Ben Bolt Theatre
828 Washington Street,
Chillicothe,
MO
64601
828 Washington Street,
Chillicothe,
MO
64601
1 person
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Additional Info
Previously operated by: B & B Theatres, Commonwealth Theaters Corp.
Architects: Robert O. Boller, Dietz Lusk Jr.
Firms: Boller & Lusk
Styles: Streamline Moderne
Nearby Theaters
The Ben Bolt Theatre was opened on August 18, 1949 with Doris Day in “It’s a Great Feeling”.
Unfortunately, this late-Art Moderne style gem was closed in February 1999 and demolished in September 1999.
Contributed by
Bryan Krefft
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Recent comments (view all 19 comments)
The July 2, 1949, issue of Boxoffice has an architect’s rendering of the proposed Ben Bolt Theatre. It, too, attributes the design to Boller & Lusk.
Unless I missed it somewhere up above BOXOFFICE reported the Ben Bolt was to be transformed into a Triple Theatre.The Downstairs theatre will have 350 seats and the two upstairs theatres will seat 200.Dolby Sound.Suppose to be ready for mid summer 1985. Source BOXOFFICE June 1985.
Streamline Moderne was the thing in the 1940’s,very nice marquee for all you marquee people like me.
Just an empty dirt lot. What a stupid waste.
Was there someone called Ben Bolt?
It was a play/opera, I believe. The man who wrote the music died in Chillicothe. There’s a zero milestone/memorial to him on the side of the drugstore on the square.
Thomas Kneass, who is buried in Chillicothe, adapted an old German melody to the 1840s poem “Ben Bolt” by Thomas Dunn English. The song was used in a play called “The Battle of Buena Vista” which was first staged during the war with Mexico.
The Ben Bolt Theatre was opened on Aug. 18, 1949, according to a note two days later in BoxOffice. It was built by Theatre Enterprises, Inc. “and named after the old song”. The first movie was It’s a Great Feeling.
“Two murals painted by Frank J. Zimmer, Los Angeles artist, are featured on the wall of the auditorium. Romance of the type suggested by the old song after which the theatre has been named is the theme of the murals, which are made more prominent with black light when the regular house lighting is low.”
The Ben Bolt Theatre also opened with the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Mississippi Hare”, the FrizPatrick’s Traveltalks short “Calling On Michigan”, and Pathe News.
In 1971, Commonwealth Theatres took over operations of the Ben Bolt, and in March 1985, an attempt on converting the single-screener into a triplex by adding two more screens in the upstairs section of the building failed for unknown reasons.
The Ben Bolt Theatre closed for the final time in February 1999 when the Grand 6 Cinemas opened on North Grand Drive, and was sadly demolished in September of that same year.
However in April 1999 while the theater was still abandoned, a group of members of the Fine Arts Theater Group of Kansas City rescued scavenged parts of the theater and managed to save items before demolition.
Last operated by B&B.