As covered in the earlier blog post, The Cooperative Center and the Open Shop, after the Cooperative Center was established in 1925 by a group of Yiddish communists in Boyle Heights, the 3-story venue emerged as a busy center for an array of political leftists and labor activists. It was also the focus of a harassment campaign by the LAPD’s Red Squad unit, especially after the facility emerged as a key organizer for local protest rallies centered around the Los Angeles Plaza area in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Up until the early 1940s, the building’s auditorium, located at 2706-2708 Brooklyn Avenue (now Cesar Chavez Avenue) remained a frequent venue for left-wing sponsored programs despite several different new owners. But these new owners were more interested in rent than politics after the building was sold by its socialist founders in the early 1930s.
One early event several weeks after its opening in February 1925, was a dance sponsored by the Freiheit Social Club at the “new Co-operative Centre.” Freiheit (Yiddish word for freedom) was also the name of the New York-based Yiddish language newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Another fundraising dance in 1927 was promoted as a fundraiser for striking Colorado miners and “labor and political prisoners in the United States.” Also, in an L.A. Times society column published in 1929, the columnist noted the venue previously hosted a lecture by journalist Anna Louise Strong. Born in 1885, the Nebraska-born minister’s daughter was a prolific writer and author deeply involved in the international communist movement. Strong is buried in Beijing, China where she died in 1970.
The Cooperative Center auditorium also hosted artistic programs that included musical performances by visiting artists and plays performed by the local Yiddish theater group. In March 1938, a production of Awake and Sing by playwright and communist fellow traveler Clifford Odets was performed over several nights. In June 1937, the East Los Angeles Workers Club presented a “June Frolic” that included dance music by the Jose Garcia Orchestra, as well as “solo numbers by Clarence Muse, Negro singer.”
Born in 1889, Muse was a multi-talented Black artist with a long list of acting credits over six decades. Inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, Muse died in Perris, California in 1979 where the city’s Information Technology Department and TV studio is named the Clarence Muse Center.
The Cooperative Center also hosted events in support of two high-profile court trials that drew a lot of interest from members of the CPUSA, including the International Labor Defense (ILD), the legal arm of the party. One case involved socialist and union organizer Tom Mooney, who was convicted in 1917 for a deadly bombing in San Francisco the previous year. Insisting he was innocent and targeted mostly for his politics, supporters saw similarities to the Sacco and Vanzetti case. The other trial took place in a Scottsboro, Alabama courthouse in 1931 and is known as the Scottsboro Boys case. In this trial, nine Black “hobo” youths were tried and convicted primarily on the testimony of two young runaway white women who falsely accused them of rape.
In May 1932, the Cooperative Center hosted a welcome banquet for two noted speakers who were touring together on behalf of the defendants in the two trials that had emerged as a cause célèbre among American communists. The speakers were Tom Mooney’s 84-year-old Irish-born mother Mary Mooney, who traveled the throughout the United States and Europe campaigning for her son’s release as well as other “political prisoners” until her death in 1934. The other featured speaker was Barbados-born American socialist, essayist, and author Richard B. Moore who was campaigning for the release of the Scottsboro Boys as a representative for the ILD committee.
So committed to the cause for Tom Mooney’s release, a group of young communists, four men and two women, attempted to disrupt the last-day events of the 1932 Summer Olympics at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum by running onto the field with “Free Tom Mooney” signs. The protesters were Jess Shapiro, 18, a former student at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights; Ben Boots, 21; Edward Palmer, 22; Ethel Dell, 19, a Boyle Heights resident; Ann Davis, 19; and Meyer Baylin, 27, who formally lived on Boyle Heights-adjacent Townsend Avenue.
Below are two images taken from the online archives of the communist newspaper, the Western Worker about the protest, including photos of them running onto the field. Also of interest is a story in the right-hand column, below the protest photos.
