The Royal Theatre became a three-theater complex in 1972. The January 30 issue of Boxoffice ran an article headed “Mississippi Triplex Sparkles In Debut” which said that the expansion was accomplished by adding two new auditoriums adjacent to the original 517-seat Royal, which had been built by Lloyd Royal in 1941, opening on January 4 that year.
The 1972 additions were called the Royal Cinema, which had 800 seats, and the Mini Royal, with 200 seats. The original Royal Theatre was reseated to accommodate 325 patrons with greater comfort. The new auditoriums were opened on January 17, 1972.
I’ve found the Strand mentioned in Boxoffice Magazine as early as the July 6, 1940, issue. At that time it was being operated by the Manning & Wink circuit.
The most recent Boxoffice mention of the Strand I’ve found is in the January 31, 1972, issue, at which time it was still being operated by Martin.
A brief item in the January 18, 1941, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that the new Athens Theatre had recently opened with the musical “Barnyard Follies” as the initial offering. The February 1 issue of Boxoffice said that the Athens was the eighth house of the Manning & Wink circuit.
The October 13, 1956, issue of Boxoffice Magazine ran an item about the 50th anniversary of the Bohemia Theatre. The item included the information that the Roxy was next door to the Bohemia, and had been built by the Cleveland Amusement Company, operators of the Bohemia, but that it had been a short-lived operation. As far as I’ve been able to determine, the Roxy’s operation was confined to some part of the 1930s.
The October 13, 1956, issue of Boxoffice Magazine ran an item about the 50th anniversary of the Bohemia Theatre. The house opened in 1906, operated by Jesse Steed. Later it was operated by Roy S. and H.E. Campbell, who installed sound in 1929. They later sold the house to the Cleveland Amusement Company, and then it was operated for a while by one of that company’s partners, Otis Renner, who in turn sold it to Crescent sometime in the 1940s. The Bohemia suffered severe damage in a fire in 1950 and had to be rebuilt. I’ve been unable to find any mentions of it after 1956.
The Village Theatre was actually opened by Atco Corporation in 1969. Martin bought the house from Atco in 1971, according to the January 11, 1971, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The Village was apparently Atco’s first theater. They opened the 520-seat Jackson Square Theatre in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1970, and Boxoffice in its issue of May 4 that year described that house as being similar to the Village Theatre. I can’t find anything about Atco after 1972, so the company must have either changed its name, gone out of business, or been absorbed by some larger outfit.
The Red Clay Theatre’s web site no longer has any information about the theater, and the domain name might be for sale. They probably didn’t pay their web hosting bill. The site is currently a link dump. I can’t find any events scheduled for the house anywhere else on the Internet either. It looks like the live performance venture has failed.
Also, I can’t find any mention in Boxoffice about another Village Theatre in Cleveland.
Unless the name was used for more than one theater in Bonham, the American was much older than the facade seen in the photos would suggest. Earl Moseley’s column in the July 14, 1956, issue of Boxoffice Magazine mentioned that long-time Texas theater man L.E. Holloway had worked at the American Theatre in Bonham in 1928.
A couple of late 1970 issues of Boxoffice ran items saying that the American Theatre had reopened after extensive remodeling. Perhaps the rippled facade dates from that time, or perhaps from an earlier remodeling, a $30,000 project mentioned in the July 17, 1948, issue of Boxoffice. It certainly wouldn’t have looked like that in the 1920s.
The October 22, 1938, issue of Boxoffice said that H.E. Brookings had purchased the Beacon Theatre from the McDonald brothers.
The November 5, 1938, issue said that Brookings had changed the name to Glendora Theatre.
It’s surprising how frequently the Glendora is mentioned in Boxoffice from the 1940s through the 1950s, and almost every time it gets mentioned it is changing owners. Various owners after Brookins included: Sid Smith; Tony Blanco; Dave Fred and Perry Morgan; W.G. McKinney; B.G. Meyers; the Western Amusement Company (for almost six years, 1945-1951); Mr. and Mrs. L.D. Dover; Joe Pokorny; Willard Blunt; and finally Fed Stein, whose Statewide Theatres operated the house from at least 1960 to 1967.
