By Kathryn Stelmach Artuso

As North Hollywood’s historic El Portal Theatre prepares for its 100th anniversary celebration this fall, visitors might be surprised to learn that the surrounding NoHo Arts District is in decline.

A young Marilyn Monroe went to the movies at El Portal Theatre when the nearby Lankershim Elementary School let its students, including Monroe, out for the day. Riding her bike over from Burbank, a young Debbie Reynolds also fell in love with movies at El Portal Theatre before her career took off in a series of Hollywood films. She later starred in a Vegas-style variety show from 2004-2014 at the theater.

The theater’s lobby shows off donations from Reynolds including circular pouf sofas from a popular musical she starred in, The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964). The lobby is also decorated with bas-relief sculptures created during the 1930s by the federal Works Progress Administration, which provided jobs during the Great Depression.

After Reynolds passed away in 2016, the managers of El Portal paid tribute to her years of patronage, renaming the central theater the Debbie Reynolds MainStage. They also threw a memorial celebration for her in June 2017, featuring 60 tap dancers in raincoats, replicating the famous number from the 1952 musical romantic comedy film, Singin’ in the Rain.

“I was in one of those raincoats,” chuckled Pegge Forrest, the managing director of El Portal Theatre since 1998, joined later by Jay Irwin, the general manager.

Built in the Spanish Revival style with a neon Art Deco marquee, the theater began as a vaudeville playhouse in 1926, but was converted into a movie palace and later to a multi-stage performing arts center. In addition to the 360-seat Debbie Reynolds MainStage, it boasts the 96-seat Monroe Forum named after Marilyn Monroe, where former weatherman Fritz Coleman performs a monthly comedy show.

“We are still the ‘Jewel in the Crown’” of the North Hollywood theater district, Forrest said, using the theater’s long-standing nickname.

Despite its storied past, El Portal has seen its share of trouble, surviving severe damage caused by the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, the Great Recession in 2008, and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.

Not all of the theaters in NoHo have weathered these storms as smoothly as El Portal Theatre. Named after New York’s bohemian SoHo district, NoHo once boasted the second-largest theater district in the country, with 22 live theaters, trailing only Broadway. In the 1990s, creatives from Hollywood fled rising rents, and NoHo attracted artists — until gentrification and rising rents pushed many out.

After facing economic struggles during the pandemic, the NoHo Arts District is down to 14 theaters despite efforts by advocates like Nancy Bianconi, the CEO of NoHo Communications Group and president of Nohoartsdistrict.com. Affectionately known as “The Godmother” of the Arts District, Bianconi persuaded then-L.A. City Councilmember Paul Krekorian in 2020 to reallocate $200,000 from an emergency grant program aimed at helping theaters remain financially solvent.

“About half of our landlords were capable of lowering the rent,” said Bianconi, who also ran GoFundMe campaigns for theaters during the pandemic. “With the extra subsidies or grants that were provided through the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the efforts of Councilman Krekorian, and Nohoartsdistrict.com, we were able to keep some theaters surviving.”

Doug Haverty, the artistic director of The Group Repertory Theatre Company, known as The Group Rep, said that during the pandemic, “We couldn’t operate, so we had no income.” The landlord postponed rent payments, he said, but the unpaid amount still mushroomed.

“It’s like a huge balloon payment, which is terrible,” Haverty said. “We sat there with an empty building, nothing going on there. … We owed a ton of money” but the landlord “has been gracious enough to allow us to pay it back slowly, so we are still chipping away at that mountain of debt.”

In the summer of 2021, The Group Rep experimented with staging outdoor plays in the parking lot, but they moved back inside that fall.

Since then, Haverty has sought creative ways to appeal to a changed audience.

“People stayed home, and they found new sources of entertainment, particularly binge-watching and streaming, and now we’re experiencing a kind of apathy from audiences where they just don’t want to leave the comfort of their home at night,” Haverty said. “So we’re trying to create entertainment that is light-hearted and escapist, so that if people do venture out of their house they’re going to have a good time. We’ve actually talked to subscribers who said they endure a lot of horrible news all day. They’re bombarded with it, so they don’t want to then go to the theater and see something that’s more bad news.”

Instead, he has discovered a preference for matinees as well as comedies, musicals and murder mysteries. “Even though a murder mystery is sometimes violent, there’s usually an element of comedy or drama, and then there’s a solution when the detective solves it, and so there’s gratification,” he said. “When you leave, you feel like it was figured out, and there was justice.”

Haverty had high hopes for the Performing Arts Equitable Payroll Fund, a California bill (Senate Bill 1116) that went into effect in March, designed to support the non-profit arts sector, especially small community theaters, by providing money to reimburse payroll expenses.

But he said, “It’s woefully underfunded, and they only reimburse a part of the payroll, so it means that we would have to then come up with the other part, and we at The Group Rep could not do that, so we couldn’t participate.”

Other solutions have been explored by L.A. City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian, who represents NoHo and has secured a $2.4 million grant to finance the second phase of the renovation of historic Lankershim Arts Center just down the street from the El Portal Theatre. This longtime cultural hub will receive structural repairs and a restored theater space.

Meanwhile, “District NoHo,” a major development proposed above the underground Metro Station in North Hollywood, would offer a mix of retail, office space, market-rate housing, a 28-story tower, an outdoor performing arts space and a “sign district” that would allow huge digital signs on the property. Of the 1,527 proposed housing units, 311 would be affordable.

Nazarian anticipates that District NoHo will have a valuable impact on the local economy.

“When you’re increasing the residential space in a specific hub, you’re bringing more people to an area, who will then utilize the services provided in that area as well, whether it’s the small restaurants, small businesses, and retail stores and shops, as well as the entertainment component,” Nazarian said. “It all connects, and I think it will go a long way in boosting all of those services as well.”