Title supplied by cataloger.; Herman J. Schultheis was born in Aachen, Germany in 1900, and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1920s after obtaining a Ph.D. in mechanical and electrical engineering. He married Ethel Wisloh in 1936, and the pair moved to Los Angeles the following year. He worked in the film industry from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, most notably on the animated features Fantasia and Pinocchio. His detailed notebook, documenting the special effects for Fantasia, is the subject of a 14-minute short-subject included on the film's DVD. In 1949, he started employment with Librascope as a patent engineer. Schultheis was an avid amateur photographer who traveled the world with his cameras. It was on one of these photographic exhibitions in 1955 that he disappeared in the jungles of Guatemala. His remains were discovered 18 months later. The digitized portion of this collection represents the images Schultheis took of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities after he relocated to the area in 1937. Christine Wetherill Stevenson, author of the Pilgrimage Play, believed the Cahuenga Pass would provide a dramatic outdoor setting, and purchased 59 acres in Bolton Canyon in 1919. The original wooden Pilgrimage Theatre, built in 1920 was destroyed by fire in 1929. A replacement concrete theater designed to resemble the gates of Jerusalem was built on the same site in 1931, and is still in use today. In 1941 the land was deeded to the County of Los Angeles. The Pilgrimage Play was presented from 1920 until 1964, when a separation of church and state lawsuit forced its closure. In 1976, the Pilgrimage Theatre was renamed the John Anson Ford Theatre in honor of the late L.A. County Supervisor's significant support of the arts. In 1995 the Hollywood Pilgrimage Memorial Monument, a 37 foot steel cross, was designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #617. The same year the theater was determined eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. This Foster and Kleiser billboard for the Pilgrimage Play outside the Pilgrimage Theatre, later the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre (2580 Cahuenga Boulevard).
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm. Photographic prints
Pilgrimage Theatre (Hollywood, Los Angeles, Calif.) Billboards--California--Los Angeles Mountains--California, Southern Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments Hollywood Hills (Los Angeles, Calif.) Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.) Santa Monica Mountains (Calif.) Schultheis Collection photographs Foster and Kleiser Company
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