From the January 9, 1961, issue of Boxoffice: “When fire destroyed the Donner Theatre at Truckee recently, seven families living in the second-floor apartments were left homeless. The cause of the fire was not determined.”
The Lando Theatre was offered for sale or rent by the Lando Realty Company in an ad in the November 8, 1940, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. There is a photo of the theater, and the way the building was arranged on the steeply sloping site makes me suspect that this might have been a reverse theater, with the screen and stage at the front of the house instead of the back.
This place seems to have switched names frequently. The July 7, 1931, issue of Exhibitors Forum said that the Lando Theatre, Central Avenue, had been renamed the Grand. It apparently became the Granada in 1934, when it was leased by Hendel and Rosen, who opened the New Granada in 1937.
The September 18, 1937, issue of Boxoffice carries an item saying that the Lando-Grand Theater on Center Avenue, formerly the Granada, had been reopened.
Then the August 5, 1939, issue says that the Former Lando-Grand Theatre had been reopened as the Central Theatre.
In its issue of September 21, 1940, Boxoffice said that William Lando was reopening his Lando-Grand Theatre on Center Avenue after the previous operator had failed.
In any case, the last name under which I find any mention of the house is Lando-Grand (probably chosen to differentiate it from the Warner Grand/Stanley Grand operating in Pittsburgh at the same time) so that’s probably the name under which it should be listed at Cinema Treasures. That would, of course, also help differentiate it from the New Granada Theatre. The Lando appears to have been known as the Granada only from 1934 to 1937 in any case.
I found a mention of the Howard Theatre as early as the March 21, 1942, issue of Boxoffice. The item said that Beverly Richards, 22, was the new manager of the Iowa and Howard Theatres at Jefferson, both operated by the Pioneer Theatre Corporation of Minneapolis. She was the first woman ever named manager by the company.
The Jefferson was the fourth theater opened in Oak Ridge. Its recent opening was announced in the November 4, 1944, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The Ridge, Center, and Grove Theatres had already opened. All four were being managed for the Recreation and Welfare Section of the Clinton Engineering Works by Walter Morris, a Knoxville theater owner.
The September 1, 1945, issue of Boxoffice says that seven theaters had been built at Oak Ridge by that time. Only the Middletown and Jefferson theaters were mentioned by name. The July 10, 1948, issue said that the Middletown Theatre in Oak Ridge had closed due to lack of business.
The May 4, 1952, Boxoffice mentioned the Skyway and Elza Drive-Ins at Oak Ridge, but I’ve been unable to discover if they were built by 1945, so they might or night not have been the other two theaters in the town. I got the feeling the two missing theaters were hardtops, though. Oak Ridge reached a population of about 75,000 during the war and could easily have supported seven walk-in theaters.
In 1952, a segregated theater was opened at Oak Ridge. The February 2 issue of Boxoffice gives the name as the Gambles Valley Theatre, and the seating capacity as 338. The item said it was the first Negro theater in Oak Ridge. The May 3 issue of Boxoffice said that a theater had recently opened at Gamble Valley in Oak Ridge.
The December, 1981, issue of Boxoffice mentions a Grove 1-2-3 Theatre in Oak Ridge, along with the Ridge Theatre, both being operated by the Greater Huntington Theatre Corporation. Does anyone know if this was the original Grove Theatre triplexed? There’s also a possibility that the Ridge Theatre was triplexed at a later date.
The August, 1993, issue of Boxoffice makes a reference to a Ridge 1-2-3 Theatre in Oak Ridge. Was the Ridge Theatre triplexed, or was this a new theater?
The December, 1981, Boxoffice had mentioned the Grove 1-2-3 and Ridge Theatres at Oak Ridge. Both were operated by the Greater Huntington Theatre Corporation.
