State Theatre
Main Street,
Greenville,
OH
45331
Main Street,
Greenville,
OH
45331
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One of two old former live theatres in Greenville. The screen was hung over the old stage. Closed in the mid-Seventies and demolished shortly thereafter.
Contributed by
Greg Asman
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Recent comments (view all 6 comments)
The State Theatre is listed as operating as a movie theatre in Film Daily Yearbooks that I have between 1941 and 1950. Dates before and after these need to be researched.
The State Theatre was torn down in the mid-eighties. I scrambled around in the rubble in the middle of the night til I found a whole brick as a remembrance. I was told it had been an opera house at one time. I worked the ticket booth at the Wayne Theatre in the winter and managed the Speed-Way Drive-In in the summer.
The earliest reference I’ve found to the State Theatre comes from Boxoffice Magazine, July 27, 1937, but that item says that the manager, Jonas Thomas, who was being transfered to another Chakeres Theatres house, had been at the State for the past four years, so the place was in operation by 1933.
A couple of issues of Movie Age from 1929 mention a National Theatre in Greenville. That might have been an earlier name for the State or the Wayne.
Here is a 1980 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/cn4zax
The most recent mention of the State I’ve found in Boxoffice comes from the April 12, 1965, issue. The house was then being operated by John Tabor, who would take over Greenville’s Wayne Theatre in 1975.
John Tabor also had the Speedway Drive-In. He also had a theatre in Bellfontaine, Ohio, which is where he lived and had his office. He had a couple of other theatres but I don’t remember where they were.