It’s possible the Florence ended up in the Opera House building, which sources I’ve seen indicate dated to 1891 or earlier. A 1915 building inspection listed the Opera House as being in poor condition, while the Florence was listed as very good, which might be expected if the building was nearly new.
The description of this house is inaccurate, but both the theater name and the building have a complex early history. A movie house called The Nickelodeon opened at 300 N. Water Street in 1906, and a house called the Crystal Theatre was operating in Decatur as early as July, 1908, and it was probably next door to The Nickelodeon, which appears to be in the same building. The 1908 Sanborn map shows two adjacent storefronts labeled “Electric Theatre” at 302 and 306 N. Water (302 is on the corner, so there is no 300 on the map.)
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists the Crystal without an address, but also lists a house called the Corner Theatre at 300 N. Water Street. The 1915 Sanborn map still shows the two adjacent storefronts now labeled “Motion Picture Theater”, and it still numbers them 302 and 306 Water Street.
One source says The Nickelodeon became the Colonial Theatre. The Crystal was called the Nasawan Theatre for a while before reverting to the Crystal name in 1911. It seems likely that the Crystal expanded at some point to absorb the former space of The Nickelodeon (the original space was far too small to accommodate almost 500 seats.) Unfortunately Sanborn maps of the location when the Crystal would have been alone and enlarged are not available.
In 1922 the Crystal came under the control of a Mr. and Mrs. C. E. Morrow, who opened the Morrow (or Morrow’s) Theatre, a different house, at 312 N. Water Street in 1929. The Morrow Theatre became the Bond Theatre in 1943. The Crystal was listed in the FDY through 1935 but was gone in 1936. I’ve been unable to find any theater in Decatur that was called the M & M.
The June 11, 1910 issue of American Contractor said that the theater being built at Holland, Michigan for Tim Slagh and A. Smith had been designed by Fred Jonkman. Jonkman must have been a local architect, as the only other reference to him I’ve been able to find is a 1930 newspaper article noting that he was a member of the Holland Common Council.
The final closure of the Ritz Theatre was the consequence of a late 1937 fire, reported in the December 22 issue of The Decatur Daily Review. The Crescent had been closed following an earlier fire in March, 1929. The house was reopened by an F. M. Mertz (Fred, perhaps?) in March, 1934, and sold to the Ritz Theater Company the following year. The December, 1935 remodeling had cost Ritz $8,000, a not inconsiderable sum for a modest, neighborhood house in a provincial city during the depression.
The former Strand Theatre reopened as the State Theatre on December 24, 1928 following a $100,000 remodeling job, according to an item in The Billboard of January 12, 1929. The Southwestern New York Theater Corporation had bought the house the previous summer and closed it for several months for remodeling. The company had also bought the American Theatre at East Liverpool and two houses at Steubenville.
The only two theaters listed in a 1916 Elk Point business directory are the Opera House and the Florence. I’d be inclined to think this was the Florence, if not for the fact that the FDY listings for that house, which begin in 1926, give it a capacity of 350, and this building seems too small to accommodate that many seats. Still, Florence is the only theater name other than Opera House I’ve been able to confirm in Elk Point during this era. Maybe the FDY simply got the capacity wrong, or perhaps the Florence moved to a larger building between 1917 and 1926.
This building could have been the location of one of the three theaters listed at Elk Point in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. They were called the Gem, the Lyric and the Yale. The Gem and Yale were gone by early 1915, but the Lyric was at least still standing, though closed, and had been joined by the Florence Theatre, which of course might have been a new name for one of the other two houses.
The Florence Theatre is one of three houses listed at Elk Point in the public building inspection section of the annual report of the Food & Drug Commissioner of South Dakota for the year ending June 30, 1915. The other two were the Opera House and a Lyric Theatre, the latter listed as closed. The Opera House and Florence were also listed in a 1916 business directory, but the Lyric was not. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory listed three houses at Elk Point: the Gem, the Lyric and the Yale. The Opera House was converted for movies in late 1915, according to items in issues of Moving Picture World in November and December that year. It’s possible that Florence was a new name for either the Gem or the Yale.
