Here is an article about the Theatre Louisiana and its operators, P. E. Coe and L. H. Grandjeau, from the October 24, 1914, issue of Motion Picture News.
The Retina Theatre is the subject of a brief (but sadly unillustrated) article in the November 7, 1914, issue of Motion Picture News. The article praises the theater (rather fulsomely) and its owner, John Gentner, of having rescued its neighborhood and the benighted denizens thereof from vice and crime. The tale sounds as though it could have been drawn from the plot of one of the “uplifting” movies of the day, meant to convince the church ladies that the movies weren’t a tool of the devil after all.
Here is an item that is probably about the Rialto, from the September 5, 1925, issue of Motion Picture News:
“High Class Theatre to Be Built in Bergen, N. J.
“West Bergen, N. J. is to have another high class theatre which will seat 1,500 persons. The theatre building will be erected at West Side and Communipaw avenues. The plans for this theatre have been drawn by George Flagg.”
We have the wrong address for the Hines Theatre. It was located on the north side of Walnut Street just east of Commerce Street. These four photos show some distinctive features of the area that are still there. The tower and chimney in the background of the upper left photos are on the back wall of the building that now houses the Ritz Theatre, at Walnut and Meridian Street.
The sign for First National Bank in the lower right photo still exists at the southwest corner of Commerce and Walnut, but now advertises a barbecue restaurant that replaced the bank’s drive-up teller area. Most notably, the ground floor of the building on the northeast corner of Walnut and Commerce survived the 1983 fire and now houses a lawyer’s office. Its distinctive corner column that can be seen in the vintage photo at lower right.
The address of the lawyer’s office is 124 W. Walnut, so the address of the Hines Theatre would have been a few numbers lower, perhaps 118 or 120 W. Walnut.
Prior to opening the Hines Theatre, Sherman J.Hines had operated at least two other theaters in Portland. The July 2, 1921, issue of Exhibitors Herald reported that Sherman Hines, operator of the Princess Theatre at Portland, had been arrested for snowing movies on Sunday.
The October 14, 1922, issue of The Moving Picture World said that “Sherman Hines has purchased Crystal Theatre, a moving picture house and assumed management.”
The Best Theatre at Indianapolis, operated by Charles Koch, was mentioned in the January 4, 1919, issue of Motion Picture News. Mr. Koch had just disposed of his interest in a house called the Apollo Theatre, located and South East Street and McCarty Street in the Fletcher Place district, to Max Patton.
There was a Strand Theatre operating in Atmore at least as early as 1924, when the April 26 issue of Exhibitors Herald published a capsule movie review by its manager, W.W. Lowery, Jr..
If the plans of the Martin Theatre company were carried out, the Strand was rebuilt in 1936, announced in this item in the September 18 issue of The Film Daily:
“Atmore, Ala. — Martin Theaters will start construction about Oct. 1 on a new house here seating 600 and at a cost of approximately $25,000. The house will be built on the site of the Strand.”
The Martin Theatre opened in 1940. It was built in the shell of the Paramount Theatre, which had been destroyed by a fire early that year. The Paramount had been operated by Martin in partnership with pioneer local exhibitor Z. D. Studstill.
Here is a letter from the manager of the Strand Theatre in Alexander City that was published in the January 8, 1921, issue of Exhibitors Herald:
“‘I have left Ashland, coming here and putting in a modern house. Business is good, but I can’t depend upon my memory any longer. I must have "What the Picture Did for Me” if I expect to keep using the S. R. O. sign. Am enclosing a check for two years’ subscription.‘ — Mack Jackson, Manager, Strand Theatre, Alexander City, Ala.“
An article on this web page says that the site of the Strand Theatre is now part of Strand Park, which Google Maps shows lying between Alabama Street and Tallapossa Street at Bibb Street. The December 20, 2004, issue of the Alexander City Outlook noted that the City Council had voted to rename the park on the theater’s site from Tallapoosa Street Park to Strand Park.
The correct address of the Bama Theatre is 216 Tallapoosa Street. A community theater group called Act II has taken over the house, which is owned by the City and until recently had been used as a gymnastics center, and is renovating it into an arts center to be called the Alexander City Theatre II. This is their web site which, like the theater project itself, is still under construction.
The Princess Theatre at Albertville was mentioned in the March 4, 1922, issue of The Moving Picture World.
The June 12, 1919, issue of local newspaper The Sand Mountain Banner advertised a house called the Alberta Theatre. The 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory listed only one house at Albertville, that being the Electric Theatre, located on Main Street.
