The Hollywood Theatre opened in 1930, with two entrances: 1655 Broadway and 237 W. 51st Street. Architect Thomas W. Lamb designed the theatre under the management of the Warner brothers. While most theatres began with legitimate fare and later converted to movie theatres, the Hollywood opened as a theatre for talkies then became a legitimate theatre house in the 1930s. In 1936, the Hollywood Theatre presented George Abbott’s musical Sweet River. Later, as the Mark Hellinger Theatre, My Fair Lady premiered and ran for 2,717 performances. Katharine Hepburn made her musical debut in Coco in 1969 and two years later, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar opened. By the 1980s, the Nederlander Organization had difficulty booking the venue, and they sold the former Hollywood Theatre to the Times Square Church in 1991.