For defending the six protesters in court, long-time IDL attorney Leo Gallagher (who also defended the free speech rights of speakers at the Cooperative Center) was forced to” voluntarily resign” his teaching position at Southwestern University School of Law under pressure spearheaded by the university’s dean. Gallagher continued to defend progressive organizations and leftist activists until a few months before he died in Los Angeles in 1963. The 1933 group photo of the Olympic Games protesters on the right shows them celebrating Tom Mooney’s chance for a new trial after a court declared he was initially indicted on false testimony. Mooney was acquitted of all charges and released from prison in 1934.
With regard to ownership of the Cooperative Center building, an L.A. city building permit dated August 17, 1936, listed Max Zlozower as the owner, and described the building’s use for, “hall, offices, and shops,” although there was no formal name listed for the building. The new name finally made its first appearance on October 1, 1936, in an Eastside Journal article about an upcoming “cooking school” presentation. Now called Paramount Hall, the article also reported the cooking presentation would showcase the hall’s “new stage” and “new comfortable seats.” A year later Zlozower announced the opening of the Paramount Deli located on the first floor of the building.
While still under Zlozower’s ownership, the Eastside Book Shop sponsored a dance at the “Paramount Auditorium” in 1938 that invited attendees to “dance the Progressive Swing.” Besides books, the Eastside Book Shop was often a place for local residents to purchase tickets for various cultural or political fundraising events held throughout Boyle Heights.
One of the hosts for the evening was screenwriter and author Sam Ornitz. In 1947 Ornitz would also become well-known as part of the so-called Hollywood Ten – a group of mostly Hollywood screenwriters who were blacklisted from the film industry for refusing to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee about communist affiliations.
By 1944, a Los Angeles city building permit dated September 6, listed Luis Serna as the owner, with a handwritten description of the venue as a “cocktail lounge.” In March of 1946, the Eastside Journal published an advertisement for the “Paramount Ball Room and Café.” The café or nightclub was located on the 1st floor, with the auditorium upstairs.
On September 9, 1946, San Francisco-based union organizer Archie Brown spoke at the Paramount Hall to promote his write-in campaign as a communist candidate for California governor. In 1965 Brown won a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Brown that affirmed the right of Communists to serve as elected members on union boards and offices.
By October 1949, a different owner of the Paramount was listed in an application that was submitted to the city’s Department of Building and Safety. The application was requesting to “Install a double-face neon sign on bldg. front” by the owner, R. Castino, who simply listed the building as a “dance studio.”
According to an ad in the Los Angeles Times, the dance studio had opened for business in April of that same year as a “branch studio” by Spanish-born dance instructor Eduardo Cansino. Cansino was a popular Spanish dancer in the vaudeville circuit in the United States and was the father (a harrowingly abusive father it turns out) to actress and screen legend, Rita Hayworth, born Margarita Carmen Cansino.
On the same month Cansino opened his dance studio, a benefit dance was held at the “Paramount Ballroom” for Edward R. Royball’s campaign for the Los Angeles City Council seat that included Boyle Heights. Royball initially had an unsuccessful run for the same seat in 1947.
In the intervening two years between his campaigns for the council seat, Roybal, along with Chicago-based community organizer Saul Alinsky and his Industrial Areas Foundation, and local activist Anthony Rios, helped establish the nation’s very first Community Service Organization (CSO) in Boyle Heights. With eventual branches throughout California, the grassroots civil rights organization would help train Mexican American community organizers for decades. Most notable among them was United Farm Workers leader, Cesar Chavez. While living on Folsom Street in Boyle Heights, Chavez was the CSO National Director from 1959 to 1962, when the CSO offices were located at 2701 E. 4th Street.
CSO, with its strong ties to organized labor, the Catholic Church, and progressive Jewish groups, was able to showcase its organizing skill with Roybal’s victory for the ninth district council seat – making him the first Latino American on the L.A. City Council. At a time when many Jewish residents began moving out of Boyle Heights during the post-war years, many progressive Jews who continued to live in the area provided crucial support for Roybal’s candidacy.
While the former Cooperative Center was no longer the hub of Jewish left-wing activism, they continued to organize and fund raise for Roybal’s campaign at the Vladeck Center, located at 126 N. St. Louis Street. The Vladeck Center became the new organizing center for progressive Jews on the Eastside after it was established in the mid-1940s by the Workman’s Circle, a Yiddish-based socialist collective.
