Bolling Theatre

Joshua_Bolling on February 6, 2020 at 12:53 pm

I am Robert H. Bolling’s grandson. My dad, George Bolling, Sr., said that R.H. Bolling didn’t build this theater just to operate it as a business, but he built it so Norton would have a nice theater. He partnered with Mr. Myers out of NC to run it. I came across the Souvenir Program from the opening night of the Bolling Theater in Norton, VA and I will upload it to the photo section. It opened November 23, 1931. Matinee Prices were (child/adult) 10/30 cents and evening shows were 15/40 cents.

Dad said that at some point later, they purchased ‘new’ seats came from the 42nd Street Theater in NYC. There were 18 tons of seats shipped down, approximately 850 of them, some of which were put in the pool room my family also owned in Norton. The truck driver called when he was close, but it took him 18 hours to get from Coeburn to Clintwood (11 miles curvy mountain road). He said the driver demanded more money for the hassle, but basically my grandfather told him to take it up with the guy in NY. Dad said “We didn’t have any power drills, had to drill every hole by hand to bolt them into the floor”.

R.H. changed the name from Bolling theater to “Koltown” when he had four theaters. Norton, Coeburn, Clintwood, and Pound. He didn’t own the Pound building, but he leased it.

Joe Vogel on January 2, 2015 at 9:04 pm

Here is an item from the January 24, 1933, issue of The Film Daily:

“Asheville, N. C— William A. Byers, manager of the Plaza, has resigned to assume management of the new $85,000 Bolling theater in Norton, Va. Byers is part owner of the Boiling and of one other house in Bolling, both controlled by the Boiling Theater Corp.”

The Bolling Theatre most likely opened right around the time the item was published. The line “…other house in Bolling….” was obviously meant to read “other house in Norton.” This was probably the Norton Theatre, which the January 17, 1941, issue of the Daily reported had burned on Christmas Eve, 1940, and was to be rebuilt. In 1920 Norton had a house called the Strand.