The PALACE Theatre was built of concrete block, faced with brick. The interior was in Spanish style, quite unusual for a small Midwest city in 1914. The ceiling was filled with twinkling lights, and during the movie, a cloud machine was turned on and the “stars” could be seen as the clouds passed overhead. There also was a grand Barton pipe organ, played by a local musician during silent movies.
There was a Saturday matinee for children, usually a cowboy show, and a double feature on Friday nights. The signal that the movie was about to begin was when a uniformed usher opened the curtain.
The Palace Theatre was owned by Robert A. McDonald until 1920. Early ownership is sketchy, but Frank and Henrietta Eckardt then took ownership. The couple owned three theatres in Wisconsin Rapids during the first half of the 20th century.
In 1957, Palace Recreation became the custodian, and there was a dance hall, lunch counter and pool room in the building. The slanted floor was made so it could be tipped up on one end to make a flat floor when needed.
In 1962, Ed-Syl Furniture occupied the building until Sears Roebuck and Co. moved in two years later. John Potter bought the building from the Kruger-Walrath Co. in the mid-1960s. After Sears left in 1972, the building was remodeled into separate stores. Kim’s Classic Shoe Rack was on the lower level and Mr. Image barber shop on the main level.
DeByle’s clothing store bought the building in 1980 and changed the interior into one store on two levels.
The building was owned by the Mead Witter Foundation since 2001 and became a home for the arts, the Cultural Center, Arts Council and community theater which filled the main floor, and musicians came in once a week to perform. On the lower level there was a meeting room and pottery and mosaic studios. Home-school students art met there once a week.
Interesting fact: Paul Gross of Wisconsin Rapids worked as a projectionist at all three theaters in Wisconsin Rapids.
The Mead Witter Foundation announced Sept. 6 its plans to demolish four buildings on the “Theater Block” in Wisconsin Rapids. Caitlin Shuda/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin
The foundation’s first purchase in the Theater Block was the old Wisconsin Theater building that was left vacant by previous owners. The next purchase included the Palace Theater building that was the home of a clothing store that closed. Sieber’s Restaurant offered to sell its building, as did the Potter family who owned two parcels of land. That area became a private park in 2002.
The Mead Witter Foundation announced on Sept. 6, 2018 its plans to demolish four buildings on the “Theater Block” in Wisconsin Rapids. The foundation’s first purchase in the Theater Block was the Wisconsin Theatre building that was left vacant by previous owners. The next purchase included the Palace Theatre building that had housed a clothing store that closed. Sieber’s Restaurant offered to sell its building, as did the Potter family who owned two parcels of land. That area became a private park in 2002.
(Amber Fisher, Sep. 10, 2018) – Kanye West announced on Sunday, Sept. 9 that he supports the restoration of the Avalon Regal Theater in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, which has since been transformed into a church, then a performing arts venue. “We’re doing Chicago Comedy Jam. We’re going to restore the Regal Theatre,” tweeted West, a South Side native. According to several reports, West was likely referring to the Chi City Comedy Jam, an annual stand-up comedy festival that features black comedians from Chicago. This year’s Chi City Comedy Jam will be held Oct. 5-6 at the Arie Crown Theatre. No further details were forthcoming about when the festival would be held at the Avalon Regal Theater.
South Side native and entrepreneur Jerald Gary, 33, bought the theater for $100,000 in 2014, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. He’s since been trying to raise money to fix up the building, and sent a message to the Sun-Times saying he acknowledged West’s tweet, according to the report. Gary couldn’t be reached for further comment, the Sun-Times reported.
Update: In 2005, local businessman David Naumowicz purchased the Granada Theatre with the intention of restoring it and turning it into a banquet hall or events center, but because there was no nearby parking lot, the idea was considered unfeasible and was subsequently abandoned. Larry Vail, owner of Jim’s Garage Door Service, bought the Granada in 2015 and returned its use to a warehouse.
Vail has kept some things intact, such as the fireplace in the lobby, one of the box seats, the proscenium arch and the original light fixtures on the ceiling, but said he has no plans to restore the theater. He performed a few renovations, but they were related to the warehouse use: a driveway behind the building on Carter Street, new exits and a large garage door for loading in the stagehouse.
The ceiling and walls have been painted white but the walls have persistently leaked, resulting in water spots speckling the otherwise white interior.
How a mother and her daughter saved an Iowa movie theater (Courtney Crowder, Des Moines Register)
Marianne and Rebecca Fons are freaking out over a handrail. They are frantic clapping, jumping up and down, shrill squeal-level excited over this railing, which is a sturdy wood banister, sure, but not a furnishing that should elicit this much happy hysteria. But to this mother-daughter duo, that handrail is so more than a stairwell safety requirement. It’s a sign. A harbinger that construction inside the historic Iowa Theater is on track. Proof that they are, indeed, in the final stages of renovating the beloved movie house that has graced Winterset’s town square since the early 1900s before falling into disrepair and closing in 2015. And, most importantly, an auspice that maybe their audacious idea for Rebecca to quit her steady job in Chicago and commute from the Windy City to Winterset for two years as the pair whipped up community support and raised funds to the tune of $800,000 to renovate the now-multi-use entertainment space wasn’t such a foolhardy endeavor.
Like the renovated movie theaters in nearby Newton and Knoxville, The Iowa Theater reopening in Winterset is a direct result of neighbors taking up the mantle of change and locals, like the Fonses, investing time and money in their community. As the drum beat of decline in population and amenities in rural Iowa continues steadily, Winterset is playing a different tune. The town has grown by about 10 percent since the turn of the century, according to U.S Census data, and has averaged about 16 new dwellings built per year for the past 13 years, according to the Madison County Development Group.
While all growth is mostly good growth to small communities, a focus for Winterset and many similar locales is the retention of young professionals, who want to play in their town as much as they want to live and work. Having places for residents to dine out and options for entertainment are simply necessities if you want to ensure a prosperous future, said Tom Leners, executive director of the Madison County Development Group.
And having even one successful amenity, like a movie theater on the square, can be a big driver of foot traffic and dollars to an otherwise quiet town, he said. In Knoxville, four new or remodeled restaurants have opened since their community-financed movie theater began operations in late 2015.
How, exactly, The Iowa will influence its environs has yet to be seen, but after two years of a dark theater, many residents are just excited to have movies in Winterset again. Pride drips from the Fonses as they explain how they’ve partnered with their community to restore the one-screen cinema and live performance space in the style of its glory days, but with the digital technology of modern theaters.
A couple weeks ago, the Fonses were in the home stretch, but recently the theater opened and entertained sold-out crowds for showings of classic films starring local hero John Wayne.
The story of how this unlikely mother-daughter team got those full houses, the story of the last two years of the Fonses life, well, that plays out a little bit like one of The Duke’s movies. Here, in excerpts from their recollections, the people closest to the project tell the Register how — and why — they decided to turn the lights back on at The Iowa Theater.
The main characters
REBECCA FONS, development director of The Iowa Theater: So in May of 2015…
MARIANNE FONS, chair of The Iowa Theater board: I heard wind that the movie theater was for sale.
REBECCA: We were at my wedding on Memorial Day weekend in Wisconsin and somebody told us. I think you took a phone call and you told me, “Rebecca the movie theater has closed. I don’t know about you, but it could be neat and I would not do it without you, you know.” And I was like, “Let me get married and go on a honeymoon and do that and then we will talk.” That was in May and I think in July or in late June I came to Winterset and we met with our contractor.
MARY FONS, sister and middle daughter: When my mom wants something she gets this twinkle, like this gleam in her eye. I remember her kind of thinking about looking at how much it cost and what she could do. My mom is not a women who’s flashy. She doesn’t buy jewelry and handbags, but real estate projects are her thing. She’s interested in renovation.
REBECCA: By September of that year, as a newlywed, we had acquired the theater and since then have been working to make it a nonprofit and rehab it.
The memories
BRENDA HOLLINGSWORTH, manager with the Madison County Historic Preservation Commission: Winterset always had a theater, really. The opera house was one of the first buildings built in town. And culture and arts have always played an important role in our community.
JANE MARTENS, former Iowa Theater employee: I worked at the theater in 1946, 1947 and 1948. I graduated in 1948, so it was a high school job for me and it was a fantastic job. I called myself, “The Big Boss.”
STEVE REED, contractor for Iowa Theater renovation: I am from Winterset, so (I) used to go to the theater all the time. It was a great place to be a kid.
MARTENS: Sometimes kids would be throwing stuff down in front of the screens and we would call their parents and tell them we put their kid out of the theater and they weren’t allowed back in the theater for three weeks. We did!
MARTENS: Then, there were people who couldn’t afford to come to the show. We had a little fund because I knew some of the kids’ parents couldn’t afford to hardly eat, so I would take from that little fund and, it was 35 cents at that time, so I would give them a ticket and let them see a show.
REBECCA: I would not want to have been a kid here without a movie theater because it showed me the world. And maybe it was the world through crummy movies. I wasn’t seeing foreign films or anything from film festivals or anything fancy, but it showed me the world and it showed me stories and it expanded my mind.
MARTENS: And I have hilarious stories that stick with me, too. Our projectionist had gone on to college, but he came back and one day he said to me, “Can I have a roll of pennies?” I gave it to him and all of a sudden when the movie started, the door flung wide open and a man came to my window and I said, “Yes, sir, is there is something wrong? Do you need help?” And he said, “It’s raining pennies from heaven!” The projectionist had been throwing pennies out of the window of the projector room.
The theater
HOLLINGSWORTH: The Iowa Theater was originally a one-story building that was a meat market in 1899 and then later a bakery and restaurant. In the early 1900s, the building was purchased for a new playhouse for vaudeville productions. And then around 1928, they remodeled the whole structure and built the second story and upgraded it to put in silent movies.
MARY: The Iowa Theater is where I saw my first film in the 80s. It was “Fox and the Hound,” the Disney cartoon, with my dad. I remember sitting in the balcony and the place had fallen into disrepair. It just looked terrible.
MARIANNE: It was threadbare.
REED: It was where dreams went to die, really.
LENERS: It turns out the building itself was transitioning from one generation to another in 2015, so the ladies that were taking the property over came out to see it and they decided the building needed some TLC that they weren’t able to give it.
REBECCA: The Theater finally closed in 2015. It was operational up until that point, but not super consistently.
HOLLINGSWORTH: It was a very, very sad moment for the town when the theater closed, but it was a necessary moment because the building wasn’t up to code and it wasn’t a safe place.
The comeback
REED: There’s a movement in Winterset right now to go through and restore these old buildings in town. There’s a lot of character to them and their structure is good, but if we don’t keep them up, they will fall apart.
HOLLINGSWORTH: The Theater is in the courthouse historic district, which is on the historic register. The entire square is a great example of Italianate architecture at the turn of the century in Iowa. It’s like stepping back in time.
REBECCA: We did a historical audit of the building and we found that a lot of the insides of the theater had been irreparably changed in the 1980s, so we didn’t have a huge requirement to keep a lot of the inside, but the outside of the theater, the marquee specifically, and the front ticket lobby, were the original 1930-ish marquee and terrazzo floor ticket lobby and ticket booth, so we were like, well, we’re keeping that.
REED: My opinion is, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Marianne’s goal was to keep what we could and make the rest look original. If they wanted to build a brand new modern movie theater they could do that on the edge of town, but her dream and the community’s dream was to restore The Iowa as a major part of the town square.
HOLLINGSWORTH: The downtown historic square, of which the theater is a part, is a picture of who we are in Winterset. It’s our legacy and our roots. Somebody once said to me that a city without old buildings is like an old man without a memory. Those buildings create context for our life today.
REED: From the first moment I stepped into the theater, I could see the finished product. I knew what it could become.
The personal growth
REBECCA: My relationship with my mom was always good, but it’s definitely stronger now. I left my job at the Chicago International Film Festival after 10 years, but I would never have done it if she wasn’t one of my best friends.
MARIANNE: I was raised by altruistic parents and was raised with the idea that if you can make the world a better place, you should. So because I had the ability to jump in and get the project started for the theater I decided to do it. Because of Rebecca, because I knew she had the expertise, the industry knowledge and the youth and the energy to really be the brains of the project.
REBECCA: For me a large desire to do this came from a love for movies and the power of cinema and what it can do for anybody, especially a kid growing up in Winterset, Iowa.
REBECCA: I feel like, living in Chicago, so often we put on our sunglasses and go to the grocery store and it’s like, ugh, I don’t want to see anybody, just let me do this and let me get home and rush, rush, rush. And then I come here and it is like kind of like, oh, there is someone at the coffee shop let’s just talk, and I love that, and I think it is in my blood, and I think I had kind of forgotten that part of myself, because I was so like, “I left Iowa and I never looked back.” But then I looked back and I was like, “Oh, Iowa is awesome.”
The end credits
HOLLINGSWORTH: When I first walked into the theater, I sat down in one of the seats and wept happy tears. I just had a moment. If you saw it originally, a lot of it just had to be gutted and how they went from that humble beginning to the finished product is pretty amazing.
LENERS: I was observing Friday the crowds in downtown Winterset and, you know, it just feels good that the square is parked full again and I heard from the restaurants that they had big nights on the weekend the theater opened.
