Station, which was then on Lankershim across from the theater.

The theater itself is an architectural jewel, and contains abundant art within. 

"There are historic wall reliefs installed in the 1930s as part of the FDR Works Progress Administration," said Irwin. "They show people harvesting peaches because most of this town was peach groves. On advertising posters for the town, it would say, ‘Lankershim, a peach of a place to live.’ ”

It was designed in beautifully ornate Spanish Renaissance Revival style by celebrated theater architect Lewis A. Smith, who also designed many of the Southland’s most beloved movie houses, such as the Vista, the Rialto, and the Majestic in Ventura. El Portal was the last theater Smith created.

But unlike the majority of his theaters, which were demolished decades ago, El Portal still stands.

Like his other movie palaces, it was designed with big crowds in mind, with a seating capacity of 1,346.

The first film shown at the El Portal was Blarney, starring Ralph Graves, Paulette Duval and Renée Adorée. The film, which was about Irish prize-fighters, has since been lost.

On opening night, the silent movie was accompanied by a Chinese orchestra, with Chinese actors performing in little skits between showings of the film. 

Although sound movies, heralded by The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson, were first introduced in 1927, silent films continued to be shown at El Portal along with talkies for several years.

With the silent films came vaudeville acts, and all the national stars of the circuit, from W.C. Fields—a Toluca Lake resident—to Joe Frisco to Jolson.

Being both a movie palace and a live theater, El Portal has the distinction of having the requisite amenities for both, from dressing rooms to projection booths.

“It is the only large movie theater to have a fly system [for moving scenery and curtains],” said Irwin. “None of the other Valley theaters had fly systems.”

The grandeur of the theater had a big impact on the community. At a then-staggering cost of $250,000 to construct, its beauty forever changed the tenor of the neighborhood.

“When El Portal was constructed in 1926,” said Tom Link, author of Universal City-North Hollywood: A Centennial Celebration, “the Valley was in its very early stages of development. Just a few months earlier, crews had finished construction of a paved roadway through the Cahuenga Pass, which was previously a dirt trail for horses, carriages, stagecoaches and bicycles. That made it much more possible for people to get to the Valley.”

“The electric railway hadn’t yet been installed,” he continued, “radio had not yet become widespread. Without television, cable, Internet, having a 1,300-seat state-of-the-art, fireproof theater was a major attraction, and put North Hollywood on the map. “

Before El Portal came in, the town of Lankershim was essentially unplugged from the modern world.

“Except for some kind of quilting bee or the selling of peaches,” Link said, “there wasn’t much in the way of entertainment. People here had no firsthand experience of what was happening culturally in the nation. El Portal was the first time North Hollywood could participate in the cultural life of America.”

It not only changed people’s lives here, it had a real cultural and economic impact on the town.

“Having a first-run movie palace here,” Link explained, “added a level of cultural sophistication to the neighborhood, which had a snowball effect and led to a lot of development of other theaters, restaurants and more.”

In addition to the theater space itself, the building houses upstairs offices and bathrooms, and on the main floor to the right of the entrance—which is now was a Rexall’s drugstore, which sold ice cream, sodas and assorted sundries.

Even before the construction of El Portal, its location at the southwest corner of Lankershim Boulevard and Weddington Street was the most prominent in the area. 

The first home erected in North Hollywood was on the spot where El Portal now stands. It was erected by Wilson C. Weddington in 1891, who brought the home in parts from Iowa when he moved his family to the area then known as Toluca. A second home was then built on the spot in 1904, then moved across the street, then a few blocks east down Weddington, where it still stands, according to Guy Weddington-McCreary, who is the great grandson of Wilson C. Weddington. (Read more about the historic Weddington House later this week here on Patch.)

“After El Portal came in ’26,” said Irwin, “Lankershim Boulevard became quite a happening strip. It was the main thoroughfare for the east Valley, and it was thriving. There was the Security Pacific Bank here and lots of other businesses.”

“El Portal was an anchor of this community, which developed around it," he said. "The Guild theater was just a couple blocks south. Lankershim is on an angle, but when it was built they thought it was straight, because there were no other streets in yet.” 

Though not wanting to linger on the subject, Irwin confirmed reports of spectral appearances at El Portal. Fortunately, the spirits are friendly, he said.

“I have never seen them, but my partner [Pegge Forrest] has,” said Irwin. “And about four or five other people I know have seen the same ghost, always with the same description: a man in a gray morning suit. Pegge and others have seen him coming down the stairs."

“Once we had plumbers here, because our plumbing is from the 1920s. They were from Costa Rica, and I could hear them suddenly start to talk very animatedly in Spanish. I asked a friend to translate. They said they saw a ghost who met them at the door, let them in, and told them he was in charge of contracts and financial aspects of the theater. And then he described a man in a gray morning suit.“

Despite these few reported appearances, El Portal is chiefly about the living, and the diverse live theater that is produced here every week of the year in the three theaters that now inhabit the original space. 

In Part II we will cover more of the unique history and rebirth of El Portal, as well as explore all the shows—the live theater, vaudeville, movie, concerts and more, which have been presented at El Portal.