The February 24, 1917 Moving Picture World said that C. G. Neiswanger planned to build a 500-seat airdome to operate in conjunction with his Crystal Theatre at Osborne, Kansas. In October of that year, Mr. Neiswanger was submitting capsule movie reviews to MPW’s rival trade journal, Motogrpahy. A thumbnail biography of Mr. Neiswanger reveals that it was he who had the new Crystal Theatre built in 1920.
A July 1, 1922 Motion Picture News about the sale of the new Crystal Theatre said that one of the buyers was Joseph Buck, owner of the Novelty Theatre in Osborne, which he was planning to close for the summer. The Novelty isn’t listed in the 1926 or later FDYs, so it probably closed permanently before then. It might be that the Novelty was a new name for the old Crystal, after it moved in 1920.
This item from the July 1, 1922 issue of Motion Picture News mentions the Crystal Theatre as well as another Osborne house: “John Ritter of the Pastime theatre, Tipton, Kas., and Joseph Buck purchased the Crystal theatre at Osborne, Kas. The Novelty theatre at Osborne, owned by Mr. Buck, will be closed for the summer.”
It looks like this theater also has a missing aka that never made it into the FDY. This item is from the April 6, 1929 Motion Picture News: “The Delharco, Osborne, Kas., has been purchased by Sam Blair of Belleville, Kas., from D. F. Harris.” I don’t think this was a different theater. Delmar Harris later owned at least two other houses he called the Delharco, in Salina and Concordia, Kansas. He probably didn’t own the Crystal for very long.
Sam Blair, who bought the house from Harris, was William Blair’s father. The 1938 FDY lists the Blair Theatre Enterprises Co. of Belleville, with Sam Blair as President and William H. Blair as Managing Director. The chain then operated four Kansas houses, all called the Blair. They were in Belleville, Osborne, Mankato and Smith Center.
William Blair died quite young, two days short of his forty-first birthday, on August 18, 1948. His widow, Mildred, operated the theater for some time after his death, but moved to Lawrence, Kansas in 1959, according to her 2006 obituary. It may have been a later owner of the Blair Theatre who placed this advertisement that appeared in the “Theaters for Sale” column of Boxoffice of April 1, 1963: “Drive-In and Indoor. Osborne, Kansas. For sale, both $41,000. Terms: lease with option to buy. 300-car drive-in complete, 700-seat, both ‘Scope. County seat town with large trade area. Manager now postmaster and must refrain from business. Boxoffice 9663.”
These lines about P. J. Concannon and the Electric Theatre appear in a history of Kansas published in 1918: “His chief business at Emporia has been the operation of moving picture theaters. At one time he owned three moving picture houses, but one was burned and the other he sold. He now devotes his time to the management of the Electric Theater at 612 Commercial Street. This is one of the best patronized houses in the city and has a seating capacity of 400. Mr. Concannon is state secretary of the Exhibitors League, an association of moving picture theater owners and operators.”
The March 22, 1952 issue of Boxoffice said that Dan Blair had begun construction of a drive-in at Smith Center. The May 17 issue of the same journal said that he expected to open the drive-in by May 30.
The Bison Theatre is not listed in the FDY until 1929. Prior to that, a house called the Arcade Theatre is listed in its place. However, the name Bison appears in an article in Moving Picture World of June 11, 1927. The Bison was then owned by an Anthony Jim, who the item said had operated it for the past 13 years. He had just bought the Plaza Theatre. The name Bison also appears on a 1924 Sanborn map. The Arcade was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. An item in The Billboard> of January 14, 1922 said that the Arcade Theatre in Brownsville had recently been destroyed by a fire. I’m not sure just what is going on here, but some miscommunication between the theater owners and the FDY’s editors seems most likely.
Unless it had been rebuilt, the Plaza was older than Film Daily thought in 1933. The June 11, 1927 Moving Picture World said that Anthony Jim, operator of Brownsville’s Bison Theatre for the previous 13 years, had bought Tom Wright’s Plaza Theatre, which Wright had built six years before. A Plaza Theatre is indeed listed in the 1926 FDY, along with the Bijou, the Arcade, and the Strand. No Bison Theatre is listed, so Mr. Jim’s earlier house must have operated under a different name then (apparently the Arcade, as that is the only one of the four that is missing from the 1929 FDY, which does list the Bison.)
