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| Laura Peralta |
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born:
17 July 1894 Phoenix, Arizona, United States of America |
died:
03 August 1987 Hemet, California, United States of America (age 93) |
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American actress and movie theater operator of Spanish descent, who served as the Our Gang kids' Spanish tutor for their foreign-language films in the early 1930s. Together with another Our Gang mother, Pearl Merrill, Peralta co-owned the noted Meralta movie theater in Culver City, California. Merrill and Peralta had met while performing in the Women's Symphony Orchestra of Los Angeles, where Peralta played saxophone and Merrill played clarinet. They then toured in vaudeville as a saxophone-comedy act; together, they were billed as "Ella Fant and Miss Kito" -- respectively referring to the heavyset Pearl and the petite Laura. Tiring of life on the road, they returned to Los Angeles and opened the first Meralta (a portmanteau of their surnames) movie theater in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East L.A. in 1917; they moved operations to Culver City in 1919. In 1924, they opened the "classic" Meralta theater in Culver City, followed by a third Meralta in Downey in 1926. In 1949, Laura married retired civil engineer Frank Harmon Brackett (1895-1990), who survived her after her passing nearly 38 years later. She remained in charge of the Culver City Meralta (whose run was interrupted for two years by a 1943 fire) after Merrill's passing in 1961, and as late as 1971 when she was profiled in a Los Angeles Times article; the Culver City Meralta closed in 1983, and in its place today is the Meralta Office Plaza complex. After her passing in 1987, she was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City. |
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Real name: Laura Adeline Peralta Height: 5'3" |
Films listed on this page: complete Hal Roach filmography. |
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