This article from a local Westfield web site says that the 1941 Grand Theatre was the third of that name on the site. The first Grand opened in 1917, with 775 seats, and was destroyed by a fire on November 3, 1923. The rebuilt house reopened in September, 1924, and was destroyed in a second fire in 1940.
The third Grand opened July 17, 1941. The house was taken over by the Blatt Brothers circuit on July 7, 1965, and then by Kirsch Theatres of Erie, PA in the late 1970s. It closed around 1982. Plans were afoot to reopen the house in 1985, but they came to nothing. The building was demolished in 1992.
The January 1, 1910 issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror mentions the Geyer Grand Theatre in Lexington, Missouri. Charles Geyer was listed as the manager. The Geyer Grand was listed in the 1910-1911 Cahn guide as a 740-seat, ground floor house. It had been listed in the 1909-1910 guide as the New Grand Theatre.
A letter from the Lexington Historical Association in response to the Historic Missouri Theatres Questionnaire (a very large pdf but quite useful,) and dated June 10, 1998, has this paragraph about the Grand:
“Our most notorious theatre was the Grand Opera House built in 1879 by Henry Hagan. Hagan built the structure at a cost of $5,000 and the price of the lot. It was 40' by 100' and seated 800 people. It’s opening in 1885 and featured ‘Othello’. The opera house was later known as Wrights Theatre until its destruction by fire in August of 1924. It was located at the corner of what is now 9th Street and Franklin Avenue.”
The house had become Wright’s Grand Theatre by 1913, as that is how it is listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn Guide. As the Grand is not one of the two movie houses listed at Lexington in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory it was likely still a live theater at that time. However, by 1917 (and possibly by late 1915) it had begun showing movies, as this item appeared in the September 1, 1917 issue of The Moving Picture World:
“YOUNG BUYS GRAND THEATER AT LEXINGTON.
“John C. Young, who for about two years has been associated with Clyde Wright as part owner of Wright’s Grand theater, Lexington, Mo., has purchased Mr. Wright’s interest in the house. Mr. Young, who will now assume full charge, is welt fitted for his duties as he has had several years experience in the motion picture business. This change is due to Mr. Wright’s recent illness, together with the great increase in his duties as Justice of the Peace. He has proved himself to be an enterprising manager and a great believer in the efficiency of advertising, and his many friends regret to see him give up the business with which he has been associated for several years.”
The Princess Theatre, 11th and Franklin, was one of two movie houses listed at Lexington in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory. No location was given fro the rival Evening Star Theatre.
As some of the earlier comments on this theater note, it originally opened on March 21, 1963 as a single-screen house with 600 seats. It was twinned sometime between 1980 and 1982.
A July 4, 1999 article by Mike McCormick in the Terre Haute Tribune Star says that there were two theaters on this site. The original Lyric was renamed the Orpheum at some point, but was demolished to make way for a new Orpheum in 1919. Other sources indicate that the Lyric opened in 1905.
On September 6, 1959, the Terre Haute Tribune reported that the Orpheum Theatre was under new management and would soon be remodeled.
The Moving Picture World of January 22, 1910 had this item in its “Among the Exhibitors” column: “Terre Haute, Ind. — A new moving picture theater has been opened at 323 Wabash avenue. It is known as the Savoy.”
A rather sketchy history of theaters in Hibbing by a member of the Edelstein family says that the Garden Theatre was closed in 1929 due to the cost of conversion for sound movies, and then reopened about a decade later as the Gopher. The Gumm Sisters made an appearance at the Garden in 1927. Little Frances Gumm (aka Judy Garland) would have thurned five years old that year.
A web page about downtown Hibbing has this to say about the Gopher Theatre:“An Edelstein theatre from 1925-1928. 434 seats.
It was originally called the Garden Theater.”
The December 17, 1921 issue of Exhibitors Trade Review had this brief item datelined Hibbing in its “New Theatres” column: “State opened a few days ago.”
