Comments about Park Theater in Ardmore, OK

Cimarron on April 23, 2014 at 2:52 am

Upload of Park Theater pic from 50’s added to Photo Section.

Joe Vogel on March 23, 2014 at 9:11 pm

Here is an item from the October 7, 1927, issue of Motion Picture News:

“The Ritz Theatre, at Ardmore, Okla., which was formerly the Adelphos Theatre, is having a new $25,000 organ installed about October 1st. The Ritz has been remodeled and redecorated since the Griffin [sic] Amusement Company secured interest in it and two other theatres in Ardmore a few months ago.”

The October 21 issue of the same journal had this follow-up item (this time with the correct name of the new owners):

“The Griffith Amusement Company, Oklahoma City, plan upon opening two theatres within a week. The Ritz theatre, at Ardmore, is scheduled to open October 14th. This is the old Adelphos theatre, which has been completely remodeled and redecorated and renamed. The other is the beautiful new house at Shawnee, the Bison, which will open between October 16th and 18th.”

Another item appeared in the issue of October 28:

“The old Adelphos theatre, Ardmore, Okla., which has been entirely remodeled and redecorated and refurnished, opened last Wednesday night. The Griffith Amusement Company spent $50,000 in rejuvenating this theatre. It has been renamed the Ritz.”

Joe Vogel on March 23, 2014 at 5:06 pm

This theater is older than we thought. A house called the Adelphos Theatre opened in Ardmore in 1921. I haven’t found the theater’s address, but a 1921 advertisement for “Doctor Black’s Dental Parlor” gives his office address as 117 ½ West Main Street, with its entrance “…in Adelphos Theatre.” The Adelphos had to have been the house at 117 West Main Street.

The Adelphos Theatre was to open on Tuesday, April 19, 1921, according to a brief article in the previous Sunday’s Daily Ardmoreite. Through the early 1920s, the Adelphos, the Princess, and the Palace were the three theaters that advertised in the newspaper regularly, and they were all within a block of each other on the north side of West Main Street. It must have been the brightest block in Ardmore at night.