This is the story of the people who created an amphitheater for art and culture and presented it to the citizens of Los Angeles a hundred years ago, about which an exhibition has been opened, the author of which is a woman from Novi Sad, who has been the director of the Hollywood Bowl Museum and Archives at the Los Angeles Philharmonic for ten years.
Los Angeles is celebrating 100 years since it received a gift from a private individual on which the famous building of this city was built - the Hollywood Bowl, an amphitheater in the shape of an orchestra shell carved into the slope of Bolton Canyon, the summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and a place where open-air concerts are held a hundred concerts with the most famous musical stars of classical and rock music from all over the world for more than 18.000 people. The plot and the surrounding park occupy 88 hectares.
Due to the jubilee, an exhibition was organized in the Hollywood Bowl Museum From vision to reality, and will last until June 2025. The author of that exhibition is Ljiljana Grubišić from Novi Sad, a cultural historian with a doctorate from the University of Southern California in LA, and for ten years the director of the Hollywood Bowl Museum and archives at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which was actually the reason for this text.
First we will talk about the concerts. Ljiljana Grubišić says that "symphonic music was the core of the early presentations at the Bowl", and that "jazz came to the Bowl in 1939 with the king of swing, Benny Goodman. He performed here several times, both with his band and as a classical clarinetist, sometimes even on the same program. The list of pop singers who performed at the Bowl begins with Frank Sinatra, who was then a soft-spoken jazzer on the rise. In the financially difficult year of 1943, Sinatra held a benefit concert in aid of Bowl and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Due to war restrictions, only 10.000 fans could attend his debut. The very announcement of Sinatra's performance in the local press for weeks provoked passionate reactions of support, but also resistance - music purists were horrified that their Bowl was being spoiled by popular music. However, in the end, Sinatra and popular music won out."
According to Ljiljana Grubišić, Nat King Cole, "one of the few performers who had six consecutive performances at the Bowl", followed in Sinatra's footsteps, Bobby Darin, Ray Charles, Mahalia Jackson, Sammy Davis Jr., Little Richard... "These artists then opened the door to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Rod Stewart, Elton John, and generations after."
The Beatles promoted the Hollywood Bowl as a place of rock and roll. “As soon as the Fantastic Four took America by storm in early 1964, tickets went on sale in April for their August 23rd LA show. The concert sold out in no time and without online sales. People camped along the avenue that leads to the entrance to the Bowl all the way from Hollywood Boulevard, which is a full mile from the amphitheater.” Ljiljana Grubišić says that "the concert was complete chaos. The crowd's screaming was so loud that it was difficult, if not impossible, to hear the music. Fortunately, that concert, like the two following ones in August 1965, was recorded thanks to their producer George Martin". After them, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, then Pink Floyd, The Who, Led Zeppelin and others played in the Bowl.
Since 1980, the Bowl has also become a stage for comedy - the Monty Pythons were the first (Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl), and now the annual "Netflix Is a Joke" festival is held there. American presidents, first ladies, presidential candidates of different parties spoke from the Bowl stage. Anti-war rallies were also held there.
The amphitheater also appears as a protagonist in dozens of films, such as, for example, A Star Is Born (A Star is Born) 1937 directed by David Selznick, musical comedy Anchored (Anchors Aweigh) with Sinatra and Džin Kelly from 1945 directed by Džordž Sidney; many television shows were filmed there, and it also appears in many cartoons: Looney Tunes, in Chuck Jones' legendary animation Boss, What the Hell Are You? with Duško Long-eared, or The Rabbit of Seville (Rabbit Of Seville) where Duško Dugouško imitates Leopold Stokowski, a famous conductor from the 1940s, and convinces the tenor to sing a high note for so long that the orchestra's shell breaks and finally collapses.