This item from Moving Picture World of October 1, 1927, appears to contradict the information in the NRHP form I cited in my previous comment:
“One of the most important theatre projects in the local territory, has recently been undertaken by the Columbus Amusement Company, who also operate the Liberty, Strand and State theatres in New Kensington. The new theatre, which will be known as the Ritz, will occupy the site formerly occupied by the old Imperial theatre on Fifth avenue, New Kensington. The new house will seat 1100 persons, and opening is expected by October 17th. Vaudeville and first run pictures will be the attractions. Samuel Haimovitz is president and general manager of the company; William Leibovitz is vice president and treasurer and Russell C. Roshon is publicity director.”
Some light is shed on this puzzle by an item in the July 23, 1927 issue of The Billboard, which notes that the Columbus Amusement Company had taken a long term lease on the Imperial Theatre at New Kensington and would expand the house to 1,100 seats. Indeed, the FDY lists the Imperial from 1926 through 1928, and the Ritz only makes its first appearance in the 1929 edition. I don’t know if the company made their goal of an October 17, 1927 opening or not, but the Ritz surely must have been opened by 1928. In any case, this house needs its opening name of Imperial Theatre added as an aka.
To add a bit more complication, the “New Theatres” column of the July 1, 1923 issue of Film Daily had this item: “Pana, Ill.— ‘Bella Donna’ was the attraction at the recent opening of the New Palace theater.”
This item from the July 29, 1916 issue of The American Contractor is probably about the original Clintonia Theatre, given the location and the size of the building, so I’ll put it on this page:
“CONTRACTS AWARDED Picture Theater (2 stores apt.): $10,000. 1 & 2 sty. 44 x 120. Cor. Main & Monroe sts., Clinton, Ill. Archt. A.F. Moratz, People’s Bank bldg., Bloomington. Owner W.B. Sadduth, 5 [or S. ?] Jackson av. On walls. Gen Contr. Jas. M. Kirk. Htg. & plmg. let to Byerly Htg. Co., Clinton.”
I’ve been unable to discover what became of the original Clintonia, but it might be that its walls were part of the new theater in 1937. Incidentally, I believe we’ve got the 1937 architect’s name wrong above. It should be Axel J. Claesson, who also designed the DeKalb Theatre and two other Illinois houses.
The September 24, 1923 issue of Film Daily mentioned the Arcade: “Jacksonville, Fla.—After being closed two weeks for beautifying and the installation of a new organ, the Arcade is again open.” The pipe organ database says that the instrument installed at the Arcade in 1923 was a two-manual Wurlitzer, opus 674, but has no other details. The fate of the organ is unknown.
Could this be the place? Moving Picture World of March 6, 1909: “Leavenworth, Kan.-Ed Lampson is considering the erection of a Summer theater on Shawnee street.”
On March 27, this item appeared: “Leavenworth, Kan.-Ed. Lampson has been granted a permit for the erection of a Summer theater, on Shawnee street.”
The April 3 issue has this: “Leavenworth, Kan.-Ed. Lampson is making arrangements to build a new Summer theater on Shawnee street.”
I’ve been unable to find any more reports about the project from 1909, but the Airdome was definitely in operation by 1910, as it was mentioned three times in the July 1 issue of The Labor Chronicle, published in Leavenworth.
A June 27, 1919 report in The Leavenworth Times of a storm which had struck the city said that “[p]art of the front of the old Airdome theater Shawnee street was blown down.” The “building” (what there was of it) at least was still standing then, even if the place had been closed for years. It was not one of the three houses listed at Leavenworth in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The February 15, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon had this item: “LEAVENWORTH, KANS.-C. F. Mensing, owner of the Casino and Princess theaters, has purchased the Palm Theater, 31 [sic] Delaware street, and the Fern Theater, 302 Delaware street, both formerly owned by Ed Lampson. This gives Mr. Mensing complete control of the moving picture business in this city.”
Here is an item from July 13, 1912 issue of Moving Picture World about the opening of the Airdome next to the Grand Theatre:
“Olathe, Kansas. —Weldon & Wilson have opened what is known as the Grand Theater Annex, joining the Grand on the south. It is an open air theater forty feet in width. The side walls and back will be of galvanized iron. The booth is fireproof. This new play house will seat 500 people.”
The fact that Weldon and Wilson were operating the Grand in 1912 and the Gem in 1916 may increase the chances that those were the same theater. The pair sold the Gem in 1919, along with a second Olathe house called the Moneta Theatre. This was reported in the July 17, 1919 Olathe News.
