For those who have lived here for years, the changes at the once-named Parker Playhouse downtown can be bewildering. While that name prevailed for over five decades, it was recently shortened to The Parker following months of renovations and upgrades. Now, when guests enter for a show, they walk into the Lillian S. Wells Hall at The Parker.
The hall’s name change honors one of the key financial supporters of the recent renovations, the Lillian S. Wells Foundation. Lillian S. Wells was a descendant of the Wells family, three brothers of whom bought the Riverside Hotel on Las Olas Boulevard in 1934. The family went on to acquire other properties along Las Olas and elsewhere in the city.
The name changes followed millions of dollars in renovations, which also heralded a major shift in programming from almost exclusively theater to a broader range of entertainment, including pop music and the Miami City Ballet. This transition was orchestrated through a partnership with the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, which opened in 1991 with a sold-out run of Phantom of the Opera and has since become a heavy hitter for touring Broadway shows.
Yet the new Lillian S. Wells Hall retains the original theater’s elegant, intimate charm. The seating area is wide and curves toward the stage — with no center aisle — and the distance from the last row to the proscenium is surprisingly short. Since it seats no more than 1,150 people, everyone in the audience can feel close to the performances on stage.
The website suggests that Dr. Louis Parker founded the venue in 1967. But who was he, and why did he found it? The simple answer is that he was one person with a vision that benefited us all, like Henry Flagler and his pioneering railroad, whose last-minute decision to build a station here jump-started the growth of a settlement into a city. Or James Bright, the thoroughbred breeder from Missouri who spawned a culture of horse ownership and Western businesses in Davie. Or Sylvia Aldridge, the African-American woman who initiated a fundraising drive to build Provident Hospital, the first of our local hospitals to admit Black patients.
Dr. Parker was similarly motivated to change the scope of our city. But he was not a theater producer, actor or impresario; he was a successful inventor.
He was the inventor who synchronized TV audio and video. He also devised a meter for moonwalking astronauts to monitor their oxygen supplies.
Born in Budapest, he earned his first patent at the age of 12 for a reusable circuit breaker. He settled in Fort Lauderdale after spending his life in the world’s busiest cosmopolitan areas. He was shocked to learn that many Broward County residents had never seen a stage play.
“They have missed something — something different from the movies and television,” Dr. Parker once said. “Something that for years, people in cities have taken for granted.”
So he did something about it.
Many people here were exposed for the first time to live theater in a series of notable performances. In 1981, the world watched as Elizabeth Taylor was coaxed into giving stage acting a try. Impresario Zev Buffman’s lavish production of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes — starring Taylor and Maureen Stapleton — debuted at the Parker before becoming a Broadway hit.
Other box-office hits in the theater’s celebrated history include: All My Sons with Jack Klugman, The Mousetrap with David McCallum, That Championship Season with Jason Robards and Othello with Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones.
You might say moonwalks helped birth a venue that’s still a star today
