A rare mention of the Colonial in the trade journals appeared in the February 18, 1953 issue of The Exhibitor: “The Colonial, Iron Mountain, Mich., Thomas Circuit, reopened.”
A section of this PDF from the Dickinson County Genealogical Society says that the Braumart Theatre opened on April 21, 1925. A.E. Brauns was the owner of the theater and Thomas Martin the manager for the Colonial Theatre Group, which then also operated the Colonial and Bijou theaters in Iron Mountain and four theaters in Fond du Lac.
Studying the photos on the site robboehm mentioned I have concluded that the Ritz Theatre was on the northeast corner of Kaufman Street and San Jacinto Street, diagonally across the intersection from the square. It is now the location of a modern bank building with the address 201 E. Kaufman Street.
This web page says that the Ritz Theatre was opened on the north side of the town square in 1923 and operated for 35 years. The building has since been demolished. Unfortunately there’s no photo of the Ritz, though the page has photos of several other small town Texas theaters.
The history section of the web site of Ellettsville Christian Church says that “[o]n August 5th, 1928 services were first held in the Oriental Theater on the west side of Sale Street.” The “Closings” column for Indiana in the July 1, 1929 issue of The Film Daily lists a house at Ellettsville called the Orient. Given the low odds that such a short street in a such small town would have two theaters on its west side, the house at 203 Sale probably was the Oriental (or Orient.) The absence of any other theaters on the 1929 Sanborn map would pretty much clinch it.
34 and 36 E. Morgan Street have been combined into a single space for a law office using the address 36 E. Morgan. A photo on page 81 of Martinsville) by Joanne Raetz Stuttgen and Curtis Tomak (Google Books preview) shows the entrance to Blackstone’s Theatre at 34 E. Morgan, so so it appears that Blackstone’s and the State were the same theater, unless the original auditorium was demolished and replaced.
The Billboard of February 20, 1909 mentions a theater in Martinsville called the New Wigwam, showing movies and vaudeville. It doesn’t give a location, but Wigwam would be a likely name for a theater on the ground floor of the Red Men’s Hall. The Improved Order of Red Men fraternal organization called its lodges Wigwams.
An item in the April 7, 1917 issue of Motion Picture News gives the location of the Idylhour Theatre as West Elm Street. Manager Charles Kuchen had just renewed the lease on the building for five years, and had installed a new Motiograph projector.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists only one movie house at Greensburg; the Palace, on the north side of the public square. The absence of the K of P Theatre suggests that it was presenting only live events at that time. Not everything in the theater was live by 1917, though, when the April 7 issue of Motion Picture News published this item:
“INDIANA. — Greensburg: Manager George Dunn has added a New Edison to the equipment of the K. of P, theatre, Greensburg, Indiana. A new repertoire will be used each evening.”
The New Edison referred to was that company’s most advance phonograph. The fact that the item appears in a movie industry trade journal suggests that the K of P was frequently running movies by then.
The 1914-1916 American Motion Picture Directorylists only one theater at Greensburg, a house called the Palace, situated on the north side of the public square. We don’t have a Palace Theatre listed in Greensburg, and the Vaudette is the only house we do have listed that was on the north side of the square. I wonder if there could have been a name change from Vaudette to Palace?
The Holiday Cinemas must have operated for no more than ten years at most. A 2003 Kitsap Sun article about the building referred to “…the 35,000 square-foot space that Holiday Cinema occupied over a decade ago.” The hotel, by 2003 branded as a Howard Johnson’s, had long been using the space for storage.
The new Omak Theatre was slated to open the following night, reported the July 11, 1939 issue of The Chronicle, the local newspaper. The house was located on the site of the Gem Theatre, and was the same width as the old building but was 40 feet longer. Owners Greime and Fasken had operated the Gem for seven years before rebuilding.
This item from the July 8, 1927 issue of Motion Picture Newsmight be about the Mission Theatre:
“G. C. Fasken, owner and manager of the Royal Theatre at Cashmere, Washington, last week announced that he plans to erect a 500-seat house in Wenatchee, where he will show second run attractions for 10 and 15 cents. This will be Wenatchee’s first house to be operated on a second run policy.”
An inventory of downtown Wenatchee’s historic buildings says that the building at 17 S. Mission Street was built in 1921 and originally housed a grocery store. It was converted into a theater in 1928. The Mission is known to have been on of the several movie houses in the region operated by the firm of Grieme and Fasken.