The October 7, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World has an article about the Gem Theatre (which might have been the Grand with a new name, not the Gem on Park Street) which is headed “Olathe’s One Picture Show,” so the Lyric was closed by 1916.
I’m wondering if the Grand of 1912 might have been the same house that was operating as the Gem in 1916, described in the October 7 issue of Moving Picture World:
“Olathe’s One Picture Show.
“Olathe, Kan.— A city of 3,000 people, with 17 churches—and one moving picture show! That is Olathe, Kan. The picture show is operated by T. H. Wilson and W. W. Weldon, and they are said to be prospering. The Gem theater seats 521. It is closed in the summer, the pictures being shown in a pavillion, roofed, the sides of which are removed in warm weather. It has a hard maple floor, and is equipped with church pews and seats made to order. In the winter, the seats are removed, and Wilson & Weldon operate the pavilion as a skating rink and basket ball hall.
“But about the church pews—they are especially appropriate this summer, since the Methodist church, which was erecting a new structure, used the pavilion for its Sunday services. Olathe does not have Sunday pictures, so the business is not interfered with.”
The Plaza Theatre and its manager, L. W. Morris, were mentioned in the November 22, 1930 issue of Motion Picture News. The Plaza was not among the four houses listed at Great Bend in the 1929 FDY, but I’ve been unable to discover if it was a new theater or one of the other theaters renamed.
When the Oaks Theatre was demolished in 1977, the Pasadena Star News ran a brief article about the house, which has a couple of interesting lines. One is this citation of an actor named Ollie Prickett “…who remembers the old theatre. He recalls as a child being told about the building of the place as Talley’s Theatre.”
Mr. Prickett’s memory may or may not have been a bit garbled, but the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory did in fact list (without an address, alas) a Talley’s Theatre in Pasadena, along with five other houses. But then it also listed “Fischer’s Theatre, 75 N. Oakes St.” which also appears a bit garbled. Yet, if the street number was not a mistake, 75 N. Fair Oaks would have been in the Pasadena Masonic Temple, which had an auditorium upstairs which I can imagine the lodge leasing to Mr. Fisher, perhaps when he lost the lease on the house at 87, which by 1913 had become the Savoy. For at least part of its history the Savoy operated as a legitimate house, which could have been the policy in 1914. (A whole bunch of speculation, I know, but there’s not much to go on.)
Another line from the Star News article is this: “The theater was built in 1910 by Anthony Pearce, with some assistance from William C. Clone [sic] who, some years later, build Clune’s Theatre around the corner on Colorado Boulevard. The shows at first were patterned after those at the Burbank burlesque in Los Angeles.” Clune’s Pasadena actually opened in March, 1911, and I seriously doubt that burlesque was the policy at the Burbank as early as 1910, or at the future Oaks Theatre in prim and proper Pasadena for that matter, but the opening year of 1910 sounds about right.
There is another candidate for the location of the Tally’s Theatre listed in the 1914-1915 AMPD. A 1918 Pasadena directory lists a Crown Theatre at 29 W. Colorado. This was three years before Jensen’s Raymond Theatre, which was later renamed the Crown Theatre, was built. I’ve been unable to find any more information about this first Crown Theatre.
Here is an excerpt from a “10 Years Ago” feature in the August 4, 2021 issue of the Madison Courier: “Thursday was a historic day in Marengo; it was the date of the last showing of a movie at the Rialto Movie Theater. ‘The Cable Guy’ marked a long line of Hollywood classics to shine across the silver screen of the 175-seat theater that opened more than half a century ago. The theater will now become Stone Canyon Country Music Depot, owned by Wayne Bullington.”
I haven’t been able to find any other references to a music venue of that name on the Internet, and in fact in the Google satellite view of the building the interior looks burned out, though the walls appear intact. In Google’s March, 2023 street view the masonry front looks freshly painted and the building (or its shell) bears a “For Sale” sign, though an opening in the door shows a bit of what looks like wreckage inside.
But in any case, the Rialto seems to have come back from its mid-1950s closure and survived for a long time. Oh, and Indiana Memory has a 1985 photo of the Rialto.
This theater was in the planning stage, at least, by 1916, when the November 4 issue of Motion Picture News reported that “Albert Lafrentz has purchased two lots in a prominent part of Ute, and will begin at once the erection of a brick building to be used as a moving picture theatre and opera house.”
