The State is one of several early Denver houses still missing from Cinema Treasures. The 1925 opening was actually a re-opening under new name. Here is an earlier photo showing the same house when it was called the Strand. The Strand opened September 9, 1915, according to The Moving Picture World of January 1, 1916, which also noted that the new house had been built on the site of the first Isis Theatre. The State Theatre was demolished in 1953.
An article in The Moving Picture World of January 1, 1916, indicates that the Strand Theatre (later the State), opened in 1915, had been built on the site of the first Isis Theatre. The article doesn’t say whether or not the first Isis operated under another name between the opening of the new Isis in 1913 and the old theater’s demolition.
News about the Ritz Theatre in Bartow from The Film Daily of September 12, 1936:
“The old Ernada Theater, Bartow, has been transformed into a modern, down to date house. Western Electric Wide Range projection and sound equipment has been installed. Leonard Bennett, manager, announces a change in name to The Ritz.”
Pullman, by Robert Luedeking and the Whitman County Historical Society (Google Books preview) says that the Audian Theatre had previously been called the Grand Theatre. There’s a photo of the Grand from about 1920, and the building is quite recognizable from the terra cotta cornice and parapet trim it still sports.
The 1936 reconstruction of the Audian, which was nearing completion in late summer, according to the September 12 issue of The Film Daily that year, was apparently confined to the auditorium and the interior of the building. I haven’t found any early mentions of the Grand Theatre in trade publications, but it was being advertised in the Pullman Herald in 1916.
A 350-seat house for movies and live events called the Pullman Theatre opened in December, 1913. I haven’t found the Pullman Theatre mentioned in the Herald later than 1915, about a year before the earliest mentions of the Grand Theatre. It’s possible that the Pullman Theatre became the Grand Theatre.
The Strand might have been the successor of the Dunlap Theatre, which was listed in Julius Cahn’s guides for 1906-1907 and 1913-1914. The September 12, 1936, issue of The Film Daily reported that the Dunlap Theatre in Clarksville was being rebuilt and refurnished after having been damaged by a fire about two months previously. The Cahn guides listed the Dunlap as a ground-floor house of 750 seats, so it was about the same size as the Strand. I haven’t found any mentions of the Dunlap Theatre dating from later than 1936.
The March, 1917, issue of The Doherty News has a bit of information about the America Theatre:
“The new America Theatre of Denver, one of the finest in that city, recognizes that ‘Business Follows the Lighted Lamp,’ and uses two immense signs to designate its locality.
“One of the signs is already in position on the side of the building, and is fifty feet long, by ten feet high, requiring 1,200 lamps of 40,000 candle power. The other sign, believed to be the largest in the west, will be erected on the roof and will be 52 feet high and 60 feet long, weighing fifteen tons, requiring 2,300 lamps of 30,000 candle power. This sign will carry the words, ‘America Theatre—See "America” First.’ The fact that the streets on which the theatre is located are illuminated adds greatly to the effect. One sees the two lighted avenues crossing each other, forming a distinct cross with the glow from the signs at the center.
“The theatre further capitalized illumination in its interior. The lighting effects obtained through dimmers and varied colored lamps surpasses anything seen in Denver, and is causing much favorable comment.”
In its early days, the America Theatre had entrances on both 16th Street and Curtis Street, as can be seen in this 1922 photo from the Denver Public Library.
The America Theatre’s Robert Morgan theater organ, installed in 1922, is now installed in the Broome Center for the Performing Arts (The Forum) in Binghamton, New York. A document from the Center says that the America Theatre closed in 1930 and was replaced by a ten-cent store. Here is the Cinema Treasure page for the Forum Theatre.
According to the book Denver’s Early Architecture, by James Bretzhe, the Victory Theatre closed in the late 1930s, and its operators moved across the street to the former Empress Theatre, renaming that house the New Victory Theatre. The former Empress is probably the Victory Theatre seen in the last photo linked in CSWalczak’s earlier comment.
