The Cabaret Concert Theatre was a small cellar café/cabaret, located in the Silverlake section of West Los Angeles, California, that operated between 1950 and 1961. Created by dancer Miriam Schiller with the help of a group of young actors and dancers who wanted a place to showcase their talent, the 100 seat theatre became a popular nightspot among television and film producers, talent scouts, agents and celebrities, who came to eat, drink and enjoy a wide variety of sophisticated revues, plays and concerts. The long-running Billy Barnes Revue ran for two years before transferring to the larger Las Palmas Theatre and, subsequently, Broadway. Among the many talents whose careers benefited from being seen at the Cabaret Concert Theatre are Ann B. Davis (who was cast as "Schultzie" in the long-running Robert Cummings series, Love That Bob), Jackie Joseph ("Audrey" in the 1960 version of The Little Shop of Horrors), Ann Morgan Guilbert ("Millie Helper" on The Dick Van Dyke Show), Joyce Jameson (The Steve Allen Show), Bert Convy (the Broadway productions of Fiddler on the Roof and Cabaret) and Ken Berry (F Troop).
The performers, who received little or no pay for their work, supplemented their income by waiting on tables, taking tickets and other essential activities.
Located at 4212 Sunset Blvd. at the intersection of Sunset and Myra, the building was built around 1900 and was used for many years as a studio by D.W. Griffith and his epic film, Birth of a Nation screened there in 1915. In 1961, the building was converted into an authentic replica of a 16th Century Spanish tavern and renamed El Cid. Still operating today, El Cid continues to present a variety of entertainers, from flamenco dancers and Spanish guitarists to rockabilly singers, burlesque performers and comedians.
Famous quotes containing the words concert and/or theatre:
“Science is unflinchingly deterministic, and it has begun to force its determinism into morals. On some shining tomorrow a psychoanalyst may be put into the box to prove that perjury is simply a compulsion neurosis, like beating time with the foot at a concert or counting the lampposts along the highway.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name.”
—Enid Bagnold (1889–1981)