Asian Americans at the movies : race, labor, and migration in the Transpacific West, 1900-1945, a 2008 dissertation by U.C. San Diego student Denise Kohr, contains this line:
“Japanese showmen Kaita and Yamada were not novices to the business of the movies. They were successful entrepreneurs who had opened the Bison Theatre in Seattle in 1903.”
The complete dissertation is available in the popular PDF format here. It has quite a bit of information about movie theaters operated by Japanese Americans in Seattle (ten such houses were in operation there in 1919) and other American cities.
An article about the conversion of the Orpheum Theatre to a first-rum moving picture house appeared in the June 8, 1918, issue of Motography (Google Books scan.) There is an interior photo, with an inset of the managing director Eugene Levy. The house was advertised during this period as Levy’s Orpheum Theatre, to differentiate it from the Orpheum vaudeville shows, which had been moved to the Moore Theatre.
History Link has a page about the Grand, with the emphasis on the 1917 fire. In 1911 the house had been leased to Eugene Levy, who operated a dozen movie and vaudeville houses in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane. After the fire Levy originally intended to rebuild the Grand, but instead ended up leasing the Orpheum Theatre and Third Avenue and Madison Street.
Looking at the street view I just noticed that the back of the former theater is now occupied by a U.S. Post Office, with its entrance on the Broadway Street side.
The record of a lawsuit (Levy v. Paramount Pictures) decided in 1952 indicate that the Dinuba Theatre opened on February 14, 1941, and was operated by the plaintiff, Mr. Levy until May, 1942.
The finding aid for the S. Charles Lee papers lists a Dinuba Theatre at Dinuba as a 1940-1941 project. However, given this theater’s location in a small San Joaquin Valley town, we should consider the possibility that this house was one of those projects actually designed by the unlicensed architect William B. David, with the plans only signed by S. Charles Lee, which is something Lee did for David on several occasions.
Forgot to mention the item in Boxoffice of May 1, 1954, saying that owner E. C. Rettkowski had remodeled the Alki Theatre, installing CinemaScope and stereophonic sound equipment. The opening feature was The Robe.
The Alki Theatre building still stands, with its small marquee intact, at the southeast corner of Main Avenue and Broadway Street (16 NW Main Avenue.) The building is now occupied by the Magic Mirror Beauty Salon.
A closed brick arch on the facade, which might indicate that an arch was an original feature the building, has a keystone with the year 1920 on it. If the building was erected as a theater in 1920, rather than converted to one later, then we are surely missing an earlier aka for the house. The name Roxy did not come into vogue until after the opening of the first Roxy Theatre in New York in 1926.
It’s possible that the house was called the Liberty, whether opened in 1920 or not, as the earliest trade journal item I’ve found datelined Wilbur is this, from the January 16, 1931, issue of The Film Daily: “Wilbur, Wash. — Peter Falborg has temporarily closed the Liberty.” The reopening of the Liberty was noted in the May 24 issue of the Daily.
The Alki Theatre was still in operation at least as late as 1963, when it was advertised in the August 8 issue of The News-Standard published in nearby Coulee City.
The May 1, 1954, issue of Boxoffice ran a brief item noting that the Oakland Telenews Theatre had been renamed the Globe Theatre, reflecting its change from a newsreel house to feature films, which had taken place in December, 1953. The theater was still owned and operated by Telemanagement, the company that operated the Telenews circuit.
The issue of the Rome Daily Sentinel published on December 8, 1928, two days before the opening of the Capitol, included an article about the Kallet Theatre chain (PDF here.)
The caption of a (rather dark and blurry) photo of the Strand in the August 1, 1970, issue of the Rome Daily Sentinel (PDF here) says that the building was demolished in 1964.
The bulk of the page is a reprint of an interesting 1928 article about Rome’s theaters, but the article is incomplete, and I’ve been unable to find the subsequent page on which it continues. The archive from which it comes may be incomplete itself.
Rusty is correct, and as the Palace and the Princess were both being listed in The Daily Ardmoreite from 1917 through at least 1922, it is clear they were two different theaters. Whether the house that became the Tivoli ever used the name Princess at all I haven’t discovered, but it seems increasingly unlikely.
Neither have I been able to find an address for the Princess Theatre that opened in 1917. It’s possible that the Princess was at the address we have listed for the Palace (109 W.Main Street), seeing how the two houses have been conflated in other ways, but not certain by any means. An earlier Princess Theatre, probably a storefront nickelodeon, was in operation at Ardmore by late 1909. I don’t know its address, either.
Here’s something from the July 19, 1910, issue of The Daily Ardmoreite:
“BUYS LA PICTORIAL
“Miss Hunter Will Move to New Quarters This Week.
