1920s Splendor Is Restored to ‘Grand Lady’

VENTURA — Drive by the old Ventura Theatre downtown and chaos reigns: Crews of busy painters balance precariously on ladders, the whir of drills pierces the eardrums, and paint-spattered workers dart back and forth beneath lamps still shrouded in protective plastic.

But in just three days, the once-tattered theater will throw open its doors again, and it will be sparkling and shining in all its Aladdin-esque splendor.

“I called this building a grand lady,” said new operator Glenis Gross, as she stepped nimbly across the mezzanine floor--still littered with paint, brushes and wiring on Tuesday afternoon. “She is still very much a lady, and should be treated as such.”

Less than a month ago, Gross and her partner, Dan Catullo III, of Backstreet Entertainment, signed a long-term lease for the theater with property owner Angelo Elardo. On April 18, they took over the management of the onetime movie theater that for the past eight years has served as a concert hall.

Since then, workers have carried sofas, trash and assorted junk out of the theater by the dumpster load.

The new operators said they have poured close to $1 million into refurbishing the once-noble theater and restoring it to its former glory.

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They plan to spend more than $3 million on renovations over the next three years, Catullo said, and are currently in negotiations to buy the theater.

About half of the massive restoration will be completed by Saturday night, when the New Ventura Theatre opens for Transfigured Night--the gala event of the Ventura Chamber Music Festival.

In the meantime, Gross and Catullo and their army of workers are scrambling to put in place the final touches.

Painters, electricians and restoration specialists have labored madly in recent weeks to install a state-of-the-art sound system, repair crumbling plaster moldings, change lightbulbs and paint the playful baroque interior from top to bottom.

Catullo and Gross can be spotted on the street speaking urgently into their cell phones.

They say they still await a shipment of mica from Spain to place the finishing touches on the theater’s grand chandelier by Saturday.

“We’ll just fill that in, and pull it up,” said Catullo excitedly, accidentally walking onto a floor freshly covered with red paint.

By Tuesday the walls already glinted gold, and the baroque designs leaped off the wall in splashes of bright red and blue.

But Gross says figuring out what the theater originally looked like was hard.

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Over the years, many of the theater’s ornate plaster moldings had crumbled, the once-bright colors faded.

“It was so dull, we couldn’t even see the beautiful work,” Gross said. “But we got it uncovered, we could see the shades of blue, the magnificent walls.”

In the course of the restoration, the new managers have done their best to remain true to the theater as it once was.

“You have to be very careful with a building that has such history and grace to it,” Gross said. “You can’t just go in and paint the walls lime green.”

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Instead, they hired Michael Pennington, an artist and conservator who worked on the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, to come in, chip away the layers of old paint, and do his best to recreate the original Hollywood ambience of the 1928 theater.

“I got up on a ladder with a halogen light, and started picking away,” Pennington said. Beneath the layers, he found the original colors. He has painted and antiqued the plaster moldings, and painted the leering conquistador faces that peer out from the design.

The building is commonly referred to as Spanish colonial or neoclassical in style, but Pennington calls it “Hollywood’s idea of Spanish colonial classical architecture.”

Gross and Catullo’s efforts to be true to the theater’s original style have not gone unnoticed by city officials and local preservationists.

On Monday they even received a letter from Gloria Leggett, daughter of the theater’s architect.

“Great to hear the old girl is making a comeback,” Leggett wrote in her short note. “My dad, C.B. Corcoran built it, and I know he’d be so pleased!”

When the theater first opened almost 70 years ago, it was designed to be an opera house, Gross said. But midway through construction, the owners ran out of money and made it into a movie and vaudeville theater instead.

It was the building’s old-fashioned flair that drew Gross and Catullo to the theater in their search for a funky venue to launch their budding entertainment business.

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“When we found the theater, I thought, ‘Our search is over,’ ” Gross said. “It was magic.”

Catullo said they will continue renovation work on and off through the end of this month. They still have to paint the ceiling of the concert hall in blue trompe l’oeil.

Eventually, they also plan to replace the 1950s marquee out front with a replica of the original 1920s-style sign.