Gem Theatre

I was an usher there in the late sixties. The first movie when I worked there was The Dirty Dozen. There were trap doors and hidden passageways everywhere. I’ve been told that the hidden telephone booth is still on the second floor, and is still hidden. I used to change the marquee, and rearrange the letters , just for a few minutes. Then change them back. Once, the movie was , A Man Called Dager. It was supposed to say “ A Secret Agent You’ll Get Stuck On”. For a few minutes it said … You Can Suck On.

Once, we showed “ Nobody’s Perfect” and I put the P in backwards. I got caught, but Clyde, the manager liked it and told me to leave it in.

“Osterman Weekend” wasn’t released until Mid-October 1983 so it could have still been first run for the Gem Theatre.

If you click on the Gem Theatre officeial website in the header and then click “About The Gem” you will get a pretty full history. They definately have a great web site.

Here are two more night photos from 1984:
http://tinyurl.com/nezpzt
http://tinyurl.com/l9gj3r

Also have a picture of the Colonel here

View link

The Gem is my farorite theater I have gone there my whole life and I belive it will be open for a long time.

View link

Yes and there was one other that I don’t have a picture of called the colonel that was on north Main st. that burned down 10years after it closed. It is now a parking lot.

The Dixie is no longer there it was demolished to build a bank.

1983 photo of the Gem Theatre.
View link

1984 Night photo of the Gem Theatre.
View link

I’ve dug up a bit more information about the Colonial Theatre, subject of some discussion above, but there are still some gaps (such as no address and no original opening date) so if anyone has additional information about it, please post it at the Cinema Treasures Colonial Theatre page.

Also, although the Gem Theatre web site says that the YMCA Theatre was destroyed by fire in 1936, the May 8, 1937, issue of Boxoffice Magazine reported that, among the visitors to film row in Charlotte that week, was W.A. Powell of the YMCA Theatre in Kannapolis. Sounds like it was still open.

And then the January 8, 1938, issue of Boxoffice carried an item headed “Kannapolis Fire Costly” which said: “Fire destroyed the YMCA Theatre here recently, originating from causes as yet undetermined. The ‘Y’ and the theatre building were erected as one unit in 1922 by the Cannon Mills at a cost of $500,000.”

I’ve heard that time moves more slowly in the South, so perhaps it was still 1936 in North Carolina when the YMCA burned, but already rolling into 1938 in the rest of the world? But if that is so, what am I to make of the fact that the Cabarrus Genealogical Society tells me the Gem itself was built in 1938? Perhaps time isn’t slower in the South, but simply a bit eccentric?

Or was it the case, as later issues of Boxoffice reported, that it was the Dixie Theatre, not the Gem, which was built to replace the YMCA Theatre? Maybe somebody in Kannapolis could check the archives of the local newspaper to clear up this temporal confusion.

This is a night view of the Gem Theater.

Steve, could you send pictures of the Colonial to me as well? My e-mail is Thanks so much!

To: Steve Williams, Hi. Could you email the Colonial picture to me at ? Thank you so much. Thomas