MARY: I’m so proud to be from a small town that is thriving and I don’t take it for granted that people like my mom and my younger sister are investing in the town. I live in Chicago and when you go to places like Berwyn (Illinois) you realize these places thrive because people decide to stay and to invest and make a lecture series or a music festival or brewery or a winery. It doesn’t happen because you hope it happens. It happens because people invest.
LENERS: Who knows what is available to us now? Maybe a show going to the Stoner Theater can land here before they do their weeklong run in Des Moines. One of my wife’s nephews is a musician and there are more and more of these small town playhouses to have gigs at. At some point, we think politicians might want to rent the place.
LENERS: There is this feeling that if the theater can succeed then maybe an evening coffee and dessert spot is possible and more restaurants are possible. We have people wanting to be downtown, so I am just wildly optimistic.
MARIANNE: I bought a seat during our Sponsor a Seat Campaign, of course, and when I was laying the theater out, I chose the seat way in the back corner. It would be the last seat that a person would pick, so I just imagine myself sitting in it in the way back looking out over a full house, watching everyone watch a movie from my very own seat in this theater.
Efforts underway to revive historic theater to former glory —–
From the Herald and News: In Hollywood’s golden era, grand movie theaters sprung up in towns across the country to showcase the latest Charlie Chaplin, Abbott & Costello or Lewis & Martin laugh-fest. While the era of fluorescents, marquees and drive-ins have almost completely disappeared in favor of iMax and modern stadium theaters, a group in Lakeview are working to revive a forgotten time when the local theater was the centerpiece of small town social life.
Like most smaller communities, Lakeview once had multiple theaters and a drive-in offering the latest cartoons, newsreels, serials and double features of westerns and classic Hollywood glam. Today, none remain in operation in the area. The Marius Theater decades ago was converted into office space, and the drive-in is now a vacant lot. Yet the Alger Theater, constructed in 1940, still stands, unused except for the occasional special concert or film premiere. Its décor is reminiscent of the art-decco era with a 1940s Hollywood’s bygone sentimental era. A walk inside is a trip through time back to classic Hollywood instantly sparking nostalgic memories for those who lived it and others who have only heard the stories or seen it recreated in popular films like The Majestic.
The theater closed several years ago from its regular weekly film showings, a victim of the digital era of film distribution. Unable to afford a new digital projector once distributors stopped providing physical film reels, the owners were forced to halt business. In the time since it has reopened for a couple concerts by Blues Brothers and Doors tribute acts, as well as two special film screenings coordinated with the help of Travel Oregon and Oregon Film, but otherwise has sat dormant.
Yet the final curtain may not have lowered on the Alger just yet. A group of citizens, encouraged by the Oregon Mainstreet Project, formed a group called Lakeview Community Partnership (LCP), aimed at revitalizing Lakeview’s downtown area. Committees were formed and projects established, including community town clean-ups, printing of historic photos to be placed in business windows, and an annual community celebration downtown called Daly Days in honor of Lakeview’s most famous resident – Dr. Bernard Daly.
Yet amidst the various smaller efforts the coveted prize for LCP to return Lakeview to its prominent past has always been the Alger Theater, many in the community dreaming of a return to its heyday when the Alger was the place to go. A plan has been set in motion through a partnership with the current owners of the theater and LCP that may in a few years bring the theater back to its former glory.
“It’s priceless, it really is, they’ve barely changed anything inside,” said Ginger Casto of South Central Oregon Economic Development District and one of the driving forces behind LCP. “We want to replace things like the carpeting, but keep it true to its original design. It’s about restoration, not replacement.”
Casto, along with Will Wright, RARE member and project coordinator for LCP, have been working extensively to bring the historic theater back to life. Community surveys have been collected to gauge interest in the project, which according to Wright has been overwhelmingly positive, as he works to establish a business plan for moving forward with fundraising efforts.
“When I first got here and talked to people about what LCP was doing I’d get somewhat positive responses, until I mentioned the Alger Theater,” said Wright. “Once I mentioned the Alger people would light up. Of all the stuff LCP is doing, this by far has the most community support. Anecdotally, it suggests we’ll be able to do something with it.”
For an isolated rural town with no active theater, the outcry to restore the Alger Theater is not only to be included in the newest film releases, but also for a need to provide a social center and positive activities for kids in a place where opportunities are otherwise lacking. Many who grew up going to the Alger as kids are now parents, wishing that their kids could have the same experience.
More than just a movie theater, the Alger has a large stage and balcony perfect for providing other activities as well. Casto and Wright see its stage and structure being able to facilitate lectures, community theater, dance recitals, swap meets, concerts, summer camps and more. Film festivals have been a popular request, both of relatively new films like the Harry Potter series alongside classic showcases of John Wayne or Hop Along Cassidy.
Casto brought in George Kramer, a historic theater preservationist, to inspect the theater in its current state. For an almost 80-year old theater it remains in remarkably good shape, especially its foundation, according to Kramer, making its future sustainable without a massive overhaul. Engineering-wise, the building is sound, though a seismic retrofit will be needed at some point. Figuring out how to make it all work financially for sustainable use though is Wright’s current task.
“Originally when the Alger closed digital projectors cost around $70,000, but the prices have come down dramatically,” said Wright. “Now they can come as cheap as $15,000, and we’re seeing a large amount of preliminary support in the community for the theater to be reopened.” Those undertaking the LCP-Alger project are crunching data with plans to begin fundraising later this summer. If all goes as hoped, Wright estimated the theater could be open again for regular business within 2-3 years.
Casto compares the project to another recently completed project to restore the Lakeview Swimming Pool. Built in 1952, it was showing its age, but the community rallied and held multiple fundraisers to have it rebuilt, accomplishing that task in 2015. Dollars also streamed in from many former residents, Casto included, who heard about the project and felt the need to give due to sentimental ties to the pool. Casto believes that once the fundraising process begins for the Alger, support from those with nostalgic memories of watching classic films there will flood in as well.
“What we’re trying to do right now is collect all the information we can to figure out costs – realistic bids for digital projectors and sound systems and lighting,” said Casto. “Groups have already contacted us wanting to be a part of it.”
Casto indicated that Kramer, who has restored other theaters across Oregon, is working on a statewide program with the legislature to appropriate dollars for historic theaters like the Alger to be preserved in small rural communities. Kramer warned her though that restoring a theater is easy, finding a sustainable business plan to maintain it is the hard part.
“We’re getting closer, but we don’t have a timeline,” added Casto. “I’m less concerned about the fundraising part of it. It’s not in a state of disrepair to where it can’t be used. We’ll have the occasional show now, but for the façade and marquee and lights to be fully restored back to their original glory it will take time. The priorities in projects like this are usually the things we can’t see like electrical and plumbing.”
Researching how best to restore the Alger to its former self hasn’t been contained exclusively within Lake County. Members of LCP have been reaching out to other similar-sized communities that worked to preserve their historic theaters to gauge feasibility of the project. They also contacted the Ross Ragland Theater in Klamath Falls for not only advice but for preliminary talks to possibly partner someday on projects.
“We want to keep listening, it’s the only way it’s going to be sustainable,” said Casto. “We’ve started to hear from people that come here and say that things downtown are looking better, people are beginning to notice that things are going on. We don’t know how long this will take, we don’t have any timelines and we don’t want to make any promises…but we are getting really close to making some major decisions.”
THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH: IN MEMORY OF THE ALGER (1940-2015)
by Dennis Cozzalio, JUN 18, 2016
The delightful British comedy The Smallest Show on Earth headlined a great Saturday matinee offering from the UCLA Film and Television Archive on June 25, 2016 as their excellent series “Marquee Movies: Movies on Moviegoing” wrapped up. So it seemed like a perfect time to resurrect my review of the movie, which celebrates the collective experience of seeing cinema in a darkened, and in this case dilapidated old auditorium, alongside my appreciation of my own hometown movie house, the Alger, which opened in 1940 and closed last year, one more victim of economics and the move toward digital distribution and exhibition.
“You mean to tell me my uncle actually charged people to go in there? And people actually paid?” – Matt Spenser (Bill Travers) upon first seeing the condition of the Bijou Kinema, in The Smallest Show on Earth
In Basil Dearden’s charming and wistful 1957 British comedy The Smallest Show on Earth (also known under the far-less evocative title Big Time Operators), a young couple, played by Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, inherit a small-town cinema, the Bijou Kinema – known to the citizenry of Sloughborough as the Flea Pit – and decide, in order to drive up the selling price to the local cinema magnate, who wants to tear it down and build a carpark, that against all odds and common sense they’ll reopen the doors and give the business a go. They also inherit three elderly employees who have long been part of the Bijou’s checkered history—Mrs. Fazackalee (Margaret Rutherford), the cashier who was once also the cinema organist during the silent era; Mr. Quill (Peter Sellers), the projectionist with a more-than-slight penchant for Dewar’s White Label; and Old Tom (Bernard Miles), the janitor who only wants a uniform commensurate with his position and who dutifully provides a fiery solution when negotiations with the magnate hit a snag. These three comprise what passes for the barely beating heart of the Bijou, and if Dearden’s movie seems to end just as the third act is set to begin, it remains a sweet-tempered testament to the blinkered spirits of the Bijou staff, as well as to the fleeting pleasures of nostalgia and the long-lost palaces where past generations learned to love the movies.
Some of the richest comic highlights of The Smallest Show on Earth come from all the technical foul-ups that come courtesy of the theater’s antiquated equipment — busted reels, focus failures, upside-down images and, of course, the image of sizzling celluloid from a frame on fire, these are as good as a cartoon and a newsreel, the expected bonuses when you buy a ticket at the Bijou. And audiences in 2016 who stumble upon this little beauty on DVD (or on Amazon Streaming Video, where it is currently available) will likely get huge laughs from the movie’s sly comment on the panicked movie industry’s attempt to stave off the deleterious effects of television through unabashed gimmickry.
Unable to afford upgrades to Cinemascope and stereophonic sound, the staff at the Bijou make do (albeit inadvertently) with the hardships imposed on them by the march of progress. One of the factors of modernity contributing to the theater’s fall into disrepair is a railway which zooms directly past the outside of the auditorium, making the building shake from its faulty foundation to its rickety rafters. However, fortune smiles upon the Spensers as audiences react with wild abandon when the roar of the train outside is accidentally synched to a scene of a train robbery in the western on screen. The rumbling is so awful that poor Mr. Quill, recently having “taken the pledge,” is driven back to drink after throwing himself bodily on the projector to keep it from vibrating off its floor mounts. But the audience sees it as an “enhanced” experience, something they certainly couldn’t get from sitting at home in front of the tube.
Viewers taking in The Smallest Show on Earth 60 years later will think of everything from Sensurround to D-Box, technological gimmicks that, effective as they might be, still probably wouldn’t be as much fun as a well-timed passing locomotive threatening to literally bring the house down. The movie gently satirizes the raucous behavior of working-class audiences in the age of television while serving as a bridge between the rapidly changing landscape of modern entertainment and its own unapologetically nostalgic yearning for days past, when tastes were simpler and ornate palaces built to showcase flickering images of grandeur and adventure were commonplace. Whatever else you might say about them, the rowdy, television-spoiled audiences that (eventually) pack the Bijou are at least having fun, unlike their “sophisticated” modern-day counterparts, whose countenances, lit by cell phone screens, betray the desultory sense that, despite the fact that they’ve paid upwards of $17 to get in, they’d rather be anywhere else than in a theater watching a movie.
Of course, that appeal to nostalgia for days past rings slightly differently in 2016 than it did for the characters in Dearden’s film, who have seen change in the film industry, from silent to sound to color to wide-screen, but who mourn most especially for the days when the theater could be packed for every show, when the movies really were the best and only show in town. Audiences exposed to the movie today might first marvel that there were ever such huge, expansive, ornately designed, single-screen temples whose only purpose was to show movies. Modern multiplexes with 25 screens and a bounty of tentpole blockbusters to exhibit still find themselves appealing to Internet technology to stimulate ticket sales, booking live, high-definition video feeds of operas and other “special events,” and even appealing to organizations like churches to rent auditoriums, all in order to stay afloat in an age when entertainment choices are even more fragmented. Single-screen palaces for everyday exhibition really are, with a few exceptions like the historic Vista in East Hollywood, things of the past.
For me, seeing The Smallest Show on Earth for the first time in 2014 provided its own sort of coincidence, like a train with the word “progress” spray-painted on its engine in ironic quotation marks rumbling past, but without the pleasant afterglow of an enhanced experience. As I watched the efforts of the Spensers and their staff to raise the Bijou Kinema from the ashes, I couldn’t help but reflect on a couple of beloved movie palaces in my own life that are not now what they once were.