It was listed in the 1926 FDY as the State, but by 1928 it was operating as the Star Theatre (Ute did not appear in the 1927 FDY.) It was listed with 300 seats through the 1930s. The April 20, 1946 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review reported the sale of the house: “Mr. and Mrs. Archie Mahoney have purchased the Star Theatre, Ute, from A. L. Lafrentz, who built the house in 1916 and has operated it since. Mahoney is a war veteran.”
The Star was still listed in 1951, in the last edition of FDY to which I have access, still with 300 seats. An item in Motion Picture Herald of January 7, 1956 said that “[t]he Star theatre in Ute closed with the New Year’s Day showing.” The May 11, 1957 issue of Boxoffice said that the Star had reopened under the sponsorship of the Ute Commercial Club, with two showings a week, on Wednesday and Saturday nights. I’ve found nothing later about the theater.
Incidentally, Albert Ludwig Lafrentz (January 26, 1885-October 30, 1955) is buried in Saint Clair Cemetery in Ute.
This photo of Elk Point shows the south side of Main Street with the Opera House building at the center. It is datable by the advertisement on the wall promoting an event, presumably at the Opera House, on Wednesday, June 24. The cars in the photo date from the early 1910s, and the year in that period when June 24 fell on a Wednesday was 1914.
Within a year, the vacant lot with a low fence in front of it (left of center) would become the site of a moving picture theater that appears on the 1917 Sanborn map. This had to have been the Florence Theatre, which was in operation by June, 1915. The modern address of the Florence is 118 E. Main Street.
If this house was built after 1898 then it was not Elk Point’s first Opera House. A Dakota gazetteer and business directory published by Polk in 1888 said that Elk Point “…contains a fine opera house, just finished, with a seating capacity of 500….”
A February 1, 1930 item in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported the destruction by fire of Fred Nearman’s cream station in Elk Point. The Florence Theatre was one of the neighboring buildings which suffered some smoke and water damage. Wilmarth’s barber shop was on the other side of the burned building. The cream station was a frame structure.
This weblog post presents some memories of Don Fowler, who grew up in Elk Point in the 1910s and 1920s, and he mentions the Opera House, and says that Wilmarth’s barber shop was on one side of it and a bank on the other. On the 1917 Sanborn, there are banks on both sides of the Opera House, but next to one bank is a small wood frame building housing a barber shop and lunch room, and next to that is this moving picture house at 118 E. Main.
What I suspect is that one of the banks closed and Wilmarth’s barber shop moved into its space, and the barber shop and lunch room became the site of Nearman’s cream station, in between the new barber shop location and the Florence Theatre. The improbably large seating capacity listed for the Florence in the FDYs of the 1920s was probably a mistake. The last appearance of the Florence in the 1935 FDY gives it only 220 seats, a plausible number that was probably true all along.
It’s unfortunate that Don Fowler mentions Elk Point’s movie house only in passing, not even giving its name, only saying that it showed silent movies. The ambitious Mr. Fowler, who in 1930 became the first of his family to enroll in college, probably didn’t squander his youth watching picture shows.
The February 24, 1917 Moving Picture World said that C. G. Neiswanger planned to build a 500-seat airdome to operate in conjunction with his Crystal Theatre at Osborne, Kansas. In October of that year, Mr. Neiswanger was submitting capsule movie reviews to MPW’s rival trade journal, Motogrpahy. A thumbnail biography of Mr. Neiswanger reveals that it was he who had the new Crystal Theatre built in 1920.
A July 1, 1922 Motion Picture News about the sale of the new Crystal Theatre said that one of the buyers was Joseph Buck, owner of the Novelty Theatre in Osborne, which he was planning to close for the summer. The Novelty isn’t listed in the 1926 or later FDYs, so it probably closed permanently before then. It might be that the Novelty was a new name for the old Crystal, after it moved in 1920.
This item from the July 1, 1922 issue of Motion Picture News mentions the Crystal Theatre as well as another Osborne house: “John Ritter of the Pastime theatre, Tipton, Kas., and Joseph Buck purchased the Crystal theatre at Osborne, Kas. The Novelty theatre at Osborne, owned by Mr. Buck, will be closed for the summer.”
It looks like this theater also has a missing aka that never made it into the FDY. This item is from the April 6, 1929 Motion Picture News: “The Delharco, Osborne, Kas., has been purchased by Sam Blair of Belleville, Kas., from D. F. Harris.” I don’t think this was a different theater. Delmar Harris later owned at least two other houses he called the Delharco, in Salina and Concordia, Kansas. He probably didn’t own the Crystal for very long.
