Sid Grauman (1879 - 1927)
Sid Grauman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana.1) Sid Grauman's father, David Grauman, took part in a gold rush to the Colorado hills in the late 1800s and then he and his son Sid went to the Klondike. As a teenager in Dawson, Sid staged benefit concerts for the local newsboys and one event raised $1200. David Grauman left the Klondike in 1899 but Sid stayed on. He helped Tex Rickard stage boxing matches in the Monte Carlo Saloon. A bout featuring Frank Slavin against Joe Boyle had the men acting like enemies in the ring. Sid left the Yukon in 1900 to join his family in California. His father gave him money to buy the Unique, a movie theatre on Market Street. He was the first to hire Jessy Lasky, who went on to create Paramount Pictures. A few years later, Sid and David built another theatre called the Lyceum. Both the Unique and the Lyceum were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. By 1910, anything associated with the Grauman name was successful.2)
In 1917, Sid moved to Los Angeles and built the Million Dollar Theatre. In 1922, he moved to Hollywood and opened the Egyptian. He then built a very lavish theatre with partners Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. It was called Grauman's Chinese Theatre and it opened on May 19, 1927. He perfected the art of live pre-feature prologue there. When a new motion picture opened, part of the gala was to have the celebrity place their hands or feet into fresh cement.3)