Did Del Rio have two theaters called the Strand? The house that was rebuilt as the Rita Theatre in 1941 opened in 1931 as the Strand.
Prior to being called the Rio, the house that later became the Texas Theatre had been called the Victory Theatre. The name change was noted in the July 17, 1945, issue of the Del Rio News Herald.
The mission style theater in the photo currently displayed above must have been the first Texas Theatre. That assortment of display posters wouldn’t have been seen in the post-war era. If the other photo (the one uploaded by Don Lewis) is correct, the Victory/Rio/Texas is still standing in the 800 block of Main Street, and its address is probably 827 Main.
115 W. Main Street was the address of the Arcade Theatre, which was one of four movie houses listed at Walla Walla in the 1914-195 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory. An early photo of the Arcade on this web page shows steps leading up the the doors- probably indicating that the auditorium floor had been built up at the rear rather than dug down to create a sloped seating area. If the Roxy was in the same building the more costly alteration was undoubtedly made later.
Prior to being called the Mayflower this house was called the Colonial Theatre. The June 24 issue of the Eugene Guard that year made reference to “…the Mayflower (formerly the Colonial)”.
A December 31, 1925, Guard retrospective of that year’s construction in Eugene said that “…the new Colonial theater was erected by Laura B. Paine….” The September 30 issue of the Guard had noted that the formal opening of the Colonial Theatre would take place that night.
The PSTOS page for the Mayflower, missing some information, doesn’t mention the original name of the theater, and says that its Robert Morton organ was installed in 1922. It’s possible that the organ was moved to the Colonial from some other theater. It was removed in 1936, according to a 1990 Portland Oregonian article featured on the page.
The PSTOS text says that in 1977 the Mayflower booked the original Star Wars, which played to packed houses in its small auditorium for weeks.
I haven’t discovered the name of their drive-in at Boswell, but the family’s County Amusement Co. had the Richland and Westmont Drive-Ins near Johnstown, as well as some indoor houses in that city.
This house appears to have reopened after 1957 as the Art Overbrook Theatre. A house of that name in Philadelphia was mentioned in the First Statement of the New American Cinema Group, published in the summer of 1961. The Art Overbrook had, along with the Bleeker Street Cinema and New Yorker Theatre in New York, pledged to exhibit films distributed by the group. This information was cited in Film Culture Reader,
edited by Adams P. Sitney, published in 1970 (Google Books preview). The Art Overbrook Theatre, 63rd and Haverford, was advertising in The Philadelphia Enquirer by June of 1959.
Mary Lee Sheftic (an Anglicized, semi-phonetic spelling of the original family surname, Szewczyk), 1937-2015. Obituary.
The family also owned a house in Boswell called the Sheftic Theatre. The October 2, 1954, issue of Boxoffice said that the Sheftic Theatre, remodeled and equipped for CinemaScope after having been closed for several years, had reopened on October 1, while the Mary Lee had been closed on September 30.
Back in the early 1920s, Boswell had a house called the Elden Theatre, operated by Frank Elden, who died in 1923. In the late 1930s a house called the Vernon Theatre operated in opposition to the Mary Lee. Charles Szewczyk bought the Vernon from its operator, V. F. Scott, in 1940, noted in the September 20 issue of The Film Daily. The Vernon probably became the Sheftic, and might have been the old Elden. Charles Szewczyk/Sheftic also owned a drive-in in the vicinity of Boswell in the 1950s.
The December 5, 1953, issue of Boxoffice ran a notice that a movie theater was being built at Powers Lake. The two-story building, 44x110 feet, on the east side of Main Street, would have a 400-seat theater and two storefronts on the ground floor and offices upstairs. The architect for the project was R.L. Ross.
The brick front of the building today shows marks where the marquee was removed. No address is displayed on the building, nor any business names, but it is on the lot south of the Country Store Fresh Foods, which is at 118 Main Street. If I had to guess I’d say the theater’s address was probably 114 Main, between the two storefronts which were probably 112 and 116.
Here is the new web site for the Dallas Cinema. Interestingly, it’s operated by an outfit called Cinema Treasures, LLC, who also operate the Star Cinema in Stayton.
The Majestic was a new theater built in 1916 by Crescent Amusement as a replacement for the Elite. As we don’t have an address for the Elite we don’t know if the Majestic was on the same site or not. It’s possible that the Elite was at another location and was merely closed and converted to another use when the Majestic opened.
The Nu Theatre became the Gentry Theatre on February 20, 1932, according to the February 18 issue of the Journal-Advance newspaper, which said the new owners would open the renamed house that day. Then for a while the house was called the Flint Theatre. The May 2, 1946, issue of the newspaper said that Mr. Harry Wachter had bought the Flint Theatre from S. M. Underbill and intended to rename it the New Gentry Theatre after making renovations.
