Roxy Theatre
100 Franklin Street,
Clarksville,
TN
37040
100 Franklin Street,
Clarksville,
TN
37040
2 people
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Drove to Clarksville a few years ago and saw the Roxy looked the same as the 2009 photos.
2009 photos of the Roxy courtesy army.arch
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I found a reference to this theater as the Lillian in the February 22, 1941, issue of Boxoffice. The item said that Crescent had acquired the theater three years earlier. They were having the house remodeled. Plans were by the local architectural firm of Speight & Hibbs. A new facade and marquee were planned, so this may be when the name was changed.
In any case, the theater had been renamed the Roxy by 1946, when its destruction by fire was reported in the January 19 issue of Boxoffice. So far I’ve been unable to find anything in Boxoffice about the reconstruction, but I suspect that Speight & Hibbs did the design for that, too. From the photos it certainly resembles their other work of the period.
A recent photo can be seen here.
This site has some photos of the Roxy.
1986 photo of the Roxy Theatre.
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1987 photo of the Roxy Theatre.
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Here is a B&W photo by Joe Fizer:
http://tinyurl.com/ca3xww
Here is a 2008 photo of the Roxy.
Some additional information:
Pursuing his passion, Goldberg built the Lillian Theater on Franklin Street in 1912. Described by the local newspaper as “one of the most elaborate and up-to-date movie houses in the South,†the theater burned down within its first year. Undaunted, Goldberg rebuilt the Lillian in 1914. Goldberg also bought the Majestic Theater and converted it to a live performance venue. He also constructed several buildings along what became known as the “Goldberg Block,†which he rented to merchants. Goldberg died in 1925, and management of the Lillian Theater was taken over by his son Ralph, who was forced the close the facility during the Great Depression. He sold it in 1939, when it was reopened as the Roxy Theater. Source
Here is a postcard, circa 1940s:
http://tinyurl.com/2wrp85
Sheryl Crow’s video “All I wanna do” was filmed in front of the Roxy. Link to Youtube video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=wCiXp7cH7xs
This is another 2007 photo of the Roxy Theater.
I have been told that the Roxy is being torn down to be replaced with a new theater. Can anyone confirm this?
Here is a 2007 photo of the Roxy Theater.
Another recent photo showing the Roxy Theater can be seen here.
Here is a recent (2006) photo of the Roxy theater.
Visiting Clarksville today, I drove down to see the Roxy and was graciously admitted by the Artistic Director John McDonald, who was adamant that this is and was an Art Moderne Theatre, not Art Deco because of the era of design and construction was post-Art Deco. Their website indicates that the Lillian gave way to the Roxy in 1945. The exterior of the theater looks good. The lobby has apparently been expanded inward, eating up seating and the stage expanded outward, doing the same. I believe he told me that the current seating is 200. The balcony has been walled off, similar to the Plaza Theatre in Atlanta, and converted into a 50-seat black box theatre. Because of rehearsal I was not able to be in the auditorium more than a moment but it appears that it is in “black box” decor. There seems to be nothing visible that is Art Moderne. As successful as the theatre may be, it appears that they took the Art Moderne house and turned it into a different kind of venue so that it no longer resembles the theatre that it once was except outside and to some extent in the lobby. My impressions were affirmed by my friends in the Clarksville are who remember it as it was.
Leon Cole, a wonderful organist who was widely known in Central Tennessee, toured with a Hammond and played horse shows, carnivals, political events, etc.. He told me that the Roxy had an Orchestrelle. He said he used to play it. We were both playing at the Montomery County Fair at the time (1956, maybe). He for the horse shows and I for everything else, as I recall. It’s been a long time. Wow.
There is no evidence of the Roxy’s having an Orchestrelle in the Aeolian records. I would doubt the Roxy had anything like a Morton or Wurlitzer. The cost was prohibitive for a pipe organ. Orchestrelles offered players which could be used when there was no live organist. Also, there was the matter of space for a pipe organ. I was too young to have been in the Roxy that burned in the 1940’s, although I well remember seeing the ruins, and was old enough to be at the opening of the present theater.
It is hard to believe that they would have had the space for a small pipe organ. Some companies that made Orchestrelle-type instruments used reeds, like harmoniums. In fact, there was a difference in Orchestrelles between the reed models and a “Pipe Orchestrelle”.
I played the organ at the Capitol. They tried an electronic Wurlitzer in about 1956/57. I was eighteen and at Austin Peay. O.C. Terrell managed (owned?) the theater at the time and was who asked me to play there. I was paid in gasoline from his service station on 41-A near Beech Haven.
I came across a article that stated the Roxy was at one time equipped with an organ. Do you have any information as to when the organ was in place, how many ranks it had and when was it removed?
I grew up in Clarksville, leaving there in 1960.
The immediate predecessor to the Roxy was another Roxy that had replaced the Lillian which burned in the mid 1940’s. New and fireproof!
The Capitol, now defunct, was a true Art Deco building from the early 1930’s. Somewhere there is a film that was made of its opening. It is a B&W sound flick featurning some of the vivid personalities in Clarksville at that time. I remember seeing it.
Current photos of the Roxy can be viewed at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/maincourse/