My most vivid memory of the West Side Theater is seeing “Jaws” there in 1976 with my wife when she was eight and a half months pregnant with our son. We would later tease about the scary scenes and music of that film being the cause of her going into labor. Based on that teasing, a teenage cousin of our newborn son bought him a stuffed animal shark which was immediately christened “Jaws.”
We’ve seen several live performances since the conversion to cabaret seating, and have thoroughly enjoyed them.
This is the theater at the corner of Junipero and Anaheim that my friends and I most frequented as young kids in the mid to late 1950s until about 1961 as I recall. We’d either catch the #4 bus at Anaheim and Ximeno and ride it the 21 blocks in the downtown direction to disembark at Junipero, or we’d occasionally walk it. As I recall, 50 cents bought admission to a movie, cartoon, serial, and newsreel. As I think back now, I can’t recall a single specific film I saw there, but I know that lots of them were monster films. I distinctly recall the Commander Cody serial.
What does stand out in my mind was next door to the Cabart on Anaheim. It was a little eatery called The Railroad Cafe. It had an eliptical shaped counter that the clientele sat around. When the waitress took your order, she placed it on a train that was passing by and then your food was brought out on flatcars that followed the same tracked-route.
One of my classmates has the following recollection of the Cabart, and there’s nothing in it inconsistent with my own recollections, and I recall seeing a film with the binoculars and nails scene described below.
“I remember going to the Cabart Theater every Saturday on our bikes to watch old black and white "horror” movies and cartoons while eating milk duds and jr. mints. I especially remember one old one called ‘Horrors of the Black Museum’ and getting VERY scared when the actor looked through binoculars and nails popped out and poked him in the eyes. That one really freaked me."
In checking out that comment, I have found that the release date for “Horrors of the Black Museum” was November 24, 1959. Since the Cabart ran films that were a few months old, that would put it in the early Spring of 1960 which would have been my final semester of Junior High. That makes it highly probable that I saw this horror film at the Cabart as well as I wasn’t allowed by my parents to go to the “downtown” theaters in Long Beach until I reached high school in the Fall of 1960.
My most vivid memory of the West Side Theater is seeing “Jaws” there in 1976 with my wife when she was eight and a half months pregnant with our son. We would later tease about the scary scenes and music of that film being the cause of her going into labor. Based on that teasing, a teenage cousin of our newborn son bought him a stuffed animal shark which was immediately christened “Jaws.”
We’ve seen several live performances since the conversion to cabaret seating, and have thoroughly enjoyed them.
Carl Hughes
This is the theater at the corner of Junipero and Anaheim that my friends and I most frequented as young kids in the mid to late 1950s until about 1961 as I recall. We’d either catch the #4 bus at Anaheim and Ximeno and ride it the 21 blocks in the downtown direction to disembark at Junipero, or we’d occasionally walk it. As I recall, 50 cents bought admission to a movie, cartoon, serial, and newsreel. As I think back now, I can’t recall a single specific film I saw there, but I know that lots of them were monster films. I distinctly recall the Commander Cody serial.
What does stand out in my mind was next door to the Cabart on Anaheim. It was a little eatery called The Railroad Cafe. It had an eliptical shaped counter that the clientele sat around. When the waitress took your order, she placed it on a train that was passing by and then your food was brought out on flatcars that followed the same tracked-route.
One of my classmates has the following recollection of the Cabart, and there’s nothing in it inconsistent with my own recollections, and I recall seeing a film with the binoculars and nails scene described below.
“I remember going to the Cabart Theater every Saturday on our bikes to watch old black and white "horror” movies and cartoons while eating milk duds and jr. mints. I especially remember one old one called ‘Horrors of the Black Museum’ and getting VERY scared when the actor looked through binoculars and nails popped out and poked him in the eyes. That one really freaked me."
In checking out that comment, I have found that the release date for “Horrors of the Black Museum” was November 24, 1959. Since the Cabart ran films that were a few months old, that would put it in the early Spring of 1960 which would have been my final semester of Junior High. That makes it highly probable that I saw this horror film at the Cabart as well as I wasn’t allowed by my parents to go to the “downtown” theaters in Long Beach until I reached high school in the Fall of 1960.
Carl Hughes