Rio Theatre

The Rio Theatre operated in the former Blackstone Café and Confectionery at Chapparral Street and Starr Street. Jack Pickens, Jr. and G.R. Risken took on the location in the Fall of 1931 and converted it to the plans of Everett E. Hamon of Hamon and Company. H.E. Woodruff carried out the contracting and veteran theatre interior designer Mrs. H.E. Wosnig decorated the venue. The Rio Theatre launched on November 18, 1931 with Will Rogers in “A Connecticut Yankee".

Pickens was experienced with the Dent Theatre and the Griffith Amusement circuits. He adopted a Motiograph De Luxe Sound Projector for his auditorium and hired Mable Weeks as the manager of the venue. Weeks had managed the Harlingen Empire Theatre for Publix and Cleburne’s Yale Theatre and Palace Theater in her time with Griffith Amusements. But the Rio Theatre was heading upstream under fierce competition from the R&R / Corpus Christi Theatres Circuit. The Rio Theatre cut prices to a dime in what they called “Depression Days” specials in 1932 to get customers to their diminutive 400-seat auditorium. F.D. “Fats” Nance took over the management of the venue but could not turn the tide.

The climate was too challenging and the Rio Theatre dried up after a September 11, 1934 trade screening. The neighboring Mayflower Café would later close and sued over what the owner felt were usuriously high lease payments that both he and the former Rio Theatre operators had faced. Both spots were fused into a home for a hardware store turned to Wolens Department Store. It appears that the building was torn down in 1967 for a new Continental Bus Terminal that opened in 1968.

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