2014 was the year that the movie palace of my own childhood finally closed its doors for what looks like the last time. I saw my very first movie in a theater at the tender age of three. It was Gay Purr-ee (1963), the Abe Levitow-directed animated feature (co-written by Chuck Jones) about cats in the French countryside making their way to the big city, and I saw it at the Marius Theater in beautiful downtown Lakeview, Oregon. The Marius, built in the early 1930s, wasn’t the first movie theater in town — there was a tiny silent theater operating in the early 1900s that introduced the industrial age wonder of the movies to the Irish immigrants and cowpokes who first populated my hometown. (Writer Bob Barry commemorated the theater, whose name I can’t recall — the Rex, maybe? — in his book of local history From Shamrocks to Sagebrush.) But the Marius was my first. I don’t remember a thing about it, and without the help of some photographs I doubt I’d even be able to recall what the exterior looked like— it was closed and remodeled into an office building during the years in the mid-60’s when my family briefly moved to California. By the time we returned in 1968, the Marius was gone. (The remnants of the theater stage are still discernible in the basement of that remodeled building, known since the theater’s closing as the Marius Building. Otherwise, you’d never know a movie theater once stood there.)
By the time I returned to Lakeview in 1968, I’d been infected by the movie virus in a serious way. My parents took us to movies at the big theaters near the outskirts of Sacramento —the Tower and the Roseville in downtown Roseville, and the Citrus Heights Drive-in in the bedroom community of Citrus Heights, where we lived — and when we moved back to the rural splendor of Lakeview, I took as full advantage as I could of the opportunity to go to the movies by myself or with friends —something we weren’t allowed to do in the big city. And the Alger Theater, at the edge of downtown Lakeview, just a mile from my house, became my refuge, my oasis, my home away from home. Those were the days of double features, Saturday matinees (with reduced prices!), of driving into town and thrilling to see the lights of the marquee turned on before sundown, beckoning, promising a peek into a world well beyond the limits of what could be offered by my little burg. I dreamt of that place often, the yellow bulb lights dotting the undercarriage of the marquee, glowing and playing off the pale green trim of the theater frontage — it was glamorous, the only glamour my town had to offer, and it was irresistible.
My dad’s side of the family, the Italians, were dutiful Catholics, and as such were well acquainted with Bob and Norene Alger, visible participants in local Catholic culture who owned and operated the Alger Theater and the Circle JM Drive-in Theater on the north end of town; they had owned the Marius as well. Being the son (and grandson) of family friends, Mr. and Mrs. Alger always made me feel welcome. I can remember filing out of many matinees and evening shows and being greeted by Mrs. Alger with a hug, which many of my friends and peers thought was strange because she was rarely any more than standoffish — and sometimes downright cranky — to most of them. She also came down into the auditorium to personally check on me the night I first saw Blazing Saddles, apparently fearing from my relentless laughter that I was in danger of respiratory failure or full-on hysteria. And the very first review I ever wrote, at the tender age of 12, came at the behest of Mr. Alger, who offered me free admittance to the Saturday night showing of Young Winston (1972) if I would provide him a written review of it after mass the following morning. I have no idea why he wanted me to write about it, but when I delivered my little essay, he accepted it with that slightly inscrutable half-smile, which could be easily misinterpreted (or correctly interpreted, I suppose) as a frown and which rarely left his face. I never heard another word about the review, and he never asked me to do it again.
Though they were overseers of one of the two primary communal entertainment options available to Lakeview back in the day, Bob and Norene felt no need to worry about competing with television. Which was a good thing, because the Algers were anything but show people. They ran the theater with an increasing sense of begrudging duty, and not without a sense — definitely noticed by the general populace — that they were too socially sophisticated for the audience they served. And they didn’t go in for gimmicks or promotions either. The only bonuses offered by the theater came on Christmas Eve (an annual canned-food drive matinee which didn’t survive the early ‘70’s – see Dear Brigitte on the calendar above); Independence Day (a bare-bones fireworks show for which several pals, including the Algers’ son David and I, comprised the mortar crew when I was a teenager); and, best of all, one-night horror shows for New Year’s Eve, Halloween and whenever a Friday the 13th would roll around. The Alger booked a terrific array of Hammer, Amicus and American-International titles for my formative years, allowing me to see films like Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Rasputin the Mad Monk, The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Green Slime, Tales from the Crypt, Asylum, The House That Dripped Blood, Count Yorga, Vampire and countless others that stand as favorites to this day, all projected to a crowd of very enthusiastic screamers.
Audiences at the Alger weren’t far removed from the hijinks of those rowdy delinquents inside the Spensers’ Bijou either. One of the apocryphal Bob Alger stories for me and my buddies came as a result of a Halloween night screening of Tales from the Crypt during which the audience, comprised mostly of high school kids like myself who, unlike myself, were there to do anything but watch the movie, got well out of control. The din started before the opening curtain and continued to increase. And when some sort of projectile flew out of the crowd and landed very close to the screen, it wasn’t long before Mr. Alger marched slowly, deliberately, to the front of the theater, the lights came up, the movie stopped and everyone went silent. “What I have before me, on the floor of the auditorium,” he intoned ominously, as fearsome as Sir Ralph Richardson’s cryptkeeper, “is a fresh egg.” He berated the audience for their behavior and threatened to shut the screening down entirely, with no refunds, if decorum wasn’t restored immediately. He even yelled out at one poor bastard who was still cutting up during his speech: “You! In the balcony! I know it was you who threw it!” Even though I wasn’t causing trouble myself, I was terrified (I could only laugh about it later), but I was also secretly glad because, damn it, I couldn’t hear the movie, and the last thing I would have wanted was for the Algers to pull the plug on these horror holiday special shows, which I considered a major perk and a significant antidote to the doldrums of Lakeview citizenship.
I went to see everything I could at the Alger. I wanted to see everything I could. But for the general audiences, who during the early ‘70s came out to see just about anything the theater showed — I remember a half full house for Robert Altman’s box-office bomb Buffalo Bill and the Indians, for crying out loud, a phenomenon probably attributable to the cowboy community assuming they were in for a run-of-the-mill western — I don’t think the movies themselves mattered nearly as much as the chance to get out and do something, anything.
And when that movie was done, it was done — there was no going out and talking about it afterward, because movies were rarely seen as anything more than simple diversion. Sometimes the movie was done before it was done. One of the funniest moments in The Smallest Show on Earth comes as a B-western is beginning to wrap up. It’s the last scene in the movie, and the audience, sensing that the meat of the action has finished, jumps up and bolts for the exits before “The End” even has a chance to pop up and cue them that it’s time to leave. The audiences at the Alger were similarly inclined to get on with life rather than savor the cinematic experience they’d just had. I’ll never forget coming home from college and seeing Star Wars with the hometown crowd. As soon as the Death Star exploded, at least 40 people in the packed house grabbed their coats and scooted out of the theater.
For all its deficiencies — the inept projection, the frequently misspelled marquee (it was always “Pual” Newman in something or other, and I’ll never forget “Ward Bond 007” in The Man with the Golden Gun), the uncomfortable seats, the indifferent management — the Alger was where I really fell in love with the movies. That love would be deepened elsewhere, but the Alger’s lights always seemed to be visible to me from the dark quiet of Southern Oregon nights long after I’d left the town, a glowing reminder of where it all began.
The Algers closed the drive-in in 1981 after a winter storm ripped the screen in half like a piece of wet paper. They kept the indoor theater open for a couple years after that, but soon retired, and it sat dark for a few months during the early ‘80s when local folks were finally getting into the swing of the VCR era. It eventually reopened under new ownership in the mid-80s, and competition to keep pace with an ever-shrinking window between theatrical release and home video debut forced the theater to begin picking up releases much more quickly than it ever did under the guidance of Bob Alger. In those days, it wasn’t unusual to have to wait 6-9 months after its national release for a movie to bow at the Alger — Jaws (1975) played at the Circle JM Drive-in during the summer of 1976. But the video-age Alger was facing a much-changed exhibition landscape. I remember being completely shocked to open up the pages of the local weekly newspaper, the Lake County Examiner, 15 years ago and seeing a tiny ad for the week’s offering at the Alger, Scream 3, which was opening at the Alger the very same night it opened on 3,000 or so other screens across the nation, an unthinkable scenario even five years before then.
The theater, under new management now twice removed from Bob and Norene Alger, more or less limped into the digital age. Shows were now weekends only, and the theater, which opened in 1940 was beginning to show the effects of a lack of cosmetic upkeep. A ghastly stage had been installed in the mid ‘80s, ostensibly in a move to establish a community theater presence which never took hold, obliterating the first four or five rows of original seats. What seats remained were the original 1940 editions and as butt-numbing as ever; the marquee lights were spotty, every other bulb either burnt out or screwed into a socket that had long since failed to carry current; the façade of the theater was tattered and badly in need of a paint job; and the marquee itself was warped, rickety and weather-beaten, its ability to hold up plastic letters routinely challenged by a stiff breeze. With the cost of keeping the theater open for just three days a week becoming increasingly indomitable, it seemed the writing was on the wall, and it probably had been for at least the first 10 years of the 21st century.
Much like how the storm that destroyed the drive-in screen in 1981 had presented the Algers a convenient exeunt from the drive-in business, big studio threats to stop providing 35mm prints to theaters, thus forcing small-town operations like the Alger to upgrade to digital equipment in order to stay in business, were the rationale current management needed to call theatrical exhibition in Lakeview, Oregon a permanent day. After several attempts to communicate with the current owners and brainstorm ideas for keeping the theater alive — a theater in nearby Alturas, California had successfully navigated a crowd-funding campaign to upgrade their theater and make it a community-operated business — I stopped receiving replies to my e-mails, and it became clear that, in response to deteriorating attendance, the owners weren’t really interested in rallying an effort to come up with the money to keep the doors open.
So, in March 2014 the reels of the Alger Theater’s 35mm platter projection system spun their last. The theater, much like Hollywood itself, had long since ceded any attempt to appeal to any other audience beyond the PG/PG-13 market, the only folks left in town who could be counted on to occasionally show up for a movie. It’s grimly appropriate that the last picture show would not be a landmark like Red River (the current Alger management likely being unaware of that movie, or The Last Picture Show, for that matter), or even an adult-oriented audience-pleaser like the recent Oscar-winner Argo. Instead, it was the generic animated movie The Nut Job, and a sadder, more ignominious finale for my beloved theater I couldn’t possibly imagine. According to a report filed by my niece, who was very upset about the theater closing and tried herself to generate some local interest in preserving it, the last show was just as nondescript and lacking in fanfare as one might expect. The end credits playing before an empty auditorium, what there was of the audience having already listlessly filed out, the marquee lights went dark over South F Street, the main drag on which the Alger held dominance for 74 years, and save for one special screening – author Cheryl Strayed brought the movie version of Wild to town, Lakeview being one of the towns she walked through on her epic journey along the Pacific Crest Trail – those marquee lights haven’t been back on since. It’s not clear as yet whether the township of Lakeview has even noticed.
Last year I got a message from a friend still living in Oregon who said she’d heard that the Alger was about to be purchased by a new owner, given a digital upgrade and a paint job, and reopened. Did I dream this? If it were true, it would be an unlikely deus ex machina, given the history of this theater, and given the economic straits in which the town is currently mired. It’s the sort of dream of the past and its familiar faces that I wake up from all the time. But no, I didn’t dream it. The message was real. And whether or not the resurrection of the Alger makes the transition from rumor to reality—and the town’s active interest in making it happen cannot be overemphasized– is a story I have been following closely and will continue to keep my eye on.
Maybe the Alger Theater doesn’t mean the same thing to the current citizenry of Lakeview that it does to me. Maybe it never did. However the general population may have felt it’s difficult for me to discount the importance such a tiny blip on American culture as the Alger had on the forming of my mind and my desire to see more than what could be offered on the dusty, muddy streets passing outside its doors. If they’re lucky, everyone reading this will have a place like it nestled in their memories, a place where love for what the movies could show us, could inspire in us, the emotions they could stir, was instilled and made foundation for the appreciation of what movies could be that we had yet to understand. When I see the empty shell of that theater, standing abandoned and ignored at the edge of my hometown, I don’t feel like a piece of me is lost. No, I know right where that piece is at. It’s still inside those doors, in communion with the dusty old red curtain, the forever dimmed house lights running the edges of the auditorium at the ceiling level, the mysterious projection room from whence all those amazing sights and sounds emerged, the tidy confines of the snack bar watched over by the old Thornton’s Drug clock on the wall, its timekeeping partner, the one bearing the Lincecum Signs ad, still perched in the auditorium above the door to the back of the screen, stage left. Yep, I’m still in there, sitting in those worn-down seats, waiting for the next movie to start. By a great stroke of fortune, maybe someday it will. (Dennis Cozzalio)
Marcus Theatres seemed rather proud of its “Cinema Twins,” the Marc 1 and 2, when the theater opened on July 18, 1973 at 3025 Kentucky Street. An advertisement announcing its opening boasted such amenities as lounge chair seats, “the luxuriousness of the auditoriums” and air conditioning.
For a time, The Racine Journal Times was a frequent partner with the Marc, hosting ticket giveaway contests, special family nights and even a children’s film festival. One contest The Journal Times ran in partnership with the Marc in 1984 tasked entrants with writing a 2,000-word essay about “a special place in your heart.” Five winners received a one-year pass to the Marc.
The Marc came to an end on January 4, 1987. In the years since, the building was retrofitted into retail space and housed a Rogan’s Shoes and waterbed store. Currently in the former theater are Dollar General and Michelle’s Nails & Spa, though the building’s address has changed to 4111 Durand Avenue.
