At 4-foot-10, Betty O’Meara was diminutive in stature but, over her 94 years of life, was a force of nature.
Her daughter recalls how she once persuaded Hollywood movie executives to provide first-run films to the tiny Malibu Cinema she and her husband operated for nearly two decades.
“My mom cajoled them to get current movies shown at the theater, telling them that many voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences lived in Malibu,” recalled Betty’s daughter, Frances M. O’Meara.
The strategy worked.
Blockbuster movies quickly made their way to the 250-seat Malibu Cinema immediately after public release. Hollywood stars living in the exclusive seaside enclave soon followed, including Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Carey Grant, Robert Redford and Martin Sheen, who would rub shoulders with locals who flocked to the single-screen movie house that Betty and David O’Meara owned from 1972 to 1991.
The movie theater experience was just one of the many colorful chapters in the life of Betty O’Meara, who perished Jan. 7 in the horrific Palisades fire.
Betty, who had weathered numerous wildfire threats over the years, was ordered to evacuate her home on Roca Chica Drive in Malibu by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. Unsurprisingly, said her daughter, she slammed the door in their faces.
“Everybody knew she was going to refuse to evacuate,” Frances said. “She was nothing but stubborn.”
Born in Hawaii before statehood
Betty was born in 1930 in Hawaii, which was a U.S. territory at the time. She had three siblings and her father was a physician. The family returned to their homeland of Japan before World War II broke out, Frances O’Meara said.
Following Japan’s surrender on Aug. 14, 1945, Betty, who was still a teenager, assisted the Army post-war by squiring Gen. Douglas MacArthur around Japan.
Later, while in her early 20s, Betty worked for the Pentagon, where she went undercover to determine if a Chinese pilot, who was also her bridge partner, planned to defect to the United States.
However, the espionage mission abruptly ended when the pilot died after his plane was shot down. The military didn’t say who was responsible for downing the aircraft. Later, an Army general presented Betty with a package the pilot had left behind. Inside was a stack of bridge cards and a diamond engagement ring, Frances said.
Betty met David O’Meara, a disabled Army veteran, at a Washington, D.C., apartment complex where they both lived. After they married, David job with IBM, “selling micro-computers the size of airplane hangars,” took them to Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and, finally, to Malibu in 1969, Frances said.
Giving kids somewhere to go
Betty recounted in a 2017 interview with the Malibu Times that her husband became acquainted with the “local sheriff,” who asked him to open a business that would give Malibu youth something to do after school and keep them out of trouble in the nearby hangout of Santa Monica.
“So my husband just happened to have a little luck in the Malibu shopping center and he opened the cinema,” Betty told the newspaper. “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.”
While David ran the theater’s day-to-day operations, Betty worked behind-the-scenes from home, booking the films to be shown, the Malibu Times reported.
“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 told the newspaper. “But then I explained to them that my customers (Academy Award voters) are the ones voting for this because they were in the industry. So they decided to give me a better picture.”
Active in community
In addition to mingling with movie stars at the theater, the O’Mearas also entertained celebrities at their home. Frances O’Meara, who played basketball at Stanford University and then coached women’s hoops at Loyola Marymount from 1981 to 1984 before becoming an attorney, said NBA legend Jerry West was among the guests who visited..
Betty also was well known for showering neighbors and fellow parishioners at Our Lady of Malibu Catholic Church with handmade watercolor greeting cards, cookies and brownies. “She used to say she kept the U.S. Postal Service in business with all the greeting cards that she mailed,” said Frances, who has a younger brother.
Several neighbors said on Facebook that Betty’s generosity was legendary. “This makes me so sad,” one neighbor said in a post. “I remember Betty and how sweet she was with our kids offering her lemon bars. Such a kind soul.”