A card in the Denver Public Library’s History Index says that the Empress Theatre was renamed the Victory Theatre in 1937, so unless the original Victory was itself later reopened under another name, 1937 must have seen the end of it.
An ad for architects Leon H. Lempert & Son in the 1900-1901 edition of Julius Cahn’s guide has the Opera House in Corning on a list headed “Some of our theatres.”
The August 12, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had the following item about the Opera House:
“The Corning (N. Y.) opera house recently closed its doors. Just when the house will again be opened is much in doubt. In this connection a late report from Corning says the five-year lease under which the house has been operated expired July 1. Although the house has been kept open since on the old lease. It is understood that the arrangement has not been satisfactory to either party.”
Then the September 30 issue of the same publication has this item about the Opera House:
“Corning, N. Y.—L. E. Harris, proprietor of the Family theater, Albion, and Jack Lee, of that city, have leased the Corning Opera House. The theater has been redecorated throughout and has new opera chairs. The house seats 1,000 and will have an orchestra each evening. Mr. Harris will look after the mechanical end of the theater and Mr. Lee will take care of the executive duties. Road shows, vaudeville and moving pictures will be featured.”
Will: The Princess was one of two houses in Corning that were mentioned in the August 19, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World (the other was the Bijou.) As the Princess was mentioned between the two articles about the Opera House that were less than two months apart it seems unlikely that they were the same theater.
There is an article about exterior lighting on Denver’s theaters in the October 19, 1912, issue of Electrical Review (Google Books scan) with a drawing of this Isis Theater captioned “How New Isis Theater Will Be Illuminated.”
The text of the same article has this information:
“The history of the illumination of Curtis Street is rather interesting and dates back a little more than four years. At that time one of the enterprising theater managers of Denver opened the Cameraphone Theater and installed some very elaborate illuminating effects. This was when the moving-picture business was in its infancy in Denver, and although the illumination on the Cameraphone gave it tremendous advertising, the quality of the shows presented were not on a par with the illumination on the outside and it eventually became unprofitable to operate. Later it was taken over by Samuel Baxter and renamed the Isis. Under the new management the lighting was discontinued and the quality of the shows bettered, but without the pulling force of the light it did not do a paying business. In the course of time the illumination which had been displaced was again installed and later increased, until today the theater has a total of 2,200 lamps and a candlepower of 8,500, and it is now one of the best payers of the several first-run houses.”
The article indicates that the New Isis was under construction, while the existing Isis was one of the seven movie theaters already in operation on Curtis Street between 14th and 18th Streets. So far I’ve been unable to discover what became of the first Isis when the new house opened. Possibly it was kept open under a new name.
I’m unable to reconcile the address of 216 W. Broadway with the description of the Jewel Theatre as having been “atop a hill.” The top of the hill is about 5th Street, a block west of the location of the Crystal Theatre, which is at 401 W. Broadway. I’d expect the State to have had an address in the 400 or 500 block.
The last paragraph of this weblog post by Stevie Joe Payne says that the State Theatre was south of the courthouse, so it must have been on or near the northwest corner of Main and Grandview. As the Constantine Theatre is at 110 W. Main and is across the street and a bit farther east, 121 W. Main sounds about right for the State Theatre’s address.
109 W. Main must have been the lot between Kihekah Avenue and Grandview Avenue. As the building was listed as vacant on the 1927 insurance map, I’m thinking that it might have housed the Jackson Theatre.
Stevie Joe Payne remembers the Circle A Theatre in the early 1950s. As he describes it, this was Pawhuska’s western movie theater. Just about every town big enough to have multiple theaters had a cowboy house in those days, where the kids would go for Saturday matinees of movies with stars like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.
These theaters often had names suggestive of the old west, like the chain of several houses called the Hitching Post Theatre in the Los Angeles area. Circle A sounds like the name of a ranch. Western theaters went into decline in the 1950s, when all the old movies and a lot of new half-hour cowboy shows began running on television. Most of L.A.’s Hitching Post Theatres were re-branded as art houses, showing foreign movies, but most of the western theaters in small towns or suburbia just shut down. The Circle A probably didn’t survive the 1950s.
