Richland Park Cinema

CJ1949 on September 4, 2019 at 6:52 pm

An article in the March 18, 2001 edition of the Herald-News in Dayton, TN said the theatre would be closing that week. The theatre’s owner at the time was Delbert Crowe, who told the newspaper he couldn’t find a buyer and business had gone down to a trickle of people each night. The article said the original owner was Bill Matherly who had been operating the drive-in but also bought a Jerry Lewis franchise “in February 1973.” The opening attraction of the Jerry Lewis Cinema was “Now You See Him, Now You Don’t”, which the newspaper’s 2001 article said “was sold out for weeks.”

Most contemporary writers do a poor job of explaining the Lewis franchising story and get it all screwed up. This article was no exception. Suffice it to say the theatre changed its name probably soon after it was opened. The franchising company, Network Cinema Corporation, filed for bankruptcy in June 1973. The article infers that the name change occurred around this time, but there is also a murky aside made that the theatre closed and then reopened again, with nothing said about the length of time it may have been closed.

The name Richland Park was the name of the shopping center it was in.