Cox Theatre

The March 11, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World refers to a Cape May house called the Perry Street Theatre, run by a Mr. J. P. Cox. It’s probably a safe assumption that Perry Street Theatre was an AKA for the Cox Theatre, and it was probably located on Perry Street. The magazine said that the house was Cape May’s exclusive Paramount theater.

It’s quite possible that the Perry Street Theatre never became the Cox Theatre. In fact I have no idea why I made the assumption in that comment (though as I was on the Internet at 6:07 pm there’s a good chance my dinner was late and my blood sugar had crashed, taking my higher brain functions with it.)

There is an old postcard that shows up now and then at auction websites depicting a “Cox-Pier-Theatre” on the Cape May Boardwalk (it might have been the postcard in teecee’s long-dead link), but I don’t know if that house was called the Cox Theatre, the Pier Theatre, the Cox Pier Theatre, or something else altogether (it might even have been the Palace Theatre, a house opened by J. P. Cox in 1916.) Houses called Cox’s Old Pier, Cox’s New Pier, and Cox’s Palace were all mentioned in the 1924 FDY. There’s not much information about Cape May’s old theaters on the Internet, so it might be quite a while before anybody comes along to fill in the gaps.

Anyway, my apologies for assuming that Mr. Cox had only one theater. It was pretty stupid of me.