In 1915 the Florence was operated by a Mr. Charles Bovee, who was still in charge in 1930 when the February 17 issue of the Sioux City Journal reported that part of the floor of the lobby of the Florence Theatre in Elk Point had collapsed while a crowd was waiting for the second show to begin. Ten people were injured. This article also notes that the theater had been named for Bovee’s daughter Florence, who witnessed the event but was not injured.
The December 25, 1926 issue of Exhibitors Herald had a list of theater managers who had participated in a survey determining the top moneymaking movies of 1926. C. L. Guillaume of the State Theatre, Elk Point, was among them.
Elk Grove High School’s 1961 yearbook said that a free forenoon show presented by the State Theatre had been among that year’s Homecoming events (homecoming being football-related, the event would have been held in the fall of 1960.)
The Texas Theatre operated in two different buildings in the late 1920s. The December 27, 1927 issue of Motion Picture Herald said that: “Mr. and Mrs. Walker opened their new Texas Theater at Grand Prairie Nov. 14th.” The Texas Theater that J. S. Walker was operating in 1926 when he was submitting capsule movie reviews to the trade journals was at a different location.
The May 7, 1927 issue of Moving Picture World had this notice: “GRAND PRAIRIE, TEXAS.— J. S. Walker, manager of Texas Theatre, has purchased two lots on Main street as site for proposed new moving picture theatre.” Just over seven months later Mr. Walker opened the new Texas Theatre. Walker had been leasing the original location, a former garage, at least as early as December, 1925, according to a lawsuit over the property (to which Mr. Walker was not a party.) I’ve been unable to discover the address of the original Texas Theatre.
The April 14, 1928 issue of Motion Picture News said that [t]he Palace theatre at Midland, Texas, is installing a new $7,500 organ.“ The Palace had also been mentioned in the "Dallas” column of the April 7 MPN: “Films of an oil tank fire ‘shot’ by W. H. Williams, manager of the Palace and Idle Hour theatres at Midland, are being shown in a Paramount News reel.”
The Gerald was apparently not closed long in 1957. An ad in the May 1, 1959 issue of The Gerald Journal said the house was soon to celebrate its second anniversary.
An article posted on the web site of the Gasconade County Republican on February 4, 2021 said that “[t]he Gerald Community Theatre group has been working to raise funds to purchase the old theater at 353 S. Main Street built in 1932.” I don’t know if this location is the first Gerald Theatre or the second, and I’ve been unable to find the theatre group’s Facebook page, so the project might have been abandoned.
The article says the theater was in a brick building 30x80 feet. A Zillow page for the address has photos of a more modern, metal building, housing a workshop of some kind, attached to the rear of an older building. The page says the property is off the market. Neither Google nor Bing Maps has a street view of the location, but satellite views show the two distinct buildings at the address, and the one in front (the older one) does appear to be about 30x80.
The October 16, 1946 issue of Film Daily had this brief item:
“Meier Completing the Cinema
“Gerald, Mo.— The Cinema, a 300-seater, is being completed here by Adolph P. Meier.”
The September 29, 1956 issue of Boxoffice has an article about extensive remodeling of the Orpheum at Dubuque being undertaken by new owners the World Theatre Company of Minneapolis. Plans for the $75,000 project had been prepared by Liebenberg & Kaplan. Seeman Kaplan would personally supervise the work.
A report on the destruction by fire of the Paramount Theatre at Andalusia, Alabama appeared in the Thursday, January 11, 1940 issue of Film Daily. It said that the house had been operated by the Martin-Studstill chain. A June 9, 2023 article in The Andalusia Star News reveals that the Paramount Theatre on O'Neal Court opened in 1935 as the New Paramount. There was an earlier Paramount theater nearby.
The March 31, 1928 issue of Motion Picture News had noted that Z. D. Studstill, operator of the Royal Theatre at Andalusia had a new theater under construction in the town. The new house was not yet named, but would open around the middle of April. The 1929 FDY still lists only the Royal at Andalusia, and the town does not appear at all in the 1930 edition, but in 1931 the yearbook lists both the 500 seat Royal and the 300 seat Paramount. The Star News article says that the first Paramount was located in a building now occupied by the Hester Law Firm, which would place it at 25 Court Square.
The fire that destroyed the second Paramount took place on January 5, 1940.
