In 1920, the Century Theatre was taken over by Harry Crandall’s chain and subsequently remodeled, as noted in the September 20 issue of Moving Picture World:
“Crandall Enterprises Acquire New Theatre,
“A twelfth theatre has been added to the Crandall chain with the acquisition recently of the Century Theatre in Petersburg. Va. The deal was put through by Joseph P. Morgan, general manager of the Crandall enterprises.
“The Century is a modern house, having a seating capacity of approximately 1,200. Before being opened as a link in the Crandall chain, however, it will be remodeled under the supervision of Reginald Wycliffe Geare, the architect who designed all of Mr. Crandall’s later houses, among them the Metropolitan, Knickerbocker and York in this city and the Strand in Martinsburg, W. Va.”
The reference to the Strand in Martinsburg might have been in error, someone mistaking it for the Strand in Cumberland Maryland, which Geare definitely designed, but I’ve been unable to find any confirmation that he had any connection to the Martinsburg Strand, though Harry Crandall did eventually come to control that house.
An item in the September 11, 1920 issue of Moving Picture World revealed that the Strand Theatre in Altoona had been designed by Philadelphia architect H. C. Hodgens, who the Silverman Brothers, owners of the Strand, had just hired to design another theater for them on a site that had not yet been chosen. As far as I’ve been able to determine, the new theater project never came to fruition.
Here is a brief article in the future tense about the opening of the Criterion from Moving Picture World of September 20, 1920, which was about two weeks late. It also got the opening date wrong:
“Criterion Opens September 6.
“Shea’s new Criterion Theatre, formerly the old Star, which has been completely remodeled at a cost in excess of $65,000, will open its doors on Monday evening, September 6, under the general supervision of Harold B. Franklin, managing director of Shea’s Hippodrome. The opening attraction will be ‘Something to Think About,’ which will be the first run anywhere of this picture.
“The Shea Amusement Company and the Famous Players-Artcraft Company are associated in the operation of the house and the super-productions of this company will be shown almost exclusively. The runs will be for two week periods. A classy advance advertising campaign is being placed in the local papers by Mr. Franklin. There will be a ten piece orchestra under the direction of Harry Wallace, president of the Buffalo Musicians' Association.
“The house has been practically rebuilt during the summer and when opened will present a metropolitan appearance. One of the features will be a singing sextette. Famous soloists will appear in connection with the programs.”
An article about the Rivoli appeared in the September 4, 1920 issue of Moving Picture World:
“RIVOlI Theatre Is Opened.
“BUFFALO’S newest neighborhood house, the Rivoli, owned by Joseph Kozanowski and managed by Harry T. Dixon, opened its doors on Sunday, August 22. The theatre, which is on Broadway, just beyond Fillmore, cost $250,000 and has a seating capacity of 1,700 on the orchestra floor, balcony and gallery. Joseph Geigand, Buffalo architect, designed the building. The opening attraction was ‘For the Soul of Rafael,’ starring Clara Kimball Young. Manager Dixon was showered with congratulations on the opening day.
“The Rivoli is built of red tapestry brick with beautiful terra cotta trimmings. The seats are unusually large and are upholstered in leather. The woodwork through the house is of mahogany finish. Two Simplex machines are used for projection. The stage setting is elaborate. A ten-piece orchestra accompanies the program. Seventeen ushers, girls on the orchestra floor and boys in the balcony, are used.
“The manager’s office opens from an attractive foyer on the second floor, where the rest rooms are also located. The interior decorations present a most attractive appearance, the lighting fixtures being unusually good. Prices will be 11, 22 and 28 cents on week days and 11, 25 and 33 cents on Sunday.
“This house is in the heart of the great Buffalo Polish district, with a population of close to 150,000 persons. Mr. Dixon for the present is confining his advertising to the two Polish newspapers in the district, but eventually will spread it in the big dallies. Buffalo may well be proud of the Rivoli, which will compare favorably with any neighborhood house in the state.”
Note the correct opening date of August 22, 1920. Also of note, the revelation that the theater’s management advertised only in the city’s Polish language newspapers during the early days of its operation.
