Monterey Mall Cinema

Joe Vogel on November 24, 2019 at 1:52 am

I went to this theater once, not too long after it opened, though I don’t recall what movie we saw. I believe we were in the smallest of the three auditoriums, and it was a fairly good size— certainly larger than any of the four auditoriums at the AMC multiplex built in Rosemead about ten years earlier.

It was opened when Monterey Park was already well on its way to being a predominantly east Asian community, and the shopping center in which the cinema was located had mostly Asian businesses in it. When this house opened, the much older Monterey Theatre, which I believe had been the first house Jimmy Edwards ever operated, was sublet to an Asian operator who ran Chinese language movies.