There is a youtube interview with famous "female illusionist" Charles Pierce where he tells host Skip E. Lowe about working in the early 1950's, fresh out of the Pasadena Playhouse, at a nightclub/theatre on Sunset Blvd. in Silverlake called "Cabaret Concert." Cabaret Concert was started in 1950 by a dancer named Miriam Schiller as a showcase for aspiring performers. It ran until 1961, described as "a popular nightspot among television and film producers, talent scouts, agents and celebrities," and as having "a shadowy atmosphere with candlelit tables, poetry readings, jazz and folk singers, and dancers in black leotards." Many famous names and familiar faces of the 1950's through the 1970's, mostly television personalities, started out at Cabaret Concert, some of them working for little money and doubling as wait staff and ticket takers.
Charles Pierce, "Female Illusionist"
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El Cid at 4212 Sunset, originally Cabaret Concert 1950-1961
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Inside stairs and lower courtyard of Cabaret Concert/El Cid
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Regular performers included Ann B. Davis ("Schultzie" on the Bob Cummings Show" and later housekeeper Alice in "The Brady Bunch"), Jo Ann Worley ("Laugh In"), vivacious television actress Ruta Lee, Ken Berry ("F Troop," "Mayberry R.F.D.," and "Mama's Family"), Berry's wife Jackie Joseph (the original "Little Shop of Horrors," and "The Doris Day Show"), Comedic actor and game show host Bert Convy, jazz singers Ruth Olay and Ketty Lester, Ann Morgan Guilbert (Rob and Laura's neighbor Millie Helper on "The Dick Van Dyke Show,") and voluptuous blonde bombshell/schemer Joyce Jameson. In real life, Joyce was the long-time girlfriend of "The Man From Uncle's" Robert Vaughn. She suffered from depression and and committed suicide with pills at age 54 in 1987.
Joyce Jameson
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Ann B. Davis
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Jo Ann Worley on "laugh-In"
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Ruta Lee
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Jackie Joseph and Ken Berry
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The famous musical comedy revue "The Billy Barnes Review" played for two years starting in 1956 at Cabaret Concert, then moved to the larger Las Palmas Theatre and eventually to Broadway.
The Cabaret Concert building, whose facade is a long stucco wall with a Mission-Style parapet over the street entrance, is located at 4212 Sunset Blvd. near Myra. Today it is known as "El Cid," a flamenco restaurant - theatre, doubling as a venue for eclectic musical acts. The building has an unusual layout. Photos show stairs going down from near the entrance to a lower courtyard and bar; beyond that is a cavernous room with a stage at the far end. The step-down, split-level layout owes to it being built on a hillside on the north side of Sunset. Below the building is a valley with mostly older houses (I gather this from google photographs).
The land where El Cid/Cabaret Concert is located was originally a "cornfield" used by D.W. Griffith to film scenes for his epic "Birth of a Nation," (originally entitled "The Clansman") around 1914. Griffith's studio, the Reliance-Majestic Studio - sometimes known as The Griffith Studio and Majestic Studio, later the Fine-Arts Studio - was nearby at 4516 Sunset, now a Von's parking lot. The story goes that Griffith built or was involved in the building of the El Cid structure in 1915, and he screened his film there for the outrageously high admission price of $2.00 - about $48.00 today.
In the 1920's the building's facade was startlingly remodeled into the bizarre "Jail Cafe," prominently featured here at NLA; about 1932 it became The Gateway Theatre, where for several years an old-fashioned melodrama called "The Blackguard Returns" played.
Jail Cafe 1920's
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Gateway Theatre 1930's, The Blackguard Returns
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A Charles Pierce postscript:
Pierce was an aspiring stage actor when he occasionally performed at Cabaret Concert around 1952/53. His biographer writes that Pierce's offerings, such as a performance of a Noel Coward sketch, were tepidly received. One night a friend ran into an excited Pierce at a gay bar on Melrose near Vine called "The Golden Carp," (the writer surmised it may have originally been a Chinese restaurant and the name was retained). Pierce had just come from seeing a noted impressionist named Arthur Blake at The Bar of Music (recently featured here at NLA) on Beverly Blvd. in Hollywood. Blake was a big name at the time, a friend of Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, and Talullah Bankhead, and a regular at The Trocadero and nightclubs in New York. He wasn't then a drag performer per se, but used a few props such as hats and scarves to impersonate both female and male celebrities, although he excelled at "haughty divas." Bette Davis said that Arthur Blake was the only impressionist to "get her right."
Arthur Blake,1940's
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Arthur Blake and pal Talullah Bankhead, early 1950's
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Bar of Music, Hollywood
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For Charles Pierce, seeing Arthur Blake that night was an epiphany; he began writing campy material and soon introduced his new drag persona at an Altadena spot called "Club La Vie."
An accquaintance and Pasadena Playhouse classmate of Pierce's around this time was young playwright/novelist James Leo Herlihy, who rented an inexpensive room at an old house in Hollywood called "Orchard Gables" - recently saved from demolition and now a center for non-profit organizations. Herlihy went on to success writing plays and novels that were made into movies: "Blue Denim," "All Fall Down," and "Midnight Cowboy." My friend Richard Lamparski remembers meeting Herlihy at Orchard Gables and describes him as "one of the unhappiest people I've ever met." Herlihy lived alternately in Key West and Silverlake, and killed himself with pills at age 66 in 1993.
James Leo Herlihy
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Orchard Gables, 1904 Hollywood house once surrounded by citrus orchards
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