The Rialto was on the site of an earlier house called the Coliseum Theatre, which was either remodeled to become the Rialto in 1919 or completely replaced in 1920, or perhaps both. Here is an item from the July 16, 1919 issue of Moving Picture World:“The old Coliseum Theatre, Mount Oliver, formerly owned by Fred Herrington and which was recently taken over by the Weiland interests, will be renamed when the house is reopened, the name chosen being the Rialto. Extensive improvements are being made, including a new front, repainting and redecorating, etc.”
Only a bit over a year later, the September 18, 1920 issue of MPW had this item which seems to imply that the Rialto was of new construction: “The new Rialto Theatre on Mt. Oliver, Pittsburgh, another Weiland house, is rapidly nearing completion and present indications are that it will be ready for opening about the first of October. The organ, one of the finest in Pittsburgh, is now being installed.”
An interesting fragment about the Coliseum Theatre appears in an article about Fred J. Harrington in the April 16, 1927 issue of Moving Picture World: “Fred was an exhibitor when the industry was young, having opened the Fairyland Theatre in the South Hills in 1905, this being the first theatre in that district. In 1909 he transferred his activities to Mount Oliver, where he built the Coliseum Theatre on the spot where A. A. Weiland’s Rialto Theatre now stands, he having sold the house to Mr. Weiland in 1919.”
The new Rialto was mentioned in the September 18, 1920 MPW: “The new Rialto Theatre on Mt. Oliver, Pittsburgh, another Weiland house, is rapidly nearing completion and present indications are that it will be ready for opening about the first of October. The organ, one of the finest in Pittsburgh, is now being installed.”
I think the Rialto in this item must be the Rialto we have listed at 220 Brownsville Road, Pittsburgh. If so, the Coliseum must have had the same or nearly the same address. Trade journals from the period mention some other theater names in Mount Olive. So far I’ve come across houses called the State, the Mirror and the Edyth, but no details about any of them.
A comment on a Anthon community page at Facebook says that the Star Theatre was next door to the pharmacy. Mills Pharmacy (now closed itself) was at 120 E. Main Street. The building in one direction is too small to have held the theater, so it must have been on the now-vacant lot the other side of the pharmacy. The address of that lot is 118 E. Main Street.
The Lyric is not one of the three theaters listed at Sheldon in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The Scenic and Wonderland are listed, with their locations, but the third house is called the Bijou, with no location given. I wonder if this was an aka for the Lyric? A 630-seat Lyric Theatre is listed in the 1926 FDY, along with a house called the Gem, for which no details are provided.
Two more mystery names in Sheldon are the Strand, mentioned in the August 17, 1918 Moving Picture World, and a house called the Star Theatre, mentioned in Variety of January 6, 1937. Strand might also have been an aka for the Lyric.
The odd 1937 Variety item called the Star “newly constructed” but also said it had just been reopened. An ambiguously worded item in MPW of June 24, 1916, suggests that there was then a house called the Harvey Theatre in either Sheldon or in Anthon, Iowa.
The Wonderland Theatre of Sheldon, Iowa, is mentioned in the July 11, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World:
“Sheldon, Ia.-The managers of Wonderland have had crowded houses all the week, due to their billing the town that a former well-known resident was a leading character in the ‘Blue Bonnet.’ Sure enough, the audience recognized and cheered as Mrs. E. M. Stringfield was recognized as the kind-hearted mother in this beautiful picture story of the good work of the Salvation Army.”
The Liberty was one of three houses listed at Franklin in the 1926 FDY, and the only one listed in all capital letters, indicating that it ran first run movies (the Lincoln and the Victor were the names of the other two.) A Liberty Theatre, but possibly not the same one, was in operation at Franklin by 1922, when manager M. K. Harris had a capsule movie review published in the October 7 issue of Moving Picture World. The only house listed at Franklin in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Crystal. A May, 1913 Sanborn Map shows the Crystal Theatre on Main Street, on the east side of the town square. One local source says the Crystal was gone by 1918, and its building was demolished long ago.