“Seattle — Ted Wilson has opened his new house in Cashmere with Ben Shearer doing the entire equipment job. Wilson, who operates a theatre in Leavenworth, had many exhibitors and exchange managers for the opening of the new spot and all agreed it is one of the finest theatres of its type on the coast. Ben Shearer company made sure that everything was comfortable for the patrons. New chairs, newest in drapes, the best in projection and every other modern feature were much in evidence. The house, the Vale Theatre, seats 550.”
The May 9, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World printed a letter from Mr. H. Chancellor of Arcanum, Ohio, renewing his subscription to the magazine. Given the standard one year term of magazine subscriptions, Mr. Chancellor must have been one of MPW’s earliest subscribers, as it was first published in March, 1907. The 1913-1914 Cahn Guide and 1914-1915 edition of the Gus Hill National Theatrical Directory both list H. Chancellor as the manager of the Arcanum Opera House.
Harry Chancellor and his brother William, a professional photographer, were partners in the Dreamland Theatre, which they opened in 1907 according to the article on this web page, which includes an early photo of the house. After a brief closure for remodeling, the house operated as the Ritz Theatre from May, 1927 though July, 1953, when it closed. William Chancellor had died in March, 1953, but Harry remained the theater’s manager until its closing. He died in 1965.
The aka Memorial Hall should be added to this page. E.S. French did operate the house as a movie theater, and provided a recommendation of the movie Black Beauty in the November 12, 1921 issue of Moving Picture World. Attendance, French said, was 420 in the town of 442. “Extra good, should please any kind of audience….” he wrote.
An article about the retirement of long-time theater operator R.C. “Cece” Steele in Boxoffice of March 2, 1970, says that he opened the Nechako Theatre with partner Harry Howard. The article doesn’t give the date, but a finding aid to resources in the Kitimat Museum and Archives lists a photo of construction underway on the house, dated October 26, 1955. Unfortunately, none of the 19 photos of the theater in the archives are available online.
Kitimat is a planned community developed by ALCAN (Aluminum Company of Canada) beginning in 1953. It is home to a major aluminum smelting plant, a major hydroelectric project, and a port handling liquified natural gas, among other, smaller industrial facilities. The town reached a peak population of over 11,000 in the 1990s, but has since declined to less than 9,000.
With a master plan by the noted American urban planner Clarence Stein, Kitimat features a main commercial center, but for some reason the theater ended up being built in Nechako Centre, a small shopping plaza about a mile away. While many of the commercial and public buildings in Kitimat were designed by the Vancouver modernist firm Semmens & Simpson, I haven’t been able to confirm that the Nechako Theatre was one of them.
According to this web page, this Roi Theatre was a 1960 rebuild of an old house which had operated as the Capitol Theatre from 1933 to 1941 and the Reo Theatre from 1941 to 1951, when a new owner renamed it the Roi Theatre. The page also notes that the house had been mistakenly listed in the Film Daily Yearbook as the Rex from 1935 to 1940 and then as the Capitol until 1945. Prior to the 1960 rebuild, the Capitol/Reo/Roi had only 200 seats.
A March 2, 1970 Boxoffice article about the retirement of long-time theater operator R.C. “Cece” Steele said that he had moved to Smithers in 1928 and had bought the then-closed Capitol Theatre in 1933. Two other houses in Steel’s small Reo circuit are also still in operation, one as the Grand Reo Theatre, in Vanderhoof, and the other as the Beacon Theatre, in Burns Lake.
An article in the Burns Lake Lakes District News dated March 4, 2020 said that the Beacon Theatre was celebrating its 70th birthday. An original opening year of 1950 means that the Beacon is most likely the house opened that year as the Reo Theatre by R.C. “Cece” Steele, who also had houses called the Reo Theatre in Vanderhoof and Smithers, BC.
This web page at the Northword Magazine web site is headed with a photo of the Reo Theatre (no Grande in the name then) which appears to date from some time in the 1940s. The Chamber of Commerce web site must be wrong about the building still having its original façade from 90 years ago, as the style is clearly Streamline Modern, which wasn’t around in the 1920s. The paragraph about Vanderhoof on the Northwords page (which is dated June 01, 2012) says that the building was “… built more than 90 years ago and originally operated as the Reo….” suggesting that the theater actually opened no later than 1921.
A March 2, 1970 Boxoffice article about the retirement of the Reo’s long-time owner, R. C. “Cece” Steele, says that “[i]n 1945, Cece and his son Doug remodeled the old Reo Theatre in Vanderhoof, putting in a sloping floor and theater seats….” Steele also operated houses called the Reo in Smithers, where he reopened the Capitol Theatre in 1933, renaming it the Reo in 1940, and at Burns Lake, where he opened a new-build Reo Theatre in November, 1950.
