W. B. Urling, one of the original partners in the Alpine Theater Circuit, was still active in operating the LaBelle and another South Charleston house called the Victory Theatre at least as late as 1960, when The February 1 issue of Boxoffice, mentioning both houses, said that he had recently visited West Palm Beach, Florida.
This page about the LaBelle says that the theater was renamed Cinema South in the late 1960s, and operated as a movie theater into the 1980s. It was used as a church through the 1990s, until being bought in 2003 by the City of South Charleston, who restored both the theater and its original name.
This photo from the Historic Wayne County Facebook page shows the Kenova Theatre on Chestnut Street, across the street from the Post Office. The Post office is still standing, but the theater building has been demolished and replaced by a senior citizens housing project called Roxanna Booth Manor, located at 1315 Chestnut Street.
This web page from the office of West Virginia’s Secretary of State says that the Martin Theater Company of South Charleston filed for incorporation on July 31, 1948. It was dissolved by court order on May 13, 1957.
As the company was incorporated in 1948 and the Martin first shows up in the FDY in the 1950 edition, the theater was probably opened in 1949, but not in time to notify the FDY’s publishers before that edition went to press. I don’t know when the yearbook went to press, but if the final date for making changes or additions to the 1949 edition was before the end of 1948, the Martin might even have opened in the latter part of that year.
Although the Film Daily Yearbooks list the Star with 550 seats, the building at 810 Hewitt (currently occupied by C & G’s Antiques) is far too small to have held a theater that size. I’m guessing it had 330 or 350, and somebody wrote at least one of their threes in a way that made it look like a five.
The lot the building is on also slopes up toward the rear, and as the roof is quite low at the back I am wondering if the Star might have been one of the rare breed called reverse theaters, with the screen at the entrance end of the auditorium. Of course the building might once have been taller and got cut down at some point.
On our Kearse Theatre page I found this comment about the Rialto, posted by kencmcintyre on November 16, 2006. Perhaps the Rialto had not yet been added to the CT database at that time, but the comment has a long quote from some publication (Ken didn’t cite a source, but it was probably one of Charleston’s local newspapers) which belongs here, and since Ken isn’t around anymore I’ll post it:
“THEATER WON’T DIE – ‘Closed’ Rialto Reopens Friday
“The last film at the Rialto was ‘13 Ghosts.’ But the 43-year-old theater in the Morrison Building on Quarrier Street is not one of them. After a shutdown of four days, the Rialto will reopen tomorrow with ‘The Apartment,’ the picture being shifted from the Virginian, also a unit of Stanley Warner Corp.
“Newspaper ads last week announced that the Rialto would be closed last Sunday night, ending the four-decade life of the theater. John Cox, the Rialto’s manager, was transferred to the Warner Fairmont theater. William Wyatt, manager of the Virginian, was ordered by the Pittsburgh region office to take over the closing of the Rialto.
“Last Monday, Wyatt moved dozens of large cartons into the theater for packing of the seats. A filing case was removed from the Rialto office to the Virginian. ‘All I can say now is that the lease for the Rialto has been renewed with the Stanley Warner Corp.’ said John Morrison, an owner of the Morrison building. He declined to discuss prospective remodeling of the building, which at its birth in 1917 was the pride of Charleston for its elegance.”
This web page devoted to Quarrier Street starts with a photo of the block the Rialto was on. The theater’s vertical sign is prominent, but I see no marquee. I am having a hard time figuring how the theater fit into this rather dense block.
The caption under the photo says that the Rialto was built in 1917, and says that the auditorium was entered from the side, with the orchestra floor and screen to the left and a stadium style “balcony” to the right. Given the location of the theater entrance and the configuration of the building the entrance was in, I just can’t see how a 783-seat theater was shoehorned into the space.
This item is from the Tuesday, January 3, 1928, issue of The Film Daily:
“Everett Opening Thursday
“Everett, Wash. — The new Granada, erected on the site of the old Rose, opens Thursday. It will have both Movietone and Vitaphone as features. R. F. Charles is general manager.”
R. F. Charles had previously been operator of the Star Theatre, a small house on Hewitt Avenue.
Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society’s Granada Theatre page says that a Wurlitzer Style B “Special” theater organ, opus #1769, was installed as part of the 1927 renovation.