This page about buildings on the west side of Franklin’s square (College Street) indicates that the Liberty Theatre occupied two different locations over the years. The building the first Liberty occupied was built in 1908 on the west side of the square, and later became known as the Hughes Hardware Building. The year the theater opened is not mentioned, but no motion picture theaters appear on the west side of the square on the May 1913 Sanborn map of Franklin, so it had to have been after that month. This house later became the Victor Theater, which had closed by 1933. As the Liberty and Victor are both listed in 1926, the second Liberty had to have been opened prior to that year. The first Liberty/Victor Theatre building was destroyed by a fire in 1988.
The June 25, 1949 Boxoffice reported that G. C. and T. H. Jones, owners of the Liberty Theatre, had a new drive-in theater under construction on Russellville Road near Franklin. An advertisement for a New Year’s Eve show at the Liberty Theatre appeared in the December 23, 1955 issue of The Franklin Favorite.
As Nubieber was only founded in 1931, the 1971 Boxoffice claim that the theater originally opened in 1927 seems unlikely. The earlier Motion Picture Herald report of a 1932 construction date is probably correct.
The Key Theatre is mentioned in the May 9, 1956 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor, in an item saying that J. R. McCloud had just acquired the house from Robert Mullis. Mr. Mullis later got the theater back, as the April 24, 1966 issue of Boxoffice said he had the Key, as well as drive-in theaters in High Springs and Lake City.
A history of Medicine Lodge’s Lincoln Library says that a fund raiser for construction of their original building was held in 1911 at the Pastime Theater, 106 S. Main Street. The house was then owned by one Oscar T. Thom.
However, this page from the Kansas Historical Society gives the Pastime’s address as 110 S. Main and its construction date as 1927. The building there actually looks older, so I suspect it might simply have been remodeled for theatrical use in 1927. The Pastime’s original building, at 106, has been demolished, but the 1927 location is still standing, though currently appears to be vacant, and has been significantly altered.
A Facebook page titled Pastime Inc, Indoor Theatre Restoration Project has existed since 2014, but has not been updated since August, 2019, so I suspect the project is moribund. Most of the posts concern fundraising activities, but a few are about the theater, including scans of a couple of monthly programs published in the 1950s. One post says the house closed in 1982. The last owner was named Owen “Frosty” Sill.
This web page about Sanborn’s buildings has a paragraph about the Paradox/Harker Block, and says that the Princess closed in the late 1940s. They could be mistaken, of course, but perhaps not coincidentally, the FDY for 1946 lists the Princess with 274 seats and by 1947 it was listed with only 200. Could it be that the theater was relocated sometime in 1946?
The statewide “Moving Picture Theatres” section of Polk’s 1918 Iowa directory list the American, Empress and Happy Hour theaters at Cherokee, though the local listings for Cherokee itself don’t include the American but do include the Grand Opera House. In the Cherokee listings, a J. T. Cummings is listed as proprietor of the Empress, and an M. G. Grone (probably a misspelling of Groen) as manager of the Happy Hour. Mr. Ferris was listed as proprietor of the Grand Opera House. Unfortunately no addresses were provided for any of the theaters. A Mrs. Allie Groen was the other party in the 1920 court case involving Mr. Ferris which I noted in my earlier comment. A March 24, 1917 Moving Picture World item said that an F. W. Groen had bought the Happy Hour Theatre from A. G. Ferris.
A ca. 1930 photo of the Empress is found on this page at Flickr, posted by user Historic Cherokee, Iowa. The caption says that the Empress closed on June 1, 1916 and reopened two weeks later as the Happy Hour. I haven’t been able to discover when the name Empress was restored to the house, but it was certainly by 1926, as the Empress is one of three houses listed at Cherokee in the FDY that year, along with the American and the Rialto (aka Grand Theatre/Grand Opera House.)