As the house had been advertised as the Gentry Theatre in late 1944, and the earliest use of the name Flint Theatre I’ve found is from early 1946, It’s likely that the temporary name change took place sometime in 1945.
I found a 1998 photo by Charlie Bookout captioned “Gentry’s ruined main street movie theater” and, as it had a Facebook share button, posted it to Cinema Treasures' Facebook page. It’s an interior shot, unfortunately, so we can’t use it to spot the building in Google street view, if it is still standing.
This PDF from the Kansas Historic Route 66 Planning Committee, dated 2011, says that Sapp’s Opera House and the Maywood Theatre were two different buildings. The 900-seat Opera House was upstairs in a three-story brick building at the southeast corner of Seventh and Main Street, and opened on November 2, 1890. It was destroyed by a fire on March 8, 1931. The PDF has a photo of it.
The PDF says that the “Old Maywood Theatre” was at 320 Main Street, and describes it this way:
“This two story building has a parapet front wall with a gently curved shape and concrete coping. The top and sides of the façade wall are
covered with stucco, although the first story and second stories also have areas of clapboard siding. A series of vertical and diamond shaped elements decorate the stucco wall above the second story windows. A variety of double-hung and fixed windows have been installed at both levels. A flat metal canopy above the first story is anchored to the building wall by a series of cables. Centered on a block of early 20th
century commercial businesses, this building is part of the continuous street wall lining the west side of the block. A concrete sidewalk with a very shallow curb runs in front of the buildings. A variety of changes have been made to this building including replacing windows and siding in the first and second stories. This building appears on the 1918 Sanborn Insurance Map as a Motion Picture and Vaudeville theater.
A stage occupied the west end of the space, while a second story viewing gallery was located at the east end. By 1930 it functioned strictly as a movie theater, but was listed as Purkett’s Laundry & Master Cleaners in the 1944 directory. Estimated date of construction pre-1918.”
Although the document is dated 2011, I think the text must have been written long before. There is no building at 320 Main Street today, although there is one at 302 Main Street that somewhat resembles the theater as described in the article. Also, looking at historic aerials it has been decades since the west side of this block had a “continuous street wall” of buildings. There is also an issue with the 1944 directory listing of the theater’s location as a laundry, as the Maywood Theatre Company advertised in the local high school yearbooks in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Perhaps the theater moved to another location, or maybe just shared the original location with the laundry?
The 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory listed three theaters at Galena: the Globe, the Midway, and the Pearl, which was the only one given an address, that being 705 S. Main Street. It’s possible that Pearl was an aka for Sapp’s Opera House.
The October 7, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had this item that could have been about the Maywood Theatre:
“Galena, Kans. — The finishing touches are being put on the new moving picture theater for L. H. Moore. It will have seating capacity of 800. A Wurlitzer pipe organ will also be installed.”
The 1920-1921 edition of Wid’s Year Book lists only the Palace Theatre, operated by N. W. Houston, at Galena. Perhaps an aka for the Maywood?
Here is an article about the Theatre Louisiana and its operators, P. E. Coe and L. H. Grandjeau, from the October 24, 1914, issue of Motion Picture News.
The Retina Theatre is the subject of a brief (but sadly unillustrated) article in the November 7, 1914, issue of Motion Picture News. The article praises the theater (rather fulsomely) and its owner, John Gentner, of having rescued its neighborhood and the benighted denizens thereof from vice and crime. The tale sounds as though it could have been drawn from the plot of one of the “uplifting” movies of the day, meant to convince the church ladies that the movies weren’t a tool of the devil after all.
Here is a link to the article Ron Pierce cited in the previous comment. (Click the + sign in the bar at the top of the page to zoom in.)
Here is an item that is probably about the Rialto, from the September 5, 1925, issue of Motion Picture News:
We have the wrong address for the Hines Theatre. It was located on the north side of Walnut Street just east of Commerce Street. These four photos show some distinctive features of the area that are still there. The tower and chimney in the background of the upper left photos are on the back wall of the building that now houses the Ritz Theatre, at Walnut and Meridian Street.
The sign for First National Bank in the lower right photo still exists at the southwest corner of Commerce and Walnut, but now advertises a barbecue restaurant that replaced the bank’s drive-up teller area. Most notably, the ground floor of the building on the northeast corner of Walnut and Commerce survived the 1983 fire and now houses a lawyer’s office. Its distinctive corner column that can be seen in the vintage photo at lower right.