I believe that most of the Balboa Theatre building is still
standing, though little, if any, of the theater remains intact inside the shell. The Balboa was built in conjunction with the adjacent Rumbaugh’s Department Store, on the corner of Wetmore Avenue and California Street. Rumbaugh’s was sold and re-branded as a Bon Marche store, a regional chain, in the 1940s. The Balboa closed in 1953 [May 3] and the department store expanded into the former theater space.
In 1994, three years after the Bon Marche closed, the building, under renovation and renamed the Port Gardner Building, was nominated for inclusion on Everett’s local historic registry. A document prepared at that time (PDF
here) had a bit about the theater:
“During work on the building, remnants of the Balboa Theater were uncovered. On the south side of the building, these remnants had to be removed for seismic strengthening, but on the north wall the remnants have been preserved and could be restored.
“The Historical Commission recommended that there be administrative review for minor changes. Major changes would require Historical Commission review. The Commission also noted that they would like to see the remaining decoration from the Balboa Theater maintained. Any change to the interior that would remove or destroy the last remnants of the Balboa would have to be reviewed by the Commission.”
I don’t know if the surviving decorative elements of the Balboa have been preserved though the two decades plus since this report was written, but that the building itself is still standing, except perhaps for a small section at the southwest corner, as can be seen in Google’s satellite view, is pretty obvious.
For a number of years the entire complex was occupied by Trinity Lutheran College, but more recently (August, 2017, according to this article on their web site) an outfit called Funko (“Purveyors of Pop Culture”) has installed its headquarters and a retail store in the complex. Perhaps someone living in, or near, or visiting Everett can check the place out and see if those remnants of the Balboa’s decor that were still intact in 1994 have survived.
Since Google Maps has chosen to do something weird and limiting with the street view image it fetches for this page, here is a quick link to a street view that can actually be moved around normally.
A document prepared for the City of Benicia (very large PDF here) and containing a survey of historic resources says that the building at 918 First Street, currently occupied by the Benicia Antique Mall, was built as a theater in the late 1930s. The document doesn’t give the theaters name, but I think that’s the most likely location to have been the Victory Theatre.
If you look at the corner building from the side street, it actually has a pretty low roof, disguised on the First Street side by a false parapet, and would have been ill suited for a theater. The building at 918 has a higher roof, and extends back farther.
The Majestic was built by former Benicia mayor William Crooks, probably as an investment, and it is likely that a deal was made, possibly even before the project was underway, for a theater operator to lease it. The lessee might have been the operator of the Orpheum, or someone else, but either way it’s unlikely that Crooks would have been concerned about the fate of the Orpheum.
I’ve done some searches on the Peoples Theatre in Martinez but have found nothing. Many small nickelodeons came and went quickly in those days, so it might have been one of those.
A pair of small photos of the Majestic’s entrance and box office can be seen on this web page. The Majestic was built by former Benicia mayor William Crooks.
Advertisements for Typhoon brand ventilation systems published in issues of The Moving Picture World in early 1921 list the Novelty Theatre in Martinez as one of the houses in which the company’s equipment had been installed. A notice about the installation of the new ventilation system by contractor A. Gattuan had appeared in the July 31, 1920, issue of Domestic Engineering.
I found a reference to the Curry Theatre in the May 26, 1914, issue of Coast Banker (scan at Google Books.)
I also found this item in the January 5, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“MARTINEZ, CAL. — New moving picture house in Curry street has been opened under the management of H. E. Case.”
As I can’t find a Curry Street anywhere in Martinez today, I’m wondering if Ferry Street was once called Curry Street, or if this item simply mistook the name of the theater for the name of the street. I also don’t know why they said it was a new moving picture house, unless this was a different theater, which seems unlikely. Given the MPW’s propensity for errors I think it’s possible that this is when the Curry, under new ownership, was renamed the Royal, and the magazine just got the story garbled. I’ve been unable to find any other references to H. E. Case.
The Royal was in operation at least as late as June 17, 1926, when it was mentioned, along with the Novelty Theatre, in that day’s issue of the Oakland Tribune.