If this house was indeed the Wonderland (which seems likely) then it had an earlier (and rather odd) name. The May 1, 1909 Moving Picture World said: “Cherokee, Ia.-Henry Ling has purchased the Cynic Theater here, and has taken possession.” The April 17, 1909 issue of The Lemars Globe Post provided more details:
“Henry Ling, former proprietor of the Family theatre in this City, has purchased the Cynic theatre at Cherokee and takes possession of the same Monday next. The place will be named Wonderland and will be closed until the first of May, and in the interim Ling will renovate and remodel the building making it over to suit his ideas of a modern moving picture establishment. He will also install the latest machinery and says he will have an establishment there second to none of its kind in this section of the country. The Lings have made many friends here who wish them prosperity and happiness in their new home.”
This item, from the July 22, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World mentions both the Empress and the Happy Hour/American Theatre:
“Exhibitor Ferris Prospers
“Cherokee, Ia.-A. G. Ferris of Cherokee, Iowa, recently bought the Empress theater, which was three doors from his former house, the Happy Hour. He sold the Happy Hour to Sisk & James, with the understanding that the name was to be changed; that theater is now the American. Mr. Ferris took the name Happy Hour with him to his new theater, where he is continuing his former policy as to pictures. He is refurnishing the Grand, and will open it in the fall with spoken drama and feature pictures. Another instance of Mr. Ferris’s enterprise is the fact that he will present the ‘Birth of a Nation’ during July at the Grand for four days-as long a run as the picture had in the largest cities of the immediate territory.”
A 1920 court case involving Mr. Ferris and the Happy Hour and Grand gives the address of the Happy Hour as 222 Main Street, so it seems he did take the name with him, but as the only theaters listed at Cherokee in the 1926 FDY are the American, the Rialto and the Empress, this house must have gotten its earlier name back.
The Happy Hour Theater at Cherokee, Iowa was mentioned in the March 8, 1913 issue of The Billboard. A vaudeville duo named Helistrom (sp?) and Mybre were appearing there.
The NRHP form I mentioned in the comment above is not linked on this page, but in an earlier comment I made on the Palace Theatre page. It’s getting late and my brain has already gone to sleep.
The September 12, 1908 Moving Picture World has two items datelined Nevada, Iowa, one of which might be about this theater. One of them also has what is apparently another variant misspelling of the old street name.
The first item says “[t]he Electric Theater is the name of a new amusement house which has been opened for the public.” The second item, which appears a short way down the same page, says “Fred H. Klove has fitted up the Briggs room, on Lyon Street, and has opened a moving picture and vaudeville house. Both of these items could be about the same theater, as the trade journals were prone to doing that sort of thing in their early days. Also, and October 30 item in the same journal says that Klove had sold his theater to ”…Messrs. Coates and Ball….“ so he didn’t operate it for very long.
The reference to “Briggs room” in the one item is interesting, as this theater in the J. Ray Block was apparently next door to the Briggs Block, which was (and is) at 1102-1104 6th Street and, according to its description in a downtown Nevada walking tour (PDF here) once housed “…a newsstand with art sales….” It could be that the Briggs family, who were quite prominent in town, had bought the Ray Block prior to 1908, or the reference in MPW might have simply been a mistake.
Incidentally, the NRHP form does have a mistake, as it says that the 1928 Circle was the third movie theater opened in Nevada. The well documented Palace Theatre of 1913, with the evidence of two even earlier theaters appearing on the Sanborn Maps, proves that he Circle was at least the fourth movie house opened in Nevada.
The NRHP documentation form for the historic Nevada Central Business District (PDF here) says that the Palace Theatre opened in the corner space of the Alderman brothers' new building on December 20, 1913.
The house was originally leased to A. H. Donhowe of Story City. Warner Grossman took over operation in 1921.
A North Manchester history web page has this information about the Marshall Theatre: “…Clarence Helvey and Earl Scott announced the opening of the Marshall Theater here [126 E. Main St.] on September 2, 1934. Wayne Garman, who owned the Ritz Theater, later acquired the Marshall Theater – possibly when a "new management” ad was run on March 4, 1935. The Marshall Theater remained here for the rest of our study period, and actually outlasted the Ritz."
This fragment from a North Manchester history web page gives the address of the Ritz, and its earlier name: “There was a theater at this location [128 E. Main St.] called the Gem theater, owned by C.M. Walters. In October 1931, Mr. Walters reopened the theater and changed the name to the Ritz. In 1933, Wayne Garman took over ownership of the Ritz Theater.”
