Word: grauman
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...Tillie Siegel, 50, of Los Angeles, sued Grauman's Chinese Theater for $5,000 damages. Mrs. Siegel claimed that she had stubbed her toe on Greer Garson's footprint in the cement outside the theater, fallen and suffered bruises, scratches and "discomfort...
...Grauman took a show on tour to Los Angeles, stayed there. In no time he had opened Grauman's Million Dollar Theater, the largest and most lavish Cinemansion of its day. Then he bought a Hollywood cornfield and built Grauman's Egyptian, a bewilderingly garish "architectural crazy house." So successful were its showings that in the first few years it ran only eight pictures. In 1927 came Grauman's Chinese, his masterpiece in Hollywood rococo...
Prologues and Premeers. From the start in Hollywood, Grauman concocted enormously successful madcapitalist "innovations." One of these was having movie stars make personal appearances. Another was the "prologue," the ancestor of today's stage show. The most famous and flamboyant was the "premeer"-the klieg-lighted, red-carpeted opening night, when crowds lined the streets for miles, cameras clicked, searchlights stabbed the heavens, movie stars drove up in state and were, one by one, escorted into the theater by Grauman himself...
...premeer Wilson Mizner drove up to the Egyptian in a dilapidated Ford and ceremoniously presented it to the doorman. For the opening of The Covered Wagon, Indians were brought from their reservation "by special permission of the U.S. Government." Grauman's best-known stunt was to catch the footprints of such stars as Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford in wet cement-a trick that was later used for John Barrymore's profile. Quipped Barrymore, as he caressed the cement: "I feel like the face on the barroom floor...
...nervous, impulsive bachelor, Grauman has not drunk for 30 years. But he smokes four packs of cigarets a day, plays gin rummy for high stakes all night, breakfasts in midafternoon. He loves gags and practical jokes, once got Marcus Loew to give an impassioned pep talk in a darkened room to 75 dummies; once persuaded Charlie Chaplin to enter a Charlie Chaplin impersonation contest. Chaplin won third prize: $1. Grauman credits all his success to "the Big Boss Upstairs"-"God," he says, "does my shows...