Brantley’s first movie theater was opened in 1928 by Z. D. Studstill of Andalusia. The March 31, 1928 issue of Motion Picture News that told of the event didn’t give the theater’s name, and said that it had 300 seats. However, Brantley is not listed in FDY until 1931, when the 200-seat Royal Theater first appears. I wonder if the Ritz was the Royal reopened under a new name?
This article from the August 22, 2014 Vermillion Plain Talk tells of the closing of the Vermillion Theatre. A leaky roof at the Coyote Twin had damaged on of the twin’s digital projectors, and the Vermillion was closed and its digital projector was moved to the Coyote to keep that house running. Both theaters were owned by Jack March.
Another article, this from the web site of South Dakota Magazine and dated August 13, 2015 says that Jack March sold the theaters that year, and both were taken over by a new organization called the Vermillion Downtown Cultural Association.
The first article said that the Vermillion Theatre had been operating for 43 years, which would have given it an opening year of 1971, but a house called the Vermillion Theatre was being operated here by the March Brothers by 1938, as it was listed that year in the FDY along with the Coyote Theatre. The article also says the house was once called the March Theatre, which might be the case. The second article says that the Vermillion Theatre had been built in 1918, which also seems wrong to me. Locals don’t seem to have kept track of their theater history very well, so this could prove pretty difficult to sort out.
An ad touting the movie “Pershing’s Crusaders” in Moving Picture World of September 17, 1918 lists the Opera House, Vermillion, S. D. as one of the theaters that has shown the film. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory skipped Vermillion, but it’s likely that movies were already being shown then. The 1926 and 1930 FDYs list the City Theatre with 600 seats.
The March Theatre is listed in the 1935 FDY, with 450 seats. Also listed that year is the Coyote Theatre, with 300 seats. The March is listed in the 1940 FDY with 600 seats again, and the Coyote is up to 500 seats. In the 1945 edition, the March is listed as closed, though still with 600 seats, and the Coyote is gone, the Co-Ed being listed instead with 492 seats. In 1950, the Co-Ed has 500 seats and the March is listed with only 350.
I’m still trying to puzzle out Vermillion’s rather confused theatrical history, but I’m not sure that this was the only house in Vermillion to be called the March Theatre. I think that at some point the name might have been moved to the house now called the Vermillion Theatre. A 2014 article about the closing of the Vermillion Theatre says that the Vermillion was once called the March Theatre. This makes me wonder if the name March wasn’t moved to the building at 4 W. Main Street when the original March was closed. It would account for the drastic reduction in seating capacity.
Another possible, and even likely, name for this house is provided by the April 1, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World: “Beresford, S. D.-O. J. Dyvig of Harrisburg has purchased the Empress theater from Julius Johannsen.” That reference couldn’t have been to the Empress (later the Vogue) at 109 N. Third Street, as that location was still occupied by a clothing store on the 1917 Sanborn map
Whatever name, if any, this theater had in 1914-15, there’s a decent chance that by 1916 it was the first location of the Empress. O. J. Dyvig was still operating the Empress in 1918, though, wherever it was by then, as he and the house are mentioned in the May 18 MPW that year.
Here is evidence that the Empress operated at another location before moving to this address. It’s an item from the April 1, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World: “Beresford, S. D.-O. J. Dyvig of Harrisburg has purchased the Empress theater from Julius Johannsen.” As this address was still occupied by a clothing store in 1917, the Empress of 1916 must have been elsewhere.
I’ve been unable to discover when the house at 109 N. Third opened, but the February 7, 1966 issue of Boxoffice said that the Vogue would reopen in the latter part of the month when it’s owner, Alex Sorenson, returned from Arizona. If nothing interfered with Mr. Sorenson’s plans, the Vogue was still operating in 1966.
Although I’ve found a few references to the Steinberg Theatre Company, and several to the Steinberg Theatre in Webster, Massachusetts, I haven’t found a single reference to a Steinberg Theatre in Worcester in any trade journals from the 1910s or 1920s.
The September 3, 1915 issue of Variety had this item about the Steinberg Theatre Company: “The Steinberg theatre (seating about 1,000), at Webster. Mass., controlled by the Steinberg Theatre Co., opens about the middle of September with ‘Twin Beds.’ Bookings via the Aarons' New York offices. The Steinberg Co. has also taken over the Auditorium, Concord, Mass., and Athol theatre, Athol, Mass., playing all attractions.”
