"He Learned About Women"

We see lots of the Philharmonic Auditorium at 5th & Olive in Lloyd Corrigan's film "He Learned About Women" (Paramount, 1933).  The film is set in New York and they're calling the theatre the Metropole. Here con man Grant Mitchell walks across the stage to see theatre manager Gordon Westcott, currently having trouble paying the theatre's bills.

Stu Erwin stars as Peter Potter Kendall II, a bookish young man who inherits a large fortune and needs to figure out how the world works. On one of his trips out of the house he meets Susan Fleming and Alison Skipworth, playing a couple of desperate ladies in need of a job. He decides to employ them and soon Skipworth thinks she can get more. And Westcott and Mitchell cook up a con as well.

We come back to the theatre at the end of the film. Ingenue Susan Fleming is being held in one of the dressing rooms. Westcott extorts money from Erwin and promises to release the girl. But he really intends to run away with her. Everyone shows up at the theatre for fights and chases. The upstage right trap we see here will figure in the action, going up and down unexpectedly.

Westcott outside the 2nd floor star dressing room yelling at his crew. The girl has escaped. With the money.

Fleming down at stage level.

Westcott onstage yelling at a crew member in a box.

Fleming up in the 1st balcony.

A nice detail of the proscenium plasterwork. 

Fleming in one of the side boxes. 

Alison Skipworth at the live front board turning on some stage lights. 

Stu Erwin dropping down the suddenly opened trap.

Con man Mitchell on the flyfloor stage right. 

Another view off right with Skipworth getting ready to hit a stagehand. 

A back and forth chase on the apron. Fleming jumps in the pit to escape.

A view up to the downstage end of the flyfloor. Dressing rooms are underneath it. 

Fighting upstage right with a nice capstan winch in the background. 

Erwin recovering after getting knocked behind the winch.

 Triumph at the end. Then the trap swallows Skiupworth. The last shot is her looking up from the basement.

See the page about the Philharmonic Auditorium on the Los Angeles Theatres site for a history of the building and many photos. The 2,670 seat theatre opened in 1906 and was demolished in 1985.

On IMDb: "He Learned About Women"