Riviera Theatre
1103 Hixson Pike,
Chattanooga,
TN
37405
1103 Hixson Pike,
Chattanooga,
TN
37405
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Actually, The Chattanooga Daily Times Reports That The Riviera Theatre Opened On August 29, 1935 At 2 P.M. EDT With Shirley Temple In “The Little Colonel”.
The Riviera Theater opened in 1936. The first movie shown was “Anthony Adverse,” which I attended as a young child. The Riviera was the theater attended by all of the neighborhood children on Saturday afternoons of movies, cartoons, newsreels, and serials for nine cents plus a penny tax.
The Riviera and Brainerd Theatres were both originally operated by Independent Theatres. At the time the Brainerd was under construction, the December 20, 1947, issue of Boxoffice Magazine ran an item which said that the chain’s Riviera Theatre had been built “…several years ago.”
I can’t find an exact opening year for the Riviera. It might have been built pre-war, but the earliest reference to it I’ve found in Boxoffice is in the October 19, 1946, issue, when a series of seven foreign films were booked for the house.
In 1955, the Riviera was remodeled and reopened with an art film policy, according to the April 23 issue of Boxoffice that year.
i believe the Riviera Theater in North Chattanooga, screened in parallel with the Brainerd Theater. I remember one Sunday my dad and I (I was a kid) took a reel of “Halls of Montezuma” or “Red Skies of Montana” from the Brainerd to the Rivera and swapped a reel as each theater had two of the same reels and was missing one. That was like 55 years ago. (showing my age).