Items in The American Contractor of July 1, 1916 said that architect E. L. Hunt of Torrington, Connecticut, was preparing plans for alterations to a theater at Webster for the Steinberg Theatre Company. A Webster and Dudley history page at Facebook says that the Steinberg Theatre was a 1915 addition to a 1912 office and retail building called the Larcher-Branch Building. I’ve been unable to discover if Hunt was the architect for the 1915 project or not.
The page also says the State Theater was closed for about a year in 1954 before being reopened with CinemaScope, and then adds quite ambiguously that “…the Theatre was closed in 1967 after being empty for years.” The Larcher-Branch Building is still standing, but has no theater in it.
A November 25, 2023 article in the Hannibal Courier Post lists five movie theaters operating in Hannibal in 1912. The Star is the only one on that list currently listed at Cinema Treasures. The others were the Gem Theatre, 1204 Broadway; the Majestic Theatre, 217 Broadway; the Park Theatre, 119-123 N. Main; and the Rex Theatre, 111-113 N. Main. The Star and the Gem were also listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but the other three had closed by then, and of the five only the Star survived the silent era.
A December 15, 2016 article in the Argus Leader newspaper reveals that the Time Theatre closed in May, 1951 when the Minnesota Amusement Co. lost its lease on the building. The lease then went to a Mrs. Cletus Nolte, who operated a millinery shop in the building until it was destroyed by the fire of December 28, 1954. Only the ground floor of the building was rebuilt, and that was demolished following the collapse of the adjacent building in 2016.
The article also says that the Olympia was remodeled and reopened under new management as the Royal Theatre in 1925, and that the Time Theater was in operation by 1937.
A notice that C. [sic] D. Adams planned to open a moving picture Theater in the Greeley Block on South Phillips Avenue was published in the May 22, 1909 issue of Moving Picture World. The Olympia was erroneously listed as the Olympic in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
It’s possible the Florence ended up in the Opera House building, which sources I’ve seen indicate dated to 1891 or earlier. A 1915 building inspection listed the Opera House as being in poor condition, while the Florence was listed as very good, which might be expected if the building was nearly new.
The description of this house is inaccurate, but both the theater name and the building have a complex early history. A movie house called The Nickelodeon opened at 300 N. Water Street in 1906, and a house called the Crystal Theatre was operating in Decatur as early as July, 1908, and it was probably next door to The Nickelodeon, which appears to be in the same building. The 1908 Sanborn map shows two adjacent storefronts labeled “Electric Theatre” at 302 and 306 N. Water (302 is on the corner, so there is no 300 on the map.)
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists the Crystal without an address, but also lists a house called the Corner Theatre at 300 N. Water Street. The 1915 Sanborn map still shows the two adjacent storefronts now labeled “Motion Picture Theater”, and it still numbers them 302 and 306 Water Street.
One source says The Nickelodeon became the Colonial Theatre. The Crystal was called the Nasawan Theatre for a while before reverting to the Crystal name in 1911. It seems likely that the Crystal expanded at some point to absorb the former space of The Nickelodeon (the original space was far too small to accommodate almost 500 seats.) Unfortunately Sanborn maps of the location when the Crystal would have been alone and enlarged are not available.
In 1922 the Crystal came under the control of a Mr. and Mrs. C. E. Morrow, who opened the Morrow (or Morrow’s) Theatre, a different house, at 312 N. Water Street in 1929. The Morrow Theatre became the Bond Theatre in 1943. The Crystal was listed in the FDY through 1935 but was gone in 1936. I’ve been unable to find any theater in Decatur that was called the M & M.
The June 11, 1910 issue of American Contractor said that the theater being built at Holland, Michigan for Tim Slagh and A. Smith had been designed by Fred Jonkman. Jonkman must have been a local architect, as the only other reference to him I’ve been able to find is a 1930 newspaper article noting that he was a member of the Holland Common Council.
The final closure of the Ritz Theatre was the consequence of a late 1937 fire, reported in the December 22 issue of The Decatur Daily Review. The Crescent had been closed following an earlier fire in March, 1929. The house was reopened by an F. M. Mertz (Fred, perhaps?) in March, 1934, and sold to the Ritz Theater Company the following year. The December, 1935 remodeling had cost Ritz $8,000, a not inconsiderable sum for a modest, neighborhood house in a provincial city during the depression.
