Added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 23, 1998

It says something that the most knowledgeable historic theatre enthusiasts I’ve talked to in LA haven’t heard of the Padua Hills Theatre. Tucked into a grove of 140-year-old olive trees in the mountains north of Claremont, Padua Hills is geographically distant from the classic movie palaces of Broadway and Hollywood. It never hosted lavish movie premieres, or big-name music acts. This was a true community playhouse, presenting live theatre by local entertainers. 

The Padua Hills Theatre stands out even further because of the Mexican Players, a troupe of Latino actors, dancers and singers who spent over 40 years bringing Mexican culture and folklore to a largely Anglo audience, during a time of deep racial division. 

Like a lot of the towns in the San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys, Claremont was a citrus powerhouse in the early 1900s. By the 1920s it was distinguishing itself as a center for education and culture, too. Scripps and the Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University) joined the long-running Pomona College in the late ‘20s. New schools meant new professors and students with new ideas.

That whole decade was a time of great civic growth for Claremont. Streets were paved and sewers added. A new city hall and library sprung up, and the Santa Fe Railway built a new Claremont Depot to replace their aging station from 1887. But some citizens were concerned that development was moving too quickly. And so in the late 1920s a group of about 20 Claremont residents joined together in a real estate venture called Padua Hills, Inc., and purchased a tract of 2,000 acres just north of Claremont. One of the company’s directors, Sarah Bixby Smith (of the Long Beach Bixbys), suggested the name “Padua Hills” because it lay on the southern slope of Mount San Antonio (aka Mount Baldy), and Saint Anthony was the patron saint of Padua, Italy. Padua was also a famous university town, so it set a worthy model for Claremont to follow. 

Leading the Padua Hills, Inc. venture was Herman Garner, a Tennessee transplant who had lived in Claremont since the early 1900s, when he attended Pomona College. Garner invented an air filter that kept dust out of internal combustion engines, and started the Vortox Manufacturing Company to produce and sell the thing. At first Garner was concerned that helming Padua Hills, Inc. would eat up too much of his time and attention. His colleagues convinced him it would be easy to manage. Oh, how wrong they were. 

In 1928, a local drama group called the Claremont Community Players started up, presenting plays in various school auditoriums and restaurants around town. The Community Players were both an ensemble and a social organization, and a mighty popular one – at its height, the Players counted nearly 1000 people as actors, technical staff or active supporters, about a quarter of the entire population of Claremont. Also important to note, the Community Players were all white. 

There was considerable overlap between the Claremont Community Players and Padua Hills, Inc. So it’s not too much of a surprise that the company chose to build a permanent home for the troupe as one of its first projects, even before it had subdivided its acreage for housing in 1931. 

Padua Hills, Inc. found an ideal location for the new theatre on a mesa a few miles north of town, right at the mouth of Palmer Canyon. They brought on board the firm of Marston & Maybury, well regarded for the Grace Nicholson Building in Pasadena (aka Pacific Asia Museum) and, closer to home, the Claremont Public Library and Abraham Lincoln Elementary School in Pomona. They all agreed on a Spanish colonial revival style for the new theatre, a conceptual link to the area’s 19th century history as a vast rancho owned by Ygnacio Palomares and Ricardo Véjar. Many of Claremont’s most important buildings from the 1920s were built in the same style.

By this time Herman Garner had taken a controlling interest in Padua Hills, Inc., but he left the design details of the theatre to the Community Players. When Garner, his wife Bess and their three sons left town for a three-month European vacation in July of 1930, he assumed they would return to find a simple barn-like theatre, like many other small troupes had at the time. The Players, on the other hand, thought Garner had given them carte blanche to do what they wanted. By the time the final plans reached Garner in Amsterdam, it had turned into a formidable steel and concrete theatre large enough to fit 300 patrons. The cost had ballooned to $75,000 (about $1.5 million in 2025 money), a considerable sum just as the Great Depression was taking its toll. 

