Star Theatre

Joe Vogel on February 24, 2016 at 4:23 pm

This item is from the September 10, 1947, issue of Variety:

“The Star, a 250-seater, Anthon, Ia., has been purchased by Walter D. Rasmussen, Council Bluffs, Ia., from Tom Sandberg, who opened the house in Feb., 1946.”

W. D. Rasmussen of the Star Theatre, Anthon, Iowa, was listed in the July 10, 1948, issue of Motion Picture Herald as having joined the magazine’s team of exhibitors who would contribute capsule movie reviews for the magazine’s “What the Picture Did for Me” feature. Several of his reviews appeared in the magazine later that year. Around the same time, the July 3 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review said that “W. D. Rassmussen has finished a new marquee on the Star, Anthon, Ia.”

The Star Theatre advertised in the 1953 yearbook of Climbing Hill High School in Moville, Iowa. The proprietor at that time was named Cy Schulte, and the theater boasted a “modern cry room.” A new CinemaScope installation at the Star was mentioned in the 1955 Anthon High School yearbook.

A list of theaters reopened during the first quarter of 1958 was published in the April 7 issue of Boxoffice that year, and Cy Schulte’s Star at Anthon was among them.

Though no theater name was given, a line from the April 16, 1962, issue of Boxoffice probably refers to the Star, which by that time was most likely the only movie house in this very small town: “Cherokee and Anthon, Iowa, were flooded but the theatres were safe.”

While it’s possible that the Star that Tom Sandberg opened in 1946 was an older theater reopened with a new name, the fact that it had a cry room suggests that it was either new construction or an extensive remodeling. Cry rooms were not unknown even as early as the 1920s, but they did not become common in small town theaters until the post-war period.