RKO Strand Theatre

Joe Vogel on December 22, 2017 at 7:24 pm

If this house was called B. F. Keith’s Theatre, it must have been but briefly, after the Keith circuit took control of it in 1915 and before they took over the Colonial the following year. The name B. F. Keith’s Theatre belonged to the Colonial from 1916 to 1921. I’ve found an item in the November 3, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World which notes sequential personal appearances recently made by popular child star Violet McMillan at both Keith’s Theatre and the Strand in Dayton.

hanksykes on December 8, 2014 at 5:46 pm

Hello Again Joe, I can’t believe that Universal Studios tore down the 1925 soundstage#28 which held the interior set of the Paris Opera House from the Lon Chaney silent “Phantom Of The Opera”. The destruction took place in Sept. of 2014. I’m so saddened by this. Until soon,Hank

Joe Vogel on December 4, 2014 at 5:06 pm

I live in California, formerly in suburban Los Angeles but now in a backwater in the northern Sierra foothills. I can’t really claim the knowledge as mine, though, as it’s all stuff I’ve dug up on the Internet, mostly at the Internet Archive which has a large collection of old theater industry trade journals.

Joe Vogel on December 3, 2014 at 9:00 pm

The Strand was a Keith vaudeville house from 1915 until switching to movies near the end of the silent era, according to this item from the October 5, 1929, issue of Motion Picture News:

“Strand, Dayton, To Re-Open; Cincinnati News

“STRAND, Dayton. Ohio, a Keith house since 1915, which closed recently after silent movies had proved a failure, will reopen middle of October equipped with sound. A new 10-year lease has been secured, and improvements are being made by the Fox interests who recently acquired the house in the Keith-Libson-Heidingsfeld deal. G. Claude Miller will be retained as manager.”

The November 23 issue of the same journal had a bit more about the deal in which Fox acquired the Strand:

“Additional Fox Shares For Purchase Of Libson Chain

“Fox Film Corporation has made application for the listing of an additional 51,360 shares of Class A common stock on the New York Stock Exchange, the additional shares to be used in the transaction through which Fox acquires the Libson & Heidings circuit of twelve theatres in Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus.”

Late 1929 was a terrible time for Fox to be issuing new shares, so it’s likely that he was unable to sell them and the deal collapsed. He lost control of his entire company in 1930. As the Strand became an RKO house, and RKO was a descendant of the merged Keith-Albee and Orpheum vaudeville circuits, the house apparently went back to its previous owners.

hanksykes on August 7, 2010 at 4:39 pm

One of the theaters owned by Ike Libson of Mid-West Theaters of Cincinnati,Ohio.It had been involved in the 1913 Dayton flood,afterwhich the film business continued. So you could say it had been visited by water and fire!