“Miss Amelia Hunter, who has conducted the Majestic Theater on West Main street for tho past few years, has purchased from Mrs. Foster the La Pictorial on the south side of Main street and in the future the Majestic will he located in that
building. The building is being re-papered and nicely finished and decorated on the inside and Miss Hunter expects to open in the new place Saturday night with an exceptionally fine program. Miss Hunter has been successful in her business and is showing her appreciation to the patrons of the show by fitting up one of the nicest places of the kind in the state.”
However, the stay of the Majestic at this location was not permanent. The 1914-15 edition of the American Motion Picture Directory lists La Pictorial at 110 Main Street once again, while the Majestic has decamped to 219 W. Main.
La Pictorial is also mentioned, along with three other Ardmore houses, in the October 9, 1909, issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror:
“At Ardmore, Okla., the Majestic, under management of Amelia Hunter, Theatorium (Le Roy Bickle, mgr.), La Pictorial (Mrs. M.A. Foster, mgr.), and the Princess, (Mrs. Guy, mgr.) all report steady patronage to illustrated songs and moving pictures.”
I don’t believe the Theatorium ever operated at 114 Main Street. Early references that include the address always say 212 West Main. A modern source by a local historian gives 114, but that same historian conflated the Palace and Princess Theatres, claiming that the latter was the original name of the Tivoli, when more reliable sources say that the Tivoli actually began as the Palace.
For a time in 1913, the Theatorium was called the Thanhouser Theatre, but the name Theatorium appears to have been restored before the end of the year. The name change had probably been occasioned by some sort of agreement with the Thanhouser Film Company, which operated out of New York City, and existed from 1909 to 1920.
This theater has a web site, Cinema Capitol, but it’s in French. I can’t find an English version. From my very limited French it looks to me like the house now has five screens (“Five salles”) but someone who actually speaks French should check the site to get the details.
This 2015 article from the Sheboygan Press has a nice photo of the Rex.
This house at 931 N. 8th Street was at lest the second Rex Theatre in Sheboygan. There are numerous period references to an earlier Rex Theatre at 810 N. 8th Street.
The May 26, 1917, issue of The Billboard listed the 350-seat Amusu Theatre at Jasonville, managed by George Passen, as an independent vaudeville house. A Mr. W. L. Passen was mentioned in the October 11, 1952, issue of The Motion Picture Herald as the seller of the 300-seat Amuzu Theatre in Jasonville. The buyer was named Clay Burnett.
The 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory listed two theaters at Jasonville, called the Aero and the Lyric.
The July, 1911, issue of Motography noted the sale of the Jasonville Theatre at Jasonville for $28,000,
The 1910 report of Indiana’s Department of Inspection listed only one theater at Jasonville, called the Star.
In August of 1918, three issues of The Moving Picture World list two theaters at Jasonville, those being the Crescent and the Empire. I don’t know if the Empire was a short-lived theater, or if perhaps it was a briefly-used aka for the Amusu, which was missing from those lists but mentioned in trade publications both before and after that year.
On the afternoon of July 24, 1914, Jasonville suffered a major fire that destroyed or damaged six blocks of businesses and two residential blocks. Some fifty stores were involved in the conflagration, and the total loss was estimated at $300,000. The fire is believed to have started in a movie house called the Family Theatre, located at 108 Main Street. Formerly called the Airdome, the once-outdoor theater had been given a makeshift wood and canvas roof, which allowed the fire to grow rapidly.
In addition to the Family Theatre, an adjacent building called the Opera House was destroyed, as was another nearby theater called Goldstein’s Opera House. However, newspaper reports from the following day indicate that Goldstein’s, which suffered a loss of $6,000, was also a moving picture theater.
The Crescent Theatre is listed in the 1916-1917 edition of the Indiana State Gazetteer and Business Directory. Frank Newport & Son were listed as proprietors. I’ve found the Crescent mentioned in The Moving Picture World as early as August 17, 1918.
In 1963, Boxoffice published numerous capsule movie reviews submitted by James Hardy, manager of the Crescent,
The Crescent and Amusu Theatres were mentioned in the November 23, 1921 issue of The Jasonville Leader.
The 1922-1923 Film Yearbook listed the Crescent Theatre at Jasonville as one of five houses in Indiana and two in Illinois then operated by J. B. Stine of Clinton, Indiana.
Also interesting with regards to the architects, notices of the formation of the firm Braverman & Havermaet published in 1922 give their names as S. Braverman and K. Van Havermaet. The Van does not appear to have ever been used in the firm name, though.
