LOS ANGELES — The Hollywood Bowl is Hollywood famous: a 17,500-seat amphitheater carved into a canyon that has for nearly a century provided an outdoor stage for a parade of starry performers: The Beatles.  Dudamel.  LCD Soundsystem. 

The John Anson Ford Amphitheater is something else.  Hidden a canyon away, it has just 1,200 seats and a stage that was always slightly off center, creating a challenge for performers and audiences. 

For nearly a century, the Ford suffered the indignities of being the scrawny kid next door, enduring the jarring sounds of, say, a Black Sabbath performance roaring over the canyon, or the rumble from Highway 101, which runs by it, as a classical ensemble soldiered on.  The dank warren of dressing rooms under the stage and the absence of an area to load equipment were constant challenges as the county-owned theater scrambled to book performers. 

But that may be about to change. 

Last week, workers were putting the final touches on sleek state-of-the-art lighting towers and a network of new dressing rooms, as a long-anticipated $75 million restoration project comes to an end with an inaugural performance by Savion Glover, the tap dancer, on July 15.  A concrete stage has given way to one made of handsome ipe, a Brazilian hardwood.  The sandbags once piled up in the basement — after a calamitous storm sent rivers of mud down the hillside, over the stage and into the dressing rooms — have been carted away.