The State was the first of three new theaters opened in Hibbing in a very short time. The magazine’s January 7, 1922 issue noted the recent opening of the Plaza Theatre and the January 21 issue mentioned the opening of the Homer Theatre.
The March 4, 2018 issue of CCNJ Daily said that the Ocean City Tabenacle had closed the Moorlyn Theatre and listed it for sale. The March 13 issue said that the building had been sold to Sey West Realty Partners LLC of Ocean City. I haven’t found anything about the purchaser’s plans for the property, but there are no listings on the Internet so the theater remains closed. It was last operated by Ocean City Tabernacle under the name Moorlyn Family Theatre.
The calendar of the previous year’s theatrical events in the 1893 edition of The New York Clipper Annual said that the Opera House in Charleroi, Pennsylvania was dedicated on September 14, 1892. A play called “Killarney and the Rhine” was the first presentation.
Unless the Alessios were expecting full houses with all 800 seats filled by people who had driven to the theater alone, 25% of them towing an extra car behind them just in case the first one broke down, 1000 parking spaces seems like a bit of overkill. More likely the newspaper’s typesetter accidentally added an extra zero to the number.
Looking at this theater in aerial view there is no way it ever had parking for 1,000 cars. 800 seats on opening is certainly plausible though. The auditorium is about 50x120 feet.
buckguy’s observation is correct. The Sound of Music was released in 1965, and since it had a long roadshow run it is likely that it wouldn’t have reached Fairport Harbor until 1966, or even 1967. However, I’ve found another source saying that the Lyric closed in 1962. It’s possible, as buckguy pointed out, that someone just mis-remembered seeing that movie at the Lyric. It’s also possible that the Lyric, like hundreds of small town theaters during their final days, closed and then reopened for a time, perhaps more than once. Until conclusive information becomes available it’s probably best just to say that the house closed in the 1960s.
One possibility I can imagine, since there is the reference to 800 miners meeting at the Rivoli 1928, is that Baird renamed this house the Rivoli in or before 1928 and moved the name Pastime to another location, possibly the former Grand, which then became the Rex in 1931. The local newspaper’s files would surely be of help, but unfortunately I can’t find any Portage newspapers from that period online.
Okay, I have to rethink this again as I’ve found another reference to the Pastime in the August 23, 1931 issue of The Film Daily. As it was a report of the house closing, I don’t think the item is likely be using the wrong theater name. So we’re back to a house called the Pastime becoming a house called the Rex in 1931, but no closer to figuring out where it was.
It’s undoubtedly safe to assume that the Sanborn maps are a more reliable source of information than the theater industry trade journals, and that the Rex was never located on Gillespie Street, so we should look elsewhere for it.
I’ve found a source indicating that a house called the Rivoli was in operation at Portage at least as early as 1928 (The Daily Worker, oddly enough, which reported a meeting of 800 miners held at the Rivoli on April 12.)
The most likely source for the confusion about the Rex would be the October 25, 1931, Film Daily item saying that C. O. Baird had remodeled and reopened the old Pastime and renamed it the Rex. Trade journals often got their information about small town theaters from the guys who delivered films for the distribution companies, and those guys made a lot of mistakes.
It could be that it was the old Grand that Baird was reopening as the Rex. I’ve found no mentions of the Pastime in the trade journals from later than 1926, so it’s possible that the guy passing the information to Film Daily in 1931 knew that house only as the Rivoli, and simply conflated the name Pastime with the name Grand. Since the Grand had closed by 1926, someone who had been delivering movies to Portage for only a few years or less would have had no first-hand experience of that theater at all.
This is just speculation, of course, but it would fit the timeline of events in Portage during the 1910s and 1920s that we do have, and knowing how sloppy the trade journals often were makes it even more plausible.
This item is from the May 13, 1953 issue of The Exhibitor:
“Gus Notopolous, general manager, Altoona Publix Theatres, and George Wasko, owner, Rex and Rivoli, Portage, Pa., were in Pittsburgh.”
The next item is from the June 10 issue of the same publication:
“Portage
“George Wasko installed 3-D equipment at the Rivoli, which he recently acquired. He is closing the Rex five days a week.”
