Garmar Theater
2325 Whittier Boulevard,
Montebello,
CA
90640
2325 Whittier Boulevard,
Montebello,
CA
90640
3 people
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Showing 26 - 50 of 61 comments
This page says late 70s or early 80s:
http://tinyurl.com/6omuxu
So the theater was demolished and replaced by a mini-mall, but no demolition date as of yet? Anyone know?
Wow, what a lot of great memories have been shared! The Garmar features I best remember are Psycho, The Birds, Blue Hawaii (Elvis) and The Parent Trap (Hayley Mills). The matinee games and prizes were great. Later, some of my high school friends worked in the Garmar Box Office. I remember four places adjacent to Montebello Jr. High. Across the street from Currie’s was the E&G Cafe, and across from Zesto’s was Pizza Town. The Jr. High was orginally the high school and it had a big lawn and huge trees in front of the wonderful old brick building. My grandfather went there 1925-1929. It’s too bad they had to tear it down. I’m sorry the Garmar is gone, too. Hi Larry C.
Thanks everyone for making my day talking about Montebello and the Garmar. The Vogue was okay in the fifties and cheap. But the Saturday kiddie matinee at the Garmar was some of my best childhood memories.
Two movies and cartoons, Crazy races and usually like a 3 stooges short or something for like 25 cents. My last year at the Garmar was 1959 I think. The ice cream place on the corner by the Jr. high was Zestos and I remember the Monster sodas. My oldest brother worked there in 1955. Curry’s had booths with little juke box machines in them and a counter. It was alot like Happy Days.
Thaks again for bringing back good memories.
I think I’m catching up to her. Now THAT’S REALLY UNBELIEVABLE. I think the only time I went to the Vogue Theatre (just east of the Garmar) Samson and Delilah was showing (Victor Mature & Hedi Lamar). That theatre was so small I think most people have TV screens bigger than that movie screen.
It looks like the first UCLA/Lee site has been taken down. Here are some photos from another UC site:
http://tinyurl.com/3ymrhd
http://tinyurl.com/2rptxw
http://tinyurl.com/3xhhom
http://tinyurl.com/2rb9jf
http://tinyurl.com/3xa8xu
Hayley Mills is 60 years old. Unbelievable.
Ahhh…the Garmar Theatre. Who can forget the sticky floor? I think the first movie I saw there was Cinderella-or was it Snow White? I’m giving away my age now. I remember seeing The Parent Trap with Haley Mills also. I think the last film I saw there was one of the Dirty Harry movies-Magnum Force. I used to think it was so cool to go to a Saturday matanee with the sun shinning then leave the theatre at night with all the lights blazing away. Who remembers Luigi’s Italian Restaurant catty-corner to the Garmar? It later became Mi Amigo’s Mexican Restaurant. It was the only Mexican restaurant I knew of that was owned and ran by a Chinese family. The food there was so gooooood!!! That’s gone now also along with the French Cafe. At least we still have Garduno’s (and the food is better than ever) and Tony’s Italian Deli. Too bad they tore down the Garmar and replaced it with, of all things, another crummy mini mall. Arn’t there enough of those around? Hey David – it’s your old bud Larry. How’s it going?
Ahhh…the Garmar Theatre. Who can forget the sticky floor? I think the first movie I saw there was Cinderella-or was it Snow White? I’m giving away my age now. I remember seeing The Parent Trap with Haley Mills also. I think the last film I saw there was one of the Dirty Harry movies-Magnum Force. I used to think it was so cool to go to a Saturday matanee with the sun shinning then leave the theatre at night with all the lights blazing away. Who remembers Luigi’s Italian Restaurant catty-corner to the Garmar? It later became Mi Amigo’s Mexican Restaurant. It was the only Mexican restaurant I knew of that was owned and ran by a Chinese family. The food there was so gooooood!!! That’s gone now also along with the French Cafe. At least we still have Garduno’s (and the food is better than ever) and Tony’s Italian Deli. Too bad they tore down the Garmar and replaced it with, of all things, another crummy mini mall. Arn’t there enough of those around? Hey David – it’s your old bud Larry. How’s it going?
David Grisant wrote:
> Anybody know the origin of the name “Garmar”?
The Garmar was owned by friends of my family. They named it after their two sons, GARy and MARk.
Funny! That Janice and my sister both went so many times and never told anyone about it! Yes, the Tamale place is still there in East LA, but getting crowded out. The French Cafe is no more. It was recently taken out. Remember the Wishing Well in front? They had the best soup and bread. I took my first “real” date there back in 1963. Gardunos had the best tacos in the world. Curries Ice Cream was right across from the old Montebello Junior High School. Any photos of that place???? Across from that was a small cafe which sold french fries and “Zombies” to the students with the money for lunch. A Zombie was every flavor at the soda fountain mixed together…sounds terrible today, but it was ordered by most of us back then.
Rick Yessayian
I lived a block away from the Garmar Theatre and when I was a young girl, it was 35 cents to go see 2 full length movies, a cartoon, a newsreel, and on Saturday mornings there was a live guy on stage giving prizes and announcing birthdays
A great time to live and I miss those days
One Summer I went with my cousin Janice to see Laurence of Arabia everyday for three weeks, almost 20 times
~laughs~
She’d come walk to my house and pick me up and we’d walk down to the theatre, she had the money and took me
I miss that Theatre!