The former Strand Theatre reopened as the State Theatre on December 24, 1928 following a $100,000 remodeling job, according to an item in The Billboard of January 12, 1929. The Southwestern New York Theater Corporation had bought the house the previous summer and closed it for several months for remodeling. The company had also bought the American Theatre at East Liverpool and two houses at Steubenville.
The only two theaters listed in a 1916 Elk Point business directory are the Opera House and the Florence. I’d be inclined to think this was the Florence, if not for the fact that the FDY listings for that house, which begin in 1926, give it a capacity of 350, and this building seems too small to accommodate that many seats. Still, Florence is the only theater name other than Opera House I’ve been able to confirm in Elk Point during this era. Maybe the FDY simply got the capacity wrong, or perhaps the Florence moved to a larger building between 1917 and 1926.
This building could have been the location of one of the three theaters listed at Elk Point in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. They were called the Gem, the Lyric and the Yale. The Gem and Yale were gone by early 1915, but the Lyric was at least still standing, though closed, and had been joined by the Florence Theatre, which of course might have been a new name for one of the other two houses.
The Florence Theatre is one of three houses listed at Elk Point in the public building inspection section of the annual report of the Food & Drug Commissioner of South Dakota for the year ending June 30, 1915. The other two were the Opera House and a Lyric Theatre, the latter listed as closed. The Opera House and Florence were also listed in a 1916 business directory, but the Lyric was not. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory listed three houses at Elk Point: the Gem, the Lyric and the Yale. The Opera House was converted for movies in late 1915, according to items in issues of Moving Picture World in November and December that year. It’s possible that Florence was a new name for either the Gem or the Yale.
In 1915 the Florence was operated by a Mr. Charles Bovee, who was still in charge in 1930 when the February 17 issue of the Sioux City Journal reported that part of the floor of the lobby of the Florence Theatre in Elk Point had collapsed while a crowd was waiting for the second show to begin. Ten people were injured. This article also notes that the theater had been named for Bovee’s daughter Florence, who witnessed the event but was not injured.
The December 25, 1926 issue of Exhibitors Herald had a list of theater managers who had participated in a survey determining the top moneymaking movies of 1926. C. L. Guillaume of the State Theatre, Elk Point, was among them.
Elk Grove High School’s 1961 yearbook said that a free forenoon show presented by the State Theatre had been among that year’s Homecoming events (homecoming being football-related, the event would have been held in the fall of 1960.)
The Texas Theatre operated in two different buildings in the late 1920s. The December 27, 1927 issue of Motion Picture Herald said that: “Mr. and Mrs. Walker opened their new Texas Theater at Grand Prairie Nov. 14th.” The Texas Theater that J. S. Walker was operating in 1926 when he was submitting capsule movie reviews to the trade journals was at a different location.
The May 7, 1927 issue of Moving Picture World had this notice: “GRAND PRAIRIE, TEXAS.— J. S. Walker, manager of Texas Theatre, has purchased two lots on Main street as site for proposed new moving picture theatre.” Just over seven months later Mr. Walker opened the new Texas Theatre. Walker had been leasing the original location, a former garage, at least as early as December, 1925, according to a lawsuit over the property (to which Mr. Walker was not a party.) I’ve been unable to discover the address of the original Texas Theatre.
The August 20, 1938 issue of Motion Picture Herald listed the Palace at Midland as one of 34 houses closed that summer by R. E. Griffith Theatres.
The Idle Hour makes its first appearance in Film Daily Year Book in 1927. The 1926 edition listed only the 250-seat Rialto.
The April 14, 1928 issue of Motion Picture News said that [t]he Palace theatre at Midland, Texas, is installing a new $7,500 organ.“ The Palace had also been mentioned in the "Dallas” column of the April 7 MPN: “Films of an oil tank fire ‘shot’ by W. H. Williams, manager of the Palace and Idle Hour theatres at Midland, are being shown in a Paramount News reel.”
The Gerald was apparently not closed long in 1957. An ad in the May 1, 1959 issue of The Gerald Journal said the house was soon to celebrate its second anniversary.
