The May 6, 1920, issue of Engineering News-Record had this item:
“Ia., Boone—Theatre—Rialto Theatre Co., c/o A. H. Blank. 326 Iowa Bldg., Des Moines, let contract converting 2 story, brick, rein.-con. and steel hotel into theatre, to Kofab & Brawner, Boone. About $100,000; cost plus percentage basis.”
Another item about the project identified the Des Moines firm of Kraetsch and Kraetsch as the architects. Brothers George A. and Carl H. Kraetsch had merged their practice with that of Norman T. Vorse in 1919, a relationship that lasted into the mid-1930s, and it is likely that Vorse was the lead architect for the Rialto as he was for the firm’s other theater projects.
Bogie’s Theatre could not have been in the residential district along Southwest Boulevard, but there are conflicting addresses from other sources. I’ve found references in the Sedalia Democrat giving the Bogie’s Address as 114 E. Third and 114 W. Third. Meanwhile, CinemaTour says that it was at 212 W. Main.
I’d say the correct address must have been 114 E. Third, as a June 26, 1983 Democrat article said that Central Press, formerly located at 116 E. Third, was relocating across the street, its building having been damaged by the March 5 fire that destroyed Bogie’s Theatre next door.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists 225 Ohio Street as the address of the Electric Theatre. A photo of the rear of the building at CinemaTour shows old red brick painted over, and several windows that have been sealed up on both the first and second floors, so the building itself is quite old.
It is probably the same building the Electric occupied, though the Electric was most likely a storefront conversion occupying only part of the ground floor, and the building was probably gutted and rebuilt inside to house the Uptown, and the Streamline Modern front put on.
The Electric is never listed in the FDY, and is mentioned in the trade journals only in the 1910s, so there was probably a long gap of more than a decade between the closing of the Electric and the rebuilding of the structure for the Uptown.
We have a conflict between the Sanborn maps cited in Ron Pierce’s description of this theater and the Film Daily Yearbook, which lists no theaters at Dowagiac between 1926 and 1947 other than the Century and the Beckwith (which was at Front and Beeson Street.) Both the Caruso and the Chief were opened in 1946.
Khnemu’s recent submission of the Chief says that it was in operation prior to 1931. If so, it never got listed in the FDY, and the Chief at 205 S. Front was definitely opened (and apparently newly built) in 1946. If the Sanborn maps show a movie house at the Caruso’s location in 1931 and 1933, perhaps it was the earlier Chief, and it had such a brief life that the FDY never found out about it.
Despite the claim in the 1977 News-Palladium article, I believe MJCaruso is correct in saying that no theater in Dowagiac was destroyed by a fire during WWII. The only theater fire in Dowagiac prior to 1977 that my own research has turned up was at a nickelodeon in 1908.
The November 10, 1945, issue of Motion Picture Herald had this brief notice: “The Larkin theatre company has announced plans for construction of a modern theatre in Dowagiac, Mich., to be known as the Chief.”
The Larkin Theatre Company was formed in 1921 and built the Century Theatre that year. L. E. Larkin had been in the theater business at Dowagiac since at least the early 1910s, having managed the Beckwith Theatre and a house called the Orpheum, which might have later been renamed the Larkin Theatre.
In the 1914-15 American Motion Picture Directory Dowagiac had four theaters listed: the Beckwith, the Orpheum, the Park, and the Pastime. The Film Daily Yearbook lists only the Beckwith and the Century at Beckwith from 1926 through 1946, and the Beckwith is unlisted many of those years, and most often listed as closed when it is listed.
The Chief was operating in 1946, though it didn’t appear in the FDY until 1947, the same year the Caruso first appeared.
The “Theaters Under Construction” column of The Film Daily for April 9, 1938, said that the target date for completion of the new Cactus Theatre in Limon, Colorado, was June 30. The architect for the house was Earle A. Deits of Colorado Springs.
