The El Portal's Centennial Is Also Its Changing of the Guard

In 1999, Carol Channing presented Donald O'Connor with a lifetime achievement award on the stage of the El Portal Theatre on Lankershim Boulevard. In his remarks, O'Connor remembered performing in that same building as a toddler, as part of his family's vaudeville act, according to Toluca Lake Magazine. Within a few months the theater reopened to the public for the first time since the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and O'Connor came back for the grand opening.

The El Portal turned 100 this month. It opened on October 5, 1926, as a vaudeville house, BroadwayWorld reported. The birthday gala follows on November 28. In the same year, the small group of Toluca Lake neighbors who brought the building back from the earthquake is handing it over this year, and the season on the calendar right now is the last one fully under their watch.

A North Hollywood Landmark With a Toluca Lake Address Book

The theater sits at 5269 Lankershim Blvd. in North Hollywood. The people behind it mostly go home to Toluca Lake. In the early 1990s, two families, Bernard and Judy Kaufman and Gary and Shari Goodgame, bought the building from the Guy Weddington estate. Both families live in Toluca Lake. So does Pegge Forrest, the theater's executive director, Toluca Lake Magazine reported.

The theater's best-known regular performer has neighborhood ties too. Fritz Coleman, the comedian and former NBC weathercaster who has long served as Toluca Lake's honorary mayor, has done his one-man show Unassisted Residency every month in the Monroe Forum for four years. He calls the El Portal "my second home," according to Toluca Lake Magazine's September feature.

Gary Goodgame told the same magazine that his family moved to Toluca Lake from Hidden Hills 25 years ago. He sees the theater as "a civic center for North Hollywood, Toluca Lake and the San Fernando Valley," and his stated goal is to keep it going "for the next 100 years."

Five Years Dark, Then a Reopening Built by Hand

The El Portal you walk into now dates to 2000, and the people who made that reopening happen are the same people now stepping back.

The Actors Alley theater company signed a master lease on the building in 1992. Two years later the Northridge earthquake damaged it, and rebuilding took five years. In 1998, Actors Alley managing director Bob Caine hired Forrest to run public relations and marketing for the reopening. She organized the January 2000 grand opening with O'Connor, Channing and other celebrities, followed by the first production, Over the River and Through the Woods, starring Carol Lawrence and Joe Campanella.

Actors Alley folded about a year later and the lease went back to the Kaufmans and Goodgames. They kept Forrest on as manager. She brought in Jay Irwin, a former house manager, and the two ran the theater for most of the next quarter century.

The old movie palace held about 1,400 seats. The rebuild turned it into three venues: the 360-seat Debbie Reynolds MainStage, the Monroe Forum with just under 100 seats, and the 42-seat Studio Theatre, home to Stuart Rogers' Theatre Tribe. The theater has spent the decades since surviving one hit after another. "We survived the '94 earthquake, 9/11 and COVID," Goodgame told Toluca Lake Magazine. "I'm proud that we have endured. We're still here!"

The Building Is a Collection of Other Buildings

The reopening crew didn't just restore the El Portal. They filled it with pieces of Los Angeles entertainment history, and you pass most of them on the way to your seat. Toluca Lake Magazine's walk-through lists what's there:

• The MainStage fire curtain is hand-painted, dates to 1926, and has a twin at the Pasadena Playhouse.
• The lobby bas-relief murals were made by WPA artists in the 1930s.
• The lobby sofa is a prop from the 1964 film The Unsinkable Molly Brown.
• The carpet came out of the Shubert Theatre before it was demolished in 2004.
• The seating was donated by the Writers Guild of America in 2010.

Two of the stage names are local history too. Debbie Reynolds grew up in Burbank. Marilyn Monroe went to sixth grade around the corner at Lankershim Elementary, where she was a track star nicknamed "Norma Jean the Jumping Bean." Both watched movies at the El Portal. Cher sold concessions there in the 1960s.

The 2026 Handoff

The leadership change has been underway for about a year. Irwin retired in late 2025. Ann Potenza, a Valley resident for more than 30 years who first produced a play at the El Portal in 2000, became managing director this past January. Forrest, now 95 and only five years younger than the building, plans to retire at the end of 2026 after 26 years with the theater.

Potenza has described her centennial-year plan as a return to everything the building has been:

"We had vaudeville, we had film, we had live shows... so we've been trying to bring a lot of that back."

She said that to Toluca Lake Magazine. The fall lineup follows that plan closely.

The Fall Season, Read as a Century

Here is the El Portal's own calendar from Sunday, October 25, through December:

The vaudeville roots show up in the stand-up. Coleman's Sunday afternoon show changes from month to month, covering subjects from Zoom school and retirement to veganism and aging. Smirnoff brings two shows on a single Saturday. The live-show tradition gets a Sondheim opera and an Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera in back-to-back months. The October 30 and 31 performances of Sweeney Todd were already listed as sold out on the theater's ticket calendar.

December is for families. The Santa Switch is a Christmas musical with nine weekend performances and an optional paid photo with Santa after the show. Tickets for everything can be bought at elportaltheatre.com or by calling 818-508-4200.

November 28, and a Certificate 33 Years in the Making

The centennial gala is a one-night show on the MainStage. Jason Graae directs and Michael Orland is musical director. The cast includes Frank Ferrante, Heather Lee, Beth Malone, Lesli Margherita, Faith Prince, Jenna Lea Rosen and Natalie Wachen, with special appearances from Aunt Chippie, Ed Begley Jr., Fritz Coleman, Ruta Lee and Jo Anne Worley. Coleman will emcee, and the show tells the story of each decade of the theater's history, Potenza told Toluca Lake Magazine.

The evening also marks an honor the theater has held for decades. The city made the El Portal Historic-Cultural Monument No. 573 on February 9, 1993, according to the Los Angeles City Planning monument list. According to Toluca Lake Magazine's event listing, Forrest, Potenza and Irwin will join Councilmember Adrin Nazarian at the gala to accept a certificate proclaiming that status. The ceremony puts the people who ran the theater for 25 years on stage with the person now running it.

The night ends with a ribbon cutting, and part of the proceeds go to The Thalians, the charity tied to Debbie Reynolds and Ruta Lee, BroadwayWorld reported.

Parking, and the December 4 Overlap

The theater's directions and parking page lists these options, all on Lankershim:

1. NoHo Commons Garage, 5300 Lankershim
2. The Witch's Cottage lot, 5303 Lankershim, with the entrance on Weddington
3. Kaiser Permanente, 5250 Lankershim
4. The North Hollywood Metro station Park & Ride, 5391 Lankershim, which has 619 free spaces and 333 paid reserved spaces

Metered street parking and five nearby metered lots are also available.

Friday, December 4, is a double-booked night. The Toluca Lake Chamber's Holiday Open House runs from 5 to 9 p.m. on Riverside Drive, with shopping, live entertainment and holiday lights through the business district. A John Waters Christmas starts at 8 p.m. on Lankershim the same evening.

Craig Strong has lived in Toluca Lake for decades, and Pegge Forrest, the Goodgames and the Kaufmans are the kind of neighbors who keep a place like the El Portal standing. If you have lived near the theater for years and are thinking about what's next for your own home, Craig Strong offers a private conversation with someone who knows the neighborhood. Request a confidential market consultation.