An article posted on the web site of the Gasconade County Republican on February 4, 2021 said that “[t]he Gerald Community Theatre group has been working to raise funds to purchase the old theater at 353 S. Main Street built in 1932.” I don’t know if this location is the first Gerald Theatre or the second, and I’ve been unable to find the theatre group’s Facebook page, so the project might have been abandoned.
The article says the theater was in a brick building 30x80 feet. A Zillow page for the address has photos of a more modern, metal building, housing a workshop of some kind, attached to the rear of an older building. The page says the property is off the market. Neither Google nor Bing Maps has a street view of the location, but satellite views show the two distinct buildings at the address, and the one in front (the older one) does appear to be about 30x80.
The October 16, 1946 issue of Film Daily had this brief item:
“Meier Completing the Cinema
“Gerald, Mo.— The Cinema, a 300-seater, is being completed here by Adolph P. Meier.”
The September 29, 1956 issue of Boxoffice has an article about extensive remodeling of the Orpheum at Dubuque being undertaken by new owners the World Theatre Company of Minneapolis. Plans for the $75,000 project had been prepared by Liebenberg & Kaplan. Seeman Kaplan would personally supervise the work.
A report on the destruction by fire of the Paramount Theatre at Andalusia, Alabama appeared in the Thursday, January 11, 1940 issue of Film Daily. It said that the house had been operated by the Martin-Studstill chain. A June 9, 2023 article in The Andalusia Star News reveals that the Paramount Theatre on O'Neal Court opened in 1935 as the New Paramount. There was an earlier Paramount theater nearby.
The March 31, 1928 issue of Motion Picture News had noted that Z. D. Studstill, operator of the Royal Theatre at Andalusia had a new theater under construction in the town. The new house was not yet named, but would open around the middle of April. The 1929 FDY still lists only the Royal at Andalusia, and the town does not appear at all in the 1930 edition, but in 1931 the yearbook lists both the 500 seat Royal and the 300 seat Paramount. The Star News article says that the first Paramount was located in a building now occupied by the Hester Law Firm, which would place it at 25 Court Square.
The fire that destroyed the second Paramount took place on January 5, 1940.
Brantley’s first movie theater was opened in 1928 by Z. D. Studstill of Andalusia. The March 31, 1928 issue of Motion Picture News that told of the event didn’t give the theater’s name, and said that it had 300 seats. However, Brantley is not listed in FDY until 1931, when the 200-seat Royal Theater first appears. I wonder if the Ritz was the Royal reopened under a new name?
This article from the August 22, 2014 Vermillion Plain Talk tells of the closing of the Vermillion Theatre. A leaky roof at the Coyote Twin had damaged on of the twin’s digital projectors, and the Vermillion was closed and its digital projector was moved to the Coyote to keep that house running. Both theaters were owned by Jack March.
Another article, this from the web site of South Dakota Magazine and dated August 13, 2015 says that Jack March sold the theaters that year, and both were taken over by a new organization called the Vermillion Downtown Cultural Association.
The first article said that the Vermillion Theatre had been operating for 43 years, which would have given it an opening year of 1971, but a house called the Vermillion Theatre was being operated here by the March Brothers by 1938, as it was listed that year in the FDY along with the Coyote Theatre. The article also says the house was once called the March Theatre, which might be the case. The second article says that the Vermillion Theatre had been built in 1918, which also seems wrong to me. Locals don’t seem to have kept track of their theater history very well, so this could prove pretty difficult to sort out.
An ad touting the movie “Pershing’s Crusaders” in Moving Picture World of September 17, 1918 lists the Opera House, Vermillion, S. D. as one of the theaters that has shown the film. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory skipped Vermillion, but it’s likely that movies were already being shown then. The 1926 and 1930 FDYs list the City Theatre with 600 seats.
The March Theatre is listed in the 1935 FDY, with 450 seats. Also listed that year is the Coyote Theatre, with 300 seats. The March is listed in the 1940 FDY with 600 seats again, and the Coyote is up to 500 seats. In the 1945 edition, the March is listed as closed, though still with 600 seats, and the Coyote is gone, the Co-Ed being listed instead with 492 seats. In 1950, the Co-Ed has 500 seats and the March is listed with only 350.
