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The gone-but-not-forgotten PALMS THEATER

SHALOM, BUBALA!
It means something like, 'Hi, baby!' and it still resonates with old-time Palmsians

Screenwriter Mark Evanier has written an amusing tribute to the long-gone Palms theater on Motor Ave., where the Palms post office is now. It's been posted in his blog since September 2002.

It was a friendly place to see a film — not fancy but comfy, not plush but cheap. . . . The Palms, fiercely independent to its dying day, usually offered up two second-run pictures, with a few trailers and a cartoon sandwiched between.

The best thing about the Palms was its recorded announcement. I don't know who recorded them but he always commenced with "Shalom, bubala!" and he was always hysterical. . . .

I used to go to the Palms about once a month — sometimes with my parents, sometimes with a date — but I made a point of phoning each week to hear what the "Shalom, bubala!" guy had to say. I wasn't the only one. People who had no interest whatsoever in going to the Palms Theater used to call in sufficient quantity that the Palms had to install extra phone lines.

Go to Evanier's site to read more.

Vaughn Aubuchon also remembers the Palms:

I loved the Saturday matinee at the Palms theater and "Shalom, bubala!" at 3751 Motor Ave. at Venice Blvd. Inexplicably, I still remember the owners — Jim Allen and Merritt Stone.

Superman! Rocketman! Abbott and Costello! Randolf Scott westerns! 1928 Palms theater. And the bicycle shop across the street. (Edior's note: Palms Cycle is supposed to be the oldest bike shop in L.A.: It began on Main Street in Culver City but has been in its present location since the 1930s.)

There's a spooky photo of the Palms in the L.A. Public Library's collection (above). It's either a double exposure or a single printing from two negatives. A street scene is eerily printed smack over the front of the Palms theater; it shows four ghostly flappers wearing white stockings and some equally ghostly men striding away from the camera. Floating above at the left is an advertisement for an Olsen & Johnson movie.

The result makes it seem as if Motor Ave. is populated by a whole phalanx of phantoms.

This odd photo could be dated by the advertisement you can see on its marquee for the MGM movie Love, starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, which was released in 1924. Yet Olsen & Johnson's first film, Oh, Sailor Behave, didn't come out until 1930. What is going on here? One guess: The Love photo was shot on a 4x5 negative, which was then put away without being developed. Years later, the holder with the exposed film was pulled out and the Olsen & Johnson photo was made over it. (Well, it's an idea, anyway.)

This double exposure, by the way, occupies the upper left corner in the community mural gracing the Palms branch of Wells Fargo Bank on Palms Blvd. east of Sepulveda, complete with ghosts (below). At the bottom of the mural is a photo of the old Palms railroad station, which is now the ticket office at Heritage Square in the Arroyo Seco. The other shots in that mural are not of Palms.

The Palms theater is listed on the Web site Cinema Treasures (click here to see it)

Visitors to that site have left messages about the Palms over the past few years. Here are some of them:

The Palms was razed around the late 80's. To make way for a new Post Office. The Palms ran 2nd & 3rd films in it's later years. The Palms has been around since the early 40's. and it seated 599 people. The Palms was a very popular theatre with the local people. About 1/2 mile away was the Culver theatre and around the corner was the Meralta theatre.
(Posted by William on Oct 8, 2001.)

The Palms had a very loyal audience. Every time I went to the theater, day or night, it was more than 2/3 full. Many in the audience went to the Palms on a weekly basis for years.
(Posted by Moviemanforever on Aug 15, 2002.)

When the Meralta Theatre burned down in the late '40's or early '50's, the Culver City Fire Dept. was used as a temporary movie theatre. Then they built the "Culver". The "Miralta" was right across and down the street from "Frank's Bar", where I sold the Herald Examiner paper on the corner as a boy. Both the "Palms" and the "Miralta" did in no way compare to the colorful and inticing grandeur of the "Culver".
(Posted by Joe on Nov 28, 2003.)

The Palms was an alternative theater when the Meralta burned down and then the Culver City Hall became a temp theater til the Culver Theater, with its statuesque tower opened up in '47 (I was there for its grand opening). The Kirk Douglas Culver Theater has just had a new grand opening. Cool.
(Posted by fredpamh on Oct 3, 2004.)

The neighborhood is quite old. My grandfather was a plastering contractor in the 1920s, and many of his jobs were in the Palms-Cheviot Hills area. It was pretty fully built up there before 1930, and could easily have supported a movie house of its own in the prosperous years before the Depression, even with other theaters nearby.
(Posted by Joe Vogel on Dec 4, 2004,)

This theatre dated from the mid-30's. In 1951 it was taken over from the projectionist Ralph Hines by Merrit Stone and James Allen. The first picture they played was The Day the Earth Stood Still. Over the years they built it up into the highest-grossing independent on the Westside — remodeling it in 1960 with one of the first indoor/lobby box offices. They also had one of the first recorded phone messages (VE 7-7171).

Ralph stayed on as projectionist until he retired in 1962 ,when Bob Lumpkin came in — leaving in 1969, when Mike Schleiger came in and stayed until 1974 ,when Merrit and Jim gave it up and leased it to Great Western — they running it into the ground until Stone and Allen sold the theatre and surrounding property to the post office in 1980. They took over the Meralta Theatre in 1968, where I was their projectionist that summer and fall before moving on.
(Posted by filmbreak on Aug 15, 2005.)

And to end this roundup, we present an almost-modern photo of the Palms theater, done after 1985, coupled with a recent photo of the post office that replaced it. We would like to know who is the young man posing on the sidewalk.