ORIGIN OF THE NAME GARMAR
The original owner of the Garmar Theater, Al Olander (now passed), had 2 sons Gary and Mark and named the theater after them, thus Garmar.
Al’s surviving wife, Lil, is my aunt-in-law and she tells me Al loved the theater and would be so happy to know that the theater created such great memories for the folks here!
I know somewhere in my family there is a pic of me at the preschool across the street, with the garmar in the background, I will have to look it up… I was sad to see it go, but movies playing a month was too much.. I loved the replacement The Electric Planet arcade… If memory serves me correctly Robert Blake owned it, yes THE RB. I would talk to the repair guy on the machines, he told me, and I thought Beretta COOL!. I saw his name as owner on an out of order sign. Pumping MTV from day 1, the disco look to it, the nachos. It was featured in a game magazine, anyone have a scan of that?
Hello, my name is oscar and I would like to thank everyone resposible for this site, it has brought back many memories of my childhood and the picture of the garmar priceless! my mom would drop me and my sister and freinds at the garmar where we would spend hours after hours watching 2 movies, catoons, news reels. I still have dreams of bring there. sometimes underneath the west end parking lot where there was a billboard!(remember)thats where mom used to pick us up.thanks chuck 1231 for that photo I was blown awayto see it. the vouge was my earliest recollection of the beatles and elvis movies. there were little fishies on the interior walls.
thats all I remember. the french cafe building is still there and the theater part of the golden gate is still there and the old tamale builing on whittier blvd still standing. thanks agaain for the memories…with the greatist affection……..oscar
Hi,
I use to eat at the French Cafe, Montebello off of Whittier Blvd. Somebody mentioned it earlier and I was hoping against all hope, somebody has a contact or recipes from this restaurant. My family would eat there at least twice a week, we loved the food and the people who worked there. Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Sherry Dale
Oceanside, CA
From the UCLA Digital Collection:
View link
View link
View link
stevebob:
A small picture on this page at Roadside Peek shows the giant cone sign which sits atop what they claim was once the Currie’s Ice Cream Parlor in Montebello. Does it look familiar? Currie’s had shops all over Los Angeles. I well remember their “Mile-High Cones.”
Chuck, that link is already dead! Could you repost? The Garmar was very lijkely the first theater I ever attended — as an infant, and probably in the crying room! (My first home as a child was on Via Vista, in the Garfield Gardens complex — later called Hensel Gardens, I believe.)
Was there an ice cream parlor nearby called Curry’s? I found a postcard of Marcel and Jeanne’s French Café on eBay a few years ago. It was startling — I hadn’t thought of it in decades.
Speaking of roadside architecture on Whittier Boulevard, does anyone remember the Mt. Baldy restaurant at the eastern edge of Pico Rivera? It looked like a one-story mountain range from the outside, and I believe it was a Mexican restaurant in its last incarnation. I have a feeling it must have been demolished by now, but it was certainly an eye-catcher.
Wasn’t the restaurant shaped like a big tamale on Whittier Boulevard, too, in either Montebello or East Los Angeles?
I lived just a few blocks from the Garmar. I also fondly remember those geat dinners at the “French Cafe”. Does anyone remember the little hamburger shack that was on Wilcox and Whittier Blvd. in the 50’s? This was before Garduno’s was built there. I think it was “Rod’s”. Later on, Rod’s opened as a full service restaurant on Garfield off Beverly.
I remember skipping a catholic class for my first Comunion to see The Spider Vs The Fly at the Garmar on a Saturday Afternoon and lying to my parents about it. I actually ate a few times at The French Cafe on Whittier Blvd with Bruce and Jerry Smith. I also remember sneaking a transistor radio in the show to listen to the Dodgers Vs. the Yankees in the 1963 World Series and having the radio taken from me and not given back to me till the movie was over. The girl who worked at the Garmar was named Carol Jarvis who also went to Montebello High and I was plenty mad!
As a kid, I used to go to the Saturday matinees and see the “Crazy Races” too. It was great fun, though I never won anything. I also went to a “sneak preview” of a movie, where they didn’t tell you which movie it was until it started. It was around 1960 and the movie was “The Great Imposter” with Tony Curtis. I also remember going to see “Ride the Wild Surf” and making out with my girlfriend during the movie. I must’ve been all of 14!
Garduno’s was a great “taco stand” type food establishment on the corner of Whittier and Wilcox. Lots of us went there during lunch at Montebello High. The owner’s son, Bob Garduno, was in my graduating class, ‘68.
Ther french restaurant was a classy place, but just sort of lapsed into disrepair.
The Center is listed here, but there are no comments on it yet.
I forgot about the Vouge which was the closest theater to me. Does anyone remember The Center which was a theater that was between the Golden Gate an The Boulevard theaters on Whittier Boulevard? I saw the Three Stooges there live when they were introducing the movie “ The Three Stooges Meet Hercules. To us little kids this was like seeing the Beatles. I got to shake hands with Moe as they went from the back of the theater to the stage, walking down the aisle. The snack bar served burgers and fries because it also was connected to the outside street of Whittier Blvd. and anyone could by the food in or out of the theater. I never saw anything like it again!
Rupert & Rick,
Thanks for the info!
Do you guys have any info on Marcel & Jeanne’s French Cafe, which was 2 blks east of the Garmar? Or was Gardunos around in the 50s?
Paul