The address of the lawyer’s office is 124 W. Walnut, so the address of the Hines Theatre would have been a few numbers lower, perhaps 118 or 120 W. Walnut.
Prior to opening the Hines Theatre, Sherman J.Hines had operated at least two other theaters in Portland. The July 2, 1921, issue of Exhibitors Herald reported that Sherman Hines, operator of the Princess Theatre at Portland, had been arrested for snowing movies on Sunday.
The October 14, 1922, issue of The Moving Picture World said that “Sherman Hines has purchased Crystal Theatre, a moving picture house and assumed management.”
The Best Theatre at Indianapolis, operated by Charles Koch, was mentioned in the January 4, 1919, issue of Motion Picture News. Mr. Koch had just disposed of his interest in a house called the Apollo Theatre, located and South East Street and McCarty Street in the Fletcher Place district, to Max Patton.
There was a Strand Theatre operating in Atmore at least as early as 1924, when the April 26 issue of Exhibitors Herald published a capsule movie review by its manager, W.W. Lowery, Jr..
If the plans of the Martin Theatre company were carried out, the Strand was rebuilt in 1936, announced in this item in the September 18 issue of The Film Daily:
Anniston’s Savoy Theatre was listed in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory.
The Martin Theatre opened in 1940. It was built in the shell of the Paramount Theatre, which had been destroyed by a fire early that year. The Paramount had been operated by Martin in partnership with pioneer local exhibitor Z. D. Studstill.
Here is a letter from the manager of the Strand Theatre in Alexander City that was published in the January 8, 1921, issue of Exhibitors Herald:
An article on this web page says that the site of the Strand Theatre is now part of Strand Park, which Google Maps shows lying between Alabama Street and Tallapossa Street at Bibb Street. The December 20, 2004, issue of theThe correct address of the Bama Theatre is 216 Tallapoosa Street. A community theater group called Act II has taken over the house, which is owned by the City and until recently had been used as a gymnastics center, and is renovating it into an arts center to be called the Alexander City Theatre II. This is their web site which, like the theater project itself, is still under construction.
The Princess Theatre at Albertville was mentioned in the March 4, 1922, issue of The Moving Picture World.
The June 12, 1919, issue of local newspaper The Sand Mountain Banner advertised a house called the Alberta Theatre. The 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory listed only one house at Albertville, that being the Electric Theatre, located on Main Street.
Did Del Rio have two theaters called the Strand? The house that was rebuilt as the Rita Theatre in 1941 opened in 1931 as the Strand.
Prior to being called the Rio, the house that later became the Texas Theatre had been called the Victory Theatre. The name change was noted in the July 17, 1945, issue of the Del Rio News Herald.
The mission style theater in the photo currently displayed above must have been the first Texas Theatre. That assortment of display posters wouldn’t have been seen in the post-war era. If the other photo (the one uploaded by Don Lewis) is correct, the Victory/Rio/Texas is still standing in the 800 block of Main Street, and its address is probably 827 Main.
115 W. Main Street was the address of the Arcade Theatre, which was one of four movie houses listed at Walla Walla in the 1914-195 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory. An early photo of the Arcade on this web page shows steps leading up the the doors- probably indicating that the auditorium floor had been built up at the rear rather than dug down to create a sloped seating area. If the Roxy was in the same building the more costly alteration was undoubtedly made later.
Prior to being called the Mayflower this house was called the Colonial Theatre. The June 24 issue of the Eugene Guard that year made reference to “…the Mayflower (formerly the Colonial)”.
A December 31, 1925, Guard retrospective of that year’s construction in Eugene said that “…the new Colonial theater was erected by Laura B. Paine….” The September 30 issue of the Guard had noted that the formal opening of the Colonial Theatre would take place that night.
The PSTOS page for the Mayflower, missing some information, doesn’t mention the original name of the theater, and says that its Robert Morton organ was installed in 1922. It’s possible that the organ was moved to the Colonial from some other theater. It was removed in 1936, according to a 1990 Portland Oregonian article featured on the page.
The PSTOS text says that in 1977 the Mayflower booked the original Star Wars, which played to packed houses in its small auditorium for weeks.
I haven’t discovered the name of their drive-in at Boswell, but the family’s County Amusement Co. had the Richland and Westmont Drive-Ins near Johnstown, as well as some indoor houses in that city.
