Ebell of Los Angeles - Notable Performances

Notable Performances

In more than eighty years of productions, the Wilshire Ebell has witnessed performances by many stars and celebrities, but some stand out from the rest.

• Young Judy Garland, then known as Baby Frances Gumm, first auditioned on the Wilshire Ebell Theater stage, and was discovered while performing there. MGM producer George Sidney later described Garland's first audition this way: "I had made Judy's first screen test. There was a theater here in Los Angeles called the Wilshire-Ebell. ... hey used to put on vaudeville acts on certain nights of the week. This little girl came out with her two sisters and her mother playing the piano. She did a little number with a baseball bat. We took her out to the studio and made a test on a soundstage..." And in his biography of Garland, Gerold Frank described an early performance on the Wilshire Ebell stage, witnessed by another MGM producer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz: "Judy sang. And in his seat, Joe Mankiewicz, who was to win half a dozen Oscars as a screenwriter and director, underwent a memorable experience. He sat transfixed. Not only the power, but something electric ..." Mankewicz met the 13-year-old Garland backstage at the Ebell and determined to bring her name to the studio's attention.

• In 1937, Amelia Earhart made her last public appearance and speech at the Ebell before leaving for her ill-fated around-the-world flight.

• On April 10, 1964, Glenn Gould gave his final public performance at the Ebell, spending the rest of his public life in the recording studio. Among the pieces he performed that night were Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 30, selections from Bach's The Art of Fugue, and the Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 92 No. 4 by Ernst Krenek. Oddly, a recording exists in which Gould claims the event took place in Chicago.

• Two years before his assassination, Filipino opposition leader and Ferdinand Marcos critic Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. held a memorable freedom rally speech at the theater on February 15, 1981; sharing his life and struggle under the martial law dictatorship from the jam-packed crowd of Filipino and American audience.