"Jail Bait"

We spend a bit of time at the Monterey Theatre in Monterey Park in the Ed Wood film "Jail Bait" (Howco Productions, 1954). They're going to steal the theatre circuit's payroll that they keep in an office backstage.

 

 

A look at the front of the auditorium. The young lady is a casualty of the robbery. Our robber thinks he's going to get his face altered by his plastic surgeon father so he can't be identified. The plot is foiled.

 

Before the robbery we got a clip supposedly earlier in the evening of a minstrel act on stage. It was lifted from "Yes Sir, Mister Bones!" On the version of "Jail Bait" on DVD from Westlake Entertainment this shot to the rear of the auditorium follows that clip but wasn't taken from that film. It's unknown what epic Ed Wood grabbed it from. It's an unknown theatre, not the Monterey. Jack Tillmany comments: 

 

"Of course the whole concept of the robbery in 'Jail Bait' is so insane nobody but Ed Wood would have taken it seriously. The safe at the Monterey is supposedly holding $20,000+ in cash, what we are told is the payroll money for the entire circuit, and the night watchman (aged Bud Osborne) has the combination, etc. 

 

"In the original version of this 'classic' a minstrel show (lifted out of a 1951 movie called 'Yes Sir, Mister Bones!') (yes, really) is inserted as taking place at the Monterey. It was later removed (I can't imagine why?) and replaced with a strip tease number from an earlier film. Mercifully, the version I caught on cable had neither. So we just got to see the empty auditorium, which didn't look like much."

See the page about the Monterey Theatre on the Los Angeles Theatres site for more about the building. It opened in 1924. The site is now a parking lot.  

On IMDb: "Jail Bait"