La Habra Theatre

Thank you, Tinseltoes. I love the article and the pictures. Great memories. I was there opening night along with James Arness and Carol Morris, who was the Miss U.S.A. at the time. She was kind of a knockout. I remember her better than Arness, but I was thirteen and hormones were starting to rage.

There was/is a small school that was just behind this theatre. When I was REALLY young in the mid 80s, I went to that school (it was more of less like a daycare). I remember seeing that theatre and they always had cars parked behind it with white Xs on them. From the playground I could see these cars being towed to the parking lot behind the theatre. I must have been around 4 or 5 years old at the time. I remeber when the old folks home was built too, sometime in the 90s. I went to Walnut Elementry school, which is just about a block away, and sometimes the kids went over there.

Here is a 1983 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/oeqadw

The lobby of Lippert’s La Habra Theatre was pictured on the cover of the October 6, 1956, issue of Boxoffice Magazine.

The old La Habra Theatre (formerly The Garden Theatre) at 165 E. Central managed to hang around for about thirty-five years. Esther Cramer’s history of La Habra has one sentence about the theatre: “The opening of the Garden theatre, complete with orchestra, high class vaudeville acts, and films (featuring such stars as Tom Mix and comedian Harold Lloyd), attracted visitors from miles around.” The building had the theatre entrance with box office in the center and space for a small business on either side. When I went there in the early fifties, there was a sandwich shop on one side and a dry cleaners on the other. Inside, there was still a small stage up front. Pictures changed twice a week, and for us kids, on Saturday morning, we got seven cartoons, two serials and a feature (usually a western) for 17 cents! If you had another dime, you could get a bag of popcorn or pull your fillings out with a box of Jujubees. I was about 10 and I made friends with the teenage projectionist who showed me the booth. To enter the projection booth, you had to climb up a wooden ladder that was nailed to the back wall. At the top, you swung your leg out into the booth. The film cans were hauled up into the booth with a pulley. Our theatre closed in 1954 or early 1955 but no one told us why. There was some talk about drugs being delt there. All we knew was that for the next two years we had to get our parents to take us to the Fox Fullerton until the new theatre opened up on Whittier Blvd.

I remember going to the opening night at the La Habra Theater in 1956. I believe the opening night films were “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and “Johnny Concho.” Joining us for the opening ceremonies were James Arness and Carol Morris, the then Miss U.S.A. We were very proud of our new modern theater. No balcony but the rear third of the theater had soft loge-style rocking seats. Still remembering the ancient hard seats of the old crackerbox theater down on Central Avenue which had closed two years earlier, we loved this new building. Ticket: fifty cents.