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20-624: The Playhouse was constructed between 1923 and 1927 for John Steven McGroarty ’s hugely successful Mission Play . Architect Arthur Burnett Benton designed the Playhouse in the Mission Revival style . The façade was designed to resemble McGroarty’s favorite mission, San Antonio de Padua in Monterey County. The 1,387-seat theater has Native American influences in its painted and carved ceiling. Replicas of Spanish lanterns used aboard galleons in

40-575: A hay farming business. The business was not successful, and Townsend enrolled in Omaha Medical College when he was 31. After graduating, Townsend worked in the medical field in Belle Fourche, South Dakota , and met a nurse and his future wife, Wilhelmina "Minnie" Bogue. At age 50, Townsend enlisted as a doctor in the army one year before the end of World War I . After the war ended in 1918, Townsend moved to Long Beach, California , to run

60-546: A "beloved figure in black Los Angeles" for his broad-minded views. McGroarty authored numerous books and dramas, one of his best-known works being The Mission Play (1911), a three-hour pageant describing the California Missions from their founding in 1769 through secularization in 1834, ending with their "final ruin" in 1847. The play opened on April 29, 1912. McGroarty also penned California: Its History and Romance in 1911 and Mission Memories in 1929. In his book

80-629: A dry ice factory. After that business quickly failed, Townsend worked for real estate agent Robert Earl Clements in Midway City, California . Clements later masterminded the Townsend Plan. In 1930, at the start of the Great Depression , Townsend became a Long Beach city public health officer at age 63, but lost his job three years later. Townsend died in Los Angeles on September 1, 1960. He

100-457: A film location for various TV series and movies such as The Love Boat and Remington Steele . Throughout the years, many notable names have graced the Playhouse stage including B.B. King , Tippi Hedren , Lilly Tomlin and Tony Bennett . 34°05′54″N 118°06′30″W  /  34.09837°N 118.10829°W  / 34.09837; -118.10829 John Steven McGroarty John Steven McGroarty (August 20, 1862 – August 7, 1944)

120-812: Is buried in Woodlawn Memorial Park in Compton, California. The Townsend Plan proposed that every person over 60 be paid $ 200 per month. The Old-Age Revolving Pension fund was to be supported by a 2% national sales tax aiming to stimulate the economy. There were three requirements for beneficiaries under the scheme: In September 1933, Townsend wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper (the Long Beach Press-Telegram ), and launched his career as an old-age activist. According to Townsend's autobiographical memoir, New Horizons (1943), his plan originated when he looked out his window one morning in

140-537: Is known as the McGroarty Arts Center. Francis Townsend Francis Everett Townsend ( / ˈ t aʊ n z ən d / ; January 13, 1867 – September 1, 1960) was an American physician and political activist in California. In 1933, he devised an old-age pension scheme to help alleviate the Great Depression . Known as the " Townsend Plan ", this proposal would pay every person over age 60 $ 200 per month, with

160-510: Is memorialized by a post office named in his honor. Francis Everett Townsend was born the second of six children on January 13, 1867, in Fairbury, Illinois. After Townsend contracted swamp malaria as an infant, the Townsend family moved to Nebraska where Townsend had two years of high school education. In 1898, Townsend borrowed $ 1,000 from his father and moved to Southern California to develop

180-533: The 74th Congress from January 3, 1935, to January 3, 1937, where he played a significant role in introducing the Townsend Bill to the legislature. McGroarty was reelected to the 75th Congress from January 3, 1937, to January 3, 1939. In 1937, he introduced a successful bill that enabled the federal government to purchase a large timber holding from the Yosemite Lumber Company , bringing the land within

200-517: The California Plutarch , 1935, he detailed the lives and histories of Northern and Southern California's early pioneers such as the Crocker, Carrillo, Van Nuys, Stanford, Avila, Estrada, Sepulveda, Baldwin and Mulholland families. Besides, he was also the long-time editor of West Coast Magazine . McGroarty was designated poet laureate of California by the state legislature in 1933. He served in