The Changing Face of the Oriental Theatre
(by David Luhrssen, July 3, 2018, Shepherd Express) —
Although it turns 91 this summer, the Oriental Theatre (2230 N. Farwell Ave.) isn’t Milwaukee’s oldest cinema; the Downer claims that honor. But, with all due respect to the beautiful Avalon, the Oriental was and remains the city’s most spectacular movie palace for its exuberantly Near East-Far East decor. And for several decades, the Oriental has been an anchor of the city’s cinema culture as a repertory house and then as a theater with a consistent lineup of foreign, indie and documentary films.
This month, the venerable Oriental goes dark as its new operators take charge and begin phase one of planned renovations. Milwaukee Film—whose primary project has been the Milwaukee Film Festival—is now the leaseholder, and Jonathan Jackson, MF’s artistic and executive director, has big plans. First off: more ambitious and diverse programming that reflects, and magnifies, the work of the annual festival. “The film community loves the 15-day event, but people have asked us to create more opportunities,” Jackson says.
In 1988, the Oriental caught up with the late 20th century when the Landmark Theatres chain divided its cavernous interior into a three-screen house with great sensitivity to the building’s architectural integrity. To bring it into the 21st century, Jackson has announced an upgrade in sight and sound. The 2K digital projectors will be supplanted by higher-resolution 4K units. And, in a nod to the enduring significance of actual film composed of celluloid (not pixels), MF will also install new 35mm and 70mm projectors. “With those, we expect to secure access to all the leading film archives in the world,” Jackson explains. He has received applications from old-school projectionists—an occupation rendered obsolescent by digital technology—from around the country.
“But first and foremost,” he adds, “I think it’s a great idea that women have a restroom on the first floor!” Since the Oriental Theatre opened, the women’s room has been lodged at the far end of the mezzanine and is inaccessible to the disabled. Women were usually forced into a small chamber, an afterthought added for the handicapped next to the ground floor men’s room. “I was always ashamed to walk to the bathroom during the film festival past a line of women,” Jackson says. “I once saw a gentleman block the men’s room door to allow only women to use it for a given time.”
The new women’s room—carved out of space opened up by annexing a small retail bay abutting the Oriental’s northeast corner—will, like all future alterations, conform to the building’s character. Jackson adds that MF is more than halfway through the process of adding the Oriental to the National Register of Historic Places.
Most Milwaukeeans were surprised last summer when Milwaukee Film announced its acquisition of the Oriental’s lease from the theater’s longtime operator, Landmark Theatres, but the historic cinema had long been on Jackson’s mind. The Oriental was his first job after moving to Milwaukee. He went on to manage the UW-Milwaukee Union Cinema and became, in 2003, programming director for the Milwaukee International Film Festival. (Full disclosure: I was a co-founder of the MIFF and served as its executive director through 2007.) The Oriental had always been one of that festival’s major venues, and its importance only grew after Jackson became the Milwaukee Film Festival’s executive director in 2008.
So, why not continue renting the Oriental for two weeks each year instead of undertaking the year-round responsibility for a historic landmark?
“Our relationship with the Oriental became the critical factor in our success,” Jackson explains. “It was great working with [theater manager] Eric Levin and his staff, but the growth of the festival was inhibited because we had no long-term contract.” Instead, MF worked with the Oriental year by year; according to Jackson, the paperwork for the next fall festival never arrived before late spring. “Anyone in my position would have lost sleep,” he continues. “It was a challenge for long-range planning, to secure sponsors, to sell advance tickets. You can understand the potential instability of that.”
Also, Landmarks Theatre never rented MF more than two of the Oriental’s three screens and never gave Jackson the timeframe he sought. “We always wanted late October-early November, but Landmarks wanted to save their screens for the big fall releases,” he explains. “Historically, our dates overlapped with the New York Film Festival, one of the biggest film festivals with dibs on all content.” As a result, many significant non-Hollywood movies could never be booked at the Milwaukee Film Festival—until this year. “You can only do so much to grow a film culture in 15 days,” Jackson continues. “From now on, Milwaukee Film have an additional 350 days to play.”
Aside from the opportunity to screen every available movie in the world, Jackson’s decision to assume control of Milwaukee’s flagship cinema has a financial dimension. “Non-profit cinemas are healthier than film festivals,” Jackson explains. “Most film festivals operate on 30-40% earned income, mainly ticket sales, and the rest comes from fundraising. Nonprofit cinemas generally run on 60% earned income and 40% philanthropy. We hope to change our metric by running the Oriental.” And what of Landmarks’ remaining Milwaukee venue—the city’s oldest movie theater, the Downer? “Landmarks has a lease on the Downer,” Jackson says. Landmarks Theatres refused to comment.
Milwaukee Film has an 11-year lease plus two 10-year options on the Oriental. “We have a strong, long lease so that we can fundraise long-term to pay for improvements to the structure of the building,” Jackson says. “We are investing in the building even though we don’t own it, but since we’re running it for 30 years, we’re comfortable with that.”
“Aside from, ‘What about the women’s bathroom?’ the thing that everyone says to me is, ‘Don’t touch the popcorn!’” says Jackson on future plans for the Oriental. Phase two of the facelift will include some changes at the concession stand. “We’ll want to feature as many local products as possible,” he says. The original plasterwork of the cinema’s ceiling needs restoration. And down below, the original seats in the balcony have to be replaced. The curtains and tapestries need cleaning or mending. The HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) system requires updating. “We need to look at the acoustical treatment to insure that the sound is not bouncing within each space or between the theaters,” Jackson says.
He continues: “In the early days of cinema, people might find live programming at a movie theater, a double feature, a newsreel, an organ performance—it was more of a full cultural event, and it’s what film festivals do naturally—to create an experience.” Which leads to the inevitable rebutting of the tired doomsayers who keep forecasting the death of movie theaters. After all, they say, why not stay home with your Plasma screen, your lumpy Barcalounger and your popcorn machine?
“The statistics show that movie attendance is stable,” Jackson replies. “For me, the point is the communal experience. It’s so wonderful and strange, having hundreds of people sitting silently in a room staring at a screen and sharing an experience. It’s an unparalleled opportunity for community engagement. And besides,” he adds, “you cannot beat the experience of seeing a movie on a big screen.”
The Oriental Theatre will reopen on Friday, Aug. 10.
Kenosha News, May 31, 1968) Noted theater manager retires ——– Wallace Konrad, manager of the Orpheum Theater in Kenosha for the past ll years, has announced his retirement after a 25-year career in Wisconsin theaters. Considered a nearly infallible authority on show business and movies, Konrad began his career as a canopy boy at the age of 16 in Sheboygan. In 25 years he managed a variety of theaters throughout the state, including hitching post theaters, prestige theaters, art theaters, and small and big town theaters. He made it a point to know the town in which he worked, and to know what that town’s audiences wanted in their theaters. Taking his work seriously, he would give people the kind of movies they wanted to see, and was known for his efforts in promoting movies. He also made it a point to know as much as he could about his business and the movies he showed. It is said there is no question about the business that he can’t answer. After service in World War II, Konrad returned to Port Washington, where he served as assistant manager of the Ozaukee and Grand Theaters for Fox Wisconsin Amusement Corp., under the late Harold Fitzgerald. For a number of years he managed several theaters for this chain in small towns all over the state. In 1949 he moved to Milwaukee to manage various theaters there, working his way to district manager of the Fox Milwaukee division. It was in Milwaukee that he married the former Elaine Mindick, and started the family which now numbers six. Fox began to liquidate its Wisconsin holdings in 1954, so in 1956 Konrad moved to Kenosha to manage the Orpheum Theater, recently purchased by Towne Realty, and later sold to the Prudential Management Corp. Retiring in March of this year after a short illness, Konrad will continue to make his home in Kenosha with his family.
The Labor Temple was built in 1914 by the Local Miners' Union. The front doors opened onto an attractive lobby with a wide stairway to the second floor on the right and a ticket office centered between two entrances to a large auditorium with a sloping floor, aisles between three sections of seats and a large stage. The theatre had the first air-conditioning system within thirty-five miles of Staunton. From Tuesday through Sunday it was a first-run theatre for years. The musical “Don’t Give Up the Ship” led to the Staunton High School fight song “Don’t Give Up the Fight”. On the first Monday of each month the miners held a union meeting there; other Mondays were available for graduations, dramatic or musical productions by local groups, lectures and so forth. Lavatories were upstairs as were several conference or committee meeting rooms and a large hall where lodges met and dances and receptions were held.
(Kenosha News, April 12, 1968) – Kenosha’s Mr. Showman, Bill Exton, will ring down the curtain next Thursday on his 29-year role as owner and manager of the Roosevelt Theater. Exton, whose career in the entertainment industry spans more than four decades, has long endeared himself to Kenoshans by his activities on behalf of youngsters and adults alike at his theater, the Roosevelt Rd. Businessmen’s Association and in other civic activities. At the close of business on Thursday, he will turn over the keys and operation of the theater to Theodore F. Witheril of Racine. “I am not going to retire entirely,“ said Exton. “I’m just not built that way. I will try to get away for two or three weeks, though, just to get my feet on the ground.” Operation of the theater has been a day-and-night job for Exton, who took over the Roosevelt in 1939. Prior to that, he had managed the Kenosha Theater, now closed, and the old Gateway Theater, now known as the Lake, for about 4 years. Exton’s fascination for the entertainment business became apparent at an early age. During his high school years in his native Detroit, Mich., he got his first job as a theater usher and from then on worked at just about anything they would pay him for. WORKED AT CIRCUS – By graduation, it was and one time a monkey ran up apparent to his father and moth- through the audience, er that they had a showman for Life Not Dull “Life wasn’t dull by a long shot,” he remarked. Exton’s career included a stint with Paramount Pictures, who hired him to do promotional work. Part of his job was to escort Paramount stars on personal appearance tours and whip up occasional live variety acts such as those used between reels in the movie houses at that time. After graduation, Exton went to work for a circus as a “pot-walloper,” scrubbing pots and pans and cleaning up around the kitchen. He knew by the end of the season that he would never be able to “shake the sawdust out of his trouser cuffs.” During the winter months, he wolfed in the movie houses, worked part time for the Detroit Free Press and tried his hand at public relations. Then, as now. he liked people and was good at selling his product when the product was entertainment. Summertime meant a return to the circus, and his bulging scrap book attests to his many experiences during his career with the tents. In 1921, Ringling Brothers asked Exton to head their publicity department and he “went into orbit.” The work was hard but never dull, he recalled. There were exciting and dangerous incidents such as the time when an elephant went berserk and knocked over a cage of panthers, scattering the wild cargo over the grounds. Although the panthers were recaptured without incident, the elephant killed its trainer before it was killed itself. On another occasion, a lion got loose inside a sideshow tent, In 1934, as district manager for Standard Theaters, Exton was sent to Kenosha to open the Gateway Theater, and he remained to become one of the most distinguished and well-loved citizens of the city. One of his best known projects is the annual Halloween Parade which he organized about 14 years ago. He recalled that about 200 youngsters took part that first year, but the number has grown to more than 1,400 costumed children who now compete for the coveted Halloween prizes. Exton was instrumental in the formation of the Roosevelt Rd. Businessmen’s Association about 15 years ago and twice served as its president. He is also active in the Lions and Elks Club. He resides at 6521 43rd Ave. TESTIMONIAL DINNER – In 1963, Exton was feted at a testimonial dinner sponsored by the Roosevelt Rd. Businessmen’s Association. Several hundred Kenoshans joined in honoring him for his contributions to the community, and a three hour program was presented in commemoration of his 40 years of service in the entertainment industry. In addition, Exton was named the Showman of the Year in 1964 at a convention of the Allied Theater Owners of Wisconsin held in Milwaukee. He was selected from more than 50 others under consideration for “making his theater a focal point of community campaigning and creating civic good will.” Through the years, Exton has followed a policy of selecting films for his theater which he considered “suitable for the family.” “I never wanted to get off the trend of decent, clean entertainment,” he remarked. Movies are getting better, Exton believes. There may have been a slow-down with the advent of television, but in the movies as well as in his own plans for the future, there are great things in store.
(Kenosha News, April 12, 1968) Bill Exton retiring —— Bill Exton, 2910 Roosevelt Rd., announced today that he will retire at the close of business on Thursday, April 18. The theater will be taken over by Theodore F. Witheril of Racine, who will serve as president of the Roosevelt Theater of Kenosha, Inc. Witheril, 31, has operated the Capitol Theater in Racine since Feb. 1, 1965. He was elected the Racine County coroner in 1966 and formerly served as news director of Radio Station WRAC in Racine. Witheril said that “no major changes of any kind" were planned at the theater and that Exton will serve as a consultant for at least a year. Ken Pias, Racine, vice president and secretary of the corporation, will serve as the theater manager.
(Film Daily, Oct.-Dec. 1940) – Detroit — Edward Hilke, owner of the Perrien Theater, is starting a remodeling program, with stage remodeling being completed now. House is being reseated by International Seating Co. New front will be installed next year. Architect Henry M. Freier is supervising the work.
Alan Ladd and Helen Walker in “Lucky Jordan” (1942).
