Egyptian Theatre - The First Premiere

Photo: Photo: Andreas Praefcke, CC BY 3.0 (cropped)

A stop on Hollywood Boulevard Walk, a free self-guided tour.

Five years before the Chinese Theatre, Sid Grauman built this one. The Egyptian opened in 1922 and hosted what is often called the first Hollywood movie premiere, Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood. Ancient Egypt was all the rage, so architects Meyer and Holler gave Grauman massive columns, hieroglyphs and Egyptian-style paintings, arranged around a long forecourt where premiere crowds could watch the stars arrive.

The theater had its ups and downs. MGM and then United Artists ran it for decades until it closed in 1992. The city sold it to the nonprofit American Cinematheque for a single dollar in 1996, and a restoration reopened it in 1998. In 2020 Netflix bought it, spent several years renovating it and reopened it in November 2023.

Today Netflix programs the screen early in the week, and the American Cinematheque shows classic and repertory films on weekends. Walk into the forecourt and look at the painted details along the walls and columns.

Getting here: Come back down to Hollywood Boulevard, cross Highland Avenue at the light and walk east about a block on the south side to the theater's deep forecourt.

Did you know?: The roof wears Spanish-style tiles, possibly because they had already been bought before the design changed to Egyptian.

Photo op: Stand at the sidewalk end of the forecourt and shoot straight down its length toward the columned entrance.

More on Wikipedia: Grauman's Egyptian Theatre · Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood · American Cinematheque · Sid Grauman

Egyptian Theatre - The First Premiere

Stops on this tour