The oldest buildings at the Padua Hills Theatre are the theatre itself, covered in red Spanish tiles, and a small apartment building just southeast of it. While the three-story-tall backstage section of the theatre was rebuilt after a fire, I was told that the wood-frame walls in the former seating area are original. The exposed beams and cross-bracing that hold up the roof are reminiscent of the nave of a Spanish mission. There used to be rows of green and red plush upholstered seats facing the stage. And…there used to be a stage! Today, the wood floor extends to where the raised proscenium used to be. 

Just off the former stage is an attached structure with a lean-to roof, which used to contain storage, dressing rooms and bathrooms. Downstairs toward the back of the theatre you can find a warren of small dressing rooms, now mostly used for storage for the wedding and events companies that work there now. 

Attached to the theatre on the south is the dining room and lounge on two levels, separated by a short set of stairs. The original exposed wood beams, brick fireplace and sconces still grace the dining room. This is where showgoers would dine before show time. It also operated as a standalone restaurant, open in the afternoon and evening most nights. 

On the southeast section of the main building is a small window where you’d pick up your tickets. Head around to the southwest corner of the building, and the olive trees part to reveal a stunning view of the Pomona Valley. In later years, a lower terrace was built with a black iron arch framing an even better view. Perfect Instagram fodder.

Another part of the original design was the long colonnade of brick columns, stretching from the parking lot into the heart of the property, and the simple brick apartment right next to it. That was built for the Claremont Community Players’ manager James P. Blaisdell and his wife, and compressed a living room, bedroom and bath into just 500 square feet. Two display cabinets stick out from the wall of the apartment, as they always have. 

Overlooking the walkway next to the apartment is a large terra cotta statue of a kneeling Native American maiden, created by artist and Scripps College professor Albert Stewart in the 1940s. My tour guide told me there was a rumor that her eyes had turned black after someone in the neighborhood died. 

The third part of the Padua Hills Theatre complex, separated from the others, is an L-shaped building completed a year or two after the other two structures. It was intended as an artist’s studio and residence, but mostly it was used as a shop for imported and locally-made crafts, so guests could shop for pottery, paintings or weavings after a show. Currently it serves as an administration office. Between the three buildings is a brick courtyard festooned in trees, with an outdoor fireplace at the north end and a small stage on the east.

Down below the main complex, in terraces stepping down into the olive tree groves, you used to be able to find additional studios surrounded by elaborate rockwork. The studios themselves were demolished long ago, but you can still see the foundations. 

The new Padua Hills Theatre was an instant hit. The Claremont Community Players’ first production at their new home, The Royal Family by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, sold out its entire first week in advance.

Editors from the local papers of eight different cities attended opening night. Everyone who wrote about it raved about the play, the comfortable dining room, and the beauty of the setting: 

“Nature herself responded to the auspiciousness of the occasion, bathing the surrounding foothills and mountains in full moonlight, and the valley below, with its twinkling lights from many communities, was spread out before the entranced throng who attended. The setting of the beautiful playhouse, on the brow of Olive hill, is in itself an inspiration.”

– Mrs. Arthur Babcock, Pomona Progress-Bulletin, December 3, 1930

Within a few months, the Automobile Club of Southern California had erected signs on the brand new Route 66, pointing to the theatre.

On their sojourn to Europe, the Garners had experienced a memorable dinner in Italy wherein musicians strolled between tables, singing and playing for diners as they ate. Bess Garner was charmed by the idea, and in advance of opening night, she hired Mexican-American children from the local schools and barrios to present traditional dances and Spanish songs during the meal. They couldn’t have known then that this simple idea would set the stage for the direction of the Padua Hills Theatre for the next four decades. 

