During the 1950s La Mar’s Saturday matinees were a worship center for kids like me (refugees from Opal Robinson Elementary). Images of the original Batman (1943 b & w, anti-Japaneese propaganda serial starring Lewis Wilson & Douglas Croft as “Robin”), all the Charlie Chan flix plus best of genre Westerns such as the collaborations of John Ford & John Wayne/ James Stewart- Anthony Mann/ Bud Boetticher + Randolph Scott, etc. All us kids knew how to treat a faithful dog or horse but we didn’t mess with girls because they all had cooties. Yuk!
The La Mar wasn’t everybody’s theater but it was most certainly mine during those formative years and maybe that’s why I remember that vivid evening toward the end of July, 1957 when the theater was overwhelmed by police officers & other adults. It was a fund raiser- memorial service for two officers from a neighboring city who had been gunned down by someone who ran a red light. This was destined to go unsolved for 45 years until Gerald F. Mason was finally apprehended, confessed & indicted for the double murder.
Good childhood memories mixed with disturbing ones are what swirl around the teen shoe store Sketchers which was built on the site where the deer and the antelope used to play just up from the Manhattan Beach pier. And I did bridge the gap on the cooties thing. Even wound up marrying one them 23 years ago. I guess that’s what they call progress today.
During the 1950s La Mar’s Saturday matinees were a worship center for kids like me (refugees from Opal Robinson Elementary). Images of the original Batman (1943 b & w, anti-Japaneese propaganda serial starring Lewis Wilson & Douglas Croft as “Robin”), all the Charlie Chan flix plus best of genre Westerns such as the collaborations of John Ford & John Wayne/ James Stewart- Anthony Mann/ Bud Boetticher + Randolph Scott, etc. All us kids knew how to treat a faithful dog or horse but we didn’t mess with girls because they all had cooties. Yuk!
The La Mar wasn’t everybody’s theater but it was most certainly mine during those formative years and maybe that’s why I remember that vivid evening toward the end of July, 1957 when the theater was overwhelmed by police officers & other adults. It was a fund raiser- memorial service for two officers from a neighboring city who had been gunned down by someone who ran a red light. This was destined to go unsolved for 45 years until Gerald F. Mason was finally apprehended, confessed & indicted for the double murder.
Good childhood memories mixed with disturbing ones are what swirl around the teen shoe store Sketchers which was built on the site where the deer and the antelope used to play just up from the Manhattan Beach pier. And I did bridge the gap on the cooties thing. Even wound up marrying one them 23 years ago. I guess that’s what they call progress today.