Unadilla Theatre

Long before the now-legendary Unadilla Drive-In opened its doors, Unadilla had its own indoor theatre. The Idlehour Theatre was open by 1911 (probably in that year or late the prior year) and was initially popular, but its history in the 1920’s was a series of openings and closings, starting with its first shuttering in fall 1924. References are made in area newspapers of prospective new owners and leasers throughout the remainder of the theatre’s existence.

It was renovated and reopened in late-1925, and operated through the end of 1927, with a name change to the Unadilla Theatre and W.B. Hunt taking over as manager, both in 1926. After another short closure, it reopened summer 1928, and then the regional DeVaul chain took over in January 1929. DeVaul’s name quickly disappears from theatre advertisements, before a final announcement in June 1929 that the theatre is reopening for the summer, implying that it had once again closed in the interim.

It seems that the theatre, like many, closed in 1929-30 rather than make the expensive transition to talkies except for one mysterious notice in the local paper from September 1938, where one Elwin Miller reopened the theatre for a week, showing a different movie every night. If so, how did he manage to screen talkies in the presumably silent old theatre? The short entry offers no clues, and there the trail of the theatre ends.

Doing research for a newspaper article for the Chenango American and Tri-Town News in December 1977, locals indicated to me that the theatre stood on Depot Street, on the site of an old garage across the street from the fire station.

While that garage building is now gone, in the present day there is a concrete frontage area and walkway that remains in front a vacant lot that aligns with my memory of the site, which is at 13 Depot Street. A picture of the concrete frontage and the old garage ran in the Tri-Town News article on December 7, 1977 but I have been unable to locate it.

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