El Capitan Theatre Marque. When the theater opened in 1926 as "Hollywood's First Home of Spoken Drama," it featured a Spanish colonial exterior designed by Stiles O. Clements of the architectural firm of Morgan, Walls, and Clements and a lavish East Indian interior by theatre designer G. Albert Lansburgh. For a decade, it presented live plays, with over 120 productions by 1936. By the late 1930s, the El Capitan felt the economic effects of the Depression, showcasing fewer and fewer productions. Photo by Carol Highsmith, 2005.