Rites Thursday for ‘Bean Hut’ Restaurant Owner Joseph Cano

ANAHEIM —  Joseph Cano, who operated a popular drive-in restaurant in the city for 40 years, died Friday of complications of diabetes. He was 68.

Cano owned the La Palma Drive-In, popularly known as the “Bean Hut,” from 1949 to 1989, said Suzette Cano, his niece. He was a lifelong Anaheim resident and served on various city commissions.

At its peak in the late 1950s and ‘60s, the little Mexican restaurant at the corner of Anaheim Boulevard and La Palma Avenue catered to as many as 1,000 high school students each weekend night.

“He was a great man,” his niece said. “He treated everyone special--celebrities and . . . winos who came in off the street. He would open his restaurant on holidays just to make sure everybody had some place to eat. He would give them the food for free if they couldn’t afford it.”

In a 1989 interview on the occasion of his restaurant’s closing, Joseph Cano said the famous were not strangers to the Bean Hut, a moniker given it by customers who liked the spicy beans he served. “The Righteous Brothers used to come around, and every Friday night you’d see Marlon Brando right here,” Cano said then. “He’d come by after picking up his son from St. Catherine’s military school. We never bothered him, but he was a regular.”

After his son Jon’s death in the early 1980s in a car accident, Cano endowed music scholarships for Anaheim high school students, Suzette Cano said.

Cano is survived by his son Joe, four sisters, three brothers, fivegrandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews, Suzette Cano said.

The Rosary will be recited at 7:45 tonight at St. Boniface Catholic Church in Anaheim, where the funeral will be held at 9 a.m. Thursday.

Burial will be in Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Orange.