The September 19, 1962 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor said that the conversion of the old Telepix Theatre into the Park Square Cinema for Joseph Levine and partners was well underway in Boston, with the opening expected soon. The Telepix had closed in April. Plans for the project were by theater architect William Reisman.
A rare mention of the Colonial in the trade journals appeared in the February 18, 1953 issue of The Exhibitor: “The Colonial, Iron Mountain, Mich., Thomas Circuit, reopened.”
A section of this PDF from the Dickinson County Genealogical Society says that the Braumart Theatre opened on April 21, 1925. A.E. Brauns was the owner of the theater and Thomas Martin the manager for the Colonial Theatre Group, which then also operated the Colonial and Bijou theaters in Iron Mountain and four theaters in Fond du Lac.
Studying the photos on the site robboehm mentioned I have concluded that the Ritz Theatre was on the northeast corner of Kaufman Street and San Jacinto Street, diagonally across the intersection from the square. It is now the location of a modern bank building with the address 201 E. Kaufman Street.
This web page says that the Ritz Theatre was opened on the north side of the town square in 1923 and operated for 35 years. The building has since been demolished. Unfortunately there’s no photo of the Ritz, though the page has photos of several other small town Texas theaters.
The history section of the web site of Ellettsville Christian Church says that “[o]n August 5th, 1928 services were first held in the Oriental Theater on the west side of Sale Street.” The “Closings” column for Indiana in the July 1, 1929 issue of The Film Daily lists a house at Ellettsville called the Orient. Given the low odds that such a short street in a such small town would have two theaters on its west side, the house at 203 Sale probably was the Oriental (or Orient.) The absence of any other theaters on the 1929 Sanborn map would pretty much clinch it.
34 and 36 E. Morgan Street have been combined into a single space for a law office using the address 36 E. Morgan. A photo on page 81 of Martinsville) by Joanne Raetz Stuttgen and Curtis Tomak (Google Books preview) shows the entrance to Blackstone’s Theatre at 34 E. Morgan, so so it appears that Blackstone’s and the State were the same theater, unless the original auditorium was demolished and replaced.
The Billboard of February 20, 1909 mentions a theater in Martinsville called the New Wigwam, showing movies and vaudeville. It doesn’t give a location, but Wigwam would be a likely name for a theater on the ground floor of the Red Men’s Hall. The Improved Order of Red Men fraternal organization called its lodges Wigwams.
The part of the building which housed the Bijou’s entrance is still standing, but the auditorium is long gone.
An item in the April 7, 1917 issue of Motion Picture News gives the location of the Idylhour Theatre as West Elm Street. Manager Charles Kuchen had just renewed the lease on the building for five years, and had installed a new Motiograph projector.
The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists only one movie house at Greensburg; the Palace, on the north side of the public square. The absence of the K of P Theatre suggests that it was presenting only live events at that time. Not everything in the theater was live by 1917, though, when the April 7 issue of Motion Picture News published this item:
The New Edison referred to was that company’s most advance phonograph. The fact that the item appears in a movie industry trade journal suggests that the K of P was frequently running movies by then.The 1914-1916 American Motion Picture Directorylists only one theater at Greensburg, a house called the Palace, situated on the north side of the public square. We don’t have a Palace Theatre listed in Greensburg, and the Vaudette is the only house we do have listed that was on the north side of the square. I wonder if there could have been a name change from Vaudette to Palace?
The Holiday Cinemas must have operated for no more than ten years at most. A 2003 Kitsap Sun article about the building referred to “…the 35,000 square-foot space that Holiday Cinema occupied over a decade ago.” The hotel, by 2003 branded as a Howard Johnson’s, had long been using the space for storage.
A comment on the “If You Grew Up in Bicknell” Facebook page says that the Colonial Theatre was destroyed by a fire in 1971.
The Royal Theatre was advertised in the February 11, 1926 issue of the Cashmere Valley Record.
The Royal Theatre was mentioned in the July 8, 1927 issue of Motion Picture News. It was then owned by G. C. Fasken.
The new Omak Theatre was slated to open the following night, reported the July 11, 1939 issue of The Chronicle, the local newspaper. The house was located on the site of the Gem Theatre, and was the same width as the old building but was 40 feet longer. Owners Greime and Fasken had operated the Gem for seven years before rebuilding.