Also, I’ve found two theaters listed at Pawhuska in the July 25, 1908, issue of The Billboard:
“PAWHUSKA.— Pastime Theatre (R. J. Woodring, mgr.) Dubinsky Brothers furnished the best repertoire of the season week of 12; good houses. The Casino Stock Co. week of 19.
“Lyric Theatre (Mr. Streator, mgr.) The Dell Boy played to packed houses here week of July 12.”
These appear to all have been live acts. The Dubinsky Brothers were an act made up of Edward, Maurice, and Barney Dubinsky. Edward later changed his surname to Durwood and went into the theater business. His his son Stanley Durwood went on to found the AMC circuit of multiplex theaters.
A July, 1936 Pawhuska telephone directory here lists a Skelly Filling Station at 201 W. Main. The State Theatre is also listed in the directory as being on West Main Street, but the street number is not given. The State and the Kihekah (also listed only as being on West Main) are the only theaters listed.
Lauren, what year was the latest insurance map showing the theater building published? If it was from 1922 or earlier, the theater at 201 W. Main might have been the Jackson Theatre, which is known to have advertised as late as 1922 but no later. It could have been demolished about that time.
Mooreland had a single theater operating prior to 1928, when the January 3 issue of The Film Daily reported that the town' movie house had been bought by Kenneth Campbell. The name of the theater was not given, so it might or might not have been the same house that was operating as the Mooreland Theatre in the 1940s.
Are we sure the Uptown’s building has been demolished? The odd-numbered side of the 100 block of West Madison is almost solidly built up, and all the buildings look pretty old. I can’t imagine any of them having been built after 1950.
This house was operated by Video Independent Theatres for at least part of its history. The July 25, 2000, obituary of lifelong Pawhuska resident Betty Jean Moore said: “Betty worked 38 years for The Video Theatres, beginning at The State Theater and becoming Manager over The Kihekah, The State and The Circle A Theaters and Corral Drive-In Theater in Pawhuska.”
The Feb 8, 1914 obituary of Stephen P. Buler said that he had been given charge of the Orpheum Theatre in Portsmouth, Virginia, eight years previously and had managed the house for five years, which would give an opening year of no later than 1906 for the original Orpheum.
The 1913-1914 edition of the Cahn guide listed the Orpheum in Portsmouth as a Wilmer & Vincent house presenting vaudeville exclusively.
An ad for the Pannill Miro Screen Corporation of Norfolk, Virginia, in the March 11, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World boasted that the company had “…installed the world’s largest moving picture screen in the Orpheum Theatre, Portsmouth….”
A June 24, 1922, item in The American Contractor reported that the Portsmouth Improvement Company would expend $50,000 for fire repairs to the Orpheum Theatre in Portsmouth, Virginia, but an item in the October 19 issue of Manufacturers Record said that the company would build an entirely new Orpheum at a cost of $500,000.
A list of buildings in which products of the J. G. Braun Company had been used, published in the company’s 1926 catalog, names the architect of the Orpheum Theatre as Charles M. Major.
A 1977 book titled Woodlot and Ballot Box: Marathon County in the Twentieth Century, by Howard R. Klueter and James J. Lorence, says: “Mosinee’s only theater was built in 1923….” The Art Moderne style must have been the result of a later remodeling.
This was probably the house that was in the planning stage in 1922, according to an item in the March 25 issue of The American Contractor that year:
“Theater (m. p.): Mosinee, Wis. Archt. Oppenhamer & Obel, 408 Bellin bldg.. Green Bay, Wis. Owner John Keefe, Mosinee. Prob. be fig. bet. Mar. & May.”
The closest thing to a political controversy involving the Mosinee Theatre that I can find reference to on the Internet is a fake “Communist takeover” of the town that was staged by the American Legion in 1950. The stunt attracted enough national attention in those days when Wisconsin’s red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy was riding high that Life Magazine ran this article about the event in its May 15, 1950, issue. The article includes a photo of the Mosinee Theatre.
