If this building housed a theater as early as 1912, we have another candidate for the Isis, which was one of only three houses listed in Peru in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The other two were the Palace and the Wallace, and we know neither of them was at this address. The name Roxy must have been adopted no earlier than the late 1920s, since the first Roxy was “Roxy” Rothafel’s eponymous house in New York City.
But here’s a bit of news about Peru’s Roxy in 1947, from the September 7 issue of Motion Picture Herald:
“Stage Homecoming Week For ‘Night and Day’
“Peru, Ind., the home town of Cole Porter, will stage a Peru Homecoming Week celebration for the local premiere at the Roxy. September 14, of Warner Brothers' ‘Night and Day,’ based on the life and compositions of Mr. Porter. All streets will be decorated with ‘Night and Day’ banners, and nearly every store and shop in the town agreed to tie in window displays.”
The Rexy Theatre was in operation by 1931, when the March 28 issue of the Follansbee Review reported that a labor meeting would be held at the Rexy that night. It was owned by the Floyd brothers, who also had the Strand Theatre.
Earlier, around 1916-1918, the Floyds ran a Follansbee house called the Family Theatre, which had opened in 1913 as the Star Theatre. There is a possibility, though it’s not a certainty, that the Family later became the Rexy or the Strand. A local source says that the Family Theatre building is now occupied by the American Legion Hall, which is at 998 Main Street.
The Strand at Follansbee was in operation by 1927, when the July 8 issue of Motion Picture news named it as one of several houses in the region that had become part of a new co-operateve called Affiliated Theater Utilities Inc.. Among the leaders of the organization were N.D. Dipson and Mike Manos, both of whom would later establish regional theater chains under their own names.
The July 9, 1937 Film Daily had news about the Strand:
“Steubenville, O.— The Strand Theater at nearby Follansbee, W. Va., has been renovated and new Lipman sound system has been installed, according to Joe Huszar, manager.”
The September 27 issue of the same journal had another mention of the Strand, and of two other Follansbee houses:
“Close Follansbee House
“Steubenville, O.— The Royal theater at nearby Follansbee, W. Va. has been acquired under lease by Glen Floyd and Joseph F. Huszar and has been shuttered. Patsy Petrelli was the former operator of the Royal. Floyd and Huszar operate the Roxy and Strand theaters at Follansbee and the Roxy at Monaca, Pa.”
Late 1913 is likely when George Pittenger began billing the Grand as a theater rather than an opera house and began showing movies regularly. The January 3, 1914 issue of The Moving Picture World said that “George Kleine’s ‘Quo Vadis’ was the attraction at the grand opening of the Pittenger Grand Theater, at Centralia.” The house was listed as the Grand Theater in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
Yes, it has to be the first Palace. I wonder if the Isis was the unidentified theater at 64 S. Broadway? It was almost across the street from this one.
The St. Clair Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. Having opened on November 24, 1923, the house would have been about twelve years old when the new screen was installed.
Although it is not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, the Woodlawn must date from not long after that time. An advertisement for it in the April 16, 1919 issue of the Evansville Press boasts of its “…years of success as a neighborhood theater.” Also, none of the theater building was incorporated into the modern church building. According to the Evansville History web site, the house was closed in 1957 and demolished in 1963.
The Woodlawn Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses for which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936.
The Olympic Theatre at Lebanon was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. The name change to Lido Theatre Must have taken place after that date.
The Palace Theatre in Beech Grove was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936.
The first Diana Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936.
The only movie theaters listed at Tipton in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory were the Habit Theatre and the Lyric Theatre, so the Grand must not have been in operation yet, making it most likely that it opened sometime later in 1914 or sometime in 1915.
The Tivoli Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. The Dubois County Herald of February 26, 2014 said that the Tivoli’s closure in 1970 was due to a fire that killed Joseph Gutzweiler’s daughter, Margaret Ann. The Gutzweiler family continued to operate Jasper’s other movie house, the Astra Theatre.
