Rialto Theatre
319 East Main Street,
Alice,
TX
78323
319 East Main Street,
Alice,
TX
78323
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Opened as the Alice Theatre in 1948 seating 712. It got the Rialto name during a later remodel. A beat up fairly large triangle shaped marquee adorns the front of the two story building. “Rialto” was spelled out in Art Deco fashion lighted with neon. On the front of the marquee there is still a big “A”.
The two sets of entrance doors are undoubtably the original doors. They are solid wood and no windows in them. The box office is to the right of the entrance doors.
The Rialto has been totally nedglected since its closing. The entire underside of the marquee is falling off in pieces. The entire front of the building was done in a mixture of colors, from white to yellow to green to multi color bricks on the street level. I am sure in its days though that it did a great job of serving the almost 20,000 people of Alice with the best in motion pictures.
Contributed by
Chuck Van Bibber
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Recent comments (view all 11 comments)
The theatre I believe was owned by Hall Industries, which owned other movie theatres in the area like Kingsville, Beeville and some others. It went through a nice remodeling job in 1968 or 1969 and looked fairly decent. Before then, it was a different story. At one time it had doors with windows, but you could only see by looking out.
Open those doors and the entire place is caved in.
They still have a good front to it but thats all. What a shame.
For a recent picture of the Rialto:
http://rushcreekeditions.com/lfop/
This is a recent photo of the Rialto Theater.
Here is another photo:
http://tinyurl.com/cocgth
Here are some 1984 photos:
Photo1
Photo2
Photo3
Here are some photos from my July 2010 trip to Alice.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aonghais/4787519248/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aonghais/4787518990/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aonghais/4787518768/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aonghais/4786888053/
Glad to see they had enough marquee letters.
And they are showing the same movie all the time.
Hall also owned the Queen and the Sage Theatres in Alice but they are not listed on CT. Hall at one time had three theatres in Alce. From what I found the Rex was the last one to close in the Hall Circuit of the theatres that they owned in Alce.