Sam Blair, who bought the house from Harris, was William Blair’s father. The 1938 FDY lists the Blair Theatre Enterprises Co. of Belleville, with Sam Blair as President and William H. Blair as Managing Director. The chain then operated four Kansas houses, all called the Blair. They were in Belleville, Osborne, Mankato and Smith Center.
William Blair died quite young, two days short of his forty-first birthday, on August 18, 1948. His widow, Mildred, operated the theater for some time after his death, but moved to Lawrence, Kansas in 1959, according to her 2006 obituary. It may have been a later owner of the Blair Theatre who placed this advertisement that appeared in the “Theaters for Sale” column of Boxoffice of April 1, 1963: “Drive-In and Indoor. Osborne, Kansas. For sale, both $41,000. Terms: lease with option to buy. 300-car drive-in complete, 700-seat, both ‘Scope. County seat town with large trade area. Manager now postmaster and must refrain from business. Boxoffice 9663.”
These lines about P. J. Concannon and the Electric Theatre appear in a history of Kansas published in 1918: “His chief business at Emporia has been the operation of moving picture theaters. At one time he owned three moving picture houses, but one was burned and the other he sold. He now devotes his time to the management of the Electric Theater at 612 Commercial Street. This is one of the best patronized houses in the city and has a seating capacity of 400. Mr. Concannon is state secretary of the Exhibitors League, an association of moving picture theater owners and operators.”
The recent reopening of the former Orpheum Theatre at Fergus Falls as the Fergus Theatre was noted in the April 8, 1950 issue of Boxoffice.
The March 22, 1952 issue of Boxoffice said that Dan Blair had begun construction of a drive-in at Smith Center. The May 17 issue of the same journal said that he expected to open the drive-in by May 30.
The Bison Theatre is not listed in the FDY until 1929. Prior to that, a house called the Arcade Theatre is listed in its place. However, the name Bison appears in an article in Moving Picture World of June 11, 1927. The Bison was then owned by an Anthony Jim, who the item said had operated it for the past 13 years. He had just bought the Plaza Theatre. The name Bison also appears on a 1924 Sanborn map. The Arcade was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. An item in The Billboard> of January 14, 1922 said that the Arcade Theatre in Brownsville had recently been destroyed by a fire. I’m not sure just what is going on here, but some miscommunication between the theater owners and the FDY’s editors seems most likely.
Unless it had been rebuilt, the Plaza was older than Film Daily thought in 1933. The June 11, 1927 Moving Picture World said that Anthony Jim, operator of Brownsville’s Bison Theatre for the previous 13 years, had bought Tom Wright’s Plaza Theatre, which Wright had built six years before. A Plaza Theatre is indeed listed in the 1926 FDY, along with the Bijou, the Arcade, and the Strand. No Bison Theatre is listed, so Mr. Jim’s earlier house must have operated under a different name then (apparently the Arcade, as that is the only one of the four that is missing from the 1929 FDY, which does list the Bison.)
This item from Moving Picture World of October 1, 1927, appears to contradict the information in the NRHP form I cited in my previous comment:
Some light is shed on this puzzle by an item in the July 23, 1927 issue of The Billboard, which notes that the Columbus Amusement Company had taken a long term lease on the Imperial Theatre at New Kensington and would expand the house to 1,100 seats. Indeed, the FDY lists the Imperial from 1926 through 1928, and the Ritz only makes its first appearance in the 1929 edition. I don’t know if the company made their goal of an October 17, 1927 opening or not, but the Ritz surely must have been opened by 1928. In any case, this house needs its opening name of Imperial Theatre added as an aka.To add a bit more complication, the “New Theatres” column of the July 1, 1923 issue of Film Daily had this item: “Pana, Ill.— ‘Bella Donna’ was the attraction at the recent opening of the New Palace theater.”
This item from the July 29, 1916 issue of The American Contractor is probably about the original Clintonia Theatre, given the location and the size of the building, so I’ll put it on this page:
I’ve been unable to discover what became of the original Clintonia, but it might be that its walls were part of the new theater in 1937. Incidentally, I believe we’ve got the 1937 architect’s name wrong above. It should be Axel J. Claesson, who also designed the DeKalb Theatre and two other Illinois houses.The September 24, 1923 issue of Film Daily mentioned the Arcade: “Jacksonville, Fla.—After being closed two weeks for beautifying and the installation of a new organ, the Arcade is again open.” The pipe organ database says that the instrument installed at the Arcade in 1923 was a two-manual Wurlitzer, opus 674, but has no other details. The fate of the organ is unknown.