This house appears to have reopened after 1957 as the Art Overbrook Theatre. A house of that name in Philadelphia was mentioned in the First Statement of the New American Cinema Group, published in the summer of 1961. The Art Overbrook had, along with the Bleeker Street Cinema and New Yorker Theatre in New York, pledged to exhibit films distributed by the group. This information was cited in Film Culture Reader, edited by Adams P. Sitney, published in 1970 (Google Books preview). The Art Overbrook Theatre, 63rd and Haverford, was advertising in The Philadelphia Enquirer by June of 1959.
Mary Lee Sheftic (an Anglicized, semi-phonetic spelling of the original family surname, Szewczyk), 1937-2015. Obituary.
The family also owned a house in Boswell called the Sheftic Theatre. The October 2, 1954, issue of Boxoffice said that the Sheftic Theatre, remodeled and equipped for CinemaScope after having been closed for several years, had reopened on October 1, while the Mary Lee had been closed on September 30.
Back in the early 1920s, Boswell had a house called the Elden Theatre, operated by Frank Elden, who died in 1923. In the late 1930s a house called the Vernon Theatre operated in opposition to the Mary Lee. Charles Szewczyk bought the Vernon from its operator, V. F. Scott, in 1940, noted in the September 20 issue of The Film Daily. The Vernon probably became the Sheftic, and might have been the old Elden. Charles Szewczyk/Sheftic also owned a drive-in in the vicinity of Boswell in the 1950s.
The December 5, 1953, issue of Boxoffice ran a notice that a movie theater was being built at Powers Lake. The two-story building, 44x110 feet, on the east side of Main Street, would have a 400-seat theater and two storefronts on the ground floor and offices upstairs. The architect for the project was R.L. Ross.
The brick front of the building today shows marks where the marquee was removed. No address is displayed on the building, nor any business names, but it is on the lot south of the Country Store Fresh Foods, which is at 118 Main Street. If I had to guess I’d say the theater’s address was probably 114 Main, between the two storefronts which were probably 112 and 116.
Here is the new web site for the Dallas Cinema. Interestingly, it’s operated by an outfit called Cinema Treasures, LLC, who also operate the Star Cinema in Stayton.
The Majestic was a new theater built in 1916 by Crescent Amusement as a replacement for the Elite. As we don’t have an address for the Elite we don’t know if the Majestic was on the same site or not. It’s possible that the Elite was at another location and was merely closed and converted to another use when the Majestic opened.
The Nu Theatre became the Gentry Theatre on February 20, 1932, according to the February 18 issue of the Journal-Advance newspaper, which said the new owners would open the renamed house that day. Then for a while the house was called the Flint Theatre. The May 2, 1946, issue of the newspaper said that Mr. Harry Wachter had bought the Flint Theatre from S. M. Underbill and intended to rename it the New Gentry Theatre after making renovations.
As the house had been advertised as the Gentry Theatre in late 1944, and the earliest use of the name Flint Theatre I’ve found is from early 1946, It’s likely that the temporary name change took place sometime in 1945.
I found a 1998 photo by Charlie Bookout captioned “Gentry’s ruined main street movie theater” and, as it had a Facebook share button, posted it to Cinema Treasures' Facebook page. It’s an interior shot, unfortunately, so we can’t use it to spot the building in Google street view, if it is still standing.
This PDF from the Kansas Historic Route 66 Planning Committee, dated 2011, says that Sapp’s Opera House and the Maywood Theatre were two different buildings. The 900-seat Opera House was upstairs in a three-story brick building at the southeast corner of Seventh and Main Street, and opened on November 2, 1890. It was destroyed by a fire on March 8, 1931. The PDF has a photo of it.
The PDF says that the “Old Maywood Theatre” was at 320 Main Street, and describes it this way:
Although the document is dated 2011, I think the text must have been written long before. There is no building at 320 Main Street today, although there is one at 302 Main Street that somewhat resembles the theater as described in the article. Also, looking at historic aerials it has been decades since the west side of this block had a “continuous street wall” of buildings. There is also an issue with the 1944 directory listing of the theater’s location as a laundry, as the Maywood Theatre Company advertised in the local high school yearbooks in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Perhaps the theater moved to another location, or maybe just shared the original location with the laundry?The 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory listed three theaters at Galena: the Globe, the Midway, and the Pearl, which was the only one given an address, that being 705 S. Main Street. It’s possible that Pearl was an aka for Sapp’s Opera House.
The October 7, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had this item that could have been about the Maywood Theatre:
The 1920-1921 edition of Wid’s Year Book lists only the Palace Theatre, operated by N. W. Houston, at Galena. Perhaps an aka for the Maywood?The Flamingo Theatre opened the week of January 10, 1947, according to an item in that day’s issue of Film Daily.