"Hold Your Breath"

It's Dorothy Devore clinging outside a set that's on top of a building in the 900 block on the east side of Broadway in the comedy "Hold Your Breath" (Christie Film Co., 1924). Scott Sidney was the director.

 

We're looking north toward 8th St. with the Majestic Theatre, 845 S. Broadway, on the left and Tally's Broadway, 833 S. Broadway, a couple buildings to the north. The large building just beyond Tally's is Hamburger's Department Store, soon after this shooting to become the May Co.  Film scholar Virginia Wexman gets kudos for spotting the theatres in the film. 

See the page about the Majestic Theatre on the Los Angeles Theatres site for more about that legit house. It opened in 1908 and was demolished in 1933. The page on Tally's Broadway has a history of that film house. It opened in 1910 and came down in 1929 for a southern expansion of the May Co. store. 

The film is available via the subscription-based online library of Retroformat. They comment:

"'Hold Your Breath' (1924) features Dorothy Devore, one of Al Christie’s major comedy stars, as a newspaper reporter out to prove herself, in a pulse-pounding, feminist take on the 'thrill comedy' genre pioneered by Harold Lloyd. The film co-stars Walter Heirs, Tully Marshall and Max Davidson, and features great historic footage of Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles. Unfortunately, only about half of this feature film is known to have survived, but this 45-minute Kodascope* version is a true delight."

Website: www.retroformat.org | on Facebook: www.facebook.com/RetroformatSilents | 

 

* "Kodascope" was the brand name given to the 16mm home format introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1923.

 

She's climbing the building to retrieve a bracelet a rich gentleman accused her of stealing. The cops are after her but she didn't do it. It's all the fault of a monkey belonging to an organ grinder -- and the monkey keeps climbing higher. The darker building in the center of the image down at 7th & Broadway is the south side of Loew's State Theatre, opened in late 1921. This image appears on IMDb. 

 

Problems develop with the plank when the painters sitting on the other end of it get up after finishing their lunch. In the lower right note the nice shot of the Mission Theatre, 838 S. Broadway. It was demolished several years later for construction of the Orpheum. Here they're running "The White Sister," a September 1923 release with Lillian Gish. 

 

Adventures on a ledge. And a slightly different angle for a look at the Majestic and Tally's. 

 

 

Saved by an awning. For some shots they also use a building a block or two farther south on Broadway.

On IMDb: "Hold Your Breath"