Victim of Palisades Fire ran Malibu’s only movie theater
Remembrances and tributes are pouring in for one of the victims who died in the Palisades Fire, Betty O’Meara. The longtime Malibu resident was one of 29 people known to have died in January’s devastating wildfires. For some unknown reason, the 94-year-old O’Meara refused to evacuate from her Big Rock home as the fire was bearing down on her bluff side neighborhood.
This reporter caught up with O’Meara in 2017 when Regal Theaters, who were then the owners of the Malibu Cinema, decided to close the theater that she owned and ran with her husband years earlier.
At that time, the loss of Malibu’s only movie theater was heartbreaking for many local residents who also lost another part of what they called “old Malibu” — a town that no longer exists — when life was simpler and going to the movies was a special, more intimate experience than streaming or at multiplexes.
Betty and David O’Meara moved to Malibu in 1969. An 87-year-old Betty described her late husband as an executive for a big company “sitting behind a big mahogany desk telling others what to do.” In the early ’70s, David O’Mearahad met some sheriff’s personnel at a local watering hole and got to know them. It was then that the local law enforcement told O’Meara they had a problem: The youth in Malibu had nothing to do after school and needed something like a golf course or other activity to keep them busy and keep them out of trouble in the nearby hangout of Santa Monica.
“One day the local sheriff asked my husband, ‘Mr. O’Meara, would you mind opening some kind of business for the young people to stay inside Malibu?’ So, my husband just happened to have a little luck in the Malibu shopping center and he opened the cinema,” Betty recalled. “It was small. He wasn’t used to running something so small. He was new to being behind the counter, exchanging money with customers. At first some people thought he was not fit to be the cinema owner.”
It may have been a rocky start for David O’Meara, as his widow explained in 2017, that her husband was a “martinet” about people smoking or being ill-mannered in the theater. “My husband was not used to dealing with customers — he was very strict with them,” she described. “Customers would have to behave in the cinema. There was no smoking or drinking allowed. People didn’t like him at all at first.” Other locals complained that opening the theater would cause more traffic on what was then a sleepy Pacific Coast Highway.
“Malibu people didn’t want any big businesses then, either,” Betty remembered. “But the local people in the industry supported Dave when he opened the cinema. They all came.”
It wasn’t long before Dave’s kindnesses brought him success in his new small endeavor. When the theater finally closed in 2017, The Malibu Times spoke with many people about wonderful memories at the old Malibu Cinema, including 30-plus year resident DeeAnna Staats.
“There were a few times way back when, when I would show up and we didn’t have our wallets or we didn’t have cash and they would tell us just to go in, enjoy the movie and the next time we came back we could take care of it,” Staats shared. “And they never asked for our name — nothing. They were just sweet. They recognized our faces and it was just really nice.”
Another former resident, Nilo Falamaki, remembered the laid-back atmosphere.
“When you entered the theater, the guy who sold the ticket would then run over to the popcorn machine and sell you popcorn, and then he’d run and tear up your ticket and then show you to your seat and then you’d go in and all your friends would be inside,” Falamaki said. “It was like a party.”
While Dave was often behind the counter, Betty worked behind the scenes from home, booking the films to be shown. Betty laughingly recalled that the theater’s telephone number was still hanging on her wall at home years later.
“At the beginning, they didn’t want to give me a good movie because it was a small theater and nobody knew of it,” she said. “But then I explained to them that my customers [Academy voters] are the ones voting for this because they were in the industry. So, they decided to give me a better picture.”
Betty recalled seeing many celebrities buy tickets including Flip Wilson, Lee Marvin, Johnny Carson, Barbra Streisand and even the reclusive Bob Dylan. She claimed her late husband would even drive some kids home, including the children of actor Martin Sheen.
“It was a local cinema, just opened, and it was very exciting at the time,” she said. “We had a nice community and they helped us a lot.”
David ran the Malibu Cinema from 1972-1991. It was sold to Hollywood Theaters and then taken over by Regal Cinema until its closure.
After the original article ran in the The Malibu Times in 2017, this reporter received flowers and a hand-painted notecard from Ms. O’Meara.