For their first three seasons at the Padua Hills Theatre, the Claremont Community Players put on a monthly play, including classic repertory like Little Women, Our American Cousin, The Importance of Being Earnest and Pygmalion. In the meantime, the young Latino dining room staffers were winning attention of their own by serenading the restaurant patrons. Bess Garner was persuaded to feature them more prominently, and in April of 1931 they gave their first production Noche Mexicana at a meeting of the Community Players.

Early the following year, Bess Garner caught one of the cooks directing the kitchen staff in a “particularly gory Spanish tragedy,” just for fun. It gave her the idea to involve the young Latinos in a regular play. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, with all the tourists flooding into Los Angeles that summer for the 1932 Olympics, during the exact time when the theatre was normally dark.

The debut performance of the newly christened “Mexican Players” was Serenata Mexicana, staged on July 2. It was set in a small Mexican village, and mostly featured traditional songs and dances, strung together with a simple plot. There was no written dialogue. All the spoken bits were ad-libbed in Spanish, with exaggerated actions and pantomime to get the idea across. 

The audience flipped out over Serenata Mexicana, so much so that the Mexican Players (or “Paduanos,” as they called themselves) scheduled three repeat performances the following week. Lee Shippey of the Los Angeles Times called it “the most rapid-fire, spontaneous and natural thing of the kind we’ve ever seen.” Soon they added a second play to their rotation, El Rancho San Antonio, about the days back when the area was still the Palomares family rancho. By the end of their first full season (1932-1933), the Mexican Players had produced six plays, and graduated from dining room novelties to a full-fledged troupe. That season the Mexican Players and Community Players alternated every two weekends.

The Community Players were forced to disband after the 1932-1933 season, the same sad fate met by many community theatre groups during the Great Depression. Members had to look for work, or work longer hours, and didn’t have the time to rehearse. The Theatre cut admission costs from $1 to 50 cents, but ultimately the Community Players couldn’t stay afloat. By the end of 1933, they had left Padua Hills Theatre. To help fill the gap, the Pasadena Playhouse sent a group of actors (known as the Padua Players) to present shows at Padua Hills during the week for two seasons, from 1933-1935. 

Meanwhile, the Paduanos flourished. Led by Charles Dickinson, a playwright and Pomona College grad, they were making enough of a name for themselves that they were invited to perform all over the Pomona Valley, presenting to clubs and community artist series. They traveled throughout California in 1934, putting on their dramas at a string of California missions for the sesquicentennial of Junipero Serra’s death. Some of them visited the mission dedicated to San Antonio de Padua, their theatre’s namesake, up in Jolon, CA.

To understand the uniqueness of what the Mexican Players were doing, we need to talk about the racial context in Claremont at the time. Claremont has long been a majority white city, and still is according to recent census data. Even as Mexican migrants made up the bulk of the labor force that kept Claremont’s citrus industry growing in the early 1900s, those who settled in the area were excluded from many parts of town through exclusionary zoning (i.e. prioritizing large, expensive single-family homes) and restrictive housing covenants, both explicit and implied. Eventually, the Mexican community of Claremont coalesced around two segregated neighborhoods, the East Barrio (aka Arbol Verde) and the West Barrio. Claremont’s schools weren’t integrated until the mid-1940s. 

This is all to say that, for white audiences of the mid-’30s, it would have been pretty uncommon to see Mexican-Americans in traditional garb, performing Mexican folk dances and singing folk songs in Spanish. Even less common to experience all that right after those same actors had served you lamb chops and enchiladas for dinner.

From the early days, the plays at the Theatre used gentle education to ease white audiences into the experience. The large asbestos curtain that hung in front of the stage had a giant map of Mexico painted on it (attributed to both the Mexican Players’ director, Charles Dickinson, and one of its members, Alfonso Gallardo), to place the action in its geographical context. They’d print synopses in the playbill, and the production staff would sometimes come out to explain the onstage action.

