Rialto Theatre
417 Broadway Street,
Paducah,
KY
42001
417 Broadway Street,
Paducah,
KY
42001
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The Rialto Theatre is listed in the 1941 edition of Film Daily Yearbook. It may also have been previously named Orpheum Theatre, as that edition has an Orpheum Theatre listed (but without a seating capacity given).
The Rialto Theatre was operated by the Keiler family’s Columbia Amement Company, and they had also operated an Orpheum Theatre in Paducah, as well as the Arcade Theatre, Columbia Theatre and the Kentucky Theatre.
The Rialto Theatre was still open in 1950.
Contributed by
Ken Roe
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Recent comments (view all 2 comments)
The Rialto has been demolished. It was located on the north side of the 400 block of Broadway Street, about mid-block. The site is now occupied by one end of a modern, two-story building housing an outfit called Four Rivers Behavioral Health.
The historic buildings to the east of the Rialto’s site are all still standing, though some have been considerably altered from the year (I’d guess around 1952) when this photo of Broadway Street, with the Rialto’s marquee at far left, appeared in Life magazine.
Given this theater’s location in the 400 block of Broadway Street, I’m almost certain that Rialto was a new name for the Kozy Theatre, which was operating in the 1910s.
The December 27, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World said that Rodney C. Davis and Rankin Kirkland intended to raze Davis’s 240-seat Kozy Theatre at 417 Broadway Street early the next year and replace it with a 500-seat house on the same site. I’ve found the Kozy Theatre mentioned as late as 1918, and what was probably the same house mentioned as the Cozy Theatre as late as 1925.
In the 1910s, Paducah also had a house called the Star Theatre, at 426 Broadway Street, almost across the street from the Kozy.