Chance Meeting
Friday April 2nd, 2021 with Heavy Ben
Electric Theatre

Chance meeting on a silver screen of electricity and theatre In spring 1902, Thomas L. Tally opened his Electric Theater in Los Angeles, a radical new venture devoted to movies and other high-tech devices of the era, like audio recordings. Tally was the first person to offer a modern multimedia entertainment experience to the American public. Before long, his successful movie palace produced imitators nationally, which would become known as nickelodeons. America's love affair with the moving image – from the silver screen to YouTube – would endure after all. Initially, motion pictures were not accepted by the upper class. They regarded them as “common” because of their popularity among the lower class. The original storefront movie “theaters” were likened to fleapits because they were tacky, plain, smoke-filled, and bug-infested. However, in an attempt to attract the upper-class society, proprietors decided to construct and renovate new theaters with painted walls, comfortable seating, better-quality sound, and well-dressed ushers. The first structure built during this reconstruction period was Tally’s Electric Theatre. On this day, April 2, in 1902, Tally’s Electric Theatre was established in downtown Los Angeles as the first theater built only for motion pictures. Moving pictures had been seen in France and other parts of the U.S., but the Electric Theatre was the only theatre dedicated to showing moving pictures exclusively. The theatre was originally opened between the hours of 7:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., but with such high demand, owner Thomas Lincoln Tally was forced to run matinees. The ten-cent tickets sold out every showing, and the Electric Theatre was deemed to be the “new place of amusement.” The original storefront Tally’s Electric Theatre put Los Angeles on the map as the movie capital of the world. It was later renamed The Lyric Theatre and was the start of the Hollywood revolution.