The PALACE Theatre was built of concrete block, faced with brick. The interior was in Spanish style, quite unusual for a small Midwest city in 1914. The ceiling was filled with twinkling lights, and during the movie, a cloud machine was turned on and the “stars” could be seen as the clouds passed overhead. There also was a grand Barton pipe organ, played by a local musician during silent movies.
There was a Saturday matinee for children, usually a cowboy show, and a double feature on Friday nights. The signal that the movie was about to begin was when a uniformed usher opened the curtain.
The Palace Theatre was owned by Robert A. McDonald until 1920. Early ownership is sketchy, but Frank and Henrietta Eckardt then took ownership. The couple owned three theatres in Wisconsin Rapids during the first half of the 20th century.
In 1957, Palace Recreation became the custodian, and there was a dance hall, lunch counter and pool room in the building. The slanted floor was made so it could be tipped up on one end to make a flat floor when needed.
In 1962, Ed-Syl Furniture occupied the building until Sears Roebuck and Co. moved in two years later. John Potter bought the building from the Kruger-Walrath Co. in the mid-1960s. After Sears left in 1972, the building was remodeled into separate stores. Kim’s Classic Shoe Rack was on the lower level and Mr. Image barber shop on the main level.
DeByle’s clothing store bought the building in 1980 and changed the interior into one store on two levels.
The building was owned by the Mead Witter Foundation since 2001 and became a home for the arts, the Cultural Center, Arts Council and community theater which filled the main floor, and musicians came in once a week to perform. On the lower level there was a meeting room and pottery and mosaic studios. Home-school students art met there once a week.
Interesting fact: Paul Gross of Wisconsin Rapids worked as a projectionist at all three theaters in Wisconsin Rapids.
The Mead Witter Foundation announced Sept. 6 its plans to demolish four buildings on the “Theater Block” in Wisconsin Rapids. Caitlin Shuda/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin
The foundation’s first purchase in the Theater Block was the old Wisconsin Theater building that was left vacant by previous owners. The next purchase included the Palace Theater building that was the home of a clothing store that closed. Sieber’s Restaurant offered to sell its building, as did the Potter family who owned two parcels of land. That area became a private park in 2002.
The Mead Witter Foundation announced on Sept. 6, 2018 its plans to demolish four buildings on the “Theater Block” in Wisconsin Rapids. The foundation’s first purchase in the Theater Block was the Wisconsin Theatre building that was left vacant by previous owners. The next purchase included the Palace Theatre building that had housed a clothing store that closed. Sieber’s Restaurant offered to sell its building, as did the Potter family who owned two parcels of land. That area became a private park in 2002.
(Amber Fisher, Sep. 10, 2018) – Kanye West announced on Sunday, Sept. 9 that he supports the restoration of the Avalon Regal Theater in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, which has since been transformed into a church, then a performing arts venue. “We’re doing Chicago Comedy Jam. We’re going to restore the Regal Theatre,” tweeted West, a South Side native. According to several reports, West was likely referring to the Chi City Comedy Jam, an annual stand-up comedy festival that features black comedians from Chicago. This year’s Chi City Comedy Jam will be held Oct. 5-6 at the Arie Crown Theatre. No further details were forthcoming about when the festival would be held at the Avalon Regal Theater. South Side native and entrepreneur Jerald Gary, 33, bought the theater for $100,000 in 2014, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. He’s since been trying to raise money to fix up the building, and sent a message to the Sun-Times saying he acknowledged West’s tweet, according to the report. Gary couldn’t be reached for further comment, the Sun-Times reported.
Update: In 2005, local businessman David Naumowicz purchased the Granada Theatre with the intention of restoring it and turning it into a banquet hall or events center, but because there was no nearby parking lot, the idea was considered unfeasible and was subsequently abandoned. Larry Vail, owner of Jim’s Garage Door Service, bought the Granada in 2015 and returned its use to a warehouse. Vail has kept some things intact, such as the fireplace in the lobby, one of the box seats, the proscenium arch and the original light fixtures on the ceiling, but said he has no plans to restore the theater. He performed a few renovations, but they were related to the warehouse use: a driveway behind the building on Carter Street, new exits and a large garage door for loading in the stagehouse. The ceiling and walls have been painted white but the walls have persistently leaked, resulting in water spots speckling the otherwise white interior.
How a mother and her daughter saved an Iowa movie theater (Courtney Crowder, Des Moines Register) Marianne and Rebecca Fons are freaking out over a handrail. They are frantic clapping, jumping up and down, shrill squeal-level excited over this railing, which is a sturdy wood banister, sure, but not a furnishing that should elicit this much happy hysteria. But to this mother-daughter duo, that handrail is so more than a stairwell safety requirement. It’s a sign. A harbinger that construction inside the historic Iowa Theater is on track. Proof that they are, indeed, in the final stages of renovating the beloved movie house that has graced Winterset’s town square since the early 1900s before falling into disrepair and closing in 2015. And, most importantly, an auspice that maybe their audacious idea for Rebecca to quit her steady job in Chicago and commute from the Windy City to Winterset for two years as the pair whipped up community support and raised funds to the tune of $800,000 to renovate the now-multi-use entertainment space wasn’t such a foolhardy endeavor.
Like the renovated movie theaters in nearby Newton and Knoxville, The Iowa Theater reopening in Winterset is a direct result of neighbors taking up the mantle of change and locals, like the Fonses, investing time and money in their community. As the drum beat of decline in population and amenities in rural Iowa continues steadily, Winterset is playing a different tune. The town has grown by about 10 percent since the turn of the century, according to U.S Census data, and has averaged about 16 new dwellings built per year for the past 13 years, according to the Madison County Development Group. While all growth is mostly good growth to small communities, a focus for Winterset and many similar locales is the retention of young professionals, who want to play in their town as much as they want to live and work. Having places for residents to dine out and options for entertainment are simply necessities if you want to ensure a prosperous future, said Tom Leners, executive director of the Madison County Development Group. And having even one successful amenity, like a movie theater on the square, can be a big driver of foot traffic and dollars to an otherwise quiet town, he said. In Knoxville, four new or remodeled restaurants have opened since their community-financed movie theater began operations in late 2015.
How, exactly, The Iowa will influence its environs has yet to be seen, but after two years of a dark theater, many residents are just excited to have movies in Winterset again. Pride drips from the Fonses as they explain how they’ve partnered with their community to restore the one-screen cinema and live performance space in the style of its glory days, but with the digital technology of modern theaters. A couple weeks ago, the Fonses were in the home stretch, but recently the theater opened and entertained sold-out crowds for showings of classic films starring local hero John Wayne. The story of how this unlikely mother-daughter team got those full houses, the story of the last two years of the Fonses life, well, that plays out a little bit like one of The Duke’s movies. Here, in excerpts from their recollections, the people closest to the project tell the Register how — and why — they decided to turn the lights back on at The Iowa Theater.
The main characters
REBECCA FONS, development director of The Iowa Theater: So in May of 2015… MARIANNE FONS, chair of The Iowa Theater board: I heard wind that the movie theater was for sale.
REBECCA: We were at my wedding on Memorial Day weekend in Wisconsin and somebody told us. I think you took a phone call and you told me, “Rebecca the movie theater has closed. I don’t know about you, but it could be neat and I would not do it without you, you know.” And I was like, “Let me get married and go on a honeymoon and do that and then we will talk.” That was in May and I think in July or in late June I came to Winterset and we met with our contractor. MARY FONS, sister and middle daughter: When my mom wants something she gets this twinkle, like this gleam in her eye. I remember her kind of thinking about looking at how much it cost and what she could do. My mom is not a women who’s flashy. She doesn’t buy jewelry and handbags, but real estate projects are her thing. She’s interested in renovation. REBECCA: By September of that year, as a newlywed, we had acquired the theater and since then have been working to make it a nonprofit and rehab it.
The memories
BRENDA HOLLINGSWORTH, manager with the Madison County Historic Preservation Commission: Winterset always had a theater, really. The opera house was one of the first buildings built in town. And culture and arts have always played an important role in our community. JANE MARTENS, former Iowa Theater employee: I worked at the theater in 1946, 1947 and 1948. I graduated in 1948, so it was a high school job for me and it was a fantastic job. I called myself, “The Big Boss.” STEVE REED, contractor for Iowa Theater renovation: I am from Winterset, so (I) used to go to the theater all the time. It was a great place to be a kid. MARTENS: Sometimes kids would be throwing stuff down in front of the screens and we would call their parents and tell them we put their kid out of the theater and they weren’t allowed back in the theater for three weeks. We did! MARTENS: Then, there were people who couldn’t afford to come to the show. We had a little fund because I knew some of the kids’ parents couldn’t afford to hardly eat, so I would take from that little fund and, it was 35 cents at that time, so I would give them a ticket and let them see a show. REBECCA: I would not want to have been a kid here without a movie theater because it showed me the world. And maybe it was the world through crummy movies. I wasn’t seeing foreign films or anything from film festivals or anything fancy, but it showed me the world and it showed me stories and it expanded my mind. MARTENS: And I have hilarious stories that stick with me, too. Our projectionist had gone on to college, but he came back and one day he said to me, “Can I have a roll of pennies?” I gave it to him and all of a sudden when the movie started, the door flung wide open and a man came to my window and I said, “Yes, sir, is there is something wrong? Do you need help?” And he said, “It’s raining pennies from heaven!” The projectionist had been throwing pennies out of the window of the projector room.
The theater
HOLLINGSWORTH: The Iowa Theater was originally a one-story building that was a meat market in 1899 and then later a bakery and restaurant. In the early 1900s, the building was purchased for a new playhouse for vaudeville productions. And then around 1928, they remodeled the whole structure and built the second story and upgraded it to put in silent movies. MARY: The Iowa Theater is where I saw my first film in the 80s. It was “Fox and the Hound,” the Disney cartoon, with my dad. I remember sitting in the balcony and the place had fallen into disrepair. It just looked terrible. MARIANNE: It was threadbare. REED: It was where dreams went to die, really. LENERS: It turns out the building itself was transitioning from one generation to another in 2015, so the ladies that were taking the property over came out to see it and they decided the building needed some TLC that they weren’t able to give it. REBECCA: The Theater finally closed in 2015. It was operational up until that point, but not super consistently. HOLLINGSWORTH: It was a very, very sad moment for the town when the theater closed, but it was a necessary moment because the building wasn’t up to code and it wasn’t a safe place. The comeback REED: There’s a movement in Winterset right now to go through and restore these old buildings in town. There’s a lot of character to them and their structure is good, but if we don’t keep them up, they will fall apart. HOLLINGSWORTH: The Theater is in the courthouse historic district, which is on the historic register. The entire square is a great example of Italianate architecture at the turn of the century in Iowa. It’s like stepping back in time. REBECCA: We did a historical audit of the building and we found that a lot of the insides of the theater had been irreparably changed in the 1980s, so we didn’t have a huge requirement to keep a lot of the inside, but the outside of the theater, the marquee specifically, and the front ticket lobby, were the original 1930-ish marquee and terrazzo floor ticket lobby and ticket booth, so we were like, well, we’re keeping that. REED: My opinion is, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Marianne’s goal was to keep what we could and make the rest look original. If they wanted to build a brand new modern movie theater they could do that on the edge of town, but her dream and the community’s dream was to restore The Iowa as a major part of the town square. HOLLINGSWORTH: The downtown historic square, of which the theater is a part, is a picture of who we are in Winterset. It’s our legacy and our roots. Somebody once said to me that a city without old buildings is like an old man without a memory. Those buildings create context for our life today. REED: From the first moment I stepped into the theater, I could see the finished product. I knew what it could become. The personal growth REBECCA: My relationship with my mom was always good, but it’s definitely stronger now. I left my job at the Chicago International Film Festival after 10 years, but I would never have done it if she wasn’t one of my best friends. MARIANNE: I was raised by altruistic parents and was raised with the idea that if you can make the world a better place, you should. So because I had the ability to jump in and get the project started for the theater I decided to do it. Because of Rebecca, because I knew she had the expertise, the industry knowledge and the youth and the energy to really be the brains of the project. REBECCA: For me a large desire to do this came from a love for movies and the power of cinema and what it can do for anybody, especially a kid growing up in Winterset, Iowa. REBECCA: I feel like, living in Chicago, so often we put on our sunglasses and go to the grocery store and it’s like, ugh, I don’t want to see anybody, just let me do this and let me get home and rush, rush, rush. And then I come here and it is like kind of like, oh, there is someone at the coffee shop let’s just talk, and I love that, and I think it is in my blood, and I think I had kind of forgotten that part of myself, because I was so like, “I left Iowa and I never looked back.” But then I looked back and I was like, “Oh, Iowa is awesome.”