As the Paduanos gained traction, the Theatre’s founders, Herman and Bess Garner, realized that this was more than a source of entertainment – the Paduanos offered an opportunity to build cross-cultural understanding between the Mexican and Anglo communities, at a time of deep racial segregation in LA County, and during a decade when America was deporting hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants. While the plays themselves didn’t engage in social issues or political commentary, “the Theatre’s existence was a running rebuttal to moments of xenophobia against Mexicans that bubbled up to the surface,” says historian Matt Garcia. 

In 1935, the Garners founded the Padua Institute, a non-profit spinoff of Padua Hills, Inc., to oversee the Theatre and the Mexican Players. The new tax-exempt status helped the Theatre survive during the economic challenges of the 1930s, and reinforced its educational raison d’être.

The Garners brought in groups of LA school kids to attend matinee performances and learn more about their Latino neighbors. They worked with the Spanish department at Claremont College to bring in older students to practice their conversational skills, and immerse themselves in Mexican culture. 

The Padua Institute had an impact on the plays they put on, too. Bess Garner convinced the Mexican Ministry of Education to send artists and folklore experts to live and work with the Mexican Players, and enhance the authenticity of their storytelling. This was in addition to the many trips that Bess Garner took to Mexico in the 1930s, to collect story ideas and costumes for future plays. She wrote about her travels in a regular column for the Pomona Progress-Bulletin.

Some have taken a more critical stance of the Garners’ cross-cultural mission of the Padua Hills Theatre. In his 1995 article “Just Put on That Padua Hills Smile,” Matt Garcia argued that “the effects of the Mexican Players’ performances may have at times perpetuated the stereotypes of Mexican people that romanticized and misrepresented the harsh lives of Chicanos in the Southwest.” Garcia, whose aunt Isabel Alba Martinez (grandmother to actress Jessica Alba) was a Paduano in the 1950s, points out that the white community tended “to overlook the Paduanos’ acting abilities; instead, they regarded the performances as extensions of the ‘natural’ gaiety of Mexican culture.” In addition the Garners “actively discouraged the movement of Paduanos from Padua Hills to radio or movies for fear of their becoming ‘too Hollywoodish,’” preventing these talented artists from making connections that could build their careers. 

There was also the fact that the Mexican Players were often underpaid and overworked, expected to pull double duty as both performers and servers/cooks. When in 1935-36 the Theatre began its tradition of post-play courtyard parties (called jamaícas, after the beverage served at the event), that added yet another layer of work obligations. 

Garcia acknowledges, however, the uniqueness of the Mexican Players’ space in theatre history, and the pride that the Paduanos took in their work there. While it’s important to recognize the condescension that the Garners’ could show towards the Paduanos, you have to square that with all the stories of their generosity towards the actors and staff. They were socially progressive for their time, and were known to support the wider Latino community, both in and outside of Padua Hills. As one example: In the late ‘40s, Bess Garner joined a group of wealthy locals to put up money for an integrated neighborhood in the Arbol Verde neighborhood of Claremont, and co-signed loans for the families that lived there. Those were the Intercultural Council Houses, listed separately on the National Register.

By 1936 the Mexican Players were putting on six to seven shows per year, including their annual Christmas play, which presented the Mexican tradition of Las Posadas and always ended with the destruction of a piñata.

Arts and crafts took on a greater role at the Theatre in the late 1930s. Ironworker Hayrold Russ Glick opened an iron forge nearby (he did the original ironwork in the lobby & dining room), while ceramicist William Manker opened a pottery studio there in 1937. The renowned artist Millard Sheets served on the board of the Padua Institute early on, and later on the beloved watercolorist Milford Zornes was the Institute’s art director. Tons of local artists sold their work in the craft shop on site, side by side with imported crafts from Mexico. 

