El Cameo Theater
4907 Huntington Drive,
Los Angeles,
CA
90032
4907 Huntington Drive,
Los Angeles,
CA
90032
3 people
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My uncle ran that theatre for a while. I think it was about 1959-1961. I worked as a cashier. My mom opened a little Mexican cafĂ© next door. Sundays were our real busy day with Cartoons, serials, previews and double features! Later on he showed Mexican movies, but only like 1 or 2 days a week. As you walked into the theatre seating, the first 5 rows were huge lounging chairs. The rest were regular seats. I never went upstairs except only once to see the projection room. The door outside the theatre led upstairs. I don’t know if it was living quarters or not. Down the street was a fire station and next door was a hamburger place I think was called Freddies Firehouse. Now that was a hamburger!!
This might be the theatre seen from the outside of the theatre in the music video “Lonely Boy”(Black Keys)?
The last operators of this theatre was my company, Century Theatres, we operated: El Cameo Reseda, Reseda, Granada, Sunset Blvd Whittier, Whittier Witwood, Whittier Wardman, Whittier Cove Twin Hermosa Beach Rivoli Long Beach Gilroy, Gilroy Rialto, San Bernardino Pismo Beach Theatre, Pismo Beach Highland Twin, San Bernardino Tivoli, San Francisco Golden Gate Theatre, Whittier Bay Theatre Los Angeles Corbin Theatre Tarzana Broadway Santa Ana
The company was sold in 1981
great theatre i used to go there and watch a nite mare on elm street one and two.
Here is another photo:
http://tinyurl.com/y4d58rl
Over on the Monterey Theatre page, ronp posted an excerpt from a 1990 interview with James Edwards, in which Edwards says that the Monterey, and not the Cameo, was his first theater. I’ve heard both theaters mentioned as his first by various people, but I guess I’ll take Jimmy’s word for it.
Function should be changed to retail.
The El Cameo is now a discount store:
http://tinyurl.com/2xlraj
http://tinyurl.com/22sph5
http://tinyurl.com/ywghhs
Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of January 4, 1924 announced the plans for the Cameo theatre. The architect was J.T. Payne. The project was expected to cost $35,000.
Ken:
Thanks for that list. There are several there that I never knew Edwards owned. I’m especially surprised to see a theater in Beverly Hills, and the four in Los Angeles. I had thought that, before the company began expanding rapidly in Orange County in the 1960s, all their operations were in, or adjacent to, the San Gabriel Valley.
In that decade of the 1950s, I frequently attended eight of those theaters: the Alhambra, Coronet, Garfield, Tumbleweed, Garvey, Monterey, San Gabriel and the Temple, plus Alhambra’s El Rey, which Edwards acquired a few years later. Every single one of them is now gone, the majority of them lost to earthquakes. Neither time, nor California’s unstable geology, has been kind to the theaters of that area.
Joe:
Many thanks for your most informative comments on the Cameo Theater, James Edwards and the El Sereno area.
I list here the 24 theatres operated by the Edwards Theaters Circuit in 1950;
Alhambra: Alhambra, Coronet, Garfield, Single Bill
Arcadia: Santa Anita
Azusa: State
Beverly Hills: Laurel
El Monte: Valley
El Sereno: Cameo, El Sereno
East Arcadia: Edwards Drive-In
Five Points: Tumbleweed
Garvey: Garvey
Los Angeles: Cairo, Elysian, Green Meadows, San Carlos
Monterey Park: Monterey
Montrose: Montrose
Rosemead: Rosemead
San Gabriel: San Gabriel
South Pasadena: Ritz
Tembple City: Temple
Tujunga: Tujunga
From little acorns big oak’s grow eh!
Ken:
In the 1960’s, I had occasional conversations with an older guy who frequented a coffee shop in my neighborhood. He told me that he had worked for James Edwards at the Cameo, and for a while had lived in the apartment above the lobby. He also told me that James Edwards had lived in that same apartment himself, when he first began operating the theater, sometime around 1930.
I’m not sure how old the building is, but I think it was built before 1930. For as long as I can remember this theater (about 1958-59), its building has been rather nondescript, but it has always looked as though it might have had some decoration lost to a remodeling at some time. The upstairs facade has three arched windows at the center, suggesting a Spanish revival design of some sort. The El Sereno area began developing shortly after 1900, when Henry Huntington opened the Pasadena Short Line of his Pacific Electric Interurban service, which ran along Huntington Drive. Many of the houses in the area are of late Victorian and pre-WWI Craftsman style, though there are also many blocks of Spanish style bungalows dating from 1920-1930. But the area was certainly sufficiently built-up to have supported a theater as large as the Cameo before 1920.
I never saw the inside of the Cameo, but passed by it frequently on the bus to downtown Los Angeles. Its most arresting feature was the three-sided marquee, extending the entire width of the building. As late as the 1960s, the theater still appeared to be well maintained.
I don’t know when the Cameo ceased to be part of the Edwards circuit, but by 1953 I was reading the theater listings in the newspaper every week, and I don’t remember it being listed with the other Edwards operations. By the mid ‘50s, I’m fairly sure that the circuit was being managed from offices in Alhambra, a couple of miles east of the Cameo.
The 1941 edition of the Film Daily Yearbook lists the Cameo Theater as having 750 seats and is listed under the El Sereno area, not Los Angeles v(although by 1950 it was listed under Los Angeles and had 816 seats).
I am told by a reliable source that it was at this theatre that James Edwards Jr began his Edwards Theatre Circuit. The head office of that circuit is listed at the Cameo address in 1950.