However, a Google search on the name K. Van Havermaet turns up a number of pages in Dutch which make reference to an architect of that name having designed at least one project in the region (a “Huis in art-decostijl….”) in the mid-1930s. As near as I can tell he was based in the Belgian town of Sint-Niklaas. So far I’ve been unable to get Google to open any of these pages, let alone translate them, so all this information comes from the snippets in the search results. I wonder if this was the same K. Van Havermaet? He might have returned to Europe due to the difficulty of getting work in the U.S. in the early ears of the depression.
Actually Braverman would have been only 13 or 14 when the Pastime opened. An advertisement in the February 17, 1929, issue of The Coshocton Tribune, placed by Chacos Bros. Amusement Company, operators of the Pastime, said that the company was celebrating the 21st anniversary of the opening of the house. The events were scheduled for the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd, so it was probably one of those dates in 1908 that the Pastime opened.
It’s possible that Braverman and Havermaet’s work on the theatre came as early as 1922. Though it doesn’t name any architects, an item datelined Coshocton in the February 2, 1922, issue of The Moving Picture World said that “Chacos Amusement Company will make alterations and construct an addition to Pastime Theatre.”
This web page dated August 1, 2007, says that East Coast Entertainment had just taken over operation of this house from Phoenix Entertainment. Phoenix operated the house for only about a year.
The project had originally been planned for West Virginia-based Marquee Cinemas, but they pulled out of the deal before the theater opened. As Phoenix not only operates its own theaters but also provides management services for other theater owners, I suspect that they were brought in at the last minute with a short-term deal by the owners of the mall after Marquee pulled out.
Either the theater owners or Phoenix probably became dissatisfied with the arrangement, and East Coast Entertainment, a company which operates an amusement park in Myrtle Beach, was brought in to take over the theater. Ten years later, this is still that company’s only cinema. Various reports and theater reviews from around the web suggest that they don’t put much effort into it, and the cinema is now in bad shape.
With major chain competition nearby, this independent probably doesn’t have much power with movie distributors, so it isn’t surprising that the place is getting run down. It has been suggested that the theater is being kept open only as a tax shelter. It seems a plausible claim to me.
Renaissance Rialto’s web page says the balcony was converted for a second screen in 1981 and that storefronts in the building were converted into screens three and four in 1985.
Asian Americans at the movies : race, labor, and migration in the Transpacific West, 1900-1945, a 2008 dissertation by U.C. San Diego student Denise Kohr, contains this line:
The complete dissertation is available in the popular PDF format here. It has quite a bit of information about movie theaters operated by Japanese Americans in Seattle (ten such houses were in operation there in 1919) and other American cities.An article about the conversion of the Orpheum Theatre to a first-rum moving picture house appeared in the June 8, 1918, issue of Motography (Google Books scan.) There is an interior photo, with an inset of the managing director Eugene Levy. The house was advertised during this period as Levy’s Orpheum Theatre, to differentiate it from the Orpheum vaudeville shows, which had been moved to the Moore Theatre.
History Link has a page about the Grand, with the emphasis on the 1917 fire. In 1911 the house had been leased to Eugene Levy, who operated a dozen movie and vaudeville houses in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane. After the fire Levy originally intended to rebuild the Grand, but instead ended up leasing the Orpheum Theatre and Third Avenue and Madison Street.
Looking at the street view I just noticed that the back of the former theater is now occupied by a U.S. Post Office, with its entrance on the Broadway Street side.
The record of a lawsuit (Levy v. Paramount Pictures) decided in 1952 indicate that the Dinuba Theatre opened on February 14, 1941, and was operated by the plaintiff, Mr. Levy until May, 1942.
The finding aid for the S. Charles Lee papers lists a Dinuba Theatre at Dinuba as a 1940-1941 project. However, given this theater’s location in a small San Joaquin Valley town, we should consider the possibility that this house was one of those projects actually designed by the unlicensed architect William B. David, with the plans only signed by S. Charles Lee, which is something Lee did for David on several occasions.
Forgot to mention the item in Boxoffice of May 1, 1954, saying that owner E. C. Rettkowski had remodeled the Alki Theatre, installing CinemaScope and stereophonic sound equipment. The opening feature was The Robe.
The Alki Theatre building still stands, with its small marquee intact, at the southeast corner of Main Avenue and Broadway Street (16 NW Main Avenue.) The building is now occupied by the Magic Mirror Beauty Salon.
A closed brick arch on the facade, which might indicate that an arch was an original feature the building, has a keystone with the year 1920 on it. If the building was erected as a theater in 1920, rather than converted to one later, then we are surely missing an earlier aka for the house. The name Roxy did not come into vogue until after the opening of the first Roxy Theatre in New York in 1926.
