On October 1, 1919, the Garden Theatre opened in La Habra, originally operating as both a vaudeville and motion picture venue. The theatre was later renamed the “La Habra” and managed to last until the mid 1950’s, when Lippert Theatres announced that they would be opening their own “La Habra Theatre” in town. The former Garden then sat vacant for nearly a decade, before being razed during a city revitalization project.
Unfortunately, little documentation remains of the Garden Theatre, with even the venue’s prime years recorded via little more than a city listing in the newspaper’s independent theatre section (an all too common situation for early twentieth century suburban cinemas). However, there appears to have been one noteworthy event in the Garden’s history which did manage to garner some attention, all be it of the negative variety.
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Back in the winter of 1931, the theatre’s then owner, Darius Morehead, was involved in a dispute with a former employee, which escalated to Mr. Morehead pulling out a handgun and shooting the Garden’s former manager. According to newspaper accounts of the incident, the former theatre manager, Kenneth Renaud, had been shorted his $50 a week salary and taken the matter to the labor commission. After the commission ruled in Mr. Renaud’s favor, awarding him $175, Morehead sought out the complainant and shot him twice, during a heated argument. Mr. Renaud survived the attack and Morehouse was arrested for the crime. Yet, strangely, the paper trail fell silent after the arrest; so, we are left to speculate whether the “rich theatre owner” faced justice for the “wage row” or not.
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