Shelby Theatre

The correct address of the Shelby Theatre was 610 Main Street, according to an article in the July 10, 2013, issue of the Sentinel-News (page 13 of this PDF.) The article quotes local historian Nancy Hill:

“‘That’s when I started to realize that I’d lived here all my life and I suddenly wanted to know more about all the places I’d grown up with,’ she said. ‘Like the old Smith-McKinney drug store, where my family shopped and got our medicine, and like this building here,’ she said, pointing to a photo of an old building of 610 Main St. she had pulled out of her collection. ‘The original structure was the old public stable, it was built in 1903, and then in 1920 it was the BonTon Theater and in 1934, it was changed to the Shelby Theater,’ she said. ‘When I was growing up, that’s where I used to go to the movies.’”

“The theater went out in 1968, Hill said, and the last business to occupy the building was Computer Hawks, which moved after the fire where it suffered extensive smoke damage in March, and 612, 616 and 618 Main Street were destroyed.”

Edited from my November 2, 2024 (11:24 AM) comment:

The 1945 fire happened on December 8, 1945, which according to an article confirms that the theater had been remodeled beforehand. The fire not just damaged the theater, but also destroyed the theater completely to the ground, costing an estimate $100,000 in damages.

The fire that destroyed the Shelby left Shelbyville without a movie theater until Chakeres launched the Burley Theatre the following year on Christmas Day 1946. Prior to that theater’s opening, moviegoers went to see movies in nearby Eminence to see that year’s first-run attractions, including “The Harvey Girls” and “Ziegfeld Follies Of 1946” among others.

It was completely rebuilt two years later and Chakeres reopened the Shelby Theatre on March 4, 1948 with Ronald Reagan in “The Voice Of The Turtle” along with the Looney Tunes cartoon “What’s Brewin', Bruin?” starring The Three Bears (Henry “Papa” Bear, Mama Bear, and Junior Bear) and a newsreel. The 1948-rebuilt Shelby housed 760 maroon upholstered seats with automatic lifts that precludes stumbling over other pulled-down seats in the dark (with 652 seats in the main auditorium and 108 seats in the balcony for colored patrons), and featured RCA sound installations as well as blue velvet curtaining.

Information about the Shelby as of its 1948 remodeling goes as follows: Inside the former that is largely decorated in purple, patrons enter the theater through massive blue metal doors into an auditorium carpeted in wine. The auditorium rock wool base side walls pick up a blue figure in the wine carpeting striking figured satin damask panels which carried full sound treatment. There is a full stage large enough to accommodate traveling theatricals, with dressing rooms beneath the stage. At the rear of the theater is a standee rail which is upholstered in beige fabric, which, with the soft padding, makes the patron easy to lean against. Semi-concealed lighting in back of the standee rail emits from gold neon tubes. In the center are drinking fountains framed in flexi glass, and there are also ladies lounge and powder rooms opening off to the right as the patrons enter and the gentlemen’s smoking lounge at the left rear. In addition to the balcony upstairs, the restrooms for colored patrons, and the manager’s office and uniform storage rooms are also presented.

The Shelby Theatre was lastly known as the “New Shelby Theatre” for a brief time before eventually closing its doors for the final time without any announcement in mid-November 1967.