The Ridge Theatre dated to the early 1940s, having been already in operation when it was mentioned, along with the Grove and Center theaters, in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of November 4, 1944, in an item about the opening of the Jefferson Theatre.
A photo of the Granada Theatre was featured in an ad for Texlite porcelain enamel products appearing in the March 2, 1946, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The ad named the architect of the Granada as Raymond F. Smith.
The Valley Theatre is mentioned in Boxoffice magazine as early as 1943. However, the last mention of it is in the March 10, 1956, issue, in an item that says the Valley had been closed and the building would be sold to the Wahpeton National Bank which intended to use it as a banking house. However, as the Cinema in the 1980s photo is at the Valley’s address, perhaps either the deal fell through or the place became a bank for a while and was later reconverted into a theater.
A Valley Drive-In opened in Wahpeton in 1957.
There is a goatload of stuff about the Gilles Theatre in various issues of Boxoffice, but the hardtop Valley Theatre is seldom mentioned and I can’t find anything at all about the Cinema.
The Rialto was rebuilt in 1945. The November 24 issue of Boxoffice said that “Henry Hall reopened his Rialto Theatre in Sinton on November 16. The house which was recently damaged by fire has been completely rebuilt.”
The August 11 issue of Boxoffice had said that the old Rialto had been almost completely razed by the fire, and that the new theater was being decorated by the King-Lewis Studios of Dallas. The walls were to be painted with murals depicting the evolution of navigation from the canoe to the Queen Mary. The front of the building would feature glass brick, neon, and indirect lighting. The Rialto was operated by the Hall circuit, headquartered in Beeville, Texas.
The Rialto at Sinton dates back to at least the 1920s. The September 22, 1928, issue of Motion Picture Times ran an item about the Hall Brothers, mentioning that they operated theaters called the Rialto in the Texas towns of Sinton, Taft, Three Rivers, Kenedy, and Beeville. The Beeville Rialto was the circuit’s first, and by then had been operated by the Halls for six years.
Southwest Builder & Contractor’s issue of March 27, 1925, said that a 600-seat, reinforced concrete theater building was being erected at Wasco for A.W. Thesher, proprietor of the Wasco Theatre. As Wasco was then probably too small to support two movie houses, it’s likely that the new construction was meant to replace the existing theater.
The Wasco Theatre was among many movie houses listed in ads for the Beaded Screen Corporation appearing in issues of Exhibitors' Forum in 1931.
The November 20, 1937, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that Sam Levin had recently acquired a part interest in the Wasco and Selma Theatres and that improvements and restorations were being made.
The July 13, 1939, issue of Boxoffice said that Frank Panero had bought the Wasco Theatre.
The finding aid for the S. Charles Lee papers at UCLA lists the Wasco Theatre, for Frank Panero, among Lee’s projects. In a comment of March 12, 2008, on the Sierra Theatre page, JillCh says that Frank Panero, her grandfather, had the Wasco Theatre renovated after buying it. That was probably the Lee Project, but the UCLA collection has no pictures of it online.
Kern County Library has this photograph of the Wasco Theatre. The library gives the date as ca.1938, so it might have been taken before the Lee remodeling- assuming the Lee remodeling plans were carried out.
From the October 2, 1937, issue of Boxoffice Magazine, in an article about recent theater construction in Connecticut: “In New Milford, Steve Panoras completely razed the Star Theatre, rebuilt and enlarged it on modernistic lines, and opened in June as the 800-seat Twentieth Century Theatre.”
Most later issues of Boxoffice give the surname as Panora.
The June 26 issue of Boxoffice said that the rebuilt Twentieth Century had been scheduled to open June 25.
The May 14, 1949, issue of Boxoffice says that the Panoras (Steve and John) were offering the Twentieth Century Theatre for sale. This item gives the seating capacity as 718.
