It is fitting that the Liberty Theatre's friskiest ghost is a man dressed as a sailor.
The first time Jeff Hathcock says he saw him, the apparition was sitting quietly in a back row. "I said 'Hi' and he just put his head down," the theater's director said. "When I turned around, he was gone."
Later, the ghostly sailor allegedly touched and whispered to two actresses as they performed onstage. One got so flustered that she flubbed a line.
"He seems to like buxom women," Hathcock said.
In fact, the lecherous seaman, who Hathcock claims lives in the men's dressing room, is one of many ghosts said to inhabit the old theater at the military Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos.
Whether they are literal or figurative depends on who's talking.
"It's part of our history from another time," Hathcock said of the facility, among the last World War II-era military base theaters still in use. "When I walk into this building, I feel like I'm walking into something alive."
That life began in 1942 when the base was a naval air station housing American forces waiting to be shipped overseas. They needed to be entertained, so the theater -- then known simply as Building 6 -- served as a venue not only for military briefings, but also for movies, newsreels and live USO shows.
It also was a staging area for movie crews who frequently used the base as a backdrop for feature films about the war.
"This was the closest military installation to Hollywood at the time," said James P. Combs, a retired Army brigadier general who commands the National Guard base. "All the famous show business figures of that period" came through.
Among them, he says, were actor Clark Gable and comedian Bob Hope. Later, according to Hathcock, the theater held events attended by both Presidents Bush as well as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger greeted troops returning from Iraq there.
There's a plaque in the lobby stating that the theater was used in the famous scene from the 1970 movie "Patton," in which actor George C. Scott delivers a rousing patriotic speech in front of a huge American flag.
A great tale if it were true. According to at least one historian, it's not.
"The story got started by people explaining, as a point of reference, that this is the type of setting in which Patton spoke," said Tom Lasser, a retired California National Guard lieutenant colonel who commanded the airfield until 2001 and now serves as the base's unofficial historian.
