Roxy Theatre
126 E. 4th Street,
Carthage,
MO
64836
126 E. 4th Street,
Carthage,
MO
64836
1 person
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 30 comments
William Bradfield owned the Roxy from at least 1948 (when a note in The Exhibitor called it the Roxy) to December 1963, when he sold it along with two drive-ins to Dickinson Theatres, effective April 1964.
you went in the door after getting your ticket outside from the booth, it had a small snack bar with popcorn on the right side but have no memories of what the theater looked like inside except it was plain walls and always seemed dark.
Does anyone remember what the Roxy looked like inside?
Where was the snack bar, How many isles, etc.
Thanks to all for the photos and comments. comparing google street view with some of the old photos taken on the streets it is easier to visualize where the theaters may have been. The one photo of the Roxy seems to have been showing the movie “Fall of the Roman Empire” 1964 from IMDB. I had found this same photo in the CHS school yearbook ad’s.
I found Israel P. “Put” Williams on http://www.findagrave.com. His wifes name was Delphus Williams.
You are right about the Grand Opera house. It is on the 1909 Sanborn map. I read that it burned at some time and is now a vacant lot.
As the Roxy probably was the same house as the earlier Delphus Theatre, I’ll put this item from The Nickelodeon of May, 1909, here:
I believe Fourth and Lincoln was the location of the Grand Opera House, so the Williamses might have been leasing the Opera House for showing movies.This earlier comment by jsheehy454 cites a 1914 death certificate mentioning the Hippodrome Theatre at Fourth and Lincoln, so I think Hippodrome might have been an aka for the Grand Opera House.
The 1913 Airdome built behind the Delphus Theatre was to be called the Delphus Hippodrome, according to the MPW item I cited in this comment. That item names one of the operators of the Delphus as J. P. Williams (the J was most likely a typo that should have been an I.) It looks like Williams might have used the name Hippodrome at two different theaters in Carthage.
I see that the ad for the Photoplay spells the co-owner’s name McDurmeit. As the standard spelling of that surname is McDermeit, I had thought that MPW might have made a typo, but a local ad with that spelling suggests that he did use a variant spelling of his name. Other sources do use McDermeit, though, including an item in the September 25, 1915, issue of The Billboard which said that Ben and Porter Blackford had bought the Photoplay Theatre in Carthage from James A. McDermeit.
check this out Joe Vogel https://www.facebook.com/PowersMuseumCurator/photos/a.176248022419381.38720.167192136658303/944095195634656/?type=1&theater
I shared this info with the Powers Museum of Carthage, Missouri.
Carthage also had a house called the Photoplay Theatre, opened in late 1909 or early 1910 and still running in 1912 when a photo and brief description of it appeared on this page of the January 27 issue of The Moving Picture World. The Photoplay could, of course, have been an earlier name for one or another of Carthage’s other theaters.
Powers Museum also listed 3 other theaters in Carthage the Royal, Cameo & Colonial. but no locations or info.
thank you Joe
ldc402000: If you want to submit a theater for the database, click on the “Theaters” link in the blue masthead at the top of this page. On the page the link fetches you’ll see “Submit your favorite” at the top of the right column. Put the theater name in the box below that and click “Add.” Another page will then come up where you can put additional information about the theater on a form, and then a second page with another form after that.
After you’ve filled in as much of the form as you can, click the “Finish Theater and Save” box. The site’s theater editor will check the form and see if more information is available from other sources, such as the Film Daily Yearbooks, and then will post a page for the theater to the site.
Don’t worry if you have to leave most of the boxes on the forms blank. A lot of theaters get added with very little information available, and people commenting on the page later add more information that can then be added to the theater description by the editor.
How do you add movies to this list the Powers museum posted a map today with an open air theater in Carthage called the Airdome.
I went to the Roxie alot as a child and teenager.
Yes the Roxy was just to the right, in the picture where some blue sky is showing. Thanks a lot for the pictures that have been uploaded. I went to the Roxy often after the Fox closed, I am now in California now and do not have access to newspaper or library archives to do much research on these theaters. I would love to see a photo of the interior of the Roxy, but I suppose none exist.
The opera house was on the 2nd floor and Keith McBride is working on restoring it.
the picture above is not where the Roxie was but it is the site of the Burlingame and Chaffee Opera House. The Roxie was in the middle of the block.
I posted pics of the Roxie and The Delphus.
From 2012 a photo of the Roxy Theater building in Carthage.
I have an ancestor that had a stroke and died in Carthage on October 10, 1914. On his death certificate it states that he died in the Hippodrome Theatre, 4th and Lincoln St., Carthage, MO.
Memory can be tricky. For years, I had a vivid memory of a particular theater in Los Angeles that turned out never to have existed. After discovering that my memory was false, I’ve realized that I’d rather forget the details of something real than remember something that never was real.
I’ve been searching the Internet for more information about theaters in Carthage, but have found very little. I found a reference to a Royal Theatre in Carthage in 1924, but no details about it.
The Delphus Theatre had a near neighbor, the Burlingame and Chaffee Opera House, spotlighted in this Carthage Press post, but that house closed in the 1890s and probably never ran movies.
The same post mentions a Grand Opera House, which opened in the 1890s at 4th and Lincoln. The Google Street View of that intersection doesn’t show anything resembling a theater standing there today. I’ve found references to it being in operation as late as 1908, so it’s possible that it lasted long enough to become a movie house for a while.
Given the slim pickings on the Internet, more information about the theaters in Carthage will probably have to wait until somebody with access to local sources turns up here. We’re always glad to have more contributors adding to the database.
Morning Joe, Thanks for your input and eagle eye, I know my memory has faded some. Upon retiring this must be a normal obsession, trying to relive the past. Surprisingly I can remember where I viewed certain movies, and so I use IMDB to check the dates. I’m in California, and cannot go to library’s to look up info. A web page mentioned that the Carthage library had the local newspaper from 1888 to present on microfilm. Someday I’ll get there. I was amazed to discover last night that Google has published many U.S. newspapers including Nevada, Mo.
Also in Carthage there was the Sunset Drive in, not yet listed here.
I’m thinking the Roxy was lost between 1963-68, when I returned as a seasoned projectionist and wanted to see the Roxy “soooo bad”. But it was gone. Fall 68 is when I returned to Nevada, MO. for four months and worked the Fox. In 1979 I returned to California and have been here since then, only with occasional visits to Carthage.
All the people on this web site are wonderful I can spend hours reading history. Especially thanks to the Web Host for providing this cinema web site.
I’m sure the photos of 4th Street in Hansford’s book are correctly captioned. The building that, in the 1914 photo, has “MILNES FRIEND GRO.CO” painted on the side of it is still there. It has a very distinctive parapet that can still be picked out in the Google view. The two-storey building just beyond it is still there, too, occupied by a business called Front Page.
The building the Delphus Theatre was in had to have been on the site of the one-storey building that now has a loan company and the Abbey Title Company in it. The Delphus was definitely on 4th Street, and is definitely gone. If the Roxy was actually on Main Street, then the Delphus Theatre is definitely not yet listed at Cinema Treasures.
The Theatre on Main Street that Hansford’s book calls the Electric (with a question mark) might have actually been called the Elite. There was a house of that name in Carthage, according to the book “Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915,” by Thomas J. Schlereth (Google preview.)