The Saturday, April 9, 1938 issue of The Film Daily listed the Roxy Theatre in Norfolk as a new house, opened on April 4. The item listed the architect as Ben Speigel, but it might have been a typo for Spiegel. Internet searches reveal no other references to an architect of either name, though.
This article with a history of the theater up to 2009 says that Bruce Babbitt changed the name from Gala to Silver Screen in 1981. It also says that an “open house” was held in the new theater on October 30, 1939. It doesn’t say that this was the Gala’s first show, but regular operation of the house must have begun around that time.
The July, 1914, issue of a trade journal called The Gas Industry had a brief item about a public demonstration of gas appliances recently held at the Colonial Theatre in Kendallville, Indiana.
Commonwealth Theatres' Hancock Plaza 4 would hold its grand opening that night, according to the July 23, 1981, issue of the Colorado Springs Gazette. The 1,202-seat quad was Colorado Springs' first four-screen house. Commonwealth, founded in Lawrence, Kansas in 1930, operated nine other screens in the city, including the Cooper Triplex and Ute 70 which it had acquired from Cooper-Highland in 1977.
The Hancock Plaza was designed by Ray Stevens, architect for Glatz-Jacobsen Theater Design Consultants, Inc.
Multiple sources available on the Internet agree that the Princess Theatre opened in 1908, and also agree that it was demolished in 1917. This does seem likely. George A. Giles had control of the Princess prior to 1917, the year he took over operation of the larger Gorman Theatre and first announced plans to build an even larger house in Framingham, noted in the January 6 issue of The Moving Picture World.
Although Giles' plans for a new house at Framingham did not come to fruition until 1921, I’ve found no references to the Princess in trade journal articles about Giles after November, 1917, though there are several to his other theaters, including the Gorman.
While the buildings of small theaters such as the Princess were sometimes incorporated as entrances to new auditoriums built behind them, the frontage of the St. George building was broader, and the width of its entrance narrower, than the Princess building. This really looks like a case of demolition and replacement rather than remodeling and incorporation of an earlier structure. The Princess should probably have its own page.
An item about the conversion of the Orpheum to the Gardner Cinema I and Cinema II appeared in the October 2, 1968, Fitchburg Sentinel:
“Gardner -Theaters To Replace Orpheum GARDNER – Cinema I and Cinema II are the names of two movie theaters which will replace what was once the Orpheum Theater on Parker Street. The latter theater has been closed since June 4, pending plans for complete renovation. Cinema I, which is due to open before the end of the year, will be housed in the former Orpheum auditorium. Cinema II will be housed in an entirely new building to be constructed adjacent to the existing building.”
Also, the Orpehum appears to have been older than we thought. This item is from the November 24, 1917, issue of Motography:
“Million Dollar Theater Company Is Formed
“The interests of the Trimount Theaters Inc., a Massachusetts corporation, which controlled the Princess and Gorman Theaters, of Framingham, Mass., and the Orpheum and Gardner Theaters of Gardner, Mass, were taken over by the George A. Giles Company, a new Massachusetts corporation with a capitalization of one million dollars.
“Mr. Giles, the treasurer of the old company, is also the treasurer and general manager of the new corporation.
“The Giles Company under its new and broad charter is making plans for more extensive operations.”
Indeed, a photo of the audience in the Orpheum runs across the bottom of page 633 of the October 11, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World (scan at Internet Arcnive.)
The original Gardner Theatre was an upstairs house that was rebuilt for George A. Giles in 1919-20, as noted in this paragraph from an item about Giles' proposed new theater in Framingham that appeared in the January 31, 1920, issue of The Film Daily:
“The same company has set February 23d as the opening date for the new Gardner Theatre at Gardner, Mass. This theatre, seating 1,200, is remodelled [sic] from the old store and up-stairs theatre into a modern down-stairs playhouse, being entirely new throughout with the exception of the four walls. The Giles Company have for some time operated the Orpheum there.”
