Mexican Musical Theater and Movie Palaces in Downtown Los Angeles before 1950

Abstract

The Plaza was the first site of Spanish colonial civilian settlement in 1781, it was also the first entertainment district in Los Angeles. From the mid-nineteenth century through the 1950s, Plaza district buildings housed immigrant-oriented businesses, churches, restaurants and cafes, grocery stores, social clubs, billiard halls, saloons, music stores, dance halls, rooming houses, phonograph parlors, penny arcades, nickelodeons and ten-cent motion picture houses, and vaudeville theaters. The development of the Plaza area over time mirrors the transition of Los Angeles from a small Spanish and Mexican pueblo to an American frontier city, and ultimately to one of the world's major cities and metropolitan areas. This chapter explores how musical theater directly relates to physical location, civic identity, immigration, and ethnicity. A recurring process of cultural conflict, maintenance, and accommodation played out over time on stage in Los Angeles's Latino theatrical world. Music and theater served as conduits for communal self-expression, as powerful symbols of Mexican identity, and as signs of tradition and modernity.