The end credits
HOLLINGSWORTH: When I first walked into the theater, I sat down in one of the seats and wept happy tears. I just had a moment. If you saw it originally, a lot of it just had to be gutted and how they went from that humble beginning to the finished product is pretty amazing. LENERS: I was observing Friday the crowds in downtown Winterset and, you know, it just feels good that the square is parked full again and I heard from the restaurants that they had big nights on the weekend the theater opened. MARY: I’m so proud to be from a small town that is thriving and I don’t take it for granted that people like my mom and my younger sister are investing in the town. I live in Chicago and when you go to places like Berwyn (Illinois) you realize these places thrive because people decide to stay and to invest and make a lecture series or a music festival or brewery or a winery. It doesn’t happen because you hope it happens. It happens because people invest. LENERS: Who knows what is available to us now? Maybe a show going to the Stoner Theater can land here before they do their weeklong run in Des Moines. One of my wife’s nephews is a musician and there are more and more of these small town playhouses to have gigs at. At some point, we think politicians might want to rent the place. LENERS: There is this feeling that if the theater can succeed then maybe an evening coffee and dessert spot is possible and more restaurants are possible. We have people wanting to be downtown, so I am just wildly optimistic. MARIANNE: I bought a seat during our Sponsor a Seat Campaign, of course, and when I was laying the theater out, I chose the seat way in the back corner. It would be the last seat that a person would pick, so I just imagine myself sitting in it in the way back looking out over a full house, watching everyone watch a movie from my very own seat in this theater.
REX Theatre reopening day, July 17th, 1937.
August 26, 1913.
April 25, 1912.
Efforts underway to revive historic theater to former glory —– From the Herald and News: In Hollywood’s golden era, grand movie theaters sprung up in towns across the country to showcase the latest Charlie Chaplin, Abbott & Costello or Lewis & Martin laugh-fest. While the era of fluorescents, marquees and drive-ins have almost completely disappeared in favor of iMax and modern stadium theaters, a group in Lakeview are working to revive a forgotten time when the local theater was the centerpiece of small town social life.
Like most smaller communities, Lakeview once had multiple theaters and a drive-in offering the latest cartoons, newsreels, serials and double features of westerns and classic Hollywood glam. Today, none remain in operation in the area. The Marius Theater decades ago was converted into office space, and the drive-in is now a vacant lot. Yet the Alger Theater, constructed in 1940, still stands, unused except for the occasional special concert or film premiere. Its décor is reminiscent of the art-decco era with a 1940s Hollywood’s bygone sentimental era. A walk inside is a trip through time back to classic Hollywood instantly sparking nostalgic memories for those who lived it and others who have only heard the stories or seen it recreated in popular films like The Majestic.
The theater closed several years ago from its regular weekly film showings, a victim of the digital era of film distribution. Unable to afford a new digital projector once distributors stopped providing physical film reels, the owners were forced to halt business. In the time since it has reopened for a couple concerts by Blues Brothers and Doors tribute acts, as well as two special film screenings coordinated with the help of Travel Oregon and Oregon Film, but otherwise has sat dormant.
Yet the final curtain may not have lowered on the Alger just yet. A group of citizens, encouraged by the Oregon Mainstreet Project, formed a group called Lakeview Community Partnership (LCP), aimed at revitalizing Lakeview’s downtown area. Committees were formed and projects established, including community town clean-ups, printing of historic photos to be placed in business windows, and an annual community celebration downtown called Daly Days in honor of Lakeview’s most famous resident – Dr. Bernard Daly.
Yet amidst the various smaller efforts the coveted prize for LCP to return Lakeview to its prominent past has always been the Alger Theater, many in the community dreaming of a return to its heyday when the Alger was the place to go. A plan has been set in motion through a partnership with the current owners of the theater and LCP that may in a few years bring the theater back to its former glory.
“It’s priceless, it really is, they’ve barely changed anything inside,” said Ginger Casto of South Central Oregon Economic Development District and one of the driving forces behind LCP. “We want to replace things like the carpeting, but keep it true to its original design. It’s about restoration, not replacement.”
Casto, along with Will Wright, RARE member and project coordinator for LCP, have been working extensively to bring the historic theater back to life. Community surveys have been collected to gauge interest in the project, which according to Wright has been overwhelmingly positive, as he works to establish a business plan for moving forward with fundraising efforts.
“When I first got here and talked to people about what LCP was doing I’d get somewhat positive responses, until I mentioned the Alger Theater,” said Wright. “Once I mentioned the Alger people would light up. Of all the stuff LCP is doing, this by far has the most community support. Anecdotally, it suggests we’ll be able to do something with it.”
For an isolated rural town with no active theater, the outcry to restore the Alger Theater is not only to be included in the newest film releases, but also for a need to provide a social center and positive activities for kids in a place where opportunities are otherwise lacking. Many who grew up going to the Alger as kids are now parents, wishing that their kids could have the same experience.
More than just a movie theater, the Alger has a large stage and balcony perfect for providing other activities as well. Casto and Wright see its stage and structure being able to facilitate lectures, community theater, dance recitals, swap meets, concerts, summer camps and more. Film festivals have been a popular request, both of relatively new films like the Harry Potter series alongside classic showcases of John Wayne or Hop Along Cassidy.
Casto brought in George Kramer, a historic theater preservationist, to inspect the theater in its current state. For an almost 80-year old theater it remains in remarkably good shape, especially its foundation, according to Kramer, making its future sustainable without a massive overhaul. Engineering-wise, the building is sound, though a seismic retrofit will be needed at some point. Figuring out how to make it all work financially for sustainable use though is Wright’s current task.
“Originally when the Alger closed digital projectors cost around $70,000, but the prices have come down dramatically,” said Wright. “Now they can come as cheap as $15,000, and we’re seeing a large amount of preliminary support in the community for the theater to be reopened.” Those undertaking the LCP-Alger project are crunching data with plans to begin fundraising later this summer. If all goes as hoped, Wright estimated the theater could be open again for regular business within 2-3 years.
Casto compares the project to another recently completed project to restore the Lakeview Swimming Pool. Built in 1952, it was showing its age, but the community rallied and held multiple fundraisers to have it rebuilt, accomplishing that task in 2015. Dollars also streamed in from many former residents, Casto included, who heard about the project and felt the need to give due to sentimental ties to the pool. Casto believes that once the fundraising process begins for the Alger, support from those with nostalgic memories of watching classic films there will flood in as well.
“What we’re trying to do right now is collect all the information we can to figure out costs – realistic bids for digital projectors and sound systems and lighting,” said Casto. “Groups have already contacted us wanting to be a part of it.”
Casto indicated that Kramer, who has restored other theaters across Oregon, is working on a statewide program with the legislature to appropriate dollars for historic theaters like the Alger to be preserved in small rural communities. Kramer warned her though that restoring a theater is easy, finding a sustainable business plan to maintain it is the hard part.
“We’re getting closer, but we don’t have a timeline,” added Casto. “I’m less concerned about the fundraising part of it. It’s not in a state of disrepair to where it can’t be used. We’ll have the occasional show now, but for the façade and marquee and lights to be fully restored back to their original glory it will take time. The priorities in projects like this are usually the things we can’t see like electrical and plumbing.”
Researching how best to restore the Alger to its former self hasn’t been contained exclusively within Lake County. Members of LCP have been reaching out to other similar-sized communities that worked to preserve their historic theaters to gauge feasibility of the project. They also contacted the Ross Ragland Theater in Klamath Falls for not only advice but for preliminary talks to possibly partner someday on projects.
“We want to keep listening, it’s the only way it’s going to be sustainable,” said Casto. “We’ve started to hear from people that come here and say that things downtown are looking better, people are beginning to notice that things are going on. We don’t know how long this will take, we don’t have any timelines and we don’t want to make any promises…but we are getting really close to making some major decisions.”
THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH: IN MEMORY OF THE ALGER (1940-2015) by Dennis Cozzalio, JUN 18, 2016
The delightful British comedy The Smallest Show on Earth headlined a great Saturday matinee offering from the UCLA Film and Television Archive on June 25, 2016 as their excellent series “Marquee Movies: Movies on Moviegoing” wrapped up. So it seemed like a perfect time to resurrect my review of the movie, which celebrates the collective experience of seeing cinema in a darkened, and in this case dilapidated old auditorium, alongside my appreciation of my own hometown movie house, the Alger, which opened in 1940 and closed last year, one more victim of economics and the move toward digital distribution and exhibition.
“You mean to tell me my uncle actually charged people to go in there? And people actually paid?” – Matt Spenser (Bill Travers) upon first seeing the condition of the Bijou Kinema, in The Smallest Show on Earth
In Basil Dearden’s charming and wistful 1957 British comedy The Smallest Show on Earth (also known under the far-less evocative title Big Time Operators), a young couple, played by Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, inherit a small-town cinema, the Bijou Kinema – known to the citizenry of Sloughborough as the Flea Pit – and decide, in order to drive up the selling price to the local cinema magnate, who wants to tear it down and build a carpark, that against all odds and common sense they’ll reopen the doors and give the business a go. They also inherit three elderly employees who have long been part of the Bijou’s checkered history—Mrs. Fazackalee (Margaret Rutherford), the cashier who was once also the cinema organist during the silent era; Mr. Quill (Peter Sellers), the projectionist with a more-than-slight penchant for Dewar’s White Label; and Old Tom (Bernard Miles), the janitor who only wants a uniform commensurate with his position and who dutifully provides a fiery solution when negotiations with the magnate hit a snag. These three comprise what passes for the barely beating heart of the Bijou, and if Dearden’s movie seems to end just as the third act is set to begin, it remains a sweet-tempered testament to the blinkered spirits of the Bijou staff, as well as to the fleeting pleasures of nostalgia and the long-lost palaces where past generations learned to love the movies.
Some of the richest comic highlights of The Smallest Show on Earth come from all the technical foul-ups that come courtesy of the theater’s antiquated equipment — busted reels, focus failures, upside-down images and, of course, the image of sizzling celluloid from a frame on fire, these are as good as a cartoon and a newsreel, the expected bonuses when you buy a ticket at the Bijou. And audiences in 2016 who stumble upon this little beauty on DVD (or on Amazon Streaming Video, where it is currently available) will likely get huge laughs from the movie’s sly comment on the panicked movie industry’s attempt to stave off the deleterious effects of television through unabashed gimmickry.
Unable to afford upgrades to Cinemascope and stereophonic sound, the staff at the Bijou make do (albeit inadvertently) with the hardships imposed on them by the march of progress. One of the factors of modernity contributing to the theater’s fall into disrepair is a railway which zooms directly past the outside of the auditorium, making the building shake from its faulty foundation to its rickety rafters. However, fortune smiles upon the Spensers as audiences react with wild abandon when the roar of the train outside is accidentally synched to a scene of a train robbery in the western on screen. The rumbling is so awful that poor Mr. Quill, recently having “taken the pledge,” is driven back to drink after throwing himself bodily on the projector to keep it from vibrating off its floor mounts. But the audience sees it as an “enhanced” experience, something they certainly couldn’t get from sitting at home in front of the tube.
Viewers taking in The Smallest Show on Earth 60 years later will think of everything from Sensurround to D-Box, technological gimmicks that, effective as they might be, still probably wouldn’t be as much fun as a well-timed passing locomotive threatening to literally bring the house down. The movie gently satirizes the raucous behavior of working-class audiences in the age of television while serving as a bridge between the rapidly changing landscape of modern entertainment and its own unapologetically nostalgic yearning for days past, when tastes were simpler and ornate palaces built to showcase flickering images of grandeur and adventure were commonplace. Whatever else you might say about them, the rowdy, television-spoiled audiences that (eventually) pack the Bijou are at least having fun, unlike their “sophisticated” modern-day counterparts, whose countenances, lit by cell phone screens, betray the desultory sense that, despite the fact that they’ve paid upwards of $17 to get in, they’d rather be anywhere else than in a theater watching a movie.
Of course, that appeal to nostalgia for days past rings slightly differently in 2016 than it did for the characters in Dearden’s film, who have seen change in the film industry, from silent to sound to color to wide-screen, but who mourn most especially for the days when the theater could be packed for every show, when the movies really were the best and only show in town. Audiences exposed to the movie today might first marvel that there were ever such huge, expansive, ornately designed, single-screen temples whose only purpose was to show movies. Modern multiplexes with 25 screens and a bounty of tentpole blockbusters to exhibit still find themselves appealing to Internet technology to stimulate ticket sales, booking live, high-definition video feeds of operas and other “special events,” and even appealing to organizations like churches to rent auditoriums, all in order to stay afloat in an age when entertainment choices are even more fragmented. Single-screen palaces for everyday exhibition really are, with a few exceptions like the historic Vista in East Hollywood, things of the past.
For me, seeing The Smallest Show on Earth for the first time in 2014 provided its own sort of coincidence, like a train with the word “progress” spray-painted on its engine in ironic quotation marks rumbling past, but without the pleasant afterglow of an enhanced experience. As I watched the efforts of the Spensers and their staff to raise the Bijou Kinema from the ashes, I couldn’t help but reflect on a couple of beloved movie palaces in my own life that are not now what they once were.
