Screening, mini-concert puts you "20 Feet From Stardom"

If you’re curious about the Oscar-winning documentary “20 Feet From Stardom” and one of its featured singers, Claudia Lennear, an event Tuesday is your best shot at seeing them both.

The movie, about those who sang in the background on hit records but are largely unknown, will screen at Pomona College’s Rose Hills Theatre, 170 E. Sixth St. in Claremont, at 7 p.m. Admission is free. (The theater is in the basement of the Smith Campus Center at College Avenue and Sixth Street.)

Four of the movie’s stars will be in attendance: Lennear, a Pomona resident who was profiled in my column in March, and Orin, Maxine and Julia Waters, known as the Waters Family, who have sung in the background of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and on the soundtrack of “The Lion King.” Lennear sang behind Ike and Tina Turner, Stephen Stills, Joe Cocker, Leon Russell and others.

The foursome will take questions after the screening. And then they’ll perform a few songs, accompanied by a band led by Caleb Quaye, a guitarist who was part of Elton John’s band in the 1970s.

I’ll be in the audience, 20 feet or so from stardom.

Valley Vignettes

• Preservation advocates LA Conservancy last month issued “report cards” for each city in L.A. County on historic preservation. Our Inland Valley cities scored like this: Claremont A-plus, Pomona A, San Dimas B, La Verne C-plus (I guess that’s a hair above average) and Diamond Bar F. Nowhere to go but up.

• Food Truck Thursdays has resumed at Fairplex. A half-dozen trucks park in the lot near Gate 1 each Thursday from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Parking and admission are free. The event is scheduled to continue through Aug. 7.

• Visa Lam, the owner of Deli V in downtown Upland since 2008, is reported to have died April 12 in Singapore, where she has family. Deli V has been closed for more than a month, and merchants are already missing her soups, sandwiches and chocolate chiffon pie, as well as the personable Lam herself. “She was a chirpy little bird eager to make you her favorite dish,” said Marilyn Anderson of the Cooper Museum next door. “Evidently she never wrote down any of her recipes so nobody can open and carry on.”

Locomotive Log

• The Big Boy train, which left Pomona for Union Pacific’s Bloomington rail yard in January, will depart from 19100 Slover Ave. at 8 a.m. Monday for an 11-day, 27-stop journey. Towed the whole way, the inoperable 1940s behemoth is scheduled to arrive in Victorville at 12:30 p.m. and Barstow at 3:15 p.m. It will lay over in Las Vegas on Wednesday — what the Big Boy does in Vegas stays in Vegas — and should arrive at its final destination, Cheyenne, Wyo., on May 8 for years of restoration.

• At “All About Metrolink,” a talk at Ontario’s public library from 7 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, a representative will explain the commuter rail system and how to use it. (Needless to say, yours truly feels no need to attend.) The library is at 215 E. C St. and the talk is free.

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On my blog last week: We visit Pomona’s Westmont neighborhood, first to admire its midcentury architecture, second to admire the mural at the Community Center, and we eat at the Hat, an oasis of neon and pastrami on the Upland borderlands. Check out my blog, an oasis of photos and text, at insidesocal.com/davidallen.

Final Hitch

Some 33 film fans attended my screening Thursday of “Rear Window,” the finale of my all-Hitchcock series at Ontario’s public library. It was a good turnout.

Many people came out four straight Thursdays. Among them were three merchants from the Claremont Village, who no doubt are starved for entertainment in their own town. They told me they were impressed by Ontario’s library compared to Claremont’s.

Venturing to Thursday’s screening for the first time were Betty Zacharias and Bernie Dickey of Rancho Cucamonga, who had introduced themselves to me on a Metrolink train last July. The headline for the resulting column was “These strangers on a train were friendly ones.”

They told me they really wanted to come to my April 3 screening of “Strangers on a Train” just for the joke, but they had a conflict. It was nice to see them anyway, strangers no more.

That’s it for me this year, but the library generally shows movies on Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. May brings four animated films: “The Jungle Book” (May 8), “Tangled” (May 15), “Pocahontas” (May 22) and “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (May 29).

If the library invites me back next April, I already have a theme in mind, and it’s bigger and broader than Hitchcock. Which is pretty big and broad.

‘Mad’ in Ontario

For April 13’s final-season premiere of “Mad Men,” LA/Ontario International Airport’s old terminals, and a decommissioned jet used for ONT film shoots, substituted for LAX circa 1969. ONT has rarely looked so glamorous.

David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, unglamorously. Contact david.allen@langnews.com or 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.

Screening, mini-concert puts you "20 Feet From Stardom"