Bonito Theatre
410 N. Ford Boulevard,
East Los Angeles,
CA
90022
410 N. Ford Boulevard,
East Los Angeles,
CA
90022
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Destroyed by fire on August 2, 1945 that also injured a 53-year-old man, later rebuilt.
A 1946 opening under the name Bonito Theatre indicates that there is probably a missing aka, as the building (which in the vintage photo looks like it has a stage house) dates from 1925. The reliable Bill Counter says the remodeled building is currently in use as a print shop.
1st listing in the LA Times: December 1st, 1946.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives the date of construction for the 7403 sq.ft. building at this address as 1925.
Here are some photos from June 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/2zos4u
http://tinyurl.com/2haefg
http://tinyurl.com/2ge8jf
There is a print shop on the first floor. I took a couple of photos. Status should be changed to retail.
KenRoe: Anaheim Road must refer to the street now called Telegraph Road, which shows up on old maps as Anaheim-Telegraph Road. Interestingly, the 4500 E. block was probably right at the southern end of Ford Boulevard, so the Garden was probably about a mile and a half south of the Bonito. The Garden would most likely be gone now, as the intersection of Anaheim-Telegraph Road and Ford Boulevard was pretty much obliterated by the construction of the Long Beach Freeway-Santa Ana Freeway interchange.
I don’t think the Garden Theatre is listed at Cinema Treasures.
The theatre that Cinema Treasures has listed at 1520 E. First St. is called the Aliso Theatre. It probably got renamed when the Aliso Village housing project was built across the street.
LA Times lists the Keystone theater at 1520 E. 1st on 4/9/42. Is this theater listed under another name?
On 1/22/50, the features were “Barbary Pirate” and “Fury at Furnace Creek”.
Joe; The Garden Theatre was located at 4511 Anaheim Road, Belvedere Gardens. Other theatres listed in this district in 1950 were….Golden Gate, New Boulevard, Royale, Strand and United Artists all of which were on Whittier Boulevard.
I don’t know if this is the same place or not, but the Motion Picture Herald of February 27, 1932, had a small item saying that Frank Pratt had taken over the lease on the Garden Theatre, Belvedere Gardens, East Los Angeles. The name Belvedere was historically applied to a good-sized swath of the unincorporated east side, though, including some commercial districts along First and Third Streets and Brooklyn Avenue, so Garden Theatre might have been an early name of some other theatre in the area.
The 1941 & 1943 editions of Film Daily Yearbook list this as the Bonita Theatre, located in Belvedere Gardens district. In the 1950 & 1952 editions of F.D.Y. it is listed as the Bonito Theatre in the main Los Angeles listing section.
If so, status should be closed.
The building has not been demolished. If you drive down Ford in E.L.A. you can see by the shell that this was a theatre at one time. It showed spanish films.