The last mention I’ve found of the Twentieth Century name is in the June 19, 1950, issue which says that the house had been bought by Arthur Smith. The name was apparently changed to New Milford Theatre some time after that. Unfortunately, there was also a new Milford Theatre at Milford, Indiana, which dominates the search results. The earliest reference to the Connecticut house as the New Milford Theatre I’ve found is in an item in the February 6, 1954, issue about the installation of CinemaScope.
The May 31, 1947, issue of Boxoffice said that the Tower, then under construction, was expected to open about June 30. However, both the completion of the building and the opening were delayed. The July 24, 1948, issue of Boxoffice reported that the house had finally opened on July 16. The house had been completed in October, 1947, but was kept dark due to a legal dispute between the lessor and the lessee. The seating capacity at opening was 886, according to Boxoffice.
Also, does anyone know the name of a former theater at 4200 W. Douglas Avenue in Wichita? The 375-seat, quonset style house was under construction in 1947 according to the April 26 issue of Boxoffice that year. Google Street View shows a quonset hut building there, and Google search returns an Orth Roofing & Construction at that address. I can’t find a theater listed for that address at Cinema Treasures, though.
The Davis Theatre was renamed the Vista Theatre in 1958, after the Davis family sold the house. I’ve found no mentions of the Vista Theatre in Boxoffice after 1958, though.
Dean Davis died in 1953, and Boxoffice published an obituary in its February 7 issue. The obituary said that he built the Davis Theatre in West Plains in 1927 (but didn’t name the source for the date) and that the house originally had 620 seats. The additional seating must have been in the missing balcony Grigsby mentions in his Sep 7, 2005, comment above.
At the time of his death, Davis also operated the Avenue theater and a drive-in at West Plains, and the Davis and Cameo Theatres and a drive-in at Mountain Grove MO.
Dean Davis operated an Avenue Theatre in West Plains prior to 1950, when this house was built. The January 21, 1950, issue of Boxoffice Magazine announced that construction bids had been taken for Dean Davis’s new theater at West Plains on the 17th of that month. The item didn’t give the name of the new house, but said that Davis was the operator of the Davis and Avenue theaters in West Plains. The new theater had been designed by Boller & Lusk of Kansas City.
The March 11, 1950, issue of Boxoffice said that construction was proceeding and the new house would be open by June. It would be called the New Avenue Theatre and would have 500 seats (the January 11 issue had said 510 seats.) Equipment from the old Avenue Theatre would be moved to the new house. The item gave the location of the old Avenue Theatre as a leased building on the east side of Washington Avenue, and its seating capacity as 350. It said that Davis had operated this house for several years.
The name New Avenue Theatre must not have stuck for very long, as Boxoffice was back to calling it simply the Avenue Theatre within a couple of years. I don’t know what became of the old Avenue Theatre, but as Davis didn’t own the building it might have been reopened by another operator under another name.
There was new development in Smithers in 1938. The November 12 issue of Boxoffice said this: “The Black Diamond Theatre Company, Montgomery, W. Va., is opening a new home at Smithers, W. Va., November 9. The company operates ten theatres in West Virginia.”
This was apparently a new theater at that time. The August 6, 1938, issue of Boxoffice had run this item: “SMITHERS, W. VA.— A new theatre is being erected here by the Black Diamond Theatres, Inc., with headquarters at Montgomery. Gene Hensley and Archie Clemens, executives of the company which operates a half dozen theatres, state that the Smithers Theatre will have a seating capacity of 400 and that opening is scheduled for early October.”
The August 20 issue of Boxoffice also had a brief item saying that Black Diamond had a theater under construction at Smithers. This was probably not the Fountain Theatre, which is mentioned in 1931 issues of Movie Age. If there was a Smithers Theatre listed as early as 1930, it must have closed before this 1938 project was built.
