El Cameo Theater
4907 Huntington Drive North,
Los Angeles,
CA
90032
4907 Huntington Drive North,
Los Angeles,
CA
90032
2 people
favorited this theater
This neighborhood theater was in the El Sereno district of the City of Los Angeles. About 1970, when it began running Spanish language movies, the name was altered from Cameo to El Cameo, probably to distinguish it from the Cameo Theater on Broadway in downtown L.A. which was also showing Spanish language movies by that time. It housed a furniture company into the mid-2000’s, and by 2009 was in use as a discount store.
Contributed by
Joe Vogel
Want to be emailed when a new comment is posted about this theater?
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater
Recent comments (view all 13 comments)
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.
The Monterey theatre was torn down in the early 90’s after being vacant for years. Its now a parking lot for the hospital next door. It was located right next to the gas station that is on the corner of Hellman and Garfield, right off the 10 freeway.
This picture from the LA Library shows the Edwards theater in Azusa as the Village:
http://jpg1.lapl.org/pics39/00039141.jpg
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.
The El Cameo is now a discount store:
http://tinyurl.com/2xlraj
http://tinyurl.com/22sph5
http://tinyurl.com/ywghhs
Function should be changed to retail.
Yes, a .99 cent store would be retail.
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.
Here is another photo:
http://tinyurl.com/y4d58rl
great theatre i used to go there and watch a nite mare on elm street one and two.