AndrewBarrett: You will probably be interested in this item I ran across in the February 9, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“The new Florence theater, soon to be opened in Pasadena under the management of D. B. Schumann, is installing a two-manual and piano-manual pipe organ built by the Seeburg-Smith factories at Chicago. This firm is practically a newcomer on the coast and especially in the South, although it is very well known in the East and throughout the Middle West. C. R. Dibble Company of Los Angeles made the sale, and is superintending the construction.”
Ah, now that the historic photo has been posted it looks like the building was extended upward to add a second floor sometime after the Orpheum closed, so it’s possible that it was erected specifically as a theater in 1913.
714 is the old, bay-windowed building adjacent to the Majestic Theatre. The building looks to have been built earlier than 1913, and so the National/Orpheum was probably a storefront conversion, closed and reconverted to retail space when the Majestic opened in 1920.
The building is currently occupied by Training Loft 714, a weight loss and “body transformation studio” (outside California aka, a gym.)
Comparing aerial views from 1965 and more recently at Historic Aerials, it is apparent that the Chief Theatre has been converted into the United Methodist Fellowship Hall, at 102 I Street. The old stone building of the original church as seen in the vintage photo is still standing at the corner of I and Elm. A new building, built sometime between 1999 and 2003, connects the old church with the fellowship hall, forming a courtyard on the I Street side of the complex.
The November 3, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World ran this brief item: “John Lyons, manager of the Orpheum at Dayton, O., will stick to a straight five-cent policy from now on, owing to the new war tax.”
If this house was called B. F. Keith’s Theatre, it must have been but briefly, after the Keith circuit took control of it in 1915 and before they took over the Colonial the following year. The name B. F. Keith’s Theatre belonged to the Colonial from 1916 to 1921. I’ve found an item in the November 3, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World which notes sequential personal appearances recently made by popular child star Violet McMillan at both Keith’s Theatre and the Strand in Dayton.
The Ideal Theatre was discussed in the November 3, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“Dayton News Letter
“By Paul J. Gray. Alhambra Theater Building, Dayton, Ohio.
“Making Patrons for Ideal Theatre.
“DAYTON, OHIO. — John Seifert. who was with the Pathe. working from Cincinnati, and who made quite a success with that company, is now in Dayton to stay. He is managing the Ideal theater in this city as well as the East Majestic, a neighborhood house.
“Mr. Seifert controlled a chain of eight theaters on the Pacific coast before going to the Pathe people and is well known in the west. He has already started plans for the complete remodeling of the Ideal. Mr. Seifert converted a house known as a ‘filler for a program’ into a legitimate ‘Feature.’ inasmuch as the Standard Film one-reel picture, ‘The Zeppelin Raids over London,’ was advertised strong in the newspapers and did a big business while at the Ideal.
“George Wilson, of the Standard exchange in Cincinnati, says that bookings are coming in fast through the running of the picture at the Ideal with such remarkable success. This task is even harder when one stops to think that B. F. Keith’s theater, only two blocks away, was playing ‘The Retreat of the Germans’ to big houses as an extra feature with a vaudeville show.
“Mr. Seifert claims the East Majestic is also doing well under his management and he is to completely remodel this house also.”
So far I’ve been unable to identify the neighborhood house called the East Majestic Theatre.
Here is a bit of information about the operation of the Auditorium Theatre during the period before the fire that destroyed the house, from the April 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“The New Auditorium is a ‘duplex’ theater. There are two 500 seat auditoriums, one above the other, the operating room of the lower being under the stage of the upper. The lower theater begins the day, and when the first two reels are finished they are sent upstairs and the show is started in the upper auditorium, thereafter the show continues for the day with the lower theater two laps ahead of the upper. There are three operators employed. The projectors are Power’s Six A’s. Projection is in charge of S. Howell, P. Willoughby and W. Stoker.
“The lobby of the New Auditorium is very spacious, is decorated in pale blue and is fitted up with wicker chairs, stand lamps and cozy corners — a beautiful, commodious rest room. The house is owned by the Auditorium Amusement Company, of which that wideawake, pleasant gentleman, Gill Burrows, is manager. We had an extended talk with Neighbor Burrows; also met Mr. Elmer Rauh, president and treasurer of the company.”
Papers in the Pretzinger Architectural Collection reveal that Albert Pretzinger’s firm did some work on the Strand Theatre in 1924. There is no indication of the nature of the work or its extent.