WWII brought a number of changes, as young men from the theatre joined the military, necessitating new plays that called for more women. Hilda Ramirez Jara, an actress, dancer and playwright with the Paduanos, took over directorial responsibility while the men were away (she would later become the director of the long-running Ramona Pageant in Hemet). With the departure of many of the longest-serving Paduanos, new shows were developed that relied less on extemporaneous dialogue, and more on scripted action. Mandated blackouts meant the theatre scrapped most of its evening performances, but kept the afternoon matinees.  

Attendance fell off during the war years due to gasoline rationing, but one member of the Padua Hills community did gangbusters: Maria Prado, who worked in the weaver studio on site, started making double texture filter cloth required for domestic champagne manufacturing. Wartime blockades meant that Southern California vintners couldn’t buy the cloth from France as usual; Señora Prado was only too happy to fill the demand.

Arguably the Mexican Players’ most visible moment came in 1944, when Walt Disney invited them to perform alongside Donald Duck in the Disney movie The Three Caballeros. It was the first feature film to mix live action and animation.

In 1946, Bess and Herman Garner went through a difficult divorce, which resulted in Bess relinquishing management of the Padua Hills Theatre. The departure of one of the Theatre’s driving forces represented the end of an era, but it also removed one of the obstacles that the Mexican Players had in exploring careers beyond the Theatre’s walls. Former Paduano Mauricio Jara (the husband of Hilda Ramirez Jara) appeared in the noir film The Lawless in 1950, and played an important role in the Elizabeth Taylor/Rock Hudson/James Dean flick Giant in 1956; Natividad Vacío was a prolific character actor, appearing in the films The Magnificent Seven (1960) and the Robert Redford-directed The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), plus episodes of Father Knows Best, Adam-12 and Adventures of Superman. Paduano Rebecca Romo Wolfe (aka Camilla Wolfe), a classically trained singer, frequently sang opera live and on the radio in the San Francisco area during the ‘40s and ‘50s, and Isabel Alba went on to audition for the role of Maria in West Side Story (1961) and the Elvis Presley flick Fun in Acapulco (1963), though she appeared in neither. 

The Padua Hills Theatre itself had a starring role in this amazing Chevy Impala commercial:

Padua Hills Theatre continued putting on its simple, colorful dramas, and slinging plates of enchiladas and arroz con pollo to diners (alongside standard American fare) for over 40 years. Bess Garner died in 1951, and Herman married his second wife Irene Welch Garner, a photographer who beautifully documented the theatre’s latter decades.

By the ‘60s the Theatre was recognized statewide, called a “California Institution” by Sunset magazine. In 1973 Ronald Reagan, governor of California at the time, wrote a letter to Herman extolling “the unique service [that] the Mexican Players of Padua Hills Theatre has rendered in preserving and presenting the musical and dramatic arts of Mexico, which underlies California’s cultural heritage.”

At the same time, the whole enterprise was showing its age. During a 2025 lecture at Claremont McKenna College, Matt Garcia pointed out that the uncomplicated dramas presented at the Theatre seemed increasingly out of step with the politics and activism of the growing Chicanismo movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

After more than 40 years of operation, the Padua Hills Theatre had become too costly to run, and closed its doors in 1974. Herman Garner willed the theatre to Pomona College, his alma mater; his widow Irene later donated the rest of the land to them. Later on it was acquired by the City of Claremont, and then for years housed the now defunct Chantrelles Catering.

Following years of neglect, the Theatre underwent a big renovation in 2009 that stabilized (and de-theatre-ified) the deteriorating theatre space and re-established the original olive grove. It’s now a wedding and events venue. Even if you don’t book the venue for your special day, it’s worth driving up into the hills, strolling among the trees and over the brick courtyard, and soaking in all the history, culture and fantasy that made this place so special. The Mexican Players have been gone longer than they were there. But you can still sense their presence as you walk around. 

Thanks to Carina Arias and David Shearer of Claremont Heritage for their invaluable assistance with this piece. And thanks to Isabela Serrano (Padua Hills Theatre) and Evan Peter (Entertainment Express) for the fantastic tour and light show.