The Royal Theatre became a three-theater complex in 1972. The January 30 issue of Boxoffice ran an article headed “Mississippi Triplex Sparkles In Debut” which said that the expansion was accomplished by adding two new auditoriums adjacent to the original 517-seat Royal, which had been built by Lloyd Royal in 1941, opening on January 4 that year.
The 1972 additions were called the Royal Cinema, which had 800 seats, and the Mini Royal, with 200 seats. The original Royal Theatre was reseated to accommodate 325 patrons with greater comfort. The new auditoriums were opened on January 17, 1972.
I’ve found the Strand mentioned in Boxoffice Magazine as early as the July 6, 1940, issue. At that time it was being operated by the Manning & Wink circuit.
The most recent Boxoffice mention of the Strand I’ve found is in the January 31, 1972, issue, at which time it was still being operated by Martin.
A brief item in the January 18, 1941, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that the new Athens Theatre had recently opened with the musical “Barnyard Follies” as the initial offering. The February 1 issue of Boxoffice said that the Athens was the eighth house of the Manning & Wink circuit.
If it fell into the street, I guess the status should be changed to demolished.
The October 13, 1956, issue of Boxoffice Magazine ran an item about the 50th anniversary of the Bohemia Theatre. The item included the information that the Roxy was next door to the Bohemia, and had been built by the Cleveland Amusement Company, operators of the Bohemia, but that it had been a short-lived operation. As far as I’ve been able to determine, the Roxy’s operation was confined to some part of the 1930s.
The October 13, 1956, issue of Boxoffice Magazine ran an item about the 50th anniversary of the Bohemia Theatre. The house opened in 1906, operated by Jesse Steed. Later it was operated by Roy S. and H.E. Campbell, who installed sound in 1929. They later sold the house to the Cleveland Amusement Company, and then it was operated for a while by one of that company’s partners, Otis Renner, who in turn sold it to Crescent sometime in the 1940s. The Bohemia suffered severe damage in a fire in 1950 and had to be rebuilt. I’ve been unable to find any mentions of it after 1956.
The Village Theatre was actually opened by Atco Corporation in 1969. Martin bought the house from Atco in 1971, according to the January 11, 1971, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The Village was apparently Atco’s first theater. They opened the 520-seat Jackson Square Theatre in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1970, and Boxoffice in its issue of May 4 that year described that house as being similar to the Village Theatre. I can’t find anything about Atco after 1972, so the company must have either changed its name, gone out of business, or been absorbed by some larger outfit.
The Red Clay Theatre’s web site no longer has any information about the theater, and the domain name might be for sale. They probably didn’t pay their web hosting bill. The site is currently a link dump. I can’t find any events scheduled for the house anywhere else on the Internet either. It looks like the live performance venture has failed.
Also, I can’t find any mention in Boxoffice about another Village Theatre in Cleveland.
The Lakeport Cinemas in the 1986 photo is the former Lakeport Theatre, now the Soper-Reese Theatre. I didn’t know it had been twinned before closing.
Unless the name was used for more than one theater in Bonham, the American was much older than the facade seen in the photos would suggest. Earl Moseley’s column in the July 14, 1956, issue of Boxoffice Magazine mentioned that long-time Texas theater man L.E. Holloway had worked at the American Theatre in Bonham in 1928.
A couple of late 1970 issues of Boxoffice ran items saying that the American Theatre had reopened after extensive remodeling. Perhaps the rippled facade dates from that time, or perhaps from an earlier remodeling, a $30,000 project mentioned in the July 17, 1948, issue of Boxoffice. It certainly wouldn’t have looked like that in the 1920s.
The October 22, 1938, issue of Boxoffice said that H.E. Brookings had purchased the Beacon Theatre from the McDonald brothers.
The November 5, 1938, issue said that Brookings had changed the name to Glendora Theatre.