Giles' newly-formed corporation had taken over the assets of the Trimount Theaters Inc., including the Gardner and Orpheum at Gardner and the Princess and Gorman at Framingham, in 1917. Giles had been the treasurer of Trimount, and continued to use the name Trimount Theaters for his theater operations for a number of years.
The renaming of the Gardner took place in early 1930, and was noted in the January 22 issue of The Film Daily that year: “Gardner, Mass. — The new Uptown, formerly known as the Gardner, has reopened with a new policy with the installation of sound equipment.”
The April 13 issue of Film Daily noted the transfer of the Uptown and Orpheum at Gardner to Publix:
“Publix Completes Deal for Two Gardner Houses
“Gardner, Mass. — Purchase of the new Uptown and Orpheum by Publix has been completed and new resident managers are expected to be appointed shortly. The houses were bought from the George A. Giles Co.”
The houses in Gardner were back in the Giles circuit’s hands by 1940. The May 21, 1941, issue of The Exhibitor said that the Giles circuit had just spent $94,000 remodeling the Uptown and had completely renovated the Orpheum the previous year.
They misspelled the name of the city, but the April 8, 1930, issue of The Film Daily did note the renovation of this house:
“Remodel Gardner Opera House
“Gardner, Me. — Russell Amusement Co., Publix subsidiary, operating the Johnson Opera House, reopened the house after completely redecorating and refurnishing it. Sound equipment was also installed.”
The Billings Gazette provides this web page about the theaters in Billings, and it says that the World was closed in 1978 and demolished to provide parking space for a bank. The following year Theatre Operators, Inc. opened the World West Theatre at Rimrock Mall, its name probably being a tribute to the chain’s lost downtown house.
According to the Dec 12, 2016, issue of the Billings Gazette, the former World West Theatres, located at 2520 Central Avenue (just off Stewart Park Road, at the northwest corner of the Rimrock Mall property), was being demolished. The building is still visible in Google’s satellite and street views, which have not yet been updated, and I’ve set street view to the proper location.
The Gazette says the house was operated by the same company that had the Rimrock 4 (later 5) inside the mall. That was a Theatre Operators, Inc. house, a chain that was later taken over by Carmike, so Carmike must have gotten the twin as well.
The World West was most likely named in tribute to Theatre Operators' World Theatre in downtown Billings, closed and demolished for a parking lot the year before the twin was opened.
Incidentally, the vintage photo uploaded by Predator indicates that the Ideal must have been open as late as 1960, as “Jazz Boat” (I have no idea why they added that H on the marquee) with Anthony Newley and Anne Aubrey was released that year.
An Ideal Theatre at Milford is mentioned in the October 4, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World, along with the Opera House and a house called the Lyceum Theatre. The Ideal was presenting “Quo Vadis” while a locally-made film called “Famous Granite Quarries” was appearing at the Lyceum. The Opera House was featuring talking movies.
A timeline of events in Milford on this web page says that the Ideal Theatre opened on April 20, 1912. The Ideal was not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, which was not exhaustive, but was mentioned in trade journals occasionally through the 1910s and 1920s and as late as the 1940s.
The 1914-15 Directory did list the Lyceum, located on Main Street, and the Music Hall, which was an aka for the Opera house, as well as a Nipmuc Park Theatre (actually a seasonal operation in Mendon, Massachusetts) and a house called the Tripoli Theatre located at 12 E. Main Street.
The Capitol Theatre at Winchendon does not appear in the state’s Department of Public Safety annual reports until the one issued for the year ending November 30, 1928. That year, the Capitol Theatre, operated by Fred J. Sharby and J. Mathieu, recieved a rating of Good.