There are location issues with this theater. The introduction says there is now a post office where the Cameo Theatre used to be, but the U. S. Postal Service gives the address of the East Lyme branch post office as 225 Boston Post Road, not Pennsylvania Avenue. The building at that location doesn’t resemble the one in the photo at the top of this page.
Meanwhile, CinemaTour lists a Cameo Theatre at 66 Pennsylvania Avenue in Niantic, Connecticut, which is just down the road from East Lyme, but lists no theaters for East Lyme itself.
The Postal Service lists the Niantic branch post office as being at 58 Pennsylvania Avenue, Suite 2. That building does resemble the one in the photo above, so I’m guessing that’s the place and I’m updating Street View to it. I suppose the addresses shifted a bit after the theater closed. The location of the theater should be changed from East Lyme to Niantic, though. The Zip Code is already correct.
The photo (quick link) jacobschen found gives a clue as to why someone might have misremembered the Franklin Park Theatre as having been Gothic in style. The building next door, where Park Playland was located, had loads of Gothic ornament, and the open cupola that once graced the theater, though entirely Classical in detail, had all those finials that echoed the Gothic finials on the neighboring building. It’s too bad that the cupola has been truncated. It added a bit of playful spectacle to the block.
The State is one of several early Denver houses still missing from Cinema Treasures. The 1925 opening was actually a re-opening under new name. Here is an earlier photo showing the same house when it was called the Strand. The Strand opened September 9, 1915, according to The Moving Picture World of January 1, 1916, which also noted that the new house had been built on the site of the first Isis Theatre. The State Theatre was demolished in 1953.
An article in The Moving Picture World of January 1, 1916, indicates that the Strand Theatre (later the State), opened in 1915, had been built on the site of the first Isis Theatre. The article doesn’t say whether or not the first Isis operated under another name between the opening of the new Isis in 1913 and the old theater’s demolition.
News about the Ritz Theatre in Bartow from The Film Daily of September 12, 1936:
Pullman, by Robert Luedeking and the Whitman County Historical Society (Google Books preview) says that the Audian Theatre had previously been called the Grand Theatre. There’s a photo of the Grand from about 1920, and the building is quite recognizable from the terra cotta cornice and parapet trim it still sports.
The 1936 reconstruction of the Audian, which was nearing completion in late summer, according to the September 12 issue of The Film Daily that year, was apparently confined to the auditorium and the interior of the building. I haven’t found any early mentions of the Grand Theatre in trade publications, but it was being advertised in the Pullman Herald in 1916.
A 350-seat house for movies and live events called the Pullman Theatre opened in December, 1913. I haven’t found the Pullman Theatre mentioned in the Herald later than 1915, about a year before the earliest mentions of the Grand Theatre. It’s possible that the Pullman Theatre became the Grand Theatre.
The Strand might have been the successor of the Dunlap Theatre, which was listed in Julius Cahn’s guides for 1906-1907 and 1913-1914. The September 12, 1936, issue of The Film Daily reported that the Dunlap Theatre in Clarksville was being rebuilt and refurnished after having been damaged by a fire about two months previously. The Cahn guides listed the Dunlap as a ground-floor house of 750 seats, so it was about the same size as the Strand. I haven’t found any mentions of the Dunlap Theatre dating from later than 1936.
The March, 1917, issue of The Doherty News has a bit of information about the America Theatre:
In its early days, the America Theatre had entrances on both 16th Street and Curtis Street, as can be seen in this 1922 photo from the Denver Public Library.The America Theatre’s Robert Morgan theater organ, installed in 1922, is now installed in the Broome Center for the Performing Arts (The Forum) in Binghamton, New York. A document from the Center says that the America Theatre closed in 1930 and was replaced by a ten-cent store. Here is the Cinema Treasure page for the Forum Theatre.
