As the strippers in “Gypsy” told us, you gotta have a gimmick. And the gimmick chosen by the Tumbleweed Theatre at 11918 Garvey Ave, El Monte (due east of downtown Los Angeles) was to build its marquee into a wooden tower topped by a windmill. This photo was taken in 1939, the year it opened. The theater itself was made to look like a barn, so they were going for a rustic look, which would have suited the relatively undeveloped area back then. The Tumbleweed lasted until the late 1960s.
The Tumbleweed by day in 1939:
An aerial shot showing the surrounding area, also from 1939:
Of course that site is a mini mall now. This is how it looked in June 2022:
Does anyone know who Garvey was? That’s the name of one of the major streets here in West Covina and I’ve always wondered who it was named after.
For anyone curious about the movie Hawaiian Nights (like me), here’s how imdb described the plot:
“Bandleader Tim Hartley’s father objects strongly to his son’s occupation choice and packs him off to Hawaii to manage the family hotel holdings. This proves to be a wrong move as Hawaii has more bands than it does pineapples.”
I worked for decades in the San Gabriel Valley. I only recognize that mini mall! A coworker once told me that her dad used to have a sheep ranch in the same area where the building we worked in was now.