This indicates that the Capitol opened either in 1927, after the inspections were carried out, or early enough in 1928 to be included in that year’s theater inspections. The Capitol was probably the proposed theater noted in this item from Exhibitors Daily of January 25, 1927
“WINCHENDON, Mass. — Architect, J. A. Tuck, Inc., Park Square Building, Boston, making sketches for $160,000 theatre in Winchendon. Owner, F. Sharby, 249 Roxbury Street, Keene, N. H.”
I’ve been unable to find more about architect J. A. Tuck, but Fred Sharby had previously operated theaters in Winchendon called the Gem and the National.
Ram9214: I just reset the Google street view to what I believe was the location of the North Star Cinema, judging from the vintage photo uploaded by elmorovivo. The building occupied by Joske’s in the photo now houses a branch of Dillard’s. The center’s map on its web site shows several small shops flanking the new mall entrance (which can be seen in street view) that has been punched through the theater space. The stores displacing the theater include Lens Crafters, Pac Sun, Journeys, Gurinsky’s Jewelers, Justice, and Urban Cowboy.
The May 6, 1920, issue of Engineering News-Record had this item:
Another item about the project identified the Des Moines firm of Kraetsch and Kraetsch as the architects. Brothers George A. and Carl H. Kraetsch had merged their practice with that of Norman T. Vorse in 1919, a relationship that lasted into the mid-1930s, and it is likely that Vorse was the lead architect for the Rialto as he was for the firm’s other theater projects.The theater was probably named for Humphrey Bogart.
The Star Theatre opened on December 15, 1927, as noted in that day’s issue of the Sedalia Democrat.
Bogie’s Theatre could not have been in the residential district along Southwest Boulevard, but there are conflicting addresses from other sources. I’ve found references in the Sedalia Democrat giving the Bogie’s Address as 114 E. Third and 114 W. Third. Meanwhile, CinemaTour says that it was at 212 W. Main.
I’d say the correct address must have been 114 E. Third, as a June 26, 1983 Democrat article said that Central Press, formerly located at 116 E. Third, was relocating across the street, its building having been damaged by the March 5 fire that destroyed Bogie’s Theatre next door.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists 225 Ohio Street as the address of the Electric Theatre. A photo of the rear of the building at CinemaTour shows old red brick painted over, and several windows that have been sealed up on both the first and second floors, so the building itself is quite old.
It is probably the same building the Electric occupied, though the Electric was most likely a storefront conversion occupying only part of the ground floor, and the building was probably gutted and rebuilt inside to house the Uptown, and the Streamline Modern front put on.
The Electric is never listed in the FDY, and is mentioned in the trade journals only in the 1910s, so there was probably a long gap of more than a decade between the closing of the Electric and the rebuilding of the structure for the Uptown.
We have a conflict between the Sanborn maps cited in Ron Pierce’s description of this theater and the Film Daily Yearbook, which lists no theaters at Dowagiac between 1926 and 1947 other than the Century and the Beckwith (which was at Front and Beeson Street.) Both the Caruso and the Chief were opened in 1946.
Khnemu’s recent submission of the Chief says that it was in operation prior to 1931. If so, it never got listed in the FDY, and the Chief at 205 S. Front was definitely opened (and apparently newly built) in 1946. If the Sanborn maps show a movie house at the Caruso’s location in 1931 and 1933, perhaps it was the earlier Chief, and it had such a brief life that the FDY never found out about it.
Despite the claim in the 1977 News-Palladium article, I believe MJCaruso is correct in saying that no theater in Dowagiac was destroyed by a fire during WWII. The only theater fire in Dowagiac prior to 1977 that my own research has turned up was at a nickelodeon in 1908.
The November 10, 1945, issue of Motion Picture Herald had this brief notice: “The Larkin theatre company has announced plans for construction of a modern theatre in Dowagiac, Mich., to be known as the Chief.”
The Larkin Theatre Company was formed in 1921 and built the Century Theatre that year. L. E. Larkin had been in the theater business at Dowagiac since at least the early 1910s, having managed the Beckwith Theatre and a house called the Orpheum, which might have later been renamed the Larkin Theatre.