In 1920, the Century Theatre was taken over by Harry Crandall’s chain and subsequently remodeled, as noted in the September 20 issue of Moving Picture World:
The reference to the Strand in Martinsburg might have been in error, someone mistaking it for the Strand in Cumberland Maryland, which Geare definitely designed, but I’ve been unable to find any confirmation that he had any connection to the Martinsburg Strand, though Harry Crandall did eventually come to control that house.An item in the September 11, 1920 issue of Moving Picture World revealed that the Strand Theatre in Altoona had been designed by Philadelphia architect H. C. Hodgens, who the Silverman Brothers, owners of the Strand, had just hired to design another theater for them on a site that had not yet been chosen. As far as I’ve been able to determine, the new theater project never came to fruition.
Here is a brief article in the future tense about the opening of the Criterion from Moving Picture World of September 20, 1920, which was about two weeks late. It also got the opening date wrong:
An article about the Rivoli appeared in the September 4, 1920 issue of Moving Picture World:
Note the correct opening date of August 22, 1920. Also of note, the revelation that the theater’s management advertised only in the city’s Polish language newspapers during the early days of its operation.The Rialto was on the site of an earlier house called the Coliseum Theatre, which was either remodeled to become the Rialto in 1919 or completely replaced in 1920, or perhaps both. Here is an item from the July 16, 1919 issue of Moving Picture World:“The old Coliseum Theatre, Mount Oliver, formerly owned by Fred Herrington and which was recently taken over by the Weiland interests, will be renamed when the house is reopened, the name chosen being the Rialto. Extensive improvements are being made, including a new front, repainting and redecorating, etc.”
Only a bit over a year later, the September 18, 1920 issue of MPW had this item which seems to imply that the Rialto was of new construction: “The new Rialto Theatre on Mt. Oliver, Pittsburgh, another Weiland house, is rapidly nearing completion and present indications are that it will be ready for opening about the first of October. The organ, one of the finest in Pittsburgh, is now being installed.”
An interesting fragment about the Coliseum Theatre appears in an article about Fred J. Harrington in the April 16, 1927 issue of Moving Picture World: “Fred was an exhibitor when the industry was young, having opened the Fairyland Theatre in the South Hills in 1905, this being the first theatre in that district. In 1909 he transferred his activities to Mount Oliver, where he built the Coliseum Theatre on the spot where A. A. Weiland’s Rialto Theatre now stands, he having sold the house to Mr. Weiland in 1919.”
The new Rialto was mentioned in the September 18, 1920 MPW: “The new Rialto Theatre on Mt. Oliver, Pittsburgh, another Weiland house, is rapidly nearing completion and present indications are that it will be ready for opening about the first of October. The organ, one of the finest in Pittsburgh, is now being installed.”
I think the Rialto in this item must be the Rialto we have listed at 220 Brownsville Road, Pittsburgh. If so, the Coliseum must have had the same or nearly the same address. Trade journals from the period mention some other theater names in Mount Olive. So far I’ve come across houses called the State, the Mirror and the Edyth, but no details about any of them.
The Cozy is the only theater listed at Tyndall in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, so odds are that this house was closed by then.
A comment on a Anthon community page at Facebook says that the Star Theatre was next door to the pharmacy. Mills Pharmacy (now closed itself) was at 120 E. Main Street. The building in one direction is too small to have held the theater, so it must have been on the now-vacant lot the other side of the pharmacy. The address of that lot is 118 E. Main Street.
The Lyric is not one of the three theaters listed at Sheldon in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The Scenic and Wonderland are listed, with their locations, but the third house is called the Bijou, with no location given. I wonder if this was an aka for the Lyric? A 630-seat Lyric Theatre is listed in the 1926 FDY, along with a house called the Gem, for which no details are provided.
Two more mystery names in Sheldon are the Strand, mentioned in the August 17, 1918 Moving Picture World, and a house called the Star Theatre, mentioned in Variety of January 6, 1937. Strand might also have been an aka for the Lyric.