In a pivotal vote for the young councilman during the height of the Red Scare panic in the spring of 1950, Roybal cast the only dissenting vote on a L.A. City Council-approved city ordinance that required Communists in the city of Los Angeles to register with the police department. Roybal felt the broad ordinance could lead to unintended and dangerous consequences as any earnest, engaged progressive citizen who was not a communist could be reported to the LAPD as a political subversive.
In the meantime, Eduardo Cansino’s dance studio at the Paramount Ballroom would prove to be short-lived. In a building and safety city permit dated July 16, 1951, the owner is listed as Adolph Franco, with the use of the building described as a “Café (and Dance Hall upstairs.).” A few years before taking over the Paramount Ballroom, Franco was the proprietor of an establishment called Lefty’s Place at 2435 Brooklyn Avenue. Initially riding the wave of the Latin dance craze in the 1950s like the mambo and the cha-cha, the Paramount would establish itself as a popular eastside venue for Latin music and dancing for the next several decades. The venue would feature a small nightclub on the 1st floor and a ballroom upstairs for dancing to a live orchestra several nights a week, along with Sunday afternoon socials with music and dancing called a tardeada. The ballroom was also available to rent for quinceaneras, bodas, and other events.
During the 1960s, the Paramount Ballroom also hosted teen dances featuring popular East Los Angeles bands like Thee Midnighters and Cannibal and Headhunters They were just two of many featured local bands that formed during an emerging and vibrant band scene in the 1960s that showcased the Eastside sound which encompassed Latin, R&B and rock music.
Two particularly young and talented siblings named Steve and Rudy Salas performed at the Paramount Ballroom in 1963. In the early 70s, the Salas brothers would form the Latin/R&B band, Tierra, one of the most popular bands to come out of East Los Angeles.
Below are two photos of the Paramount Ballroom (founded as the Cooperative Center in 1925) around the early 1970s, looking east. The painted word Paramount, with Ballroom just below it can be partially seen on the upper part of the building. In the photo to the right, you can make out a rather weathered vertical neon sign fixed to the building that spells DANCING. Maybe this is the “double-face neon sign” that was installed by then-owner R. Castino in 1949, the same year that Eduardo Cansino opened his dance studio in the upstairs ballroom.
In February 1981, amid the punk music explosion, a roaming club called the Vex opened for business in the second-floor ballroom. Although its Brooklyn Avenue location was short-lived (it moved to downtown by July), the long-venerated club quickly became a performing showcase for exuberant Eastside punk bands (creating a second renaissance of a vital Eastside band scene) as well as punk bands throughout the Los Angeles punk scene.
Below is an ad for the Vex just a few weeks after it opened at the former Paramount Ballroom. The Brat and Los Illegals were two of the most influential punk bands to come out of the Eastside punk scene.
The Paramount Ballroom was taken over by Frank Acevedo in 2004 according to a November 2022 Los Angeles Times article about the new propriter. In 2010 the nonprofit Boyle Heights Arts Conservatory opened its doors on the first floor to offer local youth community support and advocacy in music and media arts.
After investing in structural repairs and upgraded enhancements, the upstairs ballroom was reopened in 2019 as The Paramount. Since that time, the venue has once again developed a well-known reputation as a showcase for up-and-coming, cutting-edge musicians, and occasionally, special performances by popular, established bands.
This was the case in early May 2024 when renowned guitarist and singer/songwriter St Vincent performed at the Paramount for one night before kicking off her national tour later that month. Her sold-out performance was in front of a large, diverse crowd in the second-floor auditorium, 99 years after it opened. And this year, exactly 100 years after it opened, the auditorium’s stage is still presenting unique, leading-edge voices for an eager audience.
In my next blog post, I’ll discuss how the turn of a car ignition key in a quiet Boyle Heights neighborhood brought the era of the LAPD’s Red Squad unit, literally, to an explosive end.