Hollywood Bowl plans echo with dissonance

Preservationists' court fight delays demolition of band shell

By Norma Meyer
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

February 18, 2001

HOLLYWOOD -- The Beatles arrived at the Hollywood Bowl in a Brinks armored truck, only to be mobbed by hysterical fans who crushed car roofs as they climbed on vehicles trying to get backstage. The audience's screaming was so loud during the 1964 performance, the music was drowned out.

Three years earlier, Judy Garland sang a concert in pouring rain, perched on a ramp atop a reflection pool. Over the decades, Frank Sinatra crooned, Fred Astaire danced and President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke under the bowl's world-famous orchestra shell.

Now, that storied 1929 shell is about to be demolished. The county of Los Angeles, which owns the Hollywood Bowl, plans to tear down a structure it boasts is "as recognizable as the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty" and replace it with a bigger "state-of-the-art" shell with better acoustics for musicians on stage.

Outraged preservationists are headed to court to try to halt the death of one of Hollywood's last remaining landmarks. The nonprofit Hollywood Heritage -- calling the demolition a "stealth project" -- claims county officials deceived the public for years by referring to the proposed bulldozing as the Hollywood Bowl Shell Rehabilitation Project.

If many people thought the historic shell was being renovated, supporters say, there's good reason. Even as they sealed the shell's fate, the county Board of Supervisors in September passed a motion stating "Today we have the opportunity to approve a balanced proposal for rehabilitation of an icon -- the shell at the Hollywood Bowl."

Then they voted to raze the icon.

Preservationists watched in horror as the supervisors next agreed to nominate the bowl with the new, unbuilt shell -- which, according to plans may one day be accompanied by corporate-sponsored Diamond Vision screens -- to the National Register of Historic Places, an official list of properties deemed worthy of preservation.

"Idiotic and insulting," said Robert Nudelman, president of Hollywood Heritage.

"That makes L.A. sense," scoffed Ned Olds, who with his wife, Carol, was recently visiting the bowl from Wilmington, N.C. The retired couple stood on the steps and stared at the half-moon shell, which has been featured in a host of movies -- including the 1937 "A Star is Born" -- and from which live concerts were broadcast to World War II troops overseas.

Just about every celebrity seems to have graced the bowl's stage. Abbott and Costello. Jack Benny. John Barrymore. Walt Disney. The Rolling Stones. Rudolph Nureyev.

"There's 94 Oscar winners who have won 197 Oscars. The Grammy winners, I don't even want to count," said Nudelman. "Nowhere else in the world is there a facility that's had that range of people in it, period."

The push for a new shell came from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which makes the bowl its summer home. Since 1972, under a long-term lease with the county, the orchestra has operated what is billed as the nation's largest natural amphitheater.

"The current shell is falling apart," said county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, in whose district the bowl lies. He calls it "asbestos-ridden," and to prove a point, adds: "You can run your fist right through the shell. I've done it. I've dented the plaster with a soft jab."

Yaroslavsky denies allegations by Nudelman that the county pulled a fast one by calling the proposed demolition a "rehabilitation" project. Said the supervisor: "He's nitpicking one word."

The new larger shell would be similar to the old one but have a more elliptical curve and a stage almost three times the current size to accommodate musicians who now sit outside the dome. A reflective canopy would correct uneven acoustics.

"Sometimes, you can hear a single trumpet screaming at you and not hear the person sitting next to you who's another violinist," said Jay Rosen, a violinist with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Trying to play under such conditions is like having "a football team that has blinders on."

"The conductor sometimes can't hear the instruments," said Patricia Mitchell, the Philharmonic's chief operating officer. The roof, she added, "leaks like a sieve."

Hollywood Heritage contends the county failed to adequately explore alternatives other than the wrecking ball, which is scheduled for October. Acoustical improvements can be made and the asbestos removed, Nudelman says, and for far less than the $18 million taxpayer cost of the new shell.

"If the roof leaks you fix it," he said. "You don't tear down the building."

A judge this week set an April 26 hearing after reading legal briefs from both sides. The court date delays the county's plans to begin building the new shell off-site next month. It is due to be in place at the bowl by summer 2002.

The save-the-shell lawsuit claims the county failed to inform Hollywood Heritage of its intentions, in violation of state requirements. Although the county says notices were sent to 1,200 property owners, Nudelman finds it fishy that his group, which is dedicated to preserving Tinseltown landmarks, wasn't on the list. Hollywood Heritage's museum is across the street from the bowl.

Less than a handful of residents -- if that -- showed up at three public meetings held by the county, because notices called the demolition a "rehabilitation" project, Nudelman said.

"Longtime bowl patrons didn't even know," said Nadine Smith, who has attended concerts there for 50 years. Smith is president of the Womens Club of Hollywood.

She is filled with memories of the bowl -- from freezing on a bench in the last row with a date decades ago to eavesdropping backstage as Sinatra asked the Andrew Sisters for a ride home after a star-studded show.

"I'm all for repairs but there's no excuse for demolishing it," Smith said. "Once you put up a shiny new replica it's not the same."

Dismissing such nostalgia, Yaroslavsky asserts the 1929 shell -- the fourth and last since the Bowl's 1922 founding -- "has been bastardized several times over the decades." Cardboard "sonotubes" designed by architect Frank Gehry were installed in 1970 to help the acoustical problem, and removed a decade later. They were replaced by Gehry's fiberglass spheres that still hang within the shell to help musicians hear themselves.

"The 1929 shell is still the 1929 shell," countered Ken Bernstein of the Los Angeles Conservancy, which also opposes demolition. "This is an unfortunate precedent to be setting. To argue that a replica of a historic shell is acceptable opens the door to argue that a replica of any historic building is acceptable."

If the 72-year-old shell is obliterated, the bowl will be left with only one feature from its glamorous past -- a granite "Muse of Music" statute built in 1940 at the entrance, Nudelman said. Over time, the premises have been updated; what was a 1939 tearoom is now a slick, modern bowl museum.

Once the old shell is gone, Yaroslavsky wants the amphitheater listed on the National Register of Historic Places to protect the Bowl "against the incremental contamination" of prior years.

A representative of the Washington-based National Register found that reasoning odd.

"It seems to make sense the eligible historical entity is that shell," said historian Paul Lusignan. "When you talk to people on the East Coast about the Hollywood Bowl, it's the band shell that's the central component. Otherwise, it's a historic former location."