It’s surprising how frequently the Glendora is mentioned in Boxoffice from the 1940s through the 1950s, and almost every time it gets mentioned it is changing owners. Various owners after Brookins included: Sid Smith; Tony Blanco; Dave Fred and Perry Morgan; W.G. McKinney; B.G. Meyers; the Western Amusement Company (for almost six years, 1945-1951); Mr. and Mrs. L.D. Dover; Joe Pokorny; Willard Blunt; and finally Fed Stein, whose Statewide Theatres operated the house from at least 1960 to 1967.
From the January 9, 1961, issue of Boxoffice: “When fire destroyed the Donner Theatre at Truckee recently, seven families living in the second-floor apartments were left homeless. The cause of the fire was not determined.”
The Lando Theatre was offered for sale or rent by the Lando Realty Company in an ad in the November 8, 1940, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. There is a photo of the theater, and the way the building was arranged on the steeply sloping site makes me suspect that this might have been a reverse theater, with the screen and stage at the front of the house instead of the back.
This place seems to have switched names frequently. The July 7, 1931, issue of Exhibitors Forum said that the Lando Theatre, Central Avenue, had been renamed the Grand. It apparently became the Granada in 1934, when it was leased by Hendel and Rosen, who opened the New Granada in 1937.
The September 18, 1937, issue of Boxoffice carries an item saying that the Lando-Grand Theater on Center Avenue, formerly the Granada, had been reopened.
Then the August 5, 1939, issue says that the Former Lando-Grand Theatre had been reopened as the Central Theatre.
In its issue of September 21, 1940, Boxoffice said that William Lando was reopening his Lando-Grand Theatre on Center Avenue after the previous operator had failed.
In any case, the last name under which I find any mention of the house is Lando-Grand (probably chosen to differentiate it from the Warner Grand/Stanley Grand operating in Pittsburgh at the same time) so that’s probably the name under which it should be listed at Cinema Treasures. That would, of course, also help differentiate it from the New Granada Theatre. The Lando appears to have been known as the Granada only from 1934 to 1937 in any case.
I found a mention of the Howard Theatre as early as the March 21, 1942, issue of Boxoffice. The item said that Beverly Richards, 22, was the new manager of the Iowa and Howard Theatres at Jefferson, both operated by the Pioneer Theatre Corporation of Minneapolis. She was the first woman ever named manager by the company.
The Jefferson was the fourth theater opened in Oak Ridge. Its recent opening was announced in the November 4, 1944, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The Ridge, Center, and Grove Theatres had already opened. All four were being managed for the Recreation and Welfare Section of the Clinton Engineering Works by Walter Morris, a Knoxville theater owner.
The September 1, 1945, issue of Boxoffice says that seven theaters had been built at Oak Ridge by that time. Only the Middletown and Jefferson theaters were mentioned by name. The July 10, 1948, issue said that the Middletown Theatre in Oak Ridge had closed due to lack of business.
The May 4, 1952, Boxoffice mentioned the Skyway and Elza Drive-Ins at Oak Ridge, but I’ve been unable to discover if they were built by 1945, so they might or night not have been the other two theaters in the town. I got the feeling the two missing theaters were hardtops, though. Oak Ridge reached a population of about 75,000 during the war and could easily have supported seven walk-in theaters.
In 1952, a segregated theater was opened at Oak Ridge. The February 2 issue of Boxoffice gives the name as the Gambles Valley Theatre, and the seating capacity as 338. The item said it was the first Negro theater in Oak Ridge. The May 3 issue of Boxoffice said that a theater had recently opened at Gamble Valley in Oak Ridge.
The December, 1981, issue of Boxoffice mentions a Grove 1-2-3 Theatre in Oak Ridge, along with the Ridge Theatre, both being operated by the Greater Huntington Theatre Corporation. Does anyone know if this was the original Grove Theatre triplexed? There’s also a possibility that the Ridge Theatre was triplexed at a later date.
The August, 1993, issue of Boxoffice makes a reference to a Ridge 1-2-3 Theatre in Oak Ridge. Was the Ridge Theatre triplexed, or was this a new theater?