I’m still trying to puzzle out Vermillion’s rather confused theatrical history, but I’m not sure that this was the only house in Vermillion to be called the March Theatre. I think that at some point the name might have been moved to the house now called the Vermillion Theatre. A 2014 article about the closing of the Vermillion Theatre says that the Vermillion was once called the March Theatre. This makes me wonder if the name March wasn’t moved to the building at 4 W. Main Street when the original March was closed. It would account for the drastic reduction in seating capacity.
Another possible, and even likely, name for this house is provided by the April 1, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World: “Beresford, S. D.-O. J. Dyvig of Harrisburg has purchased the Empress theater from Julius Johannsen.” That reference couldn’t have been to the Empress (later the Vogue) at 109 N. Third Street, as that location was still occupied by a clothing store on the 1917 Sanborn map
Whatever name, if any, this theater had in 1914-15, there’s a decent chance that by 1916 it was the first location of the Empress. O. J. Dyvig was still operating the Empress in 1918, though, wherever it was by then, as he and the house are mentioned in the May 18 MPW that year.
Here is evidence that the Empress operated at another location before moving to this address. It’s an item from the April 1, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World: “Beresford, S. D.-O. J. Dyvig of Harrisburg has purchased the Empress theater from Julius Johannsen.” As this address was still occupied by a clothing store in 1917, the Empress of 1916 must have been elsewhere.
I’ve been unable to discover when the house at 109 N. Third opened, but the February 7, 1966 issue of Boxoffice said that the Vogue would reopen in the latter part of the month when it’s owner, Alex Sorenson, returned from Arizona. If nothing interfered with Mr. Sorenson’s plans, the Vogue was still operating in 1966.
Although I’ve found a few references to the Steinberg Theatre Company, and several to the Steinberg Theatre in Webster, Massachusetts, I haven’t found a single reference to a Steinberg Theatre in Worcester in any trade journals from the 1910s or 1920s.
The September 3, 1915 issue of Variety had this item about the Steinberg Theatre Company: “The Steinberg theatre (seating about 1,000), at Webster. Mass., controlled by the Steinberg Theatre Co., opens about the middle of September with ‘Twin Beds.’ Bookings via the Aarons' New York offices. The Steinberg Co. has also taken over the Auditorium, Concord, Mass., and Athol theatre, Athol, Mass., playing all attractions.”
Items in The American Contractor of July 1, 1916 said that architect E. L. Hunt of Torrington, Connecticut, was preparing plans for alterations to a theater at Webster for the Steinberg Theatre Company. A Webster and Dudley history page at Facebook says that the Steinberg Theatre was a 1915 addition to a 1912 office and retail building called the Larcher-Branch Building. I’ve been unable to discover if Hunt was the architect for the 1915 project or not.
The page also says the State Theater was closed for about a year in 1954 before being reopened with CinemaScope, and then adds quite ambiguously that “…the Theatre was closed in 1967 after being empty for years.” The Larcher-Branch Building is still standing, but has no theater in it.
A November 25, 2023 article in the Hannibal Courier Post lists five movie theaters operating in Hannibal in 1912. The Star is the only one on that list currently listed at Cinema Treasures. The others were the Gem Theatre, 1204 Broadway; the Majestic Theatre, 217 Broadway; the Park Theatre, 119-123 N. Main; and the Rex Theatre, 111-113 N. Main. The Star and the Gem were also listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but the other three had closed by then, and of the five only the Star survived the silent era.
A December 15, 2016 article in the Argus Leader newspaper reveals that the Time Theatre closed in May, 1951 when the Minnesota Amusement Co. lost its lease on the building. The lease then went to a Mrs. Cletus Nolte, who operated a millinery shop in the building until it was destroyed by the fire of December 28, 1954. Only the ground floor of the building was rebuilt, and that was demolished following the collapse of the adjacent building in 2016.
The article also says that the Olympia was remodeled and reopened under new management as the Royal Theatre in 1925, and that the Time Theater was in operation by 1937.
A notice that C. [sic] D. Adams planned to open a moving picture Theater in the Greeley Block on South Phillips Avenue was published in the May 22, 1909 issue of Moving Picture World. The Olympia was erroneously listed as the Olympic in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.