So in the 1950s, at least, we have a Rex and a Rivoli both operating at the same time. I haven’t found any other items mentioning both houses at the same time, but the May 1, 1937 issue of Motion Picture Herald has this item about the Rivoli:
“R. Allison has completely recarpeted his Rivoli theatre in Portage, Pa. The installation was made by Louis Weinger of the Hotel and Theatre Carpet Company of New York.”
The September 26, 1941, issue of The Film Daily lists the Rex, Portage, as one of several houses having new carpeting installed. It would be unlikely that the same theater would get new carpeting twice in four years.
An obituary for George J. Wasko, who died in 1995, said that he acquired the Rex Theatre in 1950 and the Rivoli in 1953. He operated the Bar Ann Drive-In from 1954 to 1994, and the Dale Theatre in Johnstown from 1960 to 1965.
If this theater was converted into a bowling alley by 1938, why do we have a photo with a couple of circa 1950 cars out front, and the theater’s attraction board advertising the 1946 Mexican movie Campeón sin corona with David Silva? I’m thinking perhaps a typo was involved, and it was actually converted to a bowling alley in 1958, as I’ve come across two sources saying that the conversion did take place in the 1950s.
Portage is puzzling. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists four theaters at Portage, but none are called the Pastime, Rivoli, or Rex. They were the Colonial, Globe, Grand, and Lyric, the last of which was located on Main Street. I’m looking for more information, but have an appointment so I’ll have to get back to the search later.
What I’ve been able to piece together from various sources is that the Prince Theatre closed in the mid-1960s, was donated by its owners to the City of Pahhokee in 1976, was repaired and reopened by a citizen-led group for live events and movies in 1980, but closed again a few years later. The vacant building’s roof was badly damaged by Tropical Storm Fay in 2008, and the city decided it was beyond repair.
A deal was made by the city to sell the land to the owner of an adjacent filling station in 2010, with the condition that the filling station owner have the theatre demolished. Instead, he began repairs on the building, and the city sued him. I’ve been unable to find details about what happened next, but the building was not demolished and there were reports about attempts to renovate and reopen it in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
The Prince Theatre is currently listed in the portfolio of Jones-Phillips Associates, LLC, which describes itself as “… a full-service consulting firm specializing in performance facility planning and architectural lighting design.” Their web site provides no details about the Prince Theatre project, but the fact that it is listed indicates that such a project is, at the very least, in the planning stage.
This article from a local Westfield web site says that the 1941 Grand Theatre was the third of that name on the site. The first Grand opened in 1917, with 775 seats, and was destroyed by a fire on November 3, 1923. The rebuilt house reopened in September, 1924, and was destroyed in a second fire in 1940.
The third Grand opened July 17, 1941. The house was taken over by the Blatt Brothers circuit on July 7, 1965, and then by Kirsch Theatres of Erie, PA in the late 1970s. It closed around 1982. Plans were afoot to reopen the house in 1985, but they came to nothing. The building was demolished in 1992.
The January 1, 1910 issue ofThe New York Dramatic Mirror mentions the Geyer Grand Theatre in Lexington, Missouri. Charles Geyer was listed as the manager. The Geyer Grand was listed in the 1910-1911 Cahn guide as a 740-seat, ground floor house. It had been listed in the 1909-1910 guide as the New Grand Theatre.
A letter from the Lexington Historical Association in response to the Historic Missouri Theatres Questionnaire (a very large pdf but quite useful,) and dated June 10, 1998, has this paragraph about the Grand:
The house had become Wright’s Grand Theatre by 1913, as that is how it is listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn Guide. As the Grand is not one of the two movie houses listed at Lexington in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory it was likely still a live theater at that time. However, by 1917 (and possibly by late 1915) it had begun showing movies, as this item appeared in the September 1, 1917 issue of The Moving Picture World:The Evening Star Theatre is one of the two movie houses listed at Lexington in the 1914-1915 editon of The American Motion Picture Directory.
