Theatre

Joe Vogel on July 24, 2023 at 11:15 am

As this house occupied space formerly housing a store that sold implements, I wonder if it could have been this project noted in the October 2, 1920 issue of Exhibitors Herald:

“New Theatre for Eldora

“ELDORA, IA.— Frank P. Doane and Ellis McDonald will open a motion picture show about October 1 in the building formerly occupied by the Janssen Implement House. They are remodeling the place preparatory to its reopening.”

The rather ambiguous and awkward wording (“…preparatory to its reopening>” suggests that the theater might have operated earlier at a different location. If so, it could have been either the Bijou or the Princess, both of which were listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, the Bijou on Marion (now Edgington) Avenue and the Princess at an unlisted location. Whatever the name of this house, only the Grand was listed at Eldora in the FDY by 1926. Despite no other theaters listed in FDYs from the late 1920s, I did find one reference to a house in Eldora called the Family Theatre in a 1928 issue of Motion Picture News. There is no clue to its location, though.