W. B. Urling, one of the original partners in the Alpine Theater Circuit, was still active in operating the LaBelle and another South Charleston house called the Victory Theatre at least as late as 1960, when The February 1 issue of Boxoffice, mentioning both houses, said that he had recently visited West Palm Beach, Florida.
This page about the LaBelle says that the theater was renamed Cinema South in the late 1960s, and operated as a movie theater into the 1980s. It was used as a church through the 1990s, until being bought in 2003 by the City of South Charleston, who restored both the theater and its original name.
This photo from the Historic Wayne County Facebook page shows the Kenova Theatre on Chestnut Street, across the street from the Post Office. The Post office is still standing, but the theater building has been demolished and replaced by a senior citizens housing project called Roxanna Booth Manor, located at 1315 Chestnut Street.
This web page from the office of West Virginia’s Secretary of State says that the Martin Theater Company of South Charleston filed for incorporation on July 31, 1948. It was dissolved by court order on May 13, 1957.
As the company was incorporated in 1948 and the Martin first shows up in the FDY in the 1950 edition, the theater was probably opened in 1949, but not in time to notify the FDY’s publishers before that edition went to press. I don’t know when the yearbook went to press, but if the final date for making changes or additions to the 1949 edition was before the end of 1948, the Martin might even have opened in the latter part of that year.
Although the Film Daily Yearbooks list the Star with 550 seats, the building at 810 Hewitt (currently occupied by C & G’s Antiques) is far too small to have held a theater that size. I’m guessing it had 330 or 350, and somebody wrote at least one of their threes in a way that made it look like a five.
The lot the building is on also slopes up toward the rear, and as the roof is quite low at the back I am wondering if the Star might have been one of the rare breed called reverse theaters, with the screen at the entrance end of the auditorium. Of course the building might once have been taller and got cut down at some point.
On our Kearse Theatre page I found this comment about the Rialto, posted by kencmcintyre on November 16, 2006. Perhaps the Rialto had not yet been added to the CT database at that time, but the comment has a long quote from some publication (Ken didn’t cite a source, but it was probably one of Charleston’s local newspapers) which belongs here, and since Ken isn’t around anymore I’ll post it:
This web page devoted to Quarrier Street starts with a photo of the block the Rialto was on. The theater’s vertical sign is prominent, but I see no marquee. I am having a hard time figuring how the theater fit into this rather dense block.
The caption under the photo says that the Rialto was built in 1917, and says that the auditorium was entered from the side, with the orchestra floor and screen to the left and a stadium style “balcony” to the right. Given the location of the theater entrance and the configuration of the building the entrance was in, I just can’t see how a 783-seat theater was shoehorned into the space.
Here is another early view of the Plaza Theatre, circa 1915.
This item is from the Tuesday, January 3, 1928, issue of The Film Daily:
R. F. Charles had previously been operator of the Star Theatre, a small house on Hewitt Avenue.Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society’s Granada Theatre page says that a Wurlitzer Style B “Special” theater organ, opus #1769, was installed as part of the 1927 renovation.
I believe that most of the Balboa Theatre building is still standing, though little, if any, of the theater remains intact inside the shell. The Balboa was built in conjunction with the adjacent Rumbaugh’s Department Store, on the corner of Wetmore Avenue and California Street. Rumbaugh’s was sold and re-branded as a Bon Marche store, a regional chain, in the 1940s. The Balboa closed in 1953 [May 3] and the department store expanded into the former theater space.
In 1994, three years after the Bon Marche closed, the building, under renovation and renamed the Port Gardner Building, was nominated for inclusion on Everett’s local historic registry. A document prepared at that time (PDF here) had a bit about the theater:
I don’t know if the surviving decorative elements of the Balboa have been preserved though the two decades plus since this report was written, but that the building itself is still standing, except perhaps for a small section at the southwest corner, as can be seen in Google’s satellite view, is pretty obvious.For a number of years the entire complex was occupied by Trinity Lutheran College, but more recently (August, 2017, according to this article on their web site) an outfit called Funko (“Purveyors of Pop Culture”) has installed its headquarters and a retail store in the complex. Perhaps someone living in, or near, or visiting Everett can check the place out and see if those remnants of the Balboa’s decor that were still intact in 1994 have survived.
Since Google Maps has chosen to do something weird and limiting with the street view image it fetches for this page, here is a quick link to a street view that can actually be moved around normally.