The December, 1981, Boxoffice had mentioned the Grove 1-2-3 and Ridge Theatres at Oak Ridge. Both were operated by the Greater Huntington Theatre Corporation.
The Ridge Theatre dated to the early 1940s, having been already in operation when it was mentioned, along with the Grove and Center theaters, in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of November 4, 1944, in an item about the opening of the Jefferson Theatre.
A photo of the Granada Theatre was featured in an ad for Texlite porcelain enamel products appearing in the March 2, 1946, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The ad named the architect of the Granada as Raymond F. Smith.
The Valley Theatre is mentioned in Boxoffice magazine as early as 1943. However, the last mention of it is in the March 10, 1956, issue, in an item that says the Valley had been closed and the building would be sold to the Wahpeton National Bank which intended to use it as a banking house. However, as the Cinema in the 1980s photo is at the Valley’s address, perhaps either the deal fell through or the place became a bank for a while and was later reconverted into a theater.
A Valley Drive-In opened in Wahpeton in 1957.
There is a goatload of stuff about the Gilles Theatre in various issues of Boxoffice, but the hardtop Valley Theatre is seldom mentioned and I can’t find anything at all about the Cinema.
The Rialto was rebuilt in 1945. The November 24 issue of Boxoffice said that “Henry Hall reopened his Rialto Theatre in Sinton on November 16. The house which was recently damaged by fire has been completely rebuilt.”
The August 11 issue of Boxoffice had said that the old Rialto had been almost completely razed by the fire, and that the new theater was being decorated by the King-Lewis Studios of Dallas. The walls were to be painted with murals depicting the evolution of navigation from the canoe to the Queen Mary. The front of the building would feature glass brick, neon, and indirect lighting. The Rialto was operated by the Hall circuit, headquartered in Beeville, Texas.
The Rialto at Sinton dates back to at least the 1920s. The September 22, 1928, issue of Motion Picture Times ran an item about the Hall Brothers, mentioning that they operated theaters called the Rialto in the Texas towns of Sinton, Taft, Three Rivers, Kenedy, and Beeville. The Beeville Rialto was the circuit’s first, and by then had been operated by the Halls for six years.
Southwest Builder & Contractor’s issue of March 27, 1925, said that a 600-seat, reinforced concrete theater building was being erected at Wasco for A.W. Thesher, proprietor of the Wasco Theatre. As Wasco was then probably too small to support two movie houses, it’s likely that the new construction was meant to replace the existing theater.
The Wasco Theatre was among many movie houses listed in ads for the Beaded Screen Corporation appearing in issues of Exhibitors' Forum in 1931.
The November 20, 1937, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that Sam Levin had recently acquired a part interest in the Wasco and Selma Theatres and that improvements and restorations were being made.
The July 13, 1939, issue of Boxoffice said that Frank Panero had bought the Wasco Theatre.
The finding aid for the S. Charles Lee papers at UCLA lists the Wasco Theatre, for Frank Panero, among Lee’s projects. In a comment of March 12, 2008, on the Sierra Theatre page, JillCh says that Frank Panero, her grandfather, had the Wasco Theatre renovated after buying it. That was probably the Lee Project, but the UCLA collection has no pictures of it online.
Kern County Library has this photograph of the Wasco Theatre. The library gives the date as ca.1938, so it might have been taken before the Lee remodeling- assuming the Lee remodeling plans were carried out.
From the October 2, 1937, issue of Boxoffice Magazine, in an article about recent theater construction in Connecticut: “In New Milford, Steve Panoras completely razed the Star Theatre, rebuilt and enlarged it on modernistic lines, and opened in June as the 800-seat Twentieth Century Theatre.”
Most later issues of Boxoffice give the surname as Panora.
The June 26 issue of Boxoffice said that the rebuilt Twentieth Century had been scheduled to open June 25.
