It is a long-running joke that Michael Bublé only “comes out of his cave” during the holidays, but here we are in early spring and the Canadian crooner has just dropped a new album! In typical Bublé fashion, the LP, titled “Higher,” is comprised of a slew of classic standards as well as a handful of fresh tracks and had Michael Major of Broadway World espousing that “the multi-Grammy, multi-Juno and multi-platinum selling global superstar entertainer” is “at the peak of his vocal and creative powers.” So it is no surprise that the album debuted at number three in the U.S. and number one in the U.K.
The titular tune, a jumpy number co-written by musician Ryan Tedder, certainly lives up to Bublé’s assertion that the “Higher” recordings come from a “feeling of being grateful and happy” following his young son’s successful battle against cancer. Featuring bold vocals, catchy lyrics and punchy notes, the toe-tapper, which MB describes as a “pop song with a symphonic and very orchestral arrangement,” makes you want to jump right out of your seat and dance!
So who better to direct the accompanying music video than “Dancing with the Stars” alum/Hollywood multi-hyphenate extraordinaire Derek Hough? “Higher” marks the second collaboration between the two – Hough also directed, choreographed and starred in the singer’s 2017 “I Believe in You” video. While that project was sweet and somewhat understated, “Higher” is a full-fledged romp that finds Bublé surrounded by a bevy of red-dressed dancers, including Hough’s longtime girlfriend Hayley Erbert, tapping, twisting and spinning against the stunningly gilded backdrop of the Los Angeles Theatre, one of the City of Angels’ most stunning venues.
A masterpiece of French Renaissance and Baroque style, the movie house was originally designed in 1931 by S. Charles Lee, whom the Big Orange Landmarks website deems the “king of theater design,” for independent film exhibitor Herman Louis Gumbiner. Modeled after the Fox Theatre in San Francisco (which was sadly demolished in 1963), the structure was completed in just five short months, with no expense spared in its $1.5 million construction. Appointed with opulence on top of opulence, the finished product is like a work of art! The last of the grand film palaces to be built in downtown L.A., the venue is truly a sight to behold!
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake The Los Angeles Theatre sits tucked behind a massive 80-foot façade in the heart of downtown at 615 S. Broadway, where, as noted by the Los Angeles Conservancy, “Lee’s maxim ‘the show starts at the sidewalk’ is very much in evidence.” Unfortunately, though, while the exterior is gloriously ornate with a massive sweeping arch, bright red signage and exquisitely carved terra cotta, it sits sandwiched between the bustling shops and busy storefronts of the Theater District and can easily be passed right by without realizing the beauty that lies within.
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake One step through the front door and visitors are transported to the magical Gatsby-eqsue wonderland of the grand lobby, a 115- by 40-foot space inspired by the Palace of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors and replete with glittering chandeliers, gilded ironwork and towering columns, all capped by an elaborate domed ceiling that towers 50 feet above the cascading staircase below. Just up the stairs is a spacious mezzanine featuring a striking three-tiered crystal fountain backed by a mural that the L.A. Conservancy attributes to artist Candelario Rivas. Outfitted with luxurious detailing at nearly every turn, the eye almost doesn’t know where to look once inside the dazzling venue.
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake The Los Angeles’ auditorium is no less ornate, with a 60-foot proscenium, a dramatic coffered ceiling, a decorative curtain fashioned by the Seattle-based B.F. Shearer Company and seating for approximately 2,000 patrons.
Gumbiner included numerous advanced and upscale amenities in the theatre’s design, such as air conditioning, a playroom for the children in attendance, a restaurant, a barbershop, a shoeshine stand, marble bathrooms for women with manicurists and cosmeticians on hand, a crying room for babies (that the Conservancy notes also boasted cigarette lighters!) and a highly modern periscope system that allowed patrons waiting for the restrooms to watch a projection of the movie being played on a small screen built into the wall of the lower lounge.
The venue debuted to much fanfare on January 30, 1931, with a premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights.” The actor’s good friend Albert Einstein was in attendance, amongst many other Hollywood elite. On opening day, L.A. Times drama critic Edwin Schallert wrote, “Such a spacious, ornate and comfortable playhouse as the Los Angeles Theater has seldom, I venture to say, been unveiled anywhere. It is the ultra of ultras in its modernistic appointments and its conveniences, but more than anything, perhaps, does the amplitude of its great auditorium impress the onlooker . . . “
Gumbiner found himself bankrupt just three months after the venue’s inception and the site subsequently went dark. It was reopened by William Fox (of Fox Film Corporation fame) shortly thereafter and operated as a bargain house for a time before becoming a “major showcase” for both Fox and MGM pictures. The theatre changed hands many times over the years following before being ultimately shuttered as a movie house in 1994. Today, it is owned by the Broadway Theatre Group and is utilized as a special events and live performance venue and frequent filming location. It is also opened regularly to the public via the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Broadway Historic Theatre and Commercial District Walking Tours, which take place each Saturday.
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake The “Higher” video utilizes pretty much every square inch of the place with a black suit-clad Bublé belting out such lyrics as, “Because when you go low, and I get higher, when you move that slow, it lights my fire; I might be falling for ya, I don’t know, I think it might be what you came here for,” on the lobby staircase, in the mezzanine and on the main stage.
According to a behind-the-scenes segment, the video took three full days to rehearse and just a single day to shoot.
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake Bublé also croons against the dimly-lit backdrop of the theatre’s basement lounge, an extravagant 80- by 40-foot oval-shaped, walnut-paneled space with parquet flooring and an etched glass ceiling that looks more like an executive boardroom than an anteroom leading to the venue’s lavatories.
“Higher” is hardly the only production to make use of the Los Angeles Theatre. The place is so versatile that it has popped up onscreen in countless productions over the years portraying everything from a private residence to the White House to a casino.
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. Portions of the theatre masquerade as the interior of the opulent mansion where Richie Rich (David Gallagher) lives in the 1998 straight-to-video “Richie Rich’s Christmas Wish.”
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Image Credit: Sony Pictures The lobby is transformed into the disco of Natalie Cook’s (Cameron Diaz) dreams in the 2000 hit “Charlie’s Angels.”
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Image Credit: ABC The lounge pops up regularly as the London headquarters of the Alliance of Twelve on the television show “Alias.”
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Image Credit: 20th Television The room also poses as the Hotel Cortez’s basement lair on the popular series “American Horror Story: Hotel.”
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Image Credit: 20th Century Fox The lobby is passed off as a White House ballroom, where the president’s daughter, Samantha Mackenzie (Katie Holmes), attends a gala, in the opening scene of 2004’s “First Daughter.” [The auditorium appears in a later scene, as well, in which Samantha catches a movie with her resident advisor/undercover Secret Service agent, James Lansome (Marc Blucas).]
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures It’s the site of the North Valley High School Annual Halloween Homecoming Dance, where Sam (Hilary Duff) wins the title of Homecoming Princess in the 2004 teen romance “A Cinderella Story.”
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Image Credit: Lionsgate Television Don (Jon Hamm) and Betty Draper (January Jones) attend a musical there – and Don is courted by the president of a competing advertising firm during intermission – in the season one episode of “Mad Men” titled “Shoot.”
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Image Credit: 20th Century Studios And the theatre pops up as the casino where Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) wins big and meets Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried) in the 2011 futuristic sci-fi film “In Time.”