Wyandotte Theater
102 Elm Street,
Wyandotte,
MI
48192
102 Elm Street,
Wyandotte,
MI
48192
1 person
favorited this theater
The Wyandotte Main Theatre and Wyandotte Annex Theatre were built as two theatres located side-by-side and were the biggest first run movie theaters in the “Downriver” area of Metro Detroit. The Wyandotte Main Theatre seated 1,200 and the Wyandotte Annex Theatre seated 800. They were built in 1938.
I don’t know much else about it’s history at the moment, but will research it soon (seeing that our company is speculating the purchase of this building, the Eastown or maybe even United Artists, for a performing arts venue).
It was supposed to become the Trillium Performing Arts Center…nearly $2,000,000 was put into renovations up until 2002, when fund raising became a problem (9/11). Trillium has gone belly-up as far as anybody knows. The theater is boarded up (which looks awful in downtown Wyandotte, a thriving small town). It was used this past October, 2004 for a haunted house…sheesh. More news to come!
Contributed by
Robert Quigley
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Recent comments (view all 25 comments)
Linda, I may have attended a few screenings while you were working there. My earliest memory of the Wyandotte is going with my family to Flipper’s New Adventure (1964). And even though I was just a little kid, I realized that there was something special about that place. I really liked the Chief Wyandotte busts, although at that time I didn’t know who he was.
Later, my dad would drop my brother and I off and when I could manage it, I would stick around and watch the movie twice. This place helped instill in me a love not only for movies, but for movie theaters.
My father managed the Wyandotte Theatre from the early to mid 50s until he left to manage the brand new Southland Theatre in 1970. His name was Howard Denial. I am his son Robert (Bob). My mother Mary Jo managed the concession stand during those years. The theatre was a part of the Suburban Detroit Theatre chain owned by Richard and Eugene Sloan. My dad told me that the Wyandotte was the first theatre to have two screens under one roof. Many celebrities stopped by on promotional tours, like Jerry Lewis, Dwayne Hickman and the supporting cast of the Beach Party films to name a few. An Usherette from the early 60s went on to become the 1968 Playmate of the year. I have a photo of her in her usherette outfit along with alot of other photos and memorbilia that I hope to exhibit at the Bacon Library sometime in the near future. I myself worked as a ticket taker at the Wyandotte in 1972 or 73 after my father had left. I later worked for him at Southland. It was sad to see the theatre demolished.
RDtoo, I think you mean 1969 Playmate of the Year. Connie Kreski was born in Wyandotte, appeared in the Jan 68 magazine, and was voted Playmate of the Year for 1969. Of course, IMDB lists her birth city as Detroit. Wyandotte? Where’s that?!
Don, Wyandotte is about 10 miles due south of Downtown Detroit. And yes, I was referring to Connie Kreski. Of course her last name was different when she worked at the theatre, but I will not reveal that out of respect for her and her family. I believe Connie passed away several years ago.
RDtoo, I was just joking. I was born at Wyandotte General and grew up over in Southgate. Sometimes it’s easier to say you’re from Detroit because no one knows where Wyandotte (or Southgate, for that matter) is.
According to this website:
http://www.daads.org/threatened02.htm
The Main was built in 1938, but the Annex was added sometime in the 40s to handle overflow crowds. They showed the same movie until 1958. If it’s true that the Main seated 1700, and the total seating was 2000, then the Annex only seated 300 — ? That’s not right.
I was looking at some photos at the Bacon Library (Wyandotte) website and Majestic and Rialto were completely separate from the Wyandotte Theater, so they should be removed from the “also known as…” line. I’ll be creating new pages for these theaters.
1982 Photo
Boxoffice Magazine ran an item about the opening of the Wyandotte Theatre in their issue of August 20, 1938. It was a single-screen theater with 1,500 seats, and was decorated in an American Indian motif.
The earliest mention of the Wyandotte as a duplex theater I’ve found is in the August 16, 1941, issue of Boxoffice which said that National Theatre Supply had received an order for carpeting and booth equipment for the project.
The January 10, 1942, issue of Boxoffice said that the Wyandotte Theatre’s Annex had opened on New Year’s Day. The original plan for the house had been to show double bills in one auditorium with a single feature and short subjects in the other, but the policy management settled on was to have both auditoriums running the same double feature program, but on a staggered schedule.
I ran across a 1958 Boxoffice item (which I’ve now lost track of, unfortunately) which reported that a minor fire had taken place in the main auditorium of the Wyandotte Theatre during a performance. Though the fire had been quickly extinguished the auditorium smelled of smoke, and so the audience was moved to the smaller auditorium, which had not been in use that night, and the show continued there.
The item said that one or the other of the auditoriums was usually not in use by this time, and the auditorium management opened on a given night depended on how much business they were expecting for the scheduled program. I’ve not been able to find out when they began using both auditoriums on a regular basis again.
Nice looking theatre.