A document prepared for the City of Benicia (very large PDF here) and containing a survey of historic resources says that the building at 918 First Street, currently occupied by the Benicia Antique Mall, was built as a theater in the late 1930s. The document doesn’t give the theaters name, but I think that’s the most likely location to have been the Victory Theatre.
If you look at the corner building from the side street, it actually has a pretty low roof, disguised on the First Street side by a false parapet, and would have been ill suited for a theater. The building at 918 has a higher roof, and extends back farther.
The Majestic was built by former Benicia mayor William Crooks, probably as an investment, and it is likely that a deal was made, possibly even before the project was underway, for a theater operator to lease it. The lessee might have been the operator of the Orpheum, or someone else, but either way it’s unlikely that Crooks would have been concerned about the fate of the Orpheum.
I’ve done some searches on the Peoples Theatre in Martinez but have found nothing. Many small nickelodeons came and went quickly in those days, so it might have been one of those.
A pair of small photos of the Majestic’s entrance and box office can be seen on this web page. The Majestic was built by former Benicia mayor William Crooks.
Advertisements for Typhoon brand ventilation systems published in issues of The Moving Picture World in early 1921 list the Novelty Theatre in Martinez as one of the houses in which the company’s equipment had been installed. A notice about the installation of the new ventilation system by contractor A. Gattuan had appeared in the July 31, 1920, issue of Domestic Engineering.
I found a reference to the Curry Theatre in the May 26, 1914, issue of Coast Banker (scan at Google Books.)
I also found this item in the January 5, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World:
As I can’t find a Curry Street anywhere in Martinez today, I’m wondering if Ferry Street was once called Curry Street, or if this item simply mistook the name of the theater for the name of the street. I also don’t know why they said it was a new moving picture house, unless this was a different theater, which seems unlikely. Given the MPW’s propensity for errors I think it’s possible that this is when the Curry, under new ownership, was renamed the Royal, and the magazine just got the story garbled. I’ve been unable to find any other references to H. E. Case.The Royal was in operation at least as late as June 17, 1926, when it was mentioned, along with the Novelty Theatre, in that day’s issue of the Oakland Tribune.
AndrewBarrett: You will probably be interested in this item I ran across in the February 9, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World:
Ah, now that the historic photo has been posted it looks like the building was extended upward to add a second floor sometime after the Orpheum closed, so it’s possible that it was erected specifically as a theater in 1913.
714 is the old, bay-windowed building adjacent to the Majestic Theatre. The building looks to have been built earlier than 1913, and so the National/Orpheum was probably a storefront conversion, closed and reconverted to retail space when the Majestic opened in 1920.
The building is currently occupied by Training Loft 714, a weight loss and “body transformation studio” (outside California aka, a gym.)
Comparing aerial views from 1965 and more recently at Historic Aerials, it is apparent that the Chief Theatre has been converted into the United Methodist Fellowship Hall, at 102 I Street. The old stone building of the original church as seen in the vintage photo is still standing at the corner of I and Elm. A new building, built sometime between 1999 and 2003, connects the old church with the fellowship hall, forming a courtyard on the I Street side of the complex.
After being vacant for many years, the Park Theatre building was renovated for use as office space in 2014.
The November 3, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World ran this brief item: “John Lyons, manager of the Orpheum at Dayton, O., will stick to a straight five-cent policy from now on, owing to the new war tax.”
If this house was called B. F. Keith’s Theatre, it must have been but briefly, after the Keith circuit took control of it in 1915 and before they took over the Colonial the following year. The name B. F. Keith’s Theatre belonged to the Colonial from 1916 to 1921. I’ve found an item in the November 3, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World which notes sequential personal appearances recently made by popular child star Violet McMillan at both Keith’s Theatre and the Strand in Dayton.
The Ideal Theatre was discussed in the November 3, 1917, issue of The Moving Picture World:
So far I’ve been unable to identify the neighborhood house called the East Majestic Theatre.Here is a bit of information about the operation of the Auditorium Theatre during the period before the fire that destroyed the house, from the April 1, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
Papers in the Pretzinger Architectural Collection reveal that Albert Pretzinger’s firm did some work on the Strand Theatre in 1924. There is no indication of the nature of the work or its extent.