It is especially important to say, notes Ljiljana Grubišić, that the Hollywood Bowl played a big role in the acceptance of film music as an art form. John Williams' sumptuous symphonic score in the film Star Wars from 1977 was catapulted into history when, in November of that year, the Los Angeles Philharmonic performed a concert version of the film and turned it into a great spectacle with an enthusiastic audience waving lasers in the dark, which all led to great media and financial success. In 1978, Williams made his own debut on the Bowl stage as a conductor, performing his film score. In 2018, he celebrated the 40th anniversary of his first concert at the amphitheater and still performs with musicians from the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
With the exhibition, Ljiljana Grubišić also presented a film story about the creation of the Hollywood Bowl, as well as a story about Los Angeles in the second and third decades of the last century.
First, in May 1919, says Grubišić, the Theater Arts Alliance was founded with the aim of providing art and culture to the citizens of Los Angeles, thereby uplifting them spiritually, morally and socially. Three months later, Christine Wetherill Sivenson and her Theosophical friend Marie Rankin Clark purchased ($21.000 each) a plot of land to build an open-air cultural center to be used by the Alliance. It was an amphitheater with excellent natural acoustics that was then called Daisy Dell. The Alliance was an enthusiastic but ideologically divided and belligerent group. On one side were the theosophically inclined Christine Stevenson and Mary Rankin Clark and their spiritual supporters, who insisted that the center be used exclusively for dramatic performances of a religious character, and on the other side were members of the Supreme Committee who advocated secular and more diverse cultural production. Christine Stevenson resigned and already in the early autumn of 1920, the Alliance was dissolved.
Dr. T. Percival Gerson, who was between the two factions, and lawyer Edgar Martin created an organization based on a "broader and more democratic basis." By December of that year, the Community Park and Art Association had secured funds to purchase the Hollywood Bowl from Christine Stevenson and Marie Rankin Clark. The association chose to be led by mediator and patron of the arts Frederick W. Blanchard and Artie Mason Carter, a pianist and extremely capable organizer of the Hollywood Choral Society - she later called the concert season at the Bowl "Symphonies under the Stars", a name that has survived to this day.
Promotion and financing of a project of this scale and complexity required an entire army of supporters and financiers. Support and funds were gathered through lobbying, robust advertising and publicity of all kinds. Concert tickets were sold at the lowest possible price of 25 cents, using the slogan "Popular Prices Will Prevail," coined by Frederick W. Blanchard for his music hall. The ultimate goal was for citizens to accept the idea that the Hollywood Bowl belongs to them. "Penny Wars" competitions were often organized, which were held in a spirit of friendly rivalry to see which part of Los Angeles could raise the most money from the "Penny in the Piggy Every Day" campaigns. -Day Banks”). Thousands of people participated.
The association's name was changed to the Hollywood Bowl on October 1, 1924, and two weeks later, driven by the desire to forever preserve the amphitheater for the use and benefit of all the people of Southern California, the land on which the Hollywood Bowl is located was donated to the County of Los Angeles. Local newspapers reported on it for days.
When the financial crash of 1929 resulted in the Great Depression, the Hollywood Bowl, like the rest of the nation, was already on shaky financial ground.
Already at the beginning of 1932, the musicians of the Los Angeles Philharmonic were threatened with salary cuts, and there was even a possibility that the "Symphony under the Stars" season would be canceled altogether. Again, supporters and volunteers joined in organizing "Save-the-Bowl" dinners, as well as "Penny in the Piggy Bank Every Day" campaigns were established across the city to raise the necessary financial assistance.
To save the Hollywood Bowl, seven musicians from the Los Angeles Philharmonic banded together to keep the 1934 season at all costs. They founded the Symphony Society Incorporated and rented the amphitheater for $9.000, which they withdrew from their retirement fund. During the day they were engaged in administrative work, in order to perform at concerts in the evening. Alfred Braine, the main organizer of that society (he played the French horn), was so exhausted that he never performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra again. For the founders of this amphitheater, the Hollywood Bowl was never just a location, a place on a map. They always talked about it as "our movement", "great social enterprise", "cultural ideal" or "community park".
Finally, let's mention just a few of the most recent concerts on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl: Eric Clapton and Joni Mitchell's concerts were held in October, and Danny Elfman's and Mariah Carey's in November. They were all spectacular.
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