In the 1914-15 American Motion Picture Directory Dowagiac had four theaters listed: the Beckwith, the Orpheum, the Park, and the Pastime. The Film Daily Yearbook lists only the Beckwith and the Century at Beckwith from 1926 through 1946, and the Beckwith is unlisted many of those years, and most often listed as closed when it is listed.
The Chief was operating in 1946, though it didn’t appear in the FDY until 1947, the same year the Caruso first appeared.
The “Theaters Under Construction” column of The Film Daily for April 9, 1938, said that the target date for completion of the new Cactus Theatre in Limon, Colorado, was June 30. The architect for the house was Earle A. Deits of Colorado Springs.
The “Theater Openings” column of The Film Daily, April 9, 1938, identified the architect of the Highland Theatre as George H. Burrows.
The Film Daily of Saturday, April 9, 1938, gave the opening date of the Park Theatre as February 10.
The Saturday, April 9, 1938 issue of The Film Daily listed the Roxy Theatre in Norfolk as a new house, opened on April 4. The item listed the architect as Ben Speigel, but it might have been a typo for Spiegel. Internet searches reveal no other references to an architect of either name, though.
This article with a history of the theater up to 2009 says that Bruce Babbitt changed the name from Gala to Silver Screen in 1981. It also says that an “open house” was held in the new theater on October 30, 1939. It doesn’t say that this was the Gala’s first show, but regular operation of the house must have begun around that time.
The July, 1914, issue of a trade journal called The Gas Industry had a brief item about a public demonstration of gas appliances recently held at the Colonial Theatre in Kendallville, Indiana.
The Saturday, April 9, 1938 issue of The Film Daily listed the Pikes Theatre in its “Theater Changes” column as a new theater opened on March 25.
Commonwealth Theatres' Hancock Plaza 4 would hold its grand opening that night, according to the July 23, 1981, issue of the Colorado Springs Gazette. The 1,202-seat quad was Colorado Springs' first four-screen house. Commonwealth, founded in Lawrence, Kansas in 1930, operated nine other screens in the city, including the Cooper Triplex and Ute 70 which it had acquired from Cooper-Highland in 1977.
The Hancock Plaza was designed by Ray Stevens, architect for Glatz-Jacobsen Theater Design Consultants, Inc.
Multiple sources available on the Internet agree that the Princess Theatre opened in 1908, and also agree that it was demolished in 1917. This does seem likely. George A. Giles had control of the Princess prior to 1917, the year he took over operation of the larger Gorman Theatre and first announced plans to build an even larger house in Framingham, noted in the January 6 issue of The Moving Picture World.
Although Giles' plans for a new house at Framingham did not come to fruition until 1921, I’ve found no references to the Princess in trade journal articles about Giles after November, 1917, though there are several to his other theaters, including the Gorman.
While the buildings of small theaters such as the Princess were sometimes incorporated as entrances to new auditoriums built behind them, the frontage of the St. George building was broader, and the width of its entrance narrower, than the Princess building. This really looks like a case of demolition and replacement rather than remodeling and incorporation of an earlier structure. The Princess should probably have its own page.
An item about the conversion of the Orpheum to the Gardner Cinema I and Cinema II appeared in the October 2, 1968, Fitchburg Sentinel:
Also, the Orpehum appears to have been older than we thought. This item is from the November 24, 1917, issue of Motography:Indeed, a photo of the audience in the Orpheum runs across the bottom of page 633 of the October 11, 1914, issue of The Moving Picture World (scan at Internet Arcnive.)The original Gardner Theatre was an upstairs house that was rebuilt for George A. Giles in 1919-20, as noted in this paragraph from an item about Giles' proposed new theater in Framingham that appeared in the January 31, 1920, issue of The Film Daily:
Giles' newly-formed corporation had taken over the assets of the Trimount Theaters Inc., including the Gardner and Orpheum at Gardner and the Princess and Gorman at Framingham, in 1917. Giles had been the treasurer of Trimount, and continued to use the name Trimount Theaters for his theater operations for a number of years.The renaming of the Gardner took place in early 1930, and was noted in the January 22 issue of The Film Daily that year: “Gardner, Mass. — The new Uptown, formerly known as the Gardner, has reopened with a new policy with the installation of sound equipment.”
