Tehachapi News

The movie house my father built:

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There was a reunion of old friends in Tehachapi last Tuesday between a pair who first encountered each other 73 years ago — one was Leal Kanstein and the other was the BeeKay Theater, which his father L. J. “Leo” Kanstein had opened in 1936.

Leal, 84, graduated from Tehachapi High School in 1943 along with 15 classmates and he was the student body president. He lives in Berkeley now and still meets up twice a year for reunions based on those THS friendships of long ago.

Kanstein was delighted by his March 31 visit to the restored BeeKay Theater.

“They’ve done a wonderful job bringing this building back, just wonderful,” Kanstein said. “It looks fantastic — really beautiful. It’s so nice that they were able to resurrect it and get some use out of it.”

Kanstein’s tour of the interior was organized by Shirley Edell McLean, of Keene.

She sent a copy of a column that I wrote about last year’s triumphant reopening of the BeeKay Theater to Leal, who expressed an interest in seeing it, and was especially hoping to look inside.

McLean, who was for many years the Postmaster at Keene, was able to contact Karl Schuck of the Tehachapi Community Theater, the nonprofit organization that refurbished the interior of the building and is responsible for its maintenance and upkeep.

The cheerful Schuck was happy to oblige Kanstein and his friends with a personal tour of the building.

“We’re delighted that Mr. Kanstein was interested in seeing the theater that his father started,” Schuck said.  “It is an honor for the TCT to host someone who was here when this building was new.”

Born in Tehachapi in 1925
Leal was  born just down the street from the theater at 419 South Green in 1925, delivered by a female physician named Dr. Rhinehart. He was the only child of Leo Kanstein and Hazel Davis Kanstein.

Leal’s father Leo first came to Tehachapi to work for the Tehachapi Fruit and Land Company   just before World War I.

“When the company went belly-up, he got a job working for Kern County as the ag inspector for this area,” Kanstein explained. “My mother came here as a schoolteacher and then married my father and they had me.”

Neither the elder Kanstein nor his partner, Tehachapi druggist Frank Baumgart, had any experience in the movie theater business, but during the Depression in late 1934 they decided to form a partnership and open the BeeKay, spelling out their initials “B”and “K.” The theater was completed in 1936.

“Baumgart could be a little abrasive, so it was decided that my Dad would interact with the public and Baumgart would be a silent though full partner,” Kanstein remembers. Local builder Al Lange was chosen for the project.

“Al Lange had a reputation for building things that would last a lifetime,” Kanstein noted. “If it needed to be strong, he’d build it twice as strong. This was proven during the ‘52 earthquake — the only thing that happened to the theater is two or three acoustic tiles fell off the ceiling and the projection equipment was bounced around and had to be pointed back at the screen.”

Until the BeeKay Theater opened, the only movies that could be seen in Tehachapi were those that were screened occasionally in the Odd Fellows Hall on Curry Street, which is now the Talmarc Building housing the Crisis Pregnancy Center.

The BeeKay brings movies here
Once the BeeKay opened, Tehachapi residents could see many movies.

“We had three changes of movies a week,” Kanstein remembers. “The new reels came in on the train. There was also a popcorn machine in the lobby that dispensed bags of popcorn for a nickel. My Dad would go over to the depot in his old Ford coupe and pick up these big bags of popped popcorn that were shipped from L.A., and he’d put a couple in the rumble seat and tie another up on top.”

The BeeKay used to give away dishes to ticket buyers, and also used to have a drawing at Thanksgiving to give away turkeys.

One of the projectionists in the early days was Ennis Peterman, a ham radio enthusiast who got the young Leal Kanstein interested in electronics. Kanstein was only 11 when the theater opened, but when he was a little older he worked as an usher and then as a projectionist for a few months before he went into the service during World War II.

“For a number of years I saw almost every picture that got made,” Kanstein told me. “Some were great, others not so good but I watched almost all of them. I’d also get my friends in for free when I could.”

After 21⁄2 years in the military, Kanstein got out and returned to Tehachapi, where he would run the theater at times so his parents could go on vacation.

However, his interest in electronics would eventually turn into a career as Kanstein attended UCLA, San Jose State, and then UC Berkeley. Upon graduation as an electrical engineer, he went to work at the Berkeley Radiation Lab and was involved with the cyclotron, also known as an atom smasher or particle accelerator.

At one time the cyclotron at Berkeley was the world’s largest, weighing 4,000 tons. Kanstein stayed at the Berkeley Radiation Lab until he retired in 1984.

Kansteins sell the theater in 1953

Although the BeeKay survived the earthquake with scant damage, the Kansteins were ready to retire so in 1953 they sold the business to Bob Nelson and moved to Cambria, where they lived until Leo died in 1972 and Hazel in 1984.

Accompanying Kanstein on the Tuesday tour was his THS ‘43 classmate Esther Yates Holtermann, 84, whose late husband Sylvester used to farm potatoes here and later in the San Joaquin Valley.

Also part of the reunion group was Lilian Edell, 85, who is the widow of THS ‘43 grad Jack Edell (brother of Shirley Edell McLean) and Eldine Stevens, 81, the widow of another ‘43 classmate named Kenneth Stevens.Shirley is the baby of the group at only 79. Leal’s wife Jean resides in an assisted living facility and is unable to travel.

The five delightful elders who remember Tehachapi from a much earlier time enjoyed their return to the old theater, and I think that the building was glad to see them again too.

Have a good week.