2014 was the year that the movie palace of my own childhood finally closed its doors for what looks like the last time. I saw my very first movie in a theater at the tender age of three. It was Gay Purr-ee (1963), the Abe Levitow-directed animated feature (co-written by Chuck Jones) about cats in the French countryside making their way to the big city, and I saw it at the Marius Theater in beautiful downtown Lakeview, Oregon. The Marius, built in the early 1930s, wasn’t the first movie theater in town — there was a tiny silent theater operating in the early 1900s that introduced the industrial age wonder of the movies to the Irish immigrants and cowpokes who first populated my hometown. (Writer Bob Barry commemorated the theater, whose name I can’t recall — the Rex, maybe? — in his book of local history From Shamrocks to Sagebrush.) But the Marius was my first. I don’t remember a thing about it, and without the help of some photographs I doubt I’d even be able to recall what the exterior looked like— it was closed and remodeled into an office building during the years in the mid-60’s when my family briefly moved to California. By the time we returned in 1968, the Marius was gone. (The remnants of the theater stage are still discernible in the basement of that remodeled building, known since the theater’s closing as the Marius Building. Otherwise, you’d never know a movie theater once stood there.)
By the time I returned to Lakeview in 1968, I’d been infected by the movie virus in a serious way. My parents took us to movies at the big theaters near the outskirts of Sacramento —the Tower and the Roseville in downtown Roseville, and the Citrus Heights Drive-in in the bedroom community of Citrus Heights, where we lived — and when we moved back to the rural splendor of Lakeview, I took as full advantage as I could of the opportunity to go to the movies by myself or with friends —something we weren’t allowed to do in the big city. And the Alger Theater, at the edge of downtown Lakeview, just a mile from my house, became my refuge, my oasis, my home away from home. Those were the days of double features, Saturday matinees (with reduced prices!), of driving into town and thrilling to see the lights of the marquee turned on before sundown, beckoning, promising a peek into a world well beyond the limits of what could be offered by my little burg. I dreamt of that place often, the yellow bulb lights dotting the undercarriage of the marquee, glowing and playing off the pale green trim of the theater frontage — it was glamorous, the only glamour my town had to offer, and it was irresistible.
My dad’s side of the family, the Italians, were dutiful Catholics, and as such were well acquainted with Bob and Norene Alger, visible participants in local Catholic culture who owned and operated the Alger Theater and the Circle JM Drive-in Theater on the north end of town; they had owned the Marius as well. Being the son (and grandson) of family friends, Mr. and Mrs. Alger always made me feel welcome. I can remember filing out of many matinees and evening shows and being greeted by Mrs. Alger with a hug, which many of my friends and peers thought was strange because she was rarely any more than standoffish — and sometimes downright cranky — to most of them. She also came down into the auditorium to personally check on me the night I first saw Blazing Saddles, apparently fearing from my relentless laughter that I was in danger of respiratory failure or full-on hysteria. And the very first review I ever wrote, at the tender age of 12, came at the behest of Mr. Alger, who offered me free admittance to the Saturday night showing of Young Winston (1972) if I would provide him a written review of it after mass the following morning. I have no idea why he wanted me to write about it, but when I delivered my little essay, he accepted it with that slightly inscrutable half-smile, which could be easily misinterpreted (or correctly interpreted, I suppose) as a frown and which rarely left his face. I never heard another word about the review, and he never asked me to do it again.
Though they were overseers of one of the two primary communal entertainment options available to Lakeview back in the day, Bob and Norene felt no need to worry about competing with television. Which was a good thing, because the Algers were anything but show people. They ran the theater with an increasing sense of begrudging duty, and not without a sense — definitely noticed by the general populace — that they were too socially sophisticated for the audience they served. And they didn’t go in for gimmicks or promotions either. The only bonuses offered by the theater came on Christmas Eve (an annual canned-food drive matinee which didn’t survive the early ‘70’s – see Dear Brigitte on the calendar above); Independence Day (a bare-bones fireworks show for which several pals, including the Algers’ son David and I, comprised the mortar crew when I was a teenager); and, best of all, one-night horror shows for New Year’s Eve, Halloween and whenever a Friday the 13th would roll around. The Alger booked a terrific array of Hammer, Amicus and American-International titles for my formative years, allowing me to see films like Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Rasputin the Mad Monk, The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Green Slime, Tales from the Crypt, Asylum, The House That Dripped Blood, Count Yorga, Vampire and countless others that stand as favorites to this day, all projected to a crowd of very enthusiastic screamers.
Audiences at the Alger weren’t far removed from the hijinks of those rowdy delinquents inside the Spensers’ Bijou either. One of the apocryphal Bob Alger stories for me and my buddies came as a result of a Halloween night screening of Tales from the Crypt during which the audience, comprised mostly of high school kids like myself who, unlike myself, were there to do anything but watch the movie, got well out of control. The din started before the opening curtain and continued to increase. And when some sort of projectile flew out of the crowd and landed very close to the screen, it wasn’t long before Mr. Alger marched slowly, deliberately, to the front of the theater, the lights came up, the movie stopped and everyone went silent. “What I have before me, on the floor of the auditorium,” he intoned ominously, as fearsome as Sir Ralph Richardson’s cryptkeeper, “is a fresh egg.” He berated the audience for their behavior and threatened to shut the screening down entirely, with no refunds, if decorum wasn’t restored immediately. He even yelled out at one poor bastard who was still cutting up during his speech: “You! In the balcony! I know it was you who threw it!” Even though I wasn’t causing trouble myself, I was terrified (I could only laugh about it later), but I was also secretly glad because, damn it, I couldn’t hear the movie, and the last thing I would have wanted was for the Algers to pull the plug on these horror holiday special shows, which I considered a major perk and a significant antidote to the doldrums of Lakeview citizenship.
I went to see everything I could at the Alger. I wanted to see everything I could. But for the general audiences, who during the early ‘70s came out to see just about anything the theater showed — I remember a half full house for Robert Altman’s box-office bomb Buffalo Bill and the Indians, for crying out loud, a phenomenon probably attributable to the cowboy community assuming they were in for a run-of-the-mill western — I don’t think the movies themselves mattered nearly as much as the chance to get out and do something, anything.
And when that movie was done, it was done — there was no going out and talking about it afterward, because movies were rarely seen as anything more than simple diversion. Sometimes the movie was done before it was done. One of the funniest moments in The Smallest Show on Earth comes as a B-western is beginning to wrap up. It’s the last scene in the movie, and the audience, sensing that the meat of the action has finished, jumps up and bolts for the exits before “The End” even has a chance to pop up and cue them that it’s time to leave. The audiences at the Alger were similarly inclined to get on with life rather than savor the cinematic experience they’d just had. I’ll never forget coming home from college and seeing Star Wars with the hometown crowd. As soon as the Death Star exploded, at least 40 people in the packed house grabbed their coats and scooted out of the theater.
For all its deficiencies — the inept projection, the frequently misspelled marquee (it was always “Pual” Newman in something or other, and I’ll never forget “Ward Bond 007” in The Man with the Golden Gun), the uncomfortable seats, the indifferent management — the Alger was where I really fell in love with the movies. That love would be deepened elsewhere, but the Alger’s lights always seemed to be visible to me from the dark quiet of Southern Oregon nights long after I’d left the town, a glowing reminder of where it all began.
The Algers closed the drive-in in 1981 after a winter storm ripped the screen in half like a piece of wet paper. They kept the indoor theater open for a couple years after that, but soon retired, and it sat dark for a few months during the early ‘80s when local folks were finally getting into the swing of the VCR era. It eventually reopened under new ownership in the mid-80s, and competition to keep pace with an ever-shrinking window between theatrical release and home video debut forced the theater to begin picking up releases much more quickly than it ever did under the guidance of Bob Alger. In those days, it wasn’t unusual to have to wait 6-9 months after its national release for a movie to bow at the Alger — Jaws (1975) played at the Circle JM Drive-in during the summer of 1976. But the video-age Alger was facing a much-changed exhibition landscape. I remember being completely shocked to open up the pages of the local weekly newspaper, the Lake County Examiner, 15 years ago and seeing a tiny ad for the week’s offering at the Alger, Scream 3, which was opening at the Alger the very same night it opened on 3,000 or so other screens across the nation, an unthinkable scenario even five years before then.
The theater, under new management now twice removed from Bob and Norene Alger, more or less limped into the digital age. Shows were now weekends only, and the theater, which opened in 1940 was beginning to show the effects of a lack of cosmetic upkeep. A ghastly stage had been installed in the mid ‘80s, ostensibly in a move to establish a community theater presence which never took hold, obliterating the first four or five rows of original seats. What seats remained were the original 1940 editions and as butt-numbing as ever; the marquee lights were spotty, every other bulb either burnt out or screwed into a socket that had long since failed to carry current; the façade of the theater was tattered and badly in need of a paint job; and the marquee itself was warped, rickety and weather-beaten, its ability to hold up plastic letters routinely challenged by a stiff breeze. With the cost of keeping the theater open for just three days a week becoming increasingly indomitable, it seemed the writing was on the wall, and it probably had been for at least the first 10 years of the 21st century.
Much like how the storm that destroyed the drive-in screen in 1981 had presented the Algers a convenient exeunt from the drive-in business, big studio threats to stop providing 35mm prints to theaters, thus forcing small-town operations like the Alger to upgrade to digital equipment in order to stay in business, were the rationale current management needed to call theatrical exhibition in Lakeview, Oregon a permanent day. After several attempts to communicate with the current owners and brainstorm ideas for keeping the theater alive — a theater in nearby Alturas, California had successfully navigated a crowd-funding campaign to upgrade their theater and make it a community-operated business — I stopped receiving replies to my e-mails, and it became clear that, in response to deteriorating attendance, the owners weren’t really interested in rallying an effort to come up with the money to keep the doors open.
So, in March 2014 the reels of the Alger Theater’s 35mm platter projection system spun their last. The theater, much like Hollywood itself, had long since ceded any attempt to appeal to any other audience beyond the PG/PG-13 market, the only folks left in town who could be counted on to occasionally show up for a movie. It’s grimly appropriate that the last picture show would not be a landmark like Red River (the current Alger management likely being unaware of that movie, or The Last Picture Show, for that matter), or even an adult-oriented audience-pleaser like the recent Oscar-winner Argo. Instead, it was the generic animated movie The Nut Job, and a sadder, more ignominious finale for my beloved theater I couldn’t possibly imagine. According to a report filed by my niece, who was very upset about the theater closing and tried herself to generate some local interest in preserving it, the last show was just as nondescript and lacking in fanfare as one might expect. The end credits playing before an empty auditorium, what there was of the audience having already listlessly filed out, the marquee lights went dark over South F Street, the main drag on which the Alger held dominance for 74 years, and save for one special screening – author Cheryl Strayed brought the movie version of Wild to town, Lakeview being one of the towns she walked through on her epic journey along the Pacific Crest Trail – those marquee lights haven’t been back on since. It’s not clear as yet whether the township of Lakeview has even noticed.
Last year I got a message from a friend still living in Oregon who said she’d heard that the Alger was about to be purchased by a new owner, given a digital upgrade and a paint job, and reopened. Did I dream this? If it were true, it would be an unlikely deus ex machina, given the history of this theater, and given the economic straits in which the town is currently mired. It’s the sort of dream of the past and its familiar faces that I wake up from all the time. But no, I didn’t dream it. The message was real. And whether or not the resurrection of the Alger makes the transition from rumor to reality—and the town’s active interest in making it happen cannot be overemphasized– is a story I have been following closely and will continue to keep my eye on.
Maybe the Alger Theater doesn’t mean the same thing to the current citizenry of Lakeview that it does to me. Maybe it never did. However the general population may have felt it’s difficult for me to discount the importance such a tiny blip on American culture as the Alger had on the forming of my mind and my desire to see more than what could be offered on the dusty, muddy streets passing outside its doors. If they’re lucky, everyone reading this will have a place like it nestled in their memories, a place where love for what the movies could show us, could inspire in us, the emotions they could stir, was instilled and made foundation for the appreciation of what movies could be that we had yet to understand. When I see the empty shell of that theater, standing abandoned and ignored at the edge of my hometown, I don’t feel like a piece of me is lost. No, I know right where that piece is at. It’s still inside those doors, in communion with the dusty old red curtain, the forever dimmed house lights running the edges of the auditorium at the ceiling level, the mysterious projection room from whence all those amazing sights and sounds emerged, the tidy confines of the snack bar watched over by the old Thornton’s Drug clock on the wall, its timekeeping partner, the one bearing the Lincecum Signs ad, still perched in the auditorium above the door to the back of the screen, stage left. Yep, I’m still in there, sitting in those worn-down seats, waiting for the next movie to start. By a great stroke of fortune, maybe someday it will. (Dennis Cozzalio)
Marcus Theatres seemed rather proud of its “Cinema Twins,” the Marc 1 and 2, when the theater opened on July 18, 1973 at 3025 Kentucky Street. An advertisement announcing its opening boasted such amenities as lounge chair seats, “the luxuriousness of the auditoriums” and air conditioning.
For a time, The Racine Journal Times was a frequent partner with the Marc, hosting ticket giveaway contests, special family nights and even a children’s film festival. One contest The Journal Times ran in partnership with the Marc in 1984 tasked entrants with writing a 2,000-word essay about “a special place in your heart.” Five winners received a one-year pass to the Marc.
The Marc came to an end on January 4, 1987. In the years since, the building was retrofitted into retail space and housed a Rogan’s Shoes and waterbed store. Currently in the former theater are Dollar General and Michelle’s Nails & Spa, though the building’s address has changed to 4111 Durand Avenue.
