The Brief

The great movie palaces of downtown Los Angeles are largely closed to the public, open only for events and the occasional tour. But starting this weekend, they’re opening their doors for a few special film screenings, thanks to the LA Conservancy.

The nonprofit works to protect and preserve L.A. cultural and historical sites, and for over 30 years, the program has been shining a light on some of the great, but forgotten, movie palaces of Los Angeles. Its film series, Last Remaining Seats, started in 1987 and resumes June 1 for two weeks.

A crowd watches "Rebecca" at the Orpheum Theater.

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Mike Hume

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Sarah Lann, the conservancy’s director of education, shares that the LRS program was born out of an effort to reactivate downtown L.A. as buildings were shuttering in the 1970s and '80s. And that included trying to shine a spotlight on the “incredible movie palaces that line Broadway.”

While the program rotates theaters and has screened all across L.A., including in the United Artists Theater, the Wiltern, and the Fox in Westwood, this year’s screenings will take place at three DTLA icons: the Palace, the Orpheum, and the Los Angeles Theatre. Let’s take a look at the history of these spaces before folks step back in time this weekend.

The Palace

Lann describes the Palace as “a jewel box of a theater on Broadway.” At about 1,000 seats, this theater is half the size of the Orpheum and the Los Angeles Theatre, but still magnitudes larger than most movie theaters.

Looking down at the ornate theater of the Palace.

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Mike Hume

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The theater predates the film industry. It was built in 1911 as a vaudeville house, and is the oldest theater on Broadway. “It’s like walking into a Faberge egg,” says Lann. Since it was originally built for live performances, there’s “an intimacy that you don’t see in some of the other theaters,” Lann describes, almost as if someone could jump on stage at any moment. And like any movie palace, it’s lavish, with “all the bells and whistles that you would expect — murals and curlicues and all the rest.”

The Orpheum

“The big sister to the Palace,” says Lann, the Orpheum was built in 1926 as the final home of the Orpheum Vaudeville circuit. In 1928, a Wurlizter organ was installed, which will be heavily featured in a screening this weekend. Lann says, “when you see something like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” a film from the 1920s, “with a live accompanist on the Wurlitzer organ and the lights go down and those first chords strike up and you're surrounded by just this unbelievable opulence,” there’s nothing that can quite compare.

The interior of the Orpheum Theater.

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Mike Hume

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And while you may not have attended a film, concert, or improv show at the Orpheum, you’ve probably seen it on screen. The theater’s been featured in everything from Taylor Swift music videos to episodes of Murder, She Wrote to films like Dreamgirls and Whiplash. 

A line outside the Orpheum Theater.

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Mike Hume

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The Los Angeles Theatre

Built in 1931, The Los Angeles Theatre was the last great movie palace on Broadway. But it opened during the height of the Depression, “and it failed almost as quickly as it was built,” Lann says.

The theater opened with the Charlie Chaplin film City Lights — Chaplin was an investor, and attended the premiere with guest of honor, Albert Einstein.

A line of people wait to enter the Los Angeles Theatre in January 1931 for the Charlie Chaplin film, "City Lights."

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Los Angeles Public Library Legacy Collection

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“There's a photo of them in the front lobby when you first walk in,” Lann says, before adding, “it's like all the theaters on steroids in a lot of ways.” Modeled in part after Versailles by architect S. Charles Lee, Lann starts to talk about the gold, the chandeliers, and the motifs in the building before saying “it’s more lavish than I can describe.”

So while “it's certainly not uncommon to be able to go see a classic film in a cool space across L.A.,” it is a distinct experience to catch a film in such opulent, historic spaces. “Suddenly there's this richer, more layered context that wasn't there before,” says Lann, “and it really does feel like you've stepped back in time for a moment.”

The grand, Versailles inspired interior of the Los Angeles Theatre.

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Mike Hume

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The films

And there is, of course, a great lineup of movies. Chosen by a volunteer committee of film lovers who have been routinely meeting since last September, Lann says the slate is “as strong as it can be.”

Conversations begin with questions about what might make a film relevant, and this year, the series is screening The Seven Year Itch on opening night. That’s June 1, celebrating Marilyn Monroe’s birthday, and according to Lann, hopefully bringing awareness to the current threat against Monroe’s historic residence.

Other screenings include Bullit, Gaslight, From Russia With Love, and Mi Vida Loca. “Mi Vida Loca will be celebrating its 30th anniversary this year,” says Lann, describing it as “such a Los Angeles film.” The director, Allison Anders, and some of the cast will be at the screening to discuss the movie, a film about “homegirls” surviving gang life in Echo Park. LRS has partnered with a lowrider club to cruise Broadway as cars from the film will be stationed outside the Palace.

An opulent experience

What Lann loves most about sharing these theaters with audiences is that “people … don't always understand that at one point in time, public spaces were … incredible places that anybody could go to.” Moviegoing is a casual pastime now, but once, for a few cents you could be “surrounded by this really extreme beauty and this extremely detailed architecture … that I don't think we ever expect anymore from our public spaces,” says Lann.

The lobby of the Los Angeles Theatre swarms with patrons at a Last Remaining Seats screening.

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Mike Hume

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Lann hopes that the Last Remaining Seats program reminds people that that existed in Los Angeles, even if today “they're a little bit like best kept secrets, and when people get to kind of share in that secret, I think that's really cool.”

Getting involved

Lann says, “we're always looking for good people who want to share their love of historic spaces and classic film.”

You can get involved with either Los Angeles Conservancy as a whole or the Last Remaining Seats film committee. Check out their website here for information on membership and volunteering.

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Thousands of immigrants who are lawfully in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.

The new restrictions stem from H.R. 1 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which Congress passed last year.

The changes remove eligibility for certain noncitizens, including people with refugee status and victims of trafficking. It also applies to immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan who have special immigrant visas for helping the U.S. government overseas.

 ”These are folks … many of whom have large families that we have a commitment to as a country because we welcomed them and invited them here to find a place of refuge,” said Cambria Tortorelli, president of the International Institute of Los Angeles, a refugee resettlement agency. “They’re authorized to work and they’ve been brought here by the U.S. government.”

The federal spending bill, H.R. 1, made sweeping cuts to social safety net programs, including food assistance and Medicaid. In signing the bill, President Donald Trump said the changes were delivering on his campaign promises of “America first.”

Officials estimate 23,000 people in Los Angeles County will be affected. The state estimates about 72,000 immigrants with lawful presence will be affected across California.

CalFresh is the state’s version of the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Undocumented immigrants have not been eligible to receive CalFresh benefits.

State officials say noncitizens who are currently receiving benefits will continue to get them until it’s time to renew their benefits — adding that people might be able to receive benefits again if their legal status changes to lawful permanent residents.

Who the changes apply to:

• Asylees
• Refugees
• Parolees (unless they are Cuban and Haitian entrants)
• Individuals with deportation or removal withheld
• Conditional entrants
• Victims of trafficking
• Battered noncitizens
• Iraqi or Afghan with special immigrant visas (SIV) who are not lawful permanent residents (LPR)
• Certain Afghan Nationals granted parole between July 31, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2023
• Certain Ukrainian Nationals granted parole between Feb. 24, 2022, and Sep. 30, 2024