Malone Theater

The Malone Theater sat between an insurance office on the left(I think as it has been some time since I lived there)and Red’s Bar on the right. In the 1980’s it was renovated and renamed the Chaney Harris Cultural Center. Live performances of Children’s Little Theater and the Sikeston High School Drama Club were shown. An electrical fire closed it around February or March of 1985. The boarded up ticket in the linked photo looks as though it was taken close to that time. After being found structurally unsound it was demolished in August of 1985. The last time I visited, both the bar and insurance office remained. The area where the theater was located is nothing but grass, just as across the street were the Dunn Hotel was formerly located. This is typical of Sikeston to just demolish rather than preserve. This hotel was once on the National Historic Register, and they let it fall to ruin. At least someone came to harvest the wonderful wood instead of wasting it. I now live in Portland Oregon and love how they renovate older buildings along with theaters, instead of tearing them down and throwing up some poorly made building or leaving it an ugly, open lot. One of my favorite theaters here is the Academy Theater located at 7818 SE Stark Street, Portland, OR 97215.

A “25 years ago” feature in The Sikeston Herald of November 20, 1941, mentions Bill Malone, manager of the Malone Theatre, so the house was in operation by 1916. The theater was apparently named for the street it was on, so the manager’s surname was probably a coincidence.

The Malone Theatre is mentioned in the January 19, 1918, issue of Motography, in which operator Cecil C. Reed praised the Essanay-Perfection release Two Bit Seats with Taylor Holmes: “This is some picture. Everyone came out smiling. Good business.”

O. W. McCutchen was operating the Malone Theatre by early 1925, and later that year began operating another Sikeston house called the Grand. In 1924 he had been operating the American Theatre in Sikeston. By 1926, Sikeston also had a theater called the Royal, but I haven’t found the name of the owner.

A major modernization of the Malone Theatre took place in 1935, as was noted in an article in the Herald of February 6, 1936. The theater was closed for three months, during which time it was expanded and completely remodeled. The house reopened on October 15. Earlier that year O. W. McCutchen had remodeled a building on East Center Street into the Rex Theatre, to operate during the period the Malone was closed for rebuilding (apparently all the town’s other theaters were gone by this time.) The Rex was still in operation as late as 1958.

Joe, I already have that photo on the photo page. It came up in a search on Bing.