Could this be the place? Moving Picture World of March 6, 1909: “Leavenworth, Kan.-Ed Lampson is considering the erection of a Summer theater on Shawnee street.”
On March 27, this item appeared: “Leavenworth, Kan.-Ed. Lampson has been granted a permit for the erection of a Summer theater, on Shawnee street.”
The April 3 issue has this: “Leavenworth, Kan.-Ed. Lampson is making arrangements to build a new Summer theater on Shawnee street.”
I’ve been unable to find any more reports about the project from 1909, but the Airdome was definitely in operation by 1910, as it was mentioned three times in the July 1 issue of The Labor Chronicle, published in Leavenworth.
A June 27, 1919 report in The Leavenworth Times of a storm which had struck the city said that “[p]art of the front of the old Airdome theater Shawnee street was blown down.” The “building” (what there was of it) at least was still standing then, even if the place had been closed for years. It was not one of the three houses listed at Leavenworth in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
The February 15, 1910 issue of The Nickelodeon had this item: “LEAVENWORTH, KANS.-C. F. Mensing, owner of the Casino and Princess theaters, has purchased the Palm Theater, 31 [sic] Delaware street, and the Fern Theater, 302 Delaware street, both formerly owned by Ed Lampson. This gives Mr. Mensing complete control of the moving picture business in this city.”
Here is an item from July 13, 1912 issue of Moving Picture World about the opening of the Airdome next to the Grand Theatre:
The fact that Weldon and Wilson were operating the Grand in 1912 and the Gem in 1916 may increase the chances that those were the same theater. The pair sold the Gem in 1919, along with a second Olathe house called the Moneta Theatre. This was reported in the July 17, 1919 Olathe News.The October 7, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World has an article about the Gem Theatre (which might have been the Grand with a new name, not the Gem on Park Street) which is headed “Olathe’s One Picture Show,” so the Lyric was closed by 1916.
I’m wondering if the Grand of 1912 might have been the same house that was operating as the Gem in 1916, described in the October 7 issue of Moving Picture World:
The Plaza Theatre and its manager, L. W. Morris, were mentioned in the November 22, 1930 issue of Motion Picture News. The Plaza was not among the four houses listed at Great Bend in the 1929 FDY, but I’ve been unable to discover if it was a new theater or one of the other theaters renamed.
When the Oaks Theatre was demolished in 1977, the Pasadena Star News ran a brief article about the house, which has a couple of interesting lines. One is this citation of an actor named Ollie Prickett “…who remembers the old theatre. He recalls as a child being told about the building of the place as Talley’s Theatre.”
Mr. Prickett’s memory may or may not have been a bit garbled, but the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory did in fact list (without an address, alas) a Talley’s Theatre in Pasadena, along with five other houses. But then it also listed “Fischer’s Theatre, 75 N. Oakes St.” which also appears a bit garbled. Yet, if the street number was not a mistake, 75 N. Fair Oaks would have been in the Pasadena Masonic Temple, which had an auditorium upstairs which I can imagine the lodge leasing to Mr. Fisher, perhaps when he lost the lease on the house at 87, which by 1913 had become the Savoy. For at least part of its history the Savoy operated as a legitimate house, which could have been the policy in 1914. (A whole bunch of speculation, I know, but there’s not much to go on.)
Another line from the Star News article is this: “The theater was built in 1910 by Anthony Pearce, with some assistance from William C. Clone [sic] who, some years later, build Clune’s Theatre around the corner on Colorado Boulevard. The shows at first were patterned after those at the Burbank burlesque in Los Angeles.” Clune’s Pasadena actually opened in March, 1911, and I seriously doubt that burlesque was the policy at the Burbank as early as 1910, or at the future Oaks Theatre in prim and proper Pasadena for that matter, but the opening year of 1910 sounds about right.
There is another candidate for the location of the Tally’s Theatre listed in the 1914-1915 AMPD. A 1918 Pasadena directory lists a Crown Theatre at 29 W. Colorado. This was three years before Jensen’s Raymond Theatre, which was later renamed the Crown Theatre, was built. I’ve been unable to find any more information about this first Crown Theatre.