The State Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. With a new screen, it might have been either a new theater or an older house, perhaps of a different name, being renovated. The State is mentioned a few times in trade journals in the 1940s and 1950s, but the only earlier theater name I’ve found for Crothersville was all the way back in 1918, when the July 11 Film Daily mentioned the New Grand Theatre. Crothersville does not appear in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
This house must have been the second Palace Theatre in Peru. Indiana Album has a photo dated c.1905 showing a Palace Theatre with a note on the back saying it was the second door north of 2nd Street on the west side of Broadway.
An item pertaining to the later Palace appears in The Moving Picture World of September 11, 1915, saying that about $1,000 was being expended on improvements to the house. Then the October 2 issue of MPW had this item:
“Jimmy Chandler, manager of the Palace, Peru, Ind., has asked an ‘unofficial board’ of censors to sit on ‘Midnight at Maxims’. The rector of St. Charles Church, Peru, said it was not fit for public consumption and Jimmy has named the rector on the board.”
Zooming in on Google street view of the Wayne Theatre it looks like the address is 30 N. Main Street. The theater has no web site, but there is a Facebook page that hasn’t been updated since 2019. Prior to that, there were some years with several events at the house, most of them live performances. The theater is sponsored by the Monticello Banking Company, whose offices occupy about half of the block the theater is on. The bank uses the address 50 N. Main.
Many capsule movie reviews by A. E. Christian, then proprietor of the Wayne Theatre, were published in Motion Picture Herald in the period 1935-1937.
The Amusu was mentioned in the May 1, 1937 issue of Motion Picture Herald. Its proprietor, B. V. McDougald, was mentioned in the March 2, 1935 issue of the same publication, as an exhibitor at Monticello, so presumably the same theater.
The Main Street Theatre was in operation before 1938. This item is from the April 8, 1937 issue of The Film Daily:
“Paris, Mo. — T. J. Bankead is closing the Roxy Theater here. Moss Major, operator of the Main Street Theater in Paris, now owns the lease and will keep the house dark for the present.”
A bit of information about the early days of the Strand appears in this item from The Moving Picture World of December 4, 1920:
“Stage Settings Changed Weekly
“Weekly changes in the stage settings of the new Mark Strand Theatre, at Albany, N. Y., opened November 9, have been decided upon. A dozen or so drops which have been used in the past at the Strand Theatre in New York, will again be used in the Albany Theatre. This week the stage setting includes a view of Holland, while last week Lake Como was used. Prologues will find a place on the program from time to time. Albany audiences have shown themselves responsive to scenics and these will also be featured. Local soloists, who measure up to Strand requirements, have been impossible to discover thus far with the result that New York vocalists are being used from week to week. Mary Mitchell will be featured in the vocal part of the program during the week of November 29.”
The December 4, 1920 issue of The Moving Picture World had this item:
“Frank A. Keeney added a second house — the Grand — to his holdings in Williamsport, Pa., and after renovation opened it as Keeney’s Grand. The other house plays vaudeville and pictures with the Grand as a straight picture house.”
This answer to jthackworth’s question is over eight years late, but the December 4, 1920 issue of The Moving Picture World said that “[t]he Broadway Theatre opened in Danville, Va., Monday, November 15. It is owned and operated by the Southern Amusement Company, has a seating capacity of 750, and is said to be luxuriously appointed.”
The July 18, 1960 issue of Boxoffice noted that Sidney Harp, operator of the Grand Theatre at Donaldsonville, as well as the Grand at Thibodaux, had been a visitor at the Theatre Services office in New Orleans. Other sources indicate that Harp had used Theatre Services Company as the booking agent for these houses and the Baby Grand at Thibodaux from at least as early as 1953.
Motion Picture Herald of February 15, 1947 said “The new Dixie at Thibodaux opened last Wednesday. This house was built by the Conrad Theatres.” February 15 was a Saturday, so (assuming the item was published in a timely manner) “last Wednesday” would have been February 12.
Boxoffice of February 18, 1963 mentions George Conrad of the Dixie, Thibodaux, as a recent visitor to Film Row in New Orleans. The issue of June 20, 1964 mentioned George Conrad’s Dixie as one of the houses in the region that had lately gone dark, but this closure was temporary. The August 12 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor said that the Dixie had reopened after a few weeks. I’ve been unable to find any later mentions of Conrad or the Dixie in the trade publications.
