Lyric Theatre
118 W. Fourth Street,
Marion,
IN
46952
118 W. Fourth Street,
Marion,
IN
46952
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The Lyric Theater opened September 3, 1916 with “Ramona.” It was opened by Ora O. Parks for $45,000. Films were booked from Chicago and vaudeville from the Western Vaudeville Association Circuit. It added to sound to remain viable.
The Lyric closed for the summer on May 5, 1958 as the Marionaire Drive-In season was beginning. That closure proved to be permanent making the final showtimes on May 4, 1958 as “The Deep Six” and “Daniel Boone, Trail Blazer.” The theatre was demolished in July and August of 1959.
I’m not exactly sure what the Lyric looked like before the 1930s remodel, but it appears on the 1920 and 1931 Sanborns as a brick building of one story with the entrance into a small lobby on the east side under a small square metal awning. The exit was on the far west side, and was simply a narrow hallway. The space between these was a ladies' clothing store. The theater widened to the east just past the front of the auditorium, to fill the space left by the building next door, which was wider at the front.
On the 1920 and 1931 maps, stage and scenery are noted, and there is a dressing room on the NE corner, behind the building next door. This is gone on the 1947 map, and I assume it was removed when the theater was modernized sometime in the second half of the ‘30s.
I found some really fascinating stuff about the Marion theaters, and particularly their organs. The Lyric had a Moller. The Royal Grand had a series of 3 pipe organs, starting in 1914. The last one, built in 1925, was a 4-manual Page organ (same company as the one at the Embassy in Fort Wayne), that was only used for 3 years before the theater was closed with the advent of talkies.
I wrote all this up in my new book, “The Harmonious Echo: The Life and Times of the Barley Memorial Organ,” which is available from Amazon.com. What I could not find was a photo of the Royal Grand Theater in Marion. If anybody has one, I would love to get a scan of it.
And, yes, the Luna-Lite was across the street from the Lyric. The Luna-Lite had a reputation for having really excellent promotional art in the lobby – all locally produced.
We currently own the building where the theatre was. It is 116 W 4th St. The image above is not correct. I will post a picture of the theatre then and now.
This web page about four of Marion’s theaters says that the Lyric was located at 118 W. Fourth Street, across the street from the Luna-Lite Theatre, so the Lyric is the one we currently have listed with the wrong address. The page says the Lyric was demolished in 1952.
The Lyric Theatre was built in 1916 by the owners of the Luna-Lite Theatre. An item about the project appeared in the February 12 issue of The Moving Picture World:
A 1916 program for the Lyric Theatre that was listed at auction site WorthPoint (link, probably temporary) says at the bottom of the front cover that the house was owned by the Washington Theatre Company, so there can be no mistake that it was the same house.Broan: trade journals from the 1920s mention the Luna Lite and Lyric Theatres being in operation at the same time, so they were not the same theater. We’ve apparently just got the wrong address for one or the other of them, though I don’t know which.
This may be an image of this theatre. This also appears to be the same theatre as the luna-lite.
Here is a January 1939 article from the Prescott Evening Courier:
http://tinyurl.com/79qd45