Marbro Theatre

The MARBRO had many unusual features, the lobby’s ‘flying’ staircase being perhaps the most memorable, but the auditorium had at least one notable feature too: the illuminated giant discs. These four gilded sheet metal discs were about three feet in diameter and contained cut out spaces filled with dyed isinglass panels that allowed the incandescent lights mounted behind them to show through in jewel-like colors. There were some of the trimmings made for the Grand Drapery against which they hung to cast halos of light upon the shimmering satin drapery cloth. They were probably wired in to the proscenium lights circuit and went on whenever the front wall was illuminated. They are shown in perhaps the only good photos of the area in the catalog of the E.L. Mansure Co. of 1928 as examples of some of the more unusual decorations made by that prominent firm, which still exists as a small division of the Joanna Western Mills div. of the Crown Henry conglomerate, in Joanna, S. Carolina. The same designs of convex discs were also used in the late lamented GRANADA in Chicago, and these were removed before demolition and stored in the nearby UPTOWN. The Mansure catalog is preserved at the Theatre Historical Soc. in Elmhurst, Ill. and they can be contacted at: www.HistoricTheatres.org