The May 14, 1949, issue of Boxoffice says that the Panoras (Steve and John) were offering the Twentieth Century Theatre for sale. This item gives the seating capacity as 718.
The last mention I’ve found of the Twentieth Century name is in the June 19, 1950, issue which says that the house had been bought by Arthur Smith. The name was apparently changed to New Milford Theatre some time after that. Unfortunately, there was also a new Milford Theatre at Milford, Indiana, which dominates the search results. The earliest reference to the Connecticut house as the New Milford Theatre I’ve found is in an item in the February 6, 1954, issue about the installation of CinemaScope.
The May 31, 1947, issue of Boxoffice said that the Tower, then under construction, was expected to open about June 30. However, both the completion of the building and the opening were delayed. The July 24, 1948, issue of Boxoffice reported that the house had finally opened on July 16. The house had been completed in October, 1947, but was kept dark due to a legal dispute between the lessor and the lessee. The seating capacity at opening was 886, according to Boxoffice.
Also, does anyone know the name of a former theater at 4200 W. Douglas Avenue in Wichita? The 375-seat, quonset style house was under construction in 1947 according to the April 26 issue of Boxoffice that year. Google Street View shows a quonset hut building there, and Google search returns an Orth Roofing & Construction at that address. I can’t find a theater listed for that address at Cinema Treasures, though.
The Davis Theatre was renamed the Vista Theatre in 1958, after the Davis family sold the house. I’ve found no mentions of the Vista Theatre in Boxoffice after 1958, though.
Dean Davis died in 1953, and Boxoffice published an obituary in its February 7 issue. The obituary said that he built the Davis Theatre in West Plains in 1927 (but didn’t name the source for the date) and that the house originally had 620 seats. The additional seating must have been in the missing balcony Grigsby mentions in his Sep 7, 2005, comment above.
At the time of his death, Davis also operated the Avenue theater and a drive-in at West Plains, and the Davis and Cameo Theatres and a drive-in at Mountain Grove MO.
Dean Davis operated an Avenue Theatre in West Plains prior to 1950, when this house was built. The January 21, 1950, issue of Boxoffice Magazine announced that construction bids had been taken for Dean Davis’s new theater at West Plains on the 17th of that month. The item didn’t give the name of the new house, but said that Davis was the operator of the Davis and Avenue theaters in West Plains. The new theater had been designed by Boller & Lusk of Kansas City.
The March 11, 1950, issue of Boxoffice said that construction was proceeding and the new house would be open by June. It would be called the New Avenue Theatre and would have 500 seats (the January 11 issue had said 510 seats.) Equipment from the old Avenue Theatre would be moved to the new house. The item gave the location of the old Avenue Theatre as a leased building on the east side of Washington Avenue, and its seating capacity as 350. It said that Davis had operated this house for several years.
The name New Avenue Theatre must not have stuck for very long, as Boxoffice was back to calling it simply the Avenue Theatre within a couple of years. I don’t know what became of the old Avenue Theatre, but as Davis didn’t own the building it might have been reopened by another operator under another name.
There was new development in Smithers in 1938. The November 12 issue of Boxoffice said this: “The Black Diamond Theatre Company, Montgomery, W. Va., is opening a new home at Smithers, W. Va., November 9. The company operates ten theatres in West Virginia.”
This was apparently a new theater at that time. The August 6, 1938, issue of Boxoffice had run this item: “SMITHERS, W. VA.— A new theatre is being erected here by the Black Diamond Theatres, Inc., with headquarters at Montgomery. Gene Hensley and Archie Clemens, executives of the company which operates a half dozen theatres, state that the Smithers Theatre will have a seating capacity of 400 and that opening is scheduled for early October.”
The August 20 issue of Boxoffice also had a brief item saying that Black Diamond had a theater under construction at Smithers. This was probably not the Fountain Theatre, which is mentioned in 1931 issues of Movie Age. If there was a Smithers Theatre listed as early as 1930, it must have closed before this 1938 project was built.