The April 13 issue of Film Daily noted the transfer of the Uptown and Orpheum at Gardner to Publix:
The houses in Gardner were back in the Giles circuit’s hands by 1940. The May 21, 1941, issue of The Exhibitor said that the Giles circuit had just spent $94,000 remodeling the Uptown and had completely renovated the Orpheum the previous year.They misspelled the name of the city, but the April 8, 1930, issue of The Film Daily did note the renovation of this house:
The Billings Gazette provides this web page about the theaters in Billings, and it says that the World was closed in 1978 and demolished to provide parking space for a bank. The following year Theatre Operators, Inc. opened the World West Theatre at Rimrock Mall, its name probably being a tribute to the chain’s lost downtown house.
According to the Dec 12, 2016, issue of the Billings Gazette, the former World West Theatres, located at 2520 Central Avenue (just off Stewart Park Road, at the northwest corner of the Rimrock Mall property), was being demolished. The building is still visible in Google’s satellite and street views, which have not yet been updated, and I’ve set street view to the proper location.
The Gazette says the house was operated by the same company that had the Rimrock 4 (later 5) inside the mall. That was a Theatre Operators, Inc. house, a chain that was later taken over by Carmike, so Carmike must have gotten the twin as well.
The World West was most likely named in tribute to Theatre Operators' World Theatre in downtown Billings, closed and demolished for a parking lot the year before the twin was opened.
Incidentally, the vintage photo uploaded by Predator indicates that the Ideal must have been open as late as 1960, as “Jazz Boat” (I have no idea why they added that H on the marquee) with Anthony Newley and Anne Aubrey was released that year.
An Ideal Theatre at Milford is mentioned in the October 4, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World, along with the Opera House and a house called the Lyceum Theatre. The Ideal was presenting “Quo Vadis” while a locally-made film called “Famous Granite Quarries” was appearing at the Lyceum. The Opera House was featuring talking movies.
A timeline of events in Milford on this web page says that the Ideal Theatre opened on April 20, 1912. The Ideal was not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, which was not exhaustive, but was mentioned in trade journals occasionally through the 1910s and 1920s and as late as the 1940s.
The 1914-15 Directory did list the Lyceum, located on Main Street, and the Music Hall, which was an aka for the Opera house, as well as a Nipmuc Park Theatre (actually a seasonal operation in Mendon, Massachusetts) and a house called the Tripoli Theatre located at 12 E. Main Street.
The Capitol Theatre at Winchendon does not appear in the state’s Department of Public Safety annual reports until the one issued for the year ending November 30, 1928. That year, the Capitol Theatre, operated by Fred J. Sharby and J. Mathieu, recieved a rating of Good.
This indicates that the Capitol opened either in 1927, after the inspections were carried out, or early enough in 1928 to be included in that year’s theater inspections. The Capitol was probably the proposed theater noted in this item from Exhibitors Daily of January 25, 1927
I’ve been unable to find more about architect J. A. Tuck, but Fred Sharby had previously operated theaters in Winchendon called the Gem and the National.Ram9214: I just reset the Google street view to what I believe was the location of the North Star Cinema, judging from the vintage photo uploaded by elmorovivo. The building occupied by Joske’s in the photo now houses a branch of Dillard’s. The center’s map on its web site shows several small shops flanking the new mall entrance (which can be seen in street view) that has been punched through the theater space. The stores displacing the theater include Lens Crafters, Pac Sun, Journeys, Gurinsky’s Jewelers, Justice, and Urban Cowboy.