2009, the year of its demolition.
The Changing Face of the Oriental Theatre (by David Luhrssen, July 3, 2018, Shepherd Express) — Although it turns 91 this summer, the Oriental Theatre (2230 N. Farwell Ave.) isn’t Milwaukee’s oldest cinema; the Downer claims that honor. But, with all due respect to the beautiful Avalon, the Oriental was and remains the city’s most spectacular movie palace for its exuberantly Near East-Far East decor. And for several decades, the Oriental has been an anchor of the city’s cinema culture as a repertory house and then as a theater with a consistent lineup of foreign, indie and documentary films.
This month, the venerable Oriental goes dark as its new operators take charge and begin phase one of planned renovations. Milwaukee Film—whose primary project has been the Milwaukee Film Festival—is now the leaseholder, and Jonathan Jackson, MF’s artistic and executive director, has big plans. First off: more ambitious and diverse programming that reflects, and magnifies, the work of the annual festival. “The film community loves the 15-day event, but people have asked us to create more opportunities,” Jackson says.
In 1988, the Oriental caught up with the late 20th century when the Landmark Theatres chain divided its cavernous interior into a three-screen house with great sensitivity to the building’s architectural integrity. To bring it into the 21st century, Jackson has announced an upgrade in sight and sound. The 2K digital projectors will be supplanted by higher-resolution 4K units. And, in a nod to the enduring significance of actual film composed of celluloid (not pixels), MF will also install new 35mm and 70mm projectors. “With those, we expect to secure access to all the leading film archives in the world,” Jackson explains. He has received applications from old-school projectionists—an occupation rendered obsolescent by digital technology—from around the country.
“But first and foremost,” he adds, “I think it’s a great idea that women have a restroom on the first floor!” Since the Oriental Theatre opened, the women’s room has been lodged at the far end of the mezzanine and is inaccessible to the disabled. Women were usually forced into a small chamber, an afterthought added for the handicapped next to the ground floor men’s room. “I was always ashamed to walk to the bathroom during the film festival past a line of women,” Jackson says. “I once saw a gentleman block the men’s room door to allow only women to use it for a given time.”
The new women’s room—carved out of space opened up by annexing a small retail bay abutting the Oriental’s northeast corner—will, like all future alterations, conform to the building’s character. Jackson adds that MF is more than halfway through the process of adding the Oriental to the National Register of Historic Places.
Most Milwaukeeans were surprised last summer when Milwaukee Film announced its acquisition of the Oriental’s lease from the theater’s longtime operator, Landmark Theatres, but the historic cinema had long been on Jackson’s mind. The Oriental was his first job after moving to Milwaukee. He went on to manage the UW-Milwaukee Union Cinema and became, in 2003, programming director for the Milwaukee International Film Festival. (Full disclosure: I was a co-founder of the MIFF and served as its executive director through 2007.) The Oriental had always been one of that festival’s major venues, and its importance only grew after Jackson became the Milwaukee Film Festival’s executive director in 2008.
So, why not continue renting the Oriental for two weeks each year instead of undertaking the year-round responsibility for a historic landmark?
“Our relationship with the Oriental became the critical factor in our success,” Jackson explains. “It was great working with [theater manager] Eric Levin and his staff, but the growth of the festival was inhibited because we had no long-term contract.” Instead, MF worked with the Oriental year by year; according to Jackson, the paperwork for the next fall festival never arrived before late spring. “Anyone in my position would have lost sleep,” he continues. “It was a challenge for long-range planning, to secure sponsors, to sell advance tickets. You can understand the potential instability of that.”
Also, Landmarks Theatre never rented MF more than two of the Oriental’s three screens and never gave Jackson the timeframe he sought. “We always wanted late October-early November, but Landmarks wanted to save their screens for the big fall releases,” he explains. “Historically, our dates overlapped with the New York Film Festival, one of the biggest film festivals with dibs on all content.” As a result, many significant non-Hollywood movies could never be booked at the Milwaukee Film Festival—until this year. “You can only do so much to grow a film culture in 15 days,” Jackson continues. “From now on, Milwaukee Film have an additional 350 days to play.”
Aside from the opportunity to screen every available movie in the world, Jackson’s decision to assume control of Milwaukee’s flagship cinema has a financial dimension. “Non-profit cinemas are healthier than film festivals,” Jackson explains. “Most film festivals operate on 30-40% earned income, mainly ticket sales, and the rest comes from fundraising. Nonprofit cinemas generally run on 60% earned income and 40% philanthropy. We hope to change our metric by running the Oriental.” And what of Landmarks’ remaining Milwaukee venue—the city’s oldest movie theater, the Downer? “Landmarks has a lease on the Downer,” Jackson says. Landmarks Theatres refused to comment.
Milwaukee Film has an 11-year lease plus two 10-year options on the Oriental. “We have a strong, long lease so that we can fundraise long-term to pay for improvements to the structure of the building,” Jackson says. “We are investing in the building even though we don’t own it, but since we’re running it for 30 years, we’re comfortable with that.”
“Aside from, ‘What about the women’s bathroom?’ the thing that everyone says to me is, ‘Don’t touch the popcorn!’” says Jackson on future plans for the Oriental. Phase two of the facelift will include some changes at the concession stand. “We’ll want to feature as many local products as possible,” he says. The original plasterwork of the cinema’s ceiling needs restoration. And down below, the original seats in the balcony have to be replaced. The curtains and tapestries need cleaning or mending. The HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) system requires updating. “We need to look at the acoustical treatment to insure that the sound is not bouncing within each space or between the theaters,” Jackson says.
He continues: “In the early days of cinema, people might find live programming at a movie theater, a double feature, a newsreel, an organ performance—it was more of a full cultural event, and it’s what film festivals do naturally—to create an experience.” Which leads to the inevitable rebutting of the tired doomsayers who keep forecasting the death of movie theaters. After all, they say, why not stay home with your Plasma screen, your lumpy Barcalounger and your popcorn machine?
“The statistics show that movie attendance is stable,” Jackson replies. “For me, the point is the communal experience. It’s so wonderful and strange, having hundreds of people sitting silently in a room staring at a screen and sharing an experience. It’s an unparalleled opportunity for community engagement. And besides,” he adds, “you cannot beat the experience of seeing a movie on a big screen.”
The Oriental Theatre will reopen on Friday, Aug. 10.
Kenosha News, May 31, 1968) Noted theater manager retires ——– Wallace Konrad, manager of the Orpheum Theater in Kenosha for the past ll years, has announced his retirement after a 25-year career in Wisconsin theaters. Considered a nearly infallible authority on show business and movies, Konrad began his career as a canopy boy at the age of 16 in Sheboygan. In 25 years he managed a variety of theaters throughout the state, including hitching post theaters, prestige theaters, art theaters, and small and big town theaters. He made it a point to know the town in which he worked, and to know what that town’s audiences wanted in their theaters. Taking his work seriously, he would give people the kind of movies they wanted to see, and was known for his efforts in promoting movies. He also made it a point to know as much as he could about his business and the movies he showed. It is said there is no question about the business that he can’t answer. After service in World War II, Konrad returned to Port Washington, where he served as assistant manager of the Ozaukee and Grand Theaters for Fox Wisconsin Amusement Corp., under the late Harold Fitzgerald. For a number of years he managed several theaters for this chain in small towns all over the state. In 1949 he moved to Milwaukee to manage various theaters there, working his way to district manager of the Fox Milwaukee division. It was in Milwaukee that he married the former Elaine Mindick, and started the family which now numbers six. Fox began to liquidate its Wisconsin holdings in 1954, so in 1956 Konrad moved to Kenosha to manage the Orpheum Theater, recently purchased by Towne Realty, and later sold to the Prudential Management Corp. Retiring in March of this year after a short illness, Konrad will continue to make his home in Kenosha with his family.
The Labor Temple was built in 1914 by the Local Miners' Union. The front doors opened onto an attractive lobby with a wide stairway to the second floor on the right and a ticket office centered between two entrances to a large auditorium with a sloping floor, aisles between three sections of seats and a large stage. The theatre had the first air-conditioning system within thirty-five miles of Staunton. From Tuesday through Sunday it was a first-run theatre for years. The musical “Don’t Give Up the Ship” led to the Staunton High School fight song “Don’t Give Up the Fight”. On the first Monday of each month the miners held a union meeting there; other Mondays were available for graduations, dramatic or musical productions by local groups, lectures and so forth. Lavatories were upstairs as were several conference or committee meeting rooms and a large hall where lodges met and dances and receptions were held.
As seen in 1987.
Summer, 2018.
Proposed restoration concept.
(Kenosha News, April 12, 1968) – Kenosha’s Mr. Showman, Bill Exton, will ring down the curtain next Thursday on his 29-year role as owner and manager of the Roosevelt Theater. Exton, whose career in the entertainment industry spans more than four decades, has long endeared himself to Kenoshans by his activities on behalf of youngsters and adults alike at his theater, the Roosevelt Rd. Businessmen’s Association and in other civic activities. At the close of business on Thursday, he will turn over the keys and operation of the theater to Theodore F. Witheril of Racine. “I am not going to retire entirely,“ said Exton. “I’m just not built that way. I will try to get away for two or three weeks, though, just to get my feet on the ground.” Operation of the theater has been a day-and-night job for Exton, who took over the Roosevelt in 1939. Prior to that, he had managed the Kenosha Theater, now closed, and the old Gateway Theater, now known as the Lake, for about 4 years. Exton’s fascination for the entertainment business became apparent at an early age. During his high school years in his native Detroit, Mich., he got his first job as a theater usher and from then on worked at just about anything they would pay him for. WORKED AT CIRCUS – By graduation, it was and one time a monkey ran up apparent to his father and moth- through the audience, er that they had a showman for Life Not Dull “Life wasn’t dull by a long shot,” he remarked. Exton’s career included a stint with Paramount Pictures, who hired him to do promotional work. Part of his job was to escort Paramount stars on personal appearance tours and whip up occasional live variety acts such as those used between reels in the movie houses at that time. After graduation, Exton went to work for a circus as a “pot-walloper,” scrubbing pots and pans and cleaning up around the kitchen. He knew by the end of the season that he would never be able to “shake the sawdust out of his trouser cuffs.” During the winter months, he wolfed in the movie houses, worked part time for the Detroit Free Press and tried his hand at public relations. Then, as now. he liked people and was good at selling his product when the product was entertainment. Summertime meant a return to the circus, and his bulging scrap book attests to his many experiences during his career with the tents. In 1921, Ringling Brothers asked Exton to head their publicity department and he “went into orbit.” The work was hard but never dull, he recalled. There were exciting and dangerous incidents such as the time when an elephant went berserk and knocked over a cage of panthers, scattering the wild cargo over the grounds. Although the panthers were recaptured without incident, the elephant killed its trainer before it was killed itself. On another occasion, a lion got loose inside a sideshow tent, In 1934, as district manager for Standard Theaters, Exton was sent to Kenosha to open the Gateway Theater, and he remained to become one of the most distinguished and well-loved citizens of the city. One of his best known projects is the annual Halloween Parade which he organized about 14 years ago. He recalled that about 200 youngsters took part that first year, but the number has grown to more than 1,400 costumed children who now compete for the coveted Halloween prizes. Exton was instrumental in the formation of the Roosevelt Rd. Businessmen’s Association about 15 years ago and twice served as its president. He is also active in the Lions and Elks Club. He resides at 6521 43rd Ave. TESTIMONIAL DINNER – In 1963, Exton was feted at a testimonial dinner sponsored by the Roosevelt Rd. Businessmen’s Association. Several hundred Kenoshans joined in honoring him for his contributions to the community, and a three hour program was presented in commemoration of his 40 years of service in the entertainment industry. In addition, Exton was named the Showman of the Year in 1964 at a convention of the Allied Theater Owners of Wisconsin held in Milwaukee. He was selected from more than 50 others under consideration for “making his theater a focal point of community campaigning and creating civic good will.” Through the years, Exton has followed a policy of selecting films for his theater which he considered “suitable for the family.” “I never wanted to get off the trend of decent, clean entertainment,” he remarked. Movies are getting better, Exton believes. There may have been a slow-down with the advent of television, but in the movies as well as in his own plans for the future, there are great things in store.
(Kenosha News, April 12, 1968) Bill Exton retiring —— Bill Exton, 2910 Roosevelt Rd., announced today that he will retire at the close of business on Thursday, April 18. The theater will be taken over by Theodore F. Witheril of Racine, who will serve as president of the Roosevelt Theater of Kenosha, Inc. Witheril, 31, has operated the Capitol Theater in Racine since Feb. 1, 1965. He was elected the Racine County coroner in 1966 and formerly served as news director of Radio Station WRAC in Racine. Witheril said that “no major changes of any kind" were planned at the theater and that Exton will serve as a consultant for at least a year. Ken Pias, Racine, vice president and secretary of the corporation, will serve as the theater manager.
(Film Daily, Oct.-Dec. 1940) – Detroit — Edward Hilke, owner of the Perrien Theater, is starting a remodeling program, with stage remodeling being completed now. House is being reseated by International Seating Co. New front will be installed next year. Architect Henry M. Freier is supervising the work.