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It was built to be the permanent home of the annual Academy Awards show, located, as it is, right across the street from the hotel (the Hollywood Roosevelt) where the very first Oscar Night took place, and a stone's throw from the fabulous footprints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. After years of roaming from one location to another (the Shrine, the Music Center, even Grauman's itself), the Oscars have finally come home to Hollywood to stay. And it is a dazzling home, with three balcony levels and twenty opera boxes to lend a somewhat European flourish to the surroundings. Built at a cost of $94 million, this 136,000 square foot theatre, with 3,400 seats, was custom-designed for the special needs of Oscar Night and other live TV broadcasts. The theatre is set back from the Boulevard, so that when the stars arrive in their limos on Oscar night, they walk north through the towering entrance portal, up "Awards Walk" (past backlit glass panels etched with the titles of previous Best Pictures), and up stairs into the theatre's four-story lobby, where they will find 26 giant-size photographic images (on clear plexiglass) of Oscar winners such as Brando, Grace Kelly, Jack Nicholson and Julia Roberts. Inside the theatre, there is
even a special ring of seats for Oscar nominees, next to the orchestra
pit, to make it easy for the winners to reach the 120 foot wide stage.
The theatre is sponsored by the Kodak Company, which paid a record $75 million to have its name emblazoned on the new auditorium. That's certainly appropriate. Kodak has a Hollywood history of its own: the company has won eight Academy Awards over the years, and for 80 straight years (as of 2008), every single Oscar-winning movie has been produced on Kodak film. Even though the theatre was custom-designed for Oscar Night, the Motion Picture Academy doesn't own the theatre, they simply rent the facility for the Big Event. So the challenge was what to do with the theatre for the rest of the year, between Oscar Nights. Their first non-Oscar bookings were for the American Ballet Theatre's "The Nutcracker" (for the 2001 Christmas season), followed by the Broadway hit musical "The Full Monty".
But L.A. proved to be a very competitive market when it came to booking big events in between Oscar Nights. The Kodak already had to compete with existing venues such as The Gibson Amphitheatre, The Honda Center, the Greek Theatre, the Shrine, the Pantages, the Music Center, Walt Disney Hall and the Staples Center, and by 2007 it was having problems keeping the theatre filled with top acts.
Parking:
The Hollywood & Highland center offers large
parking garages, accessible from Highland Avenue and Orange Avenue. Parking
rates are $2.00 for up to 4 hours with validation ; $1.00 for every
20 minutes thereafter. Daily maximum $10.00. (Valet parking is available
for an additional $5.)
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