BEFITTING RRRROYALTY NEWLY RENOVATED PANTAGES THEATRE READY TO ROAR WHEN 'THE LION KING' ARRIVES IN L.A.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

OK, all you would-be Leno joke writers, just get all those yuks about the newly spiffed up ``cat house'' at the corner of Hollywood and Vine out of your systems right now.

True, Walt Disney's stage version of ``The Lion King'' is designed to take an audience's breath away, but the 70-year-old Pantages Theatre, which underwent a complete $10 million facelift in preparation for the show's arrival, ain't looking so shabby itself.

And, for the record, the money came from the Nederlander Organization, owners of the theater and the producers of the Broadway/L.A. musical season, not from the mouse. Company chairman James M. Nederlander says he was looking for an event musical to tie in with the theater restoration. ``The Lion King,'' which opens Oct. 18, more than fit the bill.

``When the Disney people said they would bring 'The Lion King' in here, we decided we'd go all out,'' says Nederlander. ``So we did twice the budget. What can you do? That's the way these remodeling jobs go.''

Well, that could be the way these remodeling jobs go when - for starters - you elect to replace the carpet and every seat; redo all the lighting fixtures; and take out that elephant of a concession stand in the middle of the lobby. Your order sheet will start to fill up when improvements range from the decorative - releafing the walls - to the extremely practical - more than doubling the number of stalls in the women's restrooms. When moving from aisleways to their seats, theater patrons will no longer step from carpet on to concrete. The entire floor is now carpeted.

The overall aim, say Nederlander officials and project architects, was to bring the theater back to its opening-night heyday when the Pantages - formerly a movie house - showed Marion Davies in ``The Floradora Girl'' at its opening in 1930. Managed by Alexander Pantages, a Greek immigrant who used to produce shows for Yukon miners during the Klondike Gold Rush, the Pantages was part of the Fox Theater chain. It later became part of Howard Hughes' RKO Pictures chain of movie houses from 1949 to 1967. From 1949-59, the Pantages hosted the Academy Awards.

Sharing space with live stage and, occasionally, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Pantages scaled down its seating capacity to 1,512 seats for a run of ``Spartacus'' in 1959. In 1963, patrons paid $250 per ticket for a special screening of ``Cleopatra'' to benefit the construction of the Music Center. The theater stopped showing movies in 1977.

That same year, the Forman Family's Pacific Theatres chain and the Nederlander Organization teamed up to bring Broadway-style musicals back to Hollywood. In February 1977, the national touring company of ``Bubbling Brown Sugar'' arrived at the Pantages, followed by ``Man of La Mancha'' with Richard Kiley. The longest-running show in the theater's history: ``La Cage Aux Folles'' in 1994-95. For the current renovation, original lighting fixtures or replicas replaced previously updated ceiling lights. Tile walls and acoustic ceilings in the outside box-office lobby were stripped away to reveal the original marble and plaster and display cases. When original designs or fixtures were destroyed, project architects delved into the online archives at the L.A. Public Library system to study photographs of the theater from the early days and re-create the original look.

Even the new mural along the theater's rear VIP entrance - partially funded by donations from celebrities like Carol Burnett and Doris Roberts - is titled ``Ghosts of Pantages Dedication, 1930.''

The decorative detail of the walls, lobby statues and elaborate art deco ceiling in the auditorium will now stand out in greater detail. Much of what audiences will see has always been there, but over the years, it has been covered under a halnch of dust, grime and smoke from the days that patrons were allowed to smoke in the balconies.

``All that smoke and God knows what else coated every single surface,'' says designer Roger Morgan, whose Sachs Morgan Studio has renovated two New York Nederlander-owned theaters for Disney productions. ``You can't imagine how much work it took to get it all clean.''

Not everything is visible. Backstage, workers cleared out four giant cast-iron boilers in order to create additional dressing room space. Former dressing room space has been gutted to create a 40-by-40-foot area beneath the auditorium's center stage. In ``The Lion King,'' the space will be used to hydraulically hoist and lower the volcano-like Pride Rock. The space underneath the stage will be available for use in other shows once ``The Lion King'' departs.

``It brings the theater up to date for all these big shows,'' says Morgan, whose firm was not involved in the backstage revamp. ``They all have stuff that comes up from below, like the candles in `Phantom of the Opera.' All the shos do it these days.''

INSIDE THE LION'S DEN

With opening night less than two weeks away, here's what's been added to the venerable Hollywood theater, according to a handy ``Renovation Fun Facts'' provided by the Nederlander Organization:

--84,027 square feet of gold, silver copper and bronze leafing

--7,260 square yards of carpeting

--2,703 new seats (replacing the existing seats)

--2,000 square feet of marble,

--1,843 gallons of paint

--78 new art deco lighting fixtures

--18 new stalls in the women's restrooms

CAPTION(S):

8 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover) Opening of ``Spartacus,'' 1960

(2 -- cover) Academy Awards, 1954

(3 -- cover -- color) Opening of ``The Lion King,'' 2000

(4 -- 6 -- color) In the photograph at far left, the Pantages Theatre looks as it did around the time of its 1930 grand reopening. The Grand Lobby, left, featured a large circular refreshment stand, which was removed to create more space during the current renovation. The vista takes on new life through the use of gold, silver and bronze leaf, above.

(7 -- color) Carol Burnett, who donated funds for the creation of the new mural at the back VIP entrance, smiles like the painted version of herself as a ticket taker.

(8 -- color) Darren Evans, left, Donna Hodge and Mary Hoyt apply glaze to the elaborate 3-D ceiling of the Pantages Theatre's auditorium. The theater has undergone a $10 million restoration in preparation for the opening of Disney's stage production of ``The Lion King.''

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer

Box: Inside the Lion's Den (see text)