An item dateline Thibodaux in the July 3, 1922 issue of The Film Daily said that “[t]he Grand, costing $30,000, has been opened. It seats 750 and is under the management of Charles Delas.”
Here is an item from The Film Daily of July 2, 1940:
:“Oakland’s Esquire Burns
“Oakland, Calif. — Esquire theater, recently reopened after a $30,000 remodeling job, is again dark, following a balcony fire. Franklin theater has reopened, taking over the Esquire bookings.”
An article about the opening of the Alhambra Theatre was published in the Torrington Register on January 4, 1916, but the article itself is not available online. An article about the demolition of the building (or its remains) was published on July 11, 1951. The house appears to have been closed through most of its later years.
An article in Film Daily of July 29, 1940 said that the house had been leased to a subsidiary of Brandt Theatres. This deal apparently fell through, but the article said that leaseholders Warner Bros. had kept the house dark for many years, with only one period “about two years ago” when it opened for a while, and more recent opening for showings of “Gone With the Wind.” An article in the professional journal Fire Engineering about the December, 1949 fire said that the house had not been in use since 1940, and had still been under lease to Warner Bros. at the time of the fire.
If this building housed a theater as early as 1912, we have another candidate for the Isis, which was one of only three houses listed in Peru in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. The other two were the Palace and the Wallace, and we know neither of them was at this address. The name Roxy must have been adopted no earlier than the late 1920s, since the first Roxy was “Roxy” Rothafel’s eponymous house in New York City.
But here’s a bit of news about Peru’s Roxy in 1947, from the September 7 issue of Motion Picture Herald:
The Rexy Theatre was in operation by 1931, when the March 28 issue of the Follansbee Review reported that a labor meeting would be held at the Rexy that night. It was owned by the Floyd brothers, who also had the Strand Theatre.
Earlier, around 1916-1918, the Floyds ran a Follansbee house called the Family Theatre, which had opened in 1913 as the Star Theatre. There is a possibility, though it’s not a certainty, that the Family later became the Rexy or the Strand. A local source says that the Family Theatre building is now occupied by the American Legion Hall, which is at 998 Main Street.
The Strand at Follansbee was in operation by 1927, when the July 8 issue of Motion Picture news named it as one of several houses in the region that had become part of a new co-operateve called Affiliated Theater Utilities Inc.. Among the leaders of the organization were N.D. Dipson and Mike Manos, both of whom would later establish regional theater chains under their own names.
The July 9, 1937 Film Daily had news about the Strand:
The September 27 issue of the same journal had another mention of the Strand, and of two other Follansbee houses:Late 1913 is likely when George Pittenger began billing the Grand as a theater rather than an opera house and began showing movies regularly. The January 3, 1914 issue of The Moving Picture World said that “George Kleine’s ‘Quo Vadis’ was the attraction at the grand opening of the Pittenger Grand Theater, at Centralia.” The house was listed as the Grand Theater in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
Yes, it has to be the first Palace. I wonder if the Isis was the unidentified theater at 64 S. Broadway? It was almost across the street from this one.
The St. Clair Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. Having opened on November 24, 1923, the house would have been about twelve years old when the new screen was installed.
Although it is not listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, the Woodlawn must date from not long after that time. An advertisement for it in the April 16, 1919 issue of the Evansville Press boasts of its “…years of success as a neighborhood theater.” Also, none of the theater building was incorporated into the modern church building. According to the Evansville History web site, the house was closed in 1957 and demolished in 1963.
The Woodlawn Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses for which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936.
The Olympic Theatre at Lebanon was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. The name change to Lido Theatre Must have taken place after that date.
The Palace Theatre in Beech Grove was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936.
The first Diana Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936.
The only movie theaters listed at Tipton in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory were the Habit Theatre and the Lyric Theatre, so the Grand must not have been in operation yet, making it most likely that it opened sometime later in 1914 or sometime in 1915.
The Tivoli Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. The Dubois County Herald of February 26, 2014 said that the Tivoli’s closure in 1970 was due to a fire that killed Joseph Gutzweiler’s daughter, Margaret Ann. The Gutzweiler family continued to operate Jasper’s other movie house, the Astra Theatre.
