Victoria Theatre

As a child, I remember seeing ‘The Snow Queen’ at the Victoria. The house was not
soundproofed very well and whenever a large vehicle went by on Canal street, the
noise was quite a distraction. Today, the facade is basically intact and proudly says
‘Victoria’ above the more modern drugstore entrance. Another theater was built to
replace the Victoria across the street, not listed here – ‘The Smyrna Theater’. That
theater hung on until the 1980’s and has been converted to office space. The current
movie venue in town is a multiplex called the ‘Beacon – 14’, located in the town
shopping center, not on the downtown Canal street. The current shows are either
jam-packed or empty… but aren’t they all nowadays?

I’m very sure that this was lastly known as the Smyrna Theatre before the newer one was built in mid-1965. The earliest info I can gather about the Smyrna Theatre’s name date back as early as 1962, but was still known as the Victoria in 1961. The Victoria opened as early as 1927.

• New Smyrna Beach had another theater called the Palace Theatre but closed on September 1, 1927 due to a lease sale led by the men team of T.A. and S.L. Hayes who sold the Palace to the Florida Theatre Enterprises Incorporated who also managed the Victoria at the time. The Hayes brothers had been operating the Palace Theatre since 1924.

The older Smyrna Theatre closed on July 6, 1965 with “Beach Blanket Bingo” and “McHale’s Navy Joins The Air Force” due to the opening of the newer Smyrna Theatre the following day.