According to the book Denver’s Early Architecture, by James Bretzhe, the Victory Theatre closed in the late 1930s, and its operators moved across the street to the former Empress Theatre, renaming that house the New Victory Theatre. The former Empress is probably the Victory Theatre seen in the last photo linked in CSWalczak’s earlier comment.
A card in the Denver Public Library’s History Index says that the Empress Theatre was renamed the Victory Theatre in 1937, so unless the original Victory was itself later reopened under another name, 1937 must have seen the end of it.
An ad for architects Leon H. Lempert & Son in the 1900-1901 edition of Julius Cahn’s guide has the Opera House in Corning on a list headed “Some of our theatres.”
The August 12, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had the following item about the Opera House:
Then the September 30 issue of the same publication has this item about the Opera House:Will: The Princess was one of two houses in Corning that were mentioned in the August 19, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World (the other was the Bijou.) As the Princess was mentioned between the two articles about the Opera House that were less than two months apart it seems unlikely that they were the same theater.There is an article about exterior lighting on Denver’s theaters in the October 19, 1912, issue of Electrical Review (Google Books scan) with a drawing of this Isis Theater captioned “How New Isis Theater Will Be Illuminated.”
The text of the same article has this information:
The article indicates that the New Isis was under construction, while the existing Isis was one of the seven movie theaters already in operation on Curtis Street between 14th and 18th Streets. So far I’ve been unable to discover what became of the first Isis when the new house opened. Possibly it was kept open under a new name.I’m unable to reconcile the address of 216 W. Broadway with the description of the Jewel Theatre as having been “atop a hill.” The top of the hill is about 5th Street, a block west of the location of the Crystal Theatre, which is at 401 W. Broadway. I’d expect the State to have had an address in the 400 or 500 block.
The last paragraph of this weblog post by Stevie Joe Payne says that the State Theatre was south of the courthouse, so it must have been on or near the northwest corner of Main and Grandview. As the Constantine Theatre is at 110 W. Main and is across the street and a bit farther east, 121 W. Main sounds about right for the State Theatre’s address.
109 W. Main must have been the lot between Kihekah Avenue and Grandview Avenue. As the building was listed as vacant on the 1927 insurance map, I’m thinking that it might have housed the Jackson Theatre.
Stevie Joe Payne remembers the Circle A Theatre in the early 1950s. As he describes it, this was Pawhuska’s western movie theater. Just about every town big enough to have multiple theaters had a cowboy house in those days, where the kids would go for Saturday matinees of movies with stars like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.
These theaters often had names suggestive of the old west, like the chain of several houses called the Hitching Post Theatre in the Los Angeles area. Circle A sounds like the name of a ranch. Western theaters went into decline in the 1950s, when all the old movies and a lot of new half-hour cowboy shows began running on television. Most of L.A.’s Hitching Post Theatres were re-branded as art houses, showing foreign movies, but most of the western theaters in small towns or suburbia just shut down. The Circle A probably didn’t survive the 1950s.
Also, I’ve found two theaters listed at Pawhuska in the July 25, 1908, issue of The Billboard:
These appear to all have been live acts. The Dubinsky Brothers were an act made up of Edward, Maurice, and Barney Dubinsky. Edward later changed his surname to Durwood and went into the theater business. His his son Stanley Durwood went on to found the AMC circuit of multiplex theaters.A July, 1936 Pawhuska telephone directory here lists a Skelly Filling Station at 201 W. Main. The State Theatre is also listed in the directory as being on West Main Street, but the street number is not given. The State and the Kihekah (also listed only as being on West Main) are the only theaters listed.
Lauren, what year was the latest insurance map showing the theater building published? If it was from 1922 or earlier, the theater at 201 W. Main might have been the Jackson Theatre, which is known to have advertised as late as 1922 but no later. It could have been demolished about that time.
Hill Country Deco attributes the design of the Varsity Theatre to architect W. Scott Dunne.