The State Theatre was one of nine Indiana houses at which National Theatre Supply had recently installed a Walker Silver Sheet screen, according to The Film Daily of January 18, 1936. With a new screen, it might have been either a new theater or an older house, perhaps of a different name, being renovated. The State is mentioned a few times in trade journals in the 1940s and 1950s, but the only earlier theater name I’ve found for Crothersville was all the way back in 1918, when the July 11 Film Daily mentioned the New Grand Theatre. Crothersville does not appear in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
This house must have been the second Palace Theatre in Peru. Indiana Album has a photo dated c.1905 showing a Palace Theatre with a note on the back saying it was the second door north of 2nd Street on the west side of Broadway.
An item pertaining to the later Palace appears in The Moving Picture World of September 11, 1915, saying that about $1,000 was being expended on improvements to the house. Then the October 2 issue of MPW had this item:
The Isis was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory.
Zooming in on Google street view of the Wayne Theatre it looks like the address is 30 N. Main Street. The theater has no web site, but there is a Facebook page that hasn’t been updated since 2019. Prior to that, there were some years with several events at the house, most of them live performances. The theater is sponsored by the Monticello Banking Company, whose offices occupy about half of the block the theater is on. The bank uses the address 50 N. Main.
Many capsule movie reviews by A. E. Christian, then proprietor of the Wayne Theatre, were published in Motion Picture Herald in the period 1935-1937.
The Amusu was mentioned in the May 1, 1937 issue of Motion Picture Herald. Its proprietor, B. V. McDougald, was mentioned in the March 2, 1935 issue of the same publication, as an exhibitor at Monticello, so presumably the same theater.
The Main Street Theatre was in operation before 1938. This item is from the April 8, 1937 issue of The Film Daily:
A bit of information about the early days of the Strand appears in this item from The Moving Picture World of December 4, 1920:
The December 4, 1920 issue of The Moving Picture World had this item:
This answer to jthackworth’s question is over eight years late, but the December 4, 1920 issue of The Moving Picture World said that “[t]he Broadway Theatre opened in Danville, Va., Monday, November 15. It is owned and operated by the Southern Amusement Company, has a seating capacity of 750, and is said to be luxuriously appointed.”
The July 18, 1960 issue of Boxoffice noted that Sidney Harp, operator of the Grand Theatre at Donaldsonville, as well as the Grand at Thibodaux, had been a visitor at the Theatre Services office in New Orleans. Other sources indicate that Harp had used Theatre Services Company as the booking agent for these houses and the Baby Grand at Thibodaux from at least as early as 1953.
Motion Picture Herald of February 15, 1947 said “The new Dixie at Thibodaux opened last Wednesday. This house was built by the Conrad Theatres.” February 15 was a Saturday, so (assuming the item was published in a timely manner) “last Wednesday” would have been February 12.
Boxoffice of February 18, 1963 mentions George Conrad of the Dixie, Thibodaux, as a recent visitor to Film Row in New Orleans. The issue of June 20, 1964 mentioned George Conrad’s Dixie as one of the houses in the region that had lately gone dark, but this closure was temporary. The August 12 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor said that the Dixie had reopened after a few weeks. I’ve been unable to find any later mentions of Conrad or the Dixie in the trade publications.
An item dateline Thibodaux in the July 3, 1922 issue of The Film Daily said that “[t]he Grand, costing $30,000, has been opened. It seats 750 and is under the management of Charles Delas.”
Here is an item from The Film Daily of July 2, 1940:
An article about the opening of the Alhambra Theatre was published in the Torrington Register on January 4, 1916, but the article itself is not available online. An article about the demolition of the building (or its remains) was published on July 11, 1951. The house appears to have been closed through most of its later years.
An article in Film Daily of July 29, 1940 said that the house had been leased to a subsidiary of Brandt Theatres. This deal apparently fell through, but the article said that leaseholders Warner Bros. had kept the house dark for many years, with only one period “about two years ago” when it opened for a while, and more recent opening for showings of “Gone With the Wind.” An article in the professional journal Fire Engineering about the December, 1949 fire said that the house had not been in use since 1940, and had still been under lease to Warner Bros. at the time of the fire.