United We Still Stand: LA’s Wondrous & Historic United Theater Carries On With New Management

The history at The United Theater on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles is unignorable.

After a decade as The Theater at the Ace Hotel, the adjacent hotel — now the STILE Downtown LA — and theater, which has been owned by AJU CONTINUUM since 2019, changed management away from the ace, with the latter rebranded to The United Theater on Broadway, a nod to its earliest days.

Entering its foyer is like stepping into a giant time machine, the memories and ghosts of decades of showgoers flood down the grand staircase that flanks the palatial lobby, adorned in dark wood, gold-tinted mirrors and almost incomprehensible Spanish Gothic accoutrements.

It is not an echo of the old movie palaces, because it is not a tribute to those glistening monuments to silver nitrate: it is an almost perfectly preserved example. The theater opened as the United Artists Theatre in 1927. It was the flagship theater of United Artists Studio, formed in 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and husband-and-wife actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. The raison d’etre for UA was that the artists — actors and directors — should have greater control of their pay and their output than was then common in the earliest days of the studio system of American filmmaking, which was dominated by autocratic studio chiefs.

Though the philosophy at UA was different from other studios, the business model was more or less the same, relying on owned-and-operated theaters and the LA location was the crown jewel of UA’s chain. When it opened in 1927, it was the tallest building in the City of Angels (the now-iconic city hall would top it one year later) and if it evokes a Spanish cathedral, that means the architects met the demands of one of UA’s central figures: Pickford had fallen in love with Segovia, Spain’s cathedral on her and Fairbanks’ European Grand Tour honeymoon in 1920.

Though the level of detail and care given by its constructors certainly played a part in the perseverance of the United — the building still has its original tile and woodwork, along with the dripping edifices typical of the Flamboyant Spanish Gothic style it mimics — an unlikely hero is the reason the building is still in good shape.

“We owe so much to Pastor Gene Scott,” Serena Fortier, the theater’s general manager, says.

In the late 1980s — an era of considerable decline, decay and neglect in downtown Los Angeles — Scott, one of the country’s most recognizable televangelists (though he bristled at the term), was approached by Bruce Corwin, chairman of the Metropolitan Theatres Corporation, who asked if Scott wanted to restore the old movie palace for use as a church and broadcasting location. Other than replacing the original seating with pews — the original seats are back now, reupholstered, and the pews have been repurposed for concourse seating — Scott changed nothing about the structure, lovingly restoring it and maintaining it until his death in 2005. During Scott’s stewardship, the basement — which originally housed the gentlemen’s and ladies’ lounges which are now bars and extra green room space — held what was believed to be the world’s largest privately-held collection of Bibles.

After Scott’s death, the United continued to operate as a church, until it was purchased by real estate developers in 2011, who opened The Ace Theater and its neighboring Ace Hotel in what was UA’s office space in 2014. In early 2024, The Ace Hotel closed, which has served as a source of much confusion as to the status of the theater.

It remains very much open for business — “we didn’t close for a single day,” Fortier emphasizes. Its 1,600-plus capacity auditorium has become a favorite of comedians, getting frequent use during the biennial Netflix is a Joke festival, for example. Fortier says live podcast recordings also do swift trade there, in addition to the more traditional music acts.

Since the Ace takeover in 2014, Fortier says the venue has been modernizing – improving lighting and sound and backstage areas for performers and upgrading food and beverage points. There’s a large main bar in the lobby, plus a a few almost-hidden, secret-feeling locations throughout the building.

“We want to make it a place where people want to play,” she says.

That can be a delicate balancing act. After all, what makes The United special is that it really does feel like a place out of time and it would be jarring to see, say, the sheet metal facings of contemporary architecture.

So the vintage remains the face of the building with the modern tucked behind. The capacious auditorium still includes the space where the organ that accompanied silent films (and later, Pastor Gene’s preaching) was placed and its walls still include two large murals. One depicts a paradise and features the faces of UA’s principals living in a blissful co-operative existence. Well, not all the UA principals, because Chaplin is on the other mural, a darker scene of oppression where the other characters feature the faces of the hated studio executives. Why is Chaplin not with his confreres in the good place? Apparently he and Pickford — who were best friends — got in a spat shortly before the murals were completed. In a fit of pique, Pickford — “she seemed to always get what she wanted,” Fortier says — told the artists to stick Chaplin instead in the darker situation.

The domed ceiling of the auditorium is dazzling — in a literal as well as figurative sense: it’s decorated with what must be thousands of pieces of crushed glass tile that sends a starscape through the auditorium when the lights strike it. Downstairs, in the ladies’ lounge, one of the original chandeliers has been recently re-installed, one of dozens, if not hundreds, of period fixtures found in storage, blessedly not thrown out by Pastor Gene during his tenure.

Beyond the sheer grandeur and history of the place, the United has another great selling point.

“There’s not a lot of venues attached to a hotel,” Fortier says.

Acts playing the 1,600-cap level are often workaday types that typically sleep on the tour bus between stops. Due to the relationship with the hotel — after Ace closed, it reopened as Stile Downtown — Fortier can offer performers a soft bed that isn’t on wheels, at least for a night.

The United also hosts special events — weddings, fundraisers and so on — and has become a busy filming location. For touring purposes, it’s an open house, and similarly, unlike many of the other restored old movie palaces in Los Angeles, it’s not owned by a studio (Netflix, for example, owns the Egyptian, and Disney the Pantages), which means there’s far fewer corporate shenanigans if a director needs a period cinema for a crucial scene, as Damien Chazelle did for 2022’s “Babylon,” which utilized the lobby for a scene of a glitzy 1920s premiere.

Fortier is experimenting with different types of programming to keep the United busy. The Sunday Lobby Series brings local independent artists to the grand — though less intimidating than the auditorium — lobby of the theater for a more intimate feel.

“As much as I love big shows, this is all about holding up indie artists,” Fortier says.

She’s also interested in booking residencies since the neighboring hotel offers the same high-end lodging advantage that Vegas casinos use when booking artists.

The United is in good hands: Fortier fell in love with the theater on a trip to L.A. made before she relocated and told her then-boyfriend that she was going to run it one day and indeed she does, having worked her way up from an entry-level job at was then the Ace Hotel to now GM-ing the theater. The theater’s future is as bright as its unignorable past.