Mooreland had a single theater operating prior to 1928, when the January 3 issue of The Film Daily reported that the town' movie house had been bought by Kenneth Campbell. The name of the theater was not given, so it might or might not have been the same house that was operating as the Mooreland Theatre in the 1940s.
I updated Street View to the wrong block.
Are we sure the Uptown’s building has been demolished? The odd-numbered side of the 100 block of West Madison is almost solidly built up, and all the buildings look pretty old. I can’t imagine any of them having been built after 1950.
This house was operated by Video Independent Theatres for at least part of its history. The July 25, 2000, obituary of lifelong Pawhuska resident Betty Jean Moore said: “Betty worked 38 years for The Video Theatres, beginning at The State Theater and becoming Manager over The Kihekah, The State and The Circle A Theaters and Corral Drive-In Theater in Pawhuska.”
The Feb 8, 1914 obituary of Stephen P. Buler said that he had been given charge of the Orpheum Theatre in Portsmouth, Virginia, eight years previously and had managed the house for five years, which would give an opening year of no later than 1906 for the original Orpheum.
The 1913-1914 edition of the Cahn guide listed the Orpheum in Portsmouth as a Wilmer & Vincent house presenting vaudeville exclusively.
An ad for the Pannill Miro Screen Corporation of Norfolk, Virginia, in the March 11, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World boasted that the company had “…installed the world’s largest moving picture screen in the Orpheum Theatre, Portsmouth….”
A June 24, 1922, item in The American Contractor reported that the Portsmouth Improvement Company would expend $50,000 for fire repairs to the Orpheum Theatre in Portsmouth, Virginia, but an item in the October 19 issue of Manufacturers Record said that the company would build an entirely new Orpheum at a cost of $500,000.
A list of buildings in which products of the J. G. Braun Company had been used, published in the company’s 1926 catalog, names the architect of the Orpheum Theatre as Charles M. Major.
The Film Boards Report in the January 6, 1929, issue of The Film Daily listed the Guild Theatre at Crystal City as a new house.
A 1977 book titled Woodlot and Ballot Box: Marathon County in the Twentieth Century, by Howard R. Klueter and James J. Lorence, says: “Mosinee’s only theater was built in 1923….” The Art Moderne style must have been the result of a later remodeling.
This was probably the house that was in the planning stage in 1922, according to an item in the March 25 issue of The American Contractor that year:
The closest thing to a political controversy involving the Mosinee Theatre that I can find reference to on the Internet is a fake “Communist takeover” of the town that was staged by the American Legion in 1950. The stunt attracted enough national attention in those days when Wisconsin’s red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy was riding high that Life Magazine ran this article about the event in its May 15, 1950, issue. The article includes a photo of the Mosinee Theatre.
Here is a fresh link to the November 4, 1950, Boxoffice item about the recently-opened Niantic Theatre.
There are location issues with this theater. The introduction says there is now a post office where the Cameo Theatre used to be, but the U. S. Postal Service gives the address of the East Lyme branch post office as 225 Boston Post Road, not Pennsylvania Avenue. The building at that location doesn’t resemble the one in the photo at the top of this page.
Meanwhile, CinemaTour lists a Cameo Theatre at 66 Pennsylvania Avenue in Niantic, Connecticut, which is just down the road from East Lyme, but lists no theaters for East Lyme itself.
The Postal Service lists the Niantic branch post office as being at 58 Pennsylvania Avenue, Suite 2. That building does resemble the one in the photo above, so I’m guessing that’s the place and I’m updating Street View to it. I suppose the addresses shifted a bit after the theater closed. The location of the theater should be changed from East Lyme to Niantic, though. The Zip Code is already correct.
The photo (quick link) jacobschen found gives a clue as to why someone might have misremembered the Franklin Park Theatre as having been Gothic in style. The building next door, where Park Playland was located, had loads of Gothic ornament, and the open cupola that once graced the theater, though entirely Classical in detail, had all those finials that echoed the Gothic finials on the neighboring building. It’s too bad that the cupola has been truncated. It added a bit of playful spectacle to the block.