220-598: The 1800s hang from the ceiling. Woven tapestries that were a gift from King Alfonso XIII of Spain in 1927 adorn the sides of the theater. The theater is home to a fully restored 1924 Wurlitzer pipe organ originally built for the Albee Theatre in Brooklyn, New York. After the run of The Mission Play , the Mission Playhouse was used as a movie theatre. During WWII, the dressing rooms were turned into apartments. Since 1945,

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240-522: The National Townsend Plan would be shut down by the end of February that year, with only state chapters surviving, and that by then it had a "dwindling and aging membership." A Congressional committee was established in February 1936 to investigate Townsend. One of the findings was that the Townsend organisation had raised over a million dollars and that Townsend had received a salary of $ 12,000 for

260-525: The Playhouse has been owned and operated by the City of San Gabriel. When the city purchased the Playhouse, they renamed it the San Gabriel Civic Auditorium. On September 26, 2007, the theatre was renamed and once again called the Mission Playhouse. The Playhouse is said to be haunted by the spirit of its original owner, known affectionately by locals as "Uncle John". The Playhouse has been used as

280-457: The age of 81, and was interred at Calvary Cemetery . He lived in Tujunga, California, in a house known as Chupa Rosa, that he built himself and completed in 1923 in what was at the time the unincorporated community of Sunland. It became a part of the City of Los Angeles in 1932. The building, located at 7570 McGroarty Terrace, is now Historic Cultural Monument No. 63 of the City of Los Angeles and

300-556: The boundaries of Yosemite National Park . In 1938 McGroarty left his seat to run for California Secretary of State ; he was defeated in the Democratic primary by incumbent Republican Frank C. Jordan . After his brief stint in politics, McGroarty resumed the profession of journalism in Tujunga, California . McGroarty died in St. Vincent's Hospital in Los Angeles, California on August 7, 1944, at

320-589: The early depth of the Depression and saw two old women, dressed in once nice, now tattered clothes, picking through his garbage cans looking for food. Within two years of his putting forward his plan, over 3400 Townsend Plan Clubs were organized all over America and began exerting pressure on Congress to pass an old-age pension. Frances Perkins , President Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, in her memoir, The Roosevelt I Knew (p. 294) says that Roosevelt told her, "We have to have it [Social Security]. Congress can't stand

340-484: The pressure of the Townsend Plan unless we have a real old-age insurance system." As Roosevelt said, Social Security was passed by Congress substituting a pay-as-you-go "insurance" scheme for Townsend's far more generous pension plan, but as he told Perkins, it was the Townsend Clubs that forced Congress to act at all. The movement continued beyond Townsend's death in 1960. In 1978, The Associated Press reported that

360-516: The requirement it all be spent quickly. It was never enacted but the popularity of the Plan influenced Congress to start the Social Security system, which involved much smaller amounts. The Plan was organized by real estate salesman Robert Clements, who made Townsend only a figurehead while the Plan expanded to thousands of clubs in many states. Townsend was born just outside Fairbury, Illinois , where he

380-574: Was a poet, Los Angeles Times columnist, and author who also served two terms as a Democratic Congressman from California from 1935 to 1939. Born at Buck Mountain, in Foster Township , Luzerne County, Pennsylvania (near Wilkes-Barre ), McGroarty was the youngest of 12 children. He was educated at public schools and Harry Hillman Academy in Wilkes-Barre, and was employed as treasurer of Luzerne County from 1890 to 1893. He later studied law and

400-568: Was admitted to the bar in 1894. He practiced in Wilkes-Barre. McGroarty moved to Montana and held an executive position with the Anaconda Copper Mining Company at Butte and Anaconda from 1896 to 1901. Afterward, he moved to Los Angeles, California in 1901 and worked as a journalist. In 1909, McGroarty edited a Los Angeles Times centenary edition of Lincoln's birth with an introspective on black people in Los Angeles. He became

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