The odd 1937 Variety item called the Star “newly constructed” but also said it had just been reopened. An ambiguously worded item in MPW of June 24, 1916, suggests that there was then a house called the Harvey Theatre in either Sheldon or in Anthon, Iowa.
The Wonderland Theatre of Sheldon, Iowa, is mentioned in the July 11, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World:
The Liberty was one of three houses listed at Franklin in the 1926 FDY, and the only one listed in all capital letters, indicating that it ran first run movies (the Lincoln and the Victor were the names of the other two.) A Liberty Theatre, but possibly not the same one, was in operation at Franklin by 1922, when manager M. K. Harris had a capsule movie review published in the October 7 issue of Moving Picture World. The only house listed at Franklin in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Crystal. A May, 1913 Sanborn Map shows the Crystal Theatre on Main Street, on the east side of the town square. One local source says the Crystal was gone by 1918, and its building was demolished long ago.
This page about buildings on the west side of Franklin’s square (College Street) indicates that the Liberty Theatre occupied two different locations over the years. The building the first Liberty occupied was built in 1908 on the west side of the square, and later became known as the Hughes Hardware Building. The year the theater opened is not mentioned, but no motion picture theaters appear on the west side of the square on the May 1913 Sanborn map of Franklin, so it had to have been after that month. This house later became the Victor Theater, which had closed by 1933. As the Liberty and Victor are both listed in 1926, the second Liberty had to have been opened prior to that year. The first Liberty/Victor Theatre building was destroyed by a fire in 1988.
The June 25, 1949 Boxoffice reported that G. C. and T. H. Jones, owners of the Liberty Theatre, had a new drive-in theater under construction on Russellville Road near Franklin. An advertisement for a New Year’s Eve show at the Liberty Theatre appeared in the December 23, 1955 issue of The Franklin Favorite.
As Nubieber was only founded in 1931, the 1971 Boxoffice claim that the theater originally opened in 1927 seems unlikely. The earlier Motion Picture Herald report of a 1932 construction date is probably correct.
The Key Theatre is mentioned in the May 9, 1956 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor, in an item saying that J. R. McCloud had just acquired the house from Robert Mullis. Mr. Mullis later got the theater back, as the April 24, 1966 issue of Boxoffice said he had the Key, as well as drive-in theaters in High Springs and Lake City.
A history of Medicine Lodge’s Lincoln Library says that a fund raiser for construction of their original building was held in 1911 at the Pastime Theater, 106 S. Main Street. The house was then owned by one Oscar T. Thom.
However, this page from the Kansas Historical Society gives the Pastime’s address as 110 S. Main and its construction date as 1927. The building there actually looks older, so I suspect it might simply have been remodeled for theatrical use in 1927. The Pastime’s original building, at 106, has been demolished, but the 1927 location is still standing, though currently appears to be vacant, and has been significantly altered.
A Facebook page titled Pastime Inc, Indoor Theatre Restoration Project has existed since 2014, but has not been updated since August, 2019, so I suspect the project is moribund. Most of the posts concern fundraising activities, but a few are about the theater, including scans of a couple of monthly programs published in the 1950s. One post says the house closed in 1982. The last owner was named Owen “Frosty” Sill.
This web page about Sanborn’s buildings has a paragraph about the Paradox/Harker Block, and says that the Princess closed in the late 1940s. They could be mistaken, of course, but perhaps not coincidentally, the FDY for 1946 lists the Princess with 274 seats and by 1947 it was listed with only 200. Could it be that the theater was relocated sometime in 1946?
The statewide “Moving Picture Theatres” section of Polk’s 1918 Iowa directory list the American, Empress and Happy Hour theaters at Cherokee, though the local listings for Cherokee itself don’t include the American but do include the Grand Opera House. In the Cherokee listings, a J. T. Cummings is listed as proprietor of the Empress, and an M. G. Grone (probably a misspelling of Groen) as manager of the Happy Hour. Mr. Ferris was listed as proprietor of the Grand Opera House. Unfortunately no addresses were provided for any of the theaters. A Mrs. Allie Groen was the other party in the 1920 court case involving Mr. Ferris which I noted in my earlier comment. A March 24, 1917 Moving Picture World item said that an F. W. Groen had bought the Happy Hour Theatre from A. G. Ferris.
