Teddy and Andy Leonard watched helplessly from their nearby home as cameras posted on the deck of the Reel Inn Malibu showed blazing fires approaching the back of their famous fish shack.

Though Betty O’Meara would later run the Malibu Cinema, in postwar Japan she worked for Gen. Douglas MacArthur. In star-studded Malibu, it wasn’t unusual to see the likes of Burt Lancaster at ...