Star Theater
342 State Street,
Weiser,
ID
83672
342 State Street,
Weiser,
ID
83672
No one has favorited this theater yet
Showing all 12 comments
I finally found the Wheaton listed in the 1914 Cahn guide, and it was indeed a second-floor house. Cahn listed it as having 567 seats.
The Onion Skin Players, current occupants of the Star Theatre, have a web site.
If the Star was not the same house as the Wheaton Theatre, it reopens the question of when the Star was built. If it was opened by 1921, it could have been the Star that had the organ installed that year.
I came across a 1909 reference to a lecture held at the Wheaton Theatre, so the 1916 Music Trade Review announcement I cited must have marked its conversion into a movie theater. Judging from the photo I linked to, it looks like the Wheaton might have been a second-floor theater. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find it listed in any edition of the Cahn guide.
“TITANIC” is finishing its run on May 31.1953.
If this Star Theatre was previously the Wheaton Theatre, then the Wurlitzer installed in the Star Theatre in 1921 (Lost Memory’s comment of Aug 30, 2007) must have been in the other Star Theatre, aka the Knights of Pythias Hall. The Wheaton was apparently still in operation in 1937. An item in Boxoffice of June 5 that year reported a fire at the Wheaton Theatre in Weiser, so the house must have been renamed the Star when it was rebuilt following the fire.
The web site GenDisasters provides this page quoting a May 21, 1937, Ogden Standard Examiner item about the fire.
A 1916 issue of the Music Trade Review has this entry for Idaho in a list of theaters recently opened: “C. Matt Sears has just opened the Wheaton Theatre, a new moving picture house, at Weiser.”
GenWeb has this photo of the Wheaton Theatre. It does not bear much resemblance to the Star Theatre building seen in the recent photos.
A classified ad in Motion Picture Times of August 4, 1928, offered for sale a Wurlitzer K organ at $7,500 dollars. The ad was placed by A.C. Gordon. I wonder if that could have been the organ from the earlier Star Theatre?
Here is another photo:
http://tinyurl.com/yd267qw
Here is a photo of the 4 Star Theater in 1984.
Here is another photo of the Star Theater.
This is a 2008 photo.
A Wurlitzer theater organ opus 440 style 160 was installed in the Star Theater on 7/29/1921.
Added to the National Register of Historical Places in 1999
Star Theater ** (added 1999 – Building – #99001413)
342 State St., Weiser
Historic Significance: Event
Area of Significance: Entertainment/Recreation
Period of Significance: 1925-1949
Owner: Private
Historic Function: Recreation And Culture
Historic Sub-function: Theater
Current Function: Recreation And Culture
Current Sub-function: Theater
Recent photos (“X” out of the print menu):
View link
View link
Old photos at this link:
View link