A ca. 1930 photo of the Empress is found on this page at Flickr, posted by user Historic Cherokee, Iowa. The caption says that the Empress closed on June 1, 1916 and reopened two weeks later as the Happy Hour. I haven’t been able to discover when the name Empress was restored to the house, but it was certainly by 1926, as the Empress is one of three houses listed at Cherokee in the FDY that year, along with the American and the Rialto (aka Grand Theatre/Grand Opera House.)
The paper that mentioned Mr. Ling’s Family Theatre “…in this city….” was from Lemars (or Le Mars) so that’s where the theater must have been.
If this house was indeed the Wonderland (which seems likely) then it had an earlier (and rather odd) name. The May 1, 1909 Moving Picture World said: “Cherokee, Ia.-Henry Ling has purchased the Cynic Theater here, and has taken possession.” The April 17, 1909 issue of The Lemars Globe Post provided more details:
This item, from the July 22, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World mentions both the Empress and the Happy Hour/American Theatre:
A 1920 court case involving Mr. Ferris and the Happy Hour and Grand gives the address of the Happy Hour as 222 Main Street, so it seems he did take the name with him, but as the only theaters listed at Cherokee in the 1926 FDY are the American, the Rialto and the Empress, this house must have gotten its earlier name back.The Happy Hour Theater at Cherokee, Iowa was mentioned in the March 8, 1913 issue of The Billboard. A vaudeville duo named Helistrom (sp?) and Mybre were appearing there.
The NRHP form I mentioned in the comment above is not linked on this page, but in an earlier comment I made on the Palace Theatre page. It’s getting late and my brain has already gone to sleep.
The September 12, 1908Moving Picture World has two items datelined Nevada, Iowa, one of which might be about this theater. One of them also has what is apparently another variant misspelling of the old street name.
The first item says “[t]he Electric Theater is the name of a new amusement house which has been opened for the public.” The second item, which appears a short way down the same page, says “Fred H. Klove has fitted up the Briggs room, on Lyon Street, and has opened a moving picture and vaudeville house. Both of these items could be about the same theater, as the trade journals were prone to doing that sort of thing in their early days. Also, and October 30 item in the same journal says that Klove had sold his theater to ”…Messrs. Coates and Ball….“ so he didn’t operate it for very long.
The reference to “Briggs room” in the one item is interesting, as this theater in the J. Ray Block was apparently next door to the Briggs Block, which was (and is) at 1102-1104 6th Street and, according to its description in a downtown Nevada walking tour (PDF here) once housed “…a newsstand with art sales….” It could be that the Briggs family, who were quite prominent in town, had bought the Ray Block prior to 1908, or the reference in MPW might have simply been a mistake.
Incidentally, the NRHP form does have a mistake, as it says that the 1928 Circle was the third movie theater opened in Nevada. The well documented Palace Theatre of 1913, with the evidence of two even earlier theaters appearing on the Sanborn Maps, proves that he Circle was at least the fourth movie house opened in Nevada.
The NRHP documentation form for the historic Nevada Central Business District (PDF here) says that the Palace Theatre opened in the corner space of the Alderman brothers' new building on December 20, 1913.
The house was originally leased to A. H. Donhowe of Story City. Warner Grossman took over operation in 1921.
A North Manchester history web page has this information about the Marshall Theatre: “…Clarence Helvey and Earl Scott announced the opening of the Marshall Theater here [126 E. Main St.] on September 2, 1934. Wayne Garman, who owned the Ritz Theater, later acquired the Marshall Theater – possibly when a "new management” ad was run on March 4, 1935. The Marshall Theater remained here for the rest of our study period, and actually outlasted the Ritz."
This fragment from a North Manchester history web page gives the address of the Ritz, and its earlier name: “There was a theater at this location [128 E. Main St.] called the Gem theater, owned by C.M. Walters. In October 1931, Mr. Walters reopened the theater and changed the name to the Ritz. In 1933, Wayne Garman took over ownership of the Ritz Theater.”