Here is an excerpt from a “10 Years Ago” feature in the August 4, 2021 issue of the Madison Courier: “Thursday was a historic day in Marengo; it was the date of the last showing of a movie at the Rialto Movie Theater. ‘The Cable Guy’ marked a long line of Hollywood classics to shine across the silver screen of the 175-seat theater that opened more than half a century ago. The theater will now become Stone Canyon Country Music Depot, owned by Wayne Bullington.”
I haven’t been able to find any other references to a music venue of that name on the Internet, and in fact in the Google satellite view of the building the interior looks burned out, though the walls appear intact. In Google’s March, 2023 street view the masonry front looks freshly painted and the building (or its shell) bears a “For Sale” sign, though an opening in the door shows a bit of what looks like wreckage inside.
But in any case, the Rialto seems to have come back from its mid-1950s closure and survived for a long time. Oh, and Indiana Memory has a 1985 photo of the Rialto.
This theater was in the planning stage, at least, by 1916, when the November 4 issue of Motion Picture News reported that “Albert Lafrentz has purchased two lots in a prominent part of Ute, and will begin at once the erection of a brick building to be used as a moving picture theatre and opera house.”
It was listed in the 1926 FDY as the State, but by 1928 it was operating as the Star Theatre (Ute did not appear in the 1927 FDY.) It was listed with 300 seats through the 1930s. The April 20, 1946 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review reported the sale of the house: “Mr. and Mrs. Archie Mahoney have purchased the Star Theatre, Ute, from A. L. Lafrentz, who built the house in 1916 and has operated it since. Mahoney is a war veteran.”
The Star was still listed in 1951, in the last edition of FDY to which I have access, still with 300 seats. An item in Motion Picture Herald of January 7, 1956 said that “[t]he Star theatre in Ute closed with the New Year’s Day showing.” The May 11, 1957 issue of Boxoffice said that the Star had reopened under the sponsorship of the Ute Commercial Club, with two showings a week, on Wednesday and Saturday nights. I’ve found nothing later about the theater.
Incidentally, Albert Ludwig Lafrentz (January 26, 1885-October 30, 1955) is buried in Saint Clair Cemetery in Ute.
This photo of Elk Point shows the south side of Main Street with the Opera House building at the center. It is datable by the advertisement on the wall promoting an event, presumably at the Opera House, on Wednesday, June 24. The cars in the photo date from the early 1910s, and the year in that period when June 24 fell on a Wednesday was 1914.
Within a year, the vacant lot with a low fence in front of it (left of center) would become the site of a moving picture theater that appears on the 1917 Sanborn map. This had to have been the Florence Theatre, which was in operation by June, 1915. The modern address of the Florence is 118 E. Main Street.
This house became the Roxy in 1927. It’s recent opening was noted in the July 2 issue of Moving Picture World.
If this house was built after 1898 then it was not Elk Point’s first Opera House. A Dakota gazetteer and business directory published by Polk in 1888 said that Elk Point “…contains a fine opera house, just finished, with a seating capacity of 500….”
A February 1, 1930 item in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported the destruction by fire of Fred Nearman’s cream station in Elk Point. The Florence Theatre was one of the neighboring buildings which suffered some smoke and water damage. Wilmarth’s barber shop was on the other side of the burned building. The cream station was a frame structure.
This weblog post presents some memories of Don Fowler, who grew up in Elk Point in the 1910s and 1920s, and he mentions the Opera House, and says that Wilmarth’s barber shop was on one side of it and a bank on the other. On the 1917 Sanborn, there are banks on both sides of the Opera House, but next to one bank is a small wood frame building housing a barber shop and lunch room, and next to that is this moving picture house at 118 E. Main.
What I suspect is that one of the banks closed and Wilmarth’s barber shop moved into its space, and the barber shop and lunch room became the site of Nearman’s cream station, in between the new barber shop location and the Florence Theatre. The improbably large seating capacity listed for the Florence in the FDYs of the 1920s was probably a mistake. The last appearance of the Florence in the 1935 FDY gives it only 220 seats, a plausible number that was probably true all along.
It’s unfortunate that Don Fowler mentions Elk Point’s movie house only in passing, not even giving its name, only saying that it showed silent movies. The ambitious Mr. Fowler, who in 1930 became the first of his family to enroll in college, probably didn’t squander his youth watching picture shows.
A 1909 Polk business directory lists an Idle Hour Theatre, Maher & Hanson, proprietors, at Elk Point.