The Earl Carroll Theatre opened on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, on December 26 1938, and it was such a big event the news organization British Pathé covered the launch. ‘It’s a gilt-edged, diamond-studded night when impresario Earl Carroll opens his new nightclub,’ says the English presenter excitedly. He goes on to talk about Hollywood stars arriving in their ‘magnificent petrol chariots’ and how the lucky invitees were in for ‘a super supper club show with knobs on!’

You can see a clip of this newscast on YouTube.

Carroll was a Broadway impresario who had already operated a similarly themed theatre in New York from 1922 to 1932. Both theatres employed the phrase;’ through these portals pass the most beautiful girls in the world’ over their respective entrances. The fabulously rich entrepreneur also once described himself as the guy ‘for whom the belles toil.’ A report in the Herald Examiner said the interiors were designed by Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky and the building itself was designed in Streamline Moderne style by architect Gordon B. Kaufman.

The entrance way was decorated with a 50ft swirl of warm -white neon tubing held aloft by a Goddess of Neon at the top of the stairs and 1,200 three-foot-long pieces of warm-white neon tubing suspended from the ceiling and arranged in undulating waves.

The theatre-restaurant seated 1,000 people.

In 1953 its name was changed to the Moulin Rouge. Then it became the Aquarius Theatre in the 1960s and 70s and then the Nickelodeon on Sunset until 2017, when it closed.

The artist who created this beautiful illustration of a showgirl signed her name on the front of this 1940s menu cover. We believe she is Jean M Seymour. We are trying to find out more about her.

Courtesy Eric Lynxwiler.