Joy Theatre

Mr. and Mrs. Carl Phillips opened the Joy Theatre in 1938 as the town’s first modern sound theatre. The town was serviced previously by a long-running silent house that had gone out of business during the Depression after converting to sound.

The 330-seat Joy Theatre launched with a balcony for African-American patrons and was the neighbor of the Vian State Bank in downtown Vian at the corner of Thornton Street and the city’s main street. The location was apparently used in a daring 1969 bank heist that resulted in the Vian State Bank building a new, more fortified structure. The theatre was still operating in the 1970’s in an operational cycle that lasted for more than 35 years.

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