"D.O.A."

Rudolph Maté's "D.O.A" (Cardinal Pictures/United Artists, 1950) starts in San Francisco but about an hour in we come to L.A. and get a ride down Broadway with views of the Orpheum, Tower and Million Dollar. Edmond O'Brien is trying to track down the guy who gave him a lethal dose of radium.

You can see vaudeville is making a comeback at the Orpheum. In the distance note the United Artists building with two lit verticals -- one for the theatre and one for Texaco. This footage also appears as part of the title sequence in Thom Andersen's "Los Angeles Plays Itself" (2004), an epic exploration of how the city has been portrayed in the movies.

A view of the Tower Theatre at 8th & Broadway as we continue north.

A moment later in "D.O.A." we get this slightly better view of the theatre's original center boxoffice. The Tower, at this point known as the Music Hall, is running "Black Magic" with Orson Welles. Gregory Ratoff directed with, evidently, lots of assistance by the uncredited Welles. Note the "Welcome Orpheum Vaudeville" on the marquee.

 Later we pay a visit to the Bradbury Building and get this shot of the Million Dollar. "D.O.A." was produced by Harry Popkin's Cardinal Pictures. Popkin owned the Million Dollar building at the time. The theatre is running "The Big Wheel" starring Mickey Rooney as a race car driver.

Noirish Los Angeles contributor Handsome Stranger has views of Cliftons, the Bradbury building interior and a Wilshire Blvd. shot on his Noirish post #7288.

See the pages on the Los Angeles Theatres site about the Tower Theatre for a history of the 1927 film palace along with hundreds of photos. The various pages about the Orpheum Theatre have many photos of different areas of that great 1926 vintage vaudeville house. The Million Dollar pages will give you a detailed photo tour of Sid Grauman's first Los Angeles theatre, opened in 1918.

The entire film is available for viewing on Internet Archive.

On IMDb: "D.O.A." | "Los Angeles Plays Itself"

A L.A. Times ad for "D.O.A." Note that one of the theatres it's playing at is the Downtown Music Hall, one of the theatres seen in the film. The theatre later went back to its original name, the Tower. Thanks to Ken McIntyre for finding the ad.