The Princess Theatre, 11th and Franklin, was one of two movie houses listed at Lexington in the 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory. No location was given fro the rival Evening Star Theatre.
As some of the earlier comments on this theater note, it originally opened on March 21, 1963 as a single-screen house with 600 seats. It was twinned sometime between 1980 and 1982.
A July 4, 1999 article by Mike McCormick in the Terre Haute Tribune Star says that there were two theaters on this site. The original Lyric was renamed the Orpheum at some point, but was demolished to make way for a new Orpheum in 1919. Other sources indicate that the Lyric opened in 1905.
On September 6, 1959, the Terre Haute Tribune reported that the Orpheum Theatre was under new management and would soon be remodeled.
The Cozy began operation in very early 1910, its recent opening having been noted in the January 22 issue of The Moving Picture World.
The Moving Picture World of January 22, 1910 had this item in its “Among the Exhibitors” column: “Terre Haute, Ind. — A new moving picture theater has been opened at 323 Wabash avenue. It is known as the Savoy.”
A rather sketchy history of theaters in Hibbing by a member of the Edelstein family says that the Garden Theatre was closed in 1929 due to the cost of conversion for sound movies, and then reopened about a decade later as the Gopher. The Gumm Sisters made an appearance at the Garden in 1927. Little Frances Gumm (aka Judy Garland) would have thurned five years old that year.
A web page about downtown Hibbing has this to say about the Gopher Theatre:“An Edelstein theatre from 1925-1928. 434 seats.
It was originally called the Garden Theater.”
The December 17, 1921 issue of Exhibitors Trade Review had this brief item datelined Hibbing in its “New Theatres” column: “State opened a few days ago.”
The State was the first of three new theaters opened in Hibbing in a very short time. The magazine’s January 7, 1922 issue noted the recent opening of the Plaza Theatre and the January 21 issue mentioned the opening of the Homer Theatre.
An item datelined Hibbing in the January 21, 1922 issue of Exhibitors Trade Review said “The Homer recently had a big opening.”
The “New Theatres” column of the January 7, 1922 issue of Exhibitors Trade Review said that “Mrs. W. J. Rezac has opened her Plaza” in Hibbing.
The March 4, 2018 issue of CCNJ Daily said that the Ocean City Tabenacle had closed the Moorlyn Theatre and listed it for sale. The March 13 issue said that the building had been sold to Sey West Realty Partners LLC of Ocean City. I haven’t found anything about the purchaser’s plans for the property, but there are no listings on the Internet so the theater remains closed. It was last operated by Ocean City Tabernacle under the name Moorlyn Family Theatre.
The calendar of the previous year’s theatrical events in the 1893 edition of The New York Clipper Annual said that the Opera House in Charleroi, Pennsylvania was dedicated on September 14, 1892. A play called “Killarney and the Rhine” was the first presentation.
Unless the Alessios were expecting full houses with all 800 seats filled by people who had driven to the theater alone, 25% of them towing an extra car behind them just in case the first one broke down, 1000 parking spaces seems like a bit of overkill. More likely the newspaper’s typesetter accidentally added an extra zero to the number.
Looking at this theater in aerial view there is no way it ever had parking for 1,000 cars. 800 seats on opening is certainly plausible though. The auditorium is about 50x120 feet.
buckguy’s observation is correct. The Sound of Music was released in 1965, and since it had a long roadshow run it is likely that it wouldn’t have reached Fairport Harbor until 1966, or even 1967. However, I’ve found another source saying that the Lyric closed in 1962. It’s possible, as buckguy pointed out, that someone just mis-remembered seeing that movie at the Lyric. It’s also possible that the Lyric, like hundreds of small town theaters during their final days, closed and then reopened for a time, perhaps more than once. Until conclusive information becomes available it’s probably best just to say that the house closed in the 1960s.
One possibility I can imagine, since there is the reference to 800 miners meeting at the Rivoli 1928, is that Baird renamed this house the Rivoli in or before 1928 and moved the name Pastime to another location, possibly the former Grand, which then became the Rex in 1931. The local newspaper’s files would surely be of help, but unfortunately I can’t find any Portage newspapers from that period online.