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Audet, Emily: “‘White’ Space: The Racialization of Claremont, California” (Scripps Senior Theses 920, submitted December 14, 2016)

+ Babcock, Mrs. Arthur: “Claremont Community Players Stage ‘Royal Family’ in Gala Opening of Padua Hills Theater” (Pomona Progress-Bulletin, December 30, 1930 – via newspapers.com)

+ California Office of Historic Preservation: “Latinos in Twentieth Century California: National Register of Historic Places Context Statement” (PDF – California State Parks website, 2015)

+ “Camilla Romo Wolfe: OBITUARY” (Marin Independent Journal, September 18, 2012)

+ “Claremont South Village: Heritage” (claremontsouthvillage.com)

+ “Claremont : Use of Theater to Be Studied” (Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1991)

+ Deuel, Pauline: Mexican Serenade: The Story of the Mexican Players and the Padua Hills Theatre (Padua Institute, 1961)

+ Elliott, Ginger, Claremont Heritage: Padua Hills Theatre’s NRHP nomination form, 1997

+ “Foothill Estate Is to Be Made Exclusive Residential Section” (Pomona Progress-Bulletin, October 31, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)

+ García, Matt: “Adjusting the Focus: Padua Hills Theatre and Latino History” (OAH Magazine of History, vol. 10, no. 2, winter 1996, pages 19–22) 

+ García, Matt: “‘Just Put on That Padua Hills Smile’: The Mexican Players and the Padua Hills Theatre, 1931-1974” (California History, vol. 74 no. 3, 1995, pages 244–261)

+ Interview with Herman Garner (California Revealed, ca. 1961-1963)

+ Interview with Irene Garner (California Revealed, June 1997)

+ “Local Players at Theater Opening” (Pasadena Star-News, December 9, 1930 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Maio, Pat: “Culture and Neutra in Claremont” (Los Angeles Times, October 31, 2004 – via ProQuest)

+ “Mexican Serenade Revisited – The Stories of the Mexican Players and the Padua Hills Theatre” (VIDEO – @claremontheritage on YouTube, April 3, 2020)

+ “Mexican Serenade Revisited: The Story of the Padua Hills Theatre & Mexican Players (trailer)” (VIDEO – @claremontheritage on YouTube, March 15, 2019)

+ “Padua Hill Impala commercial” (VIDEO – @ClaremontHeritage on YouTube, July 23, 2024)

+ “Padua Hills Little Theater to be Opened on Dec. 2” (Pomona Progress-Bulletin, November 29, 1930 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Padua Hills — Redux – Matt Garcia” (VIDEO – @claremontmckenna on YouTube, May 2, 2025)

+ “Padua Hills Theater – Claremont, CA” (historicconsultants.com)

+ “Padua Hills Theatre” (ArtecoPartners.com)

+ Padua Hills Theatre: The Mexican Players (loscalifornios.org)

+ “Padua Hills Tract Plans Announced” (Pomona Progress-Bulletin, September 22, 1925 – via Newspapers.com)

+ PaduaWeddings.com

+ “Players Revise Their By-Laws” (Pomona Progress-Bulletin, January 21, 1932 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “(RE)GENERATION: Six Decades of Claremont Artists” (clmoa.org)

+ Shippey, Lee: “The Lee Side o’ LA: The Real Thing” (Los Angeles Times, September 16, 1932 – via ProQuest)

+ “The Royal Family” (AD – Pomona Progress-Bulletin, November 29, 1930 – via Newspapers.com)

+ The Three Caballeros excerpt (VIDEO – Disney, 1944 – via @JaliscoDanza on YouTube)

+ “Weavers at Padua Hills Aid Southland Champagne Makers” (Los Angeles Times, February 8, 1941 – via ProQuest)

+ “You need not know Spanish to enjoy…Fantasia Mexicana” (AD – Los Angeles Times, October 3, 1971 – via ProQuest)