This item from the July 8, 1927 issue of Motion Picture News might be about the Mission Theatre:
An inventory of downtown Wenatchee’s historic buildings says that the building at 17 S. Mission Street was built in 1921 and originally housed a grocery store. It was converted into a theater in 1928. The Mission is known to have been on of the several movie houses in the region operated by the firm of Grieme and Fasken.Here is a notice from Boxoffice of July 2, 1938:
The May 9, 1908 issue of Moving Picture World printed a letter from Mr. H. Chancellor of Arcanum, Ohio, renewing his subscription to the magazine. Given the standard one year term of magazine subscriptions, Mr. Chancellor must have been one of MPW’s earliest subscribers, as it was first published in March, 1907. The 1913-1914 Cahn Guide and 1914-1915 edition of the Gus Hill National Theatrical Directory both list H. Chancellor as the manager of the Arcanum Opera House.
Harry Chancellor and his brother William, a professional photographer, were partners in the Dreamland Theatre, which they opened in 1907 according to the article on this web page, which includes an early photo of the house. After a brief closure for remodeling, the house operated as the Ritz Theatre from May, 1927 though July, 1953, when it closed. William Chancellor had died in March, 1953, but Harry remained the theater’s manager until its closing. He died in 1965.
The aka Memorial Hall should be added to this page. E.S. French did operate the house as a movie theater, and provided a recommendation of the movie Black Beauty in the November 12, 1921 issue of Moving Picture World. Attendance, French said, was 420 in the town of 442. “Extra good, should please any kind of audience….” he wrote.
An article about the retirement of long-time theater operator R.C. “Cece” Steele in Boxoffice of March 2, 1970, says that he opened the Nechako Theatre with partner Harry Howard. The article doesn’t give the date, but a finding aid to resources in the Kitimat Museum and Archives lists a photo of construction underway on the house, dated October 26, 1955. Unfortunately, none of the 19 photos of the theater in the archives are available online.
Kitimat is a planned community developed by ALCAN (Aluminum Company of Canada) beginning in 1953. It is home to a major aluminum smelting plant, a major hydroelectric project, and a port handling liquified natural gas, among other, smaller industrial facilities. The town reached a peak population of over 11,000 in the 1990s, but has since declined to less than 9,000.
With a master plan by the noted American urban planner Clarence Stein, Kitimat features a main commercial center, but for some reason the theater ended up being built in Nechako Centre, a small shopping plaza about a mile away. While many of the commercial and public buildings in Kitimat were designed by the Vancouver modernist firm Semmens & Simpson, I haven’t been able to confirm that the Nechako Theatre was one of them.
According to this web page, this Roi Theatre was a 1960 rebuild of an old house which had operated as the Capitol Theatre from 1933 to 1941 and the Reo Theatre from 1941 to 1951, when a new owner renamed it the Roi Theatre. The page also notes that the house had been mistakenly listed in the Film Daily Yearbook as the Rex from 1935 to 1940 and then as the Capitol until 1945. Prior to the 1960 rebuild, the Capitol/Reo/Roi had only 200 seats.
A March 2, 1970 Boxoffice article about the retirement of long-time theater operator R.C. “Cece” Steele said that he had moved to Smithers in 1928 and had bought the then-closed Capitol Theatre in 1933. Two other houses in Steel’s small Reo circuit are also still in operation, one as the Grand Reo Theatre, in Vanderhoof, and the other as the Beacon Theatre, in Burns Lake.
An article in the Burns Lake Lakes District News dated March 4, 2020 said that the Beacon Theatre was celebrating its 70th birthday. An original opening year of 1950 means that the Beacon is most likely the house opened that year as the Reo Theatre by R.C. “Cece” Steele, who also had houses called the Reo Theatre in Vanderhoof and Smithers, BC.
This web page at the Northword Magazine web site is headed with a photo of the Reo Theatre (no Grande in the name then) which appears to date from some time in the 1940s. The Chamber of Commerce web site must be wrong about the building still having its original façade from 90 years ago, as the style is clearly Streamline Modern, which wasn’t around in the 1920s. The paragraph about Vanderhoof on the Northwords page (which is dated June 01, 2012) says that the building was “… built more than 90 years ago and originally operated as the Reo….” suggesting that the theater actually opened no later than 1921.
A March 2, 1970 Boxoffice article about the retirement of the Reo’s long-time owner, R. C. “Cece” Steele, says that “[i]n 1945, Cece and his son Doug remodeled the old Reo Theatre in Vanderhoof, putting in a sloping floor and theater seats….” Steele also operated houses called the Reo in Smithers, where he reopened the Capitol Theatre in 1933, renaming it the Reo in 1940, and at Burns Lake, where he opened a new-build Reo Theatre in November, 1950.
The September 19, 1962 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor said that the conversion of the old Telepix Theatre into the Park Square Cinema for Joseph Levine and partners was well underway in Boston, with the opening expected soon. The Telepix had closed in April. Plans for the project were by theater architect William Reisman.