Okay, I have to rethink this again as I’ve found another reference to the Pastime in the August 23, 1931 issue of The Film Daily. As it was a report of the house closing, I don’t think the item is likely be using the wrong theater name. So we’re back to a house called the Pastime becoming a house called the Rex in 1931, but no closer to figuring out where it was.
It’s undoubtedly safe to assume that the Sanborn maps are a more reliable source of information than the theater industry trade journals, and that the Rex was never located on Gillespie Street, so we should look elsewhere for it.
I’ve found a source indicating that a house called the Rivoli was in operation at Portage at least as early as 1928 (The Daily Worker, oddly enough, which reported a meeting of 800 miners held at the Rivoli on April 12.)
The most likely source for the confusion about the Rex would be the October 25, 1931, Film Daily item saying that C. O. Baird had remodeled and reopened the old Pastime and renamed it the Rex. Trade journals often got their information about small town theaters from the guys who delivered films for the distribution companies, and those guys made a lot of mistakes.
It could be that it was the old Grand that Baird was reopening as the Rex. I’ve found no mentions of the Pastime in the trade journals from later than 1926, so it’s possible that the guy passing the information to Film Daily in 1931 knew that house only as the Rivoli, and simply conflated the name Pastime with the name Grand. Since the Grand had closed by 1926, someone who had been delivering movies to Portage for only a few years or less would have had no first-hand experience of that theater at all.
This is just speculation, of course, but it would fit the timeline of events in Portage during the 1910s and 1920s that we do have, and knowing how sloppy the trade journals often were makes it even more plausible.
This item is from the May 13, 1953 issue of The Exhibitor:
The next item is from the June 10 issue of the same publication:So in the 1950s, at least, we have a Rex and a Rivoli both operating at the same time. I haven’t found any other items mentioning both houses at the same time, but the May 1, 1937 issue of Motion Picture Herald has this item about the Rivoli:The September 26, 1941, issue of The Film Daily lists the Rex, Portage, as one of several houses having new carpeting installed. It would be unlikely that the same theater would get new carpeting twice in four years.An obituary for George J. Wasko, who died in 1995, said that he acquired the Rex Theatre in 1950 and the Rivoli in 1953. He operated the Bar Ann Drive-In from 1954 to 1994, and the Dale Theatre in Johnstown from 1960 to 1965.
If this theater was converted into a bowling alley by 1938, why do we have a photo with a couple of circa 1950 cars out front, and the theater’s attraction board advertising the 1946 Mexican movie Campeón sin corona with David Silva? I’m thinking perhaps a typo was involved, and it was actually converted to a bowling alley in 1958, as I’ve come across two sources saying that the conversion did take place in the 1950s.
Portage is puzzling. The 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory lists four theaters at Portage, but none are called the Pastime, Rivoli, or Rex. They were the Colonial, Globe, Grand, and Lyric, the last of which was located on Main Street. I’m looking for more information, but have an appointment so I’ll have to get back to the search later.
What I’ve been able to piece together from various sources is that the Prince Theatre closed in the mid-1960s, was donated by its owners to the City of Pahhokee in 1976, was repaired and reopened by a citizen-led group for live events and movies in 1980, but closed again a few years later. The vacant building’s roof was badly damaged by Tropical Storm Fay in 2008, and the city decided it was beyond repair.
A deal was made by the city to sell the land to the owner of an adjacent filling station in 2010, with the condition that the filling station owner have the theatre demolished. Instead, he began repairs on the building, and the city sued him. I’ve been unable to find details about what happened next, but the building was not demolished and there were reports about attempts to renovate and reopen it in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
The Prince Theatre is currently listed in the portfolio of Jones-Phillips Associates, LLC, which describes itself as “… a full-service consulting firm specializing in performance facility planning and architectural lighting design.” Their web site provides no details about the Prince Theatre project, but the fact that it is listed indicates that such a project is, at the very least, in the planning stage.