Olympic Auditorium

The Olympic Auditorium (18th and South Grand Avenue) was built in 1924.  The venue would be used for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.  Events such as boxing, wrestling and weightlifting took place in the grand arena.

 

Later, pro boxing, pro wrestling and Roller Games were a huge part of the venue.  Not long after Roller Games (also known as the National Skating Derby) started, the Los Angeles T-Birds would skate in the 9,000-10,000 seat arena.

 

The Olympic would be mostly used for the T-Birds televised Roller Game Of The Week.  This blogger started watching it in the late 1960s when one of our UHF stations covered them on Saturday mornings.  Commentator, Dick Lane, a well known announcer, would call the action.  His catch phrase in "Whoa Nellie" would keep fans awake while the action was going on.  Also, fans would always see the telephone number of RI-9-5171 on the screen.  Interestingly, the telephone is no longer in use to anyone!

 

I had the opportunity to see one Roller Games event at the Olympic.  A friend and I were down in the Los Angeles area on vacation and we saw the T-Birds take on the Texas Outlaws on July 4, 1971 on a Sunday afternoon.  A sellout crowd saw the T-Birds win.  What was interesting was the absence of former Texas Outlaw women's star, Shirley Hardman.  I had found out from a T-Birds fan that she was about to take a position with the T-Birds as a possible General Manager.

 

The Olympic remained until 2005 when a Korean-American Christian church bought the property.  If you notice in the photo above, while in Los Angeles in the Summer of 2022, I took the photo.