It’s possible that the house was called the Liberty, whether opened in 1920 or not, as the earliest trade journal item I’ve found datelined Wilbur is this, from the January 16, 1931, issue of The Film Daily: “Wilbur, Wash. — Peter Falborg has temporarily closed the Liberty.” The reopening of the Liberty was noted in the May 24 issue of the Daily.
The Alki Theatre was still in operation at least as late as 1963, when it was advertised in the August 8 issue of The News-Standard published in nearby Coulee City.
The May 1, 1954, issue of Boxoffice ran a brief item noting that the Oakland Telenews Theatre had been renamed the Globe Theatre, reflecting its change from a newsreel house to feature films, which had taken place in December, 1953. The theater was still owned and operated by Telemanagement, the company that operated the Telenews circuit.
The issue of the Rome Daily Sentinel published on December 8, 1928, two days before the opening of the Capitol, included an article about the Kallet Theatre chain (PDF here.)
The caption of a (rather dark and blurry) photo of the Strand in the August 1, 1970, issue of the Rome Daily Sentinel (PDF here) says that the building was demolished in 1964.
The bulk of the page is a reprint of an interesting 1928 article about Rome’s theaters, but the article is incomplete, and I’ve been unable to find the subsequent page on which it continues. The archive from which it comes may be incomplete itself.
Rusty is correct, and as the Palace and the Princess were both being listed in The Daily Ardmoreite from 1917 through at least 1922, it is clear they were two different theaters. Whether the house that became the Tivoli ever used the name Princess at all I haven’t discovered, but it seems increasingly unlikely.
Neither have I been able to find an address for the Princess Theatre that opened in 1917. It’s possible that the Princess was at the address we have listed for the Palace (109 W.Main Street), seeing how the two houses have been conflated in other ways, but not certain by any means. An earlier Princess Theatre, probably a storefront nickelodeon, was in operation at Ardmore by late 1909. I don’t know its address, either.
Here’s something from the July 19, 1910, issue of The Daily Ardmoreite:
However, the stay of the Majestic at this location was not permanent. The 1914-15 edition of the American Motion Picture Directory lists La Pictorial at 110 Main Street once again, while the Majestic has decamped to 219 W. Main.La Pictorial is also mentioned, along with three other Ardmore houses, in the October 9, 1909, issue of The New York Dramatic Mirror:
I don’t believe the Theatorium ever operated at 114 Main Street. Early references that include the address always say 212 West Main. A modern source by a local historian gives 114, but that same historian conflated the Palace and Princess Theatres, claiming that the latter was the original name of the Tivoli, when more reliable sources say that the Tivoli actually began as the Palace.
For a time in 1913, the Theatorium was called the Thanhouser Theatre, but the name Theatorium appears to have been restored before the end of the year. The name change had probably been occasioned by some sort of agreement with the Thanhouser Film Company, which operated out of New York City, and existed from 1909 to 1920.
This theater has a web site, Cinema Capitol, but it’s in French. I can’t find an English version. From my very limited French it looks to me like the house now has five screens (“Five salles”) but someone who actually speaks French should check the site to get the details.
This 2015 article from the Sheboygan Press has a nice photo of the Rex.
This house at 931 N. 8th Street was at lest the second Rex Theatre in Sheboygan. There are numerous period references to an earlier Rex Theatre at 810 N. 8th Street.
This might be the picture DavidZornig refers to. It is from the book Chippewa Falls: Main Street.
The May 26, 1917, issue of The Billboard listed the 350-seat Amusu Theatre at Jasonville, managed by George Passen, as an independent vaudeville house. A Mr. W. L. Passen was mentioned in the October 11, 1952, issue of The Motion Picture Herald as the seller of the 300-seat Amuzu Theatre in Jasonville. The buyer was named Clay Burnett.
The 1914-1915 edition of The American Motion Picture Directory listed two theaters at Jasonville, called the Aero and the Lyric.
The July, 1911, issue of Motography noted the sale of the Jasonville Theatre at Jasonville for $28,000,
The 1910 report of Indiana’s Department of Inspection listed only one theater at Jasonville, called the Star.
In August of 1918, three issues of The Moving Picture World list two theaters at Jasonville, those being the Crescent and the Empire. I don’t know if the Empire was a short-lived theater, or if perhaps it was a briefly-used aka for the Amusu, which was missing from those lists but mentioned in trade publications both before and after that year.
On the afternoon of July 24, 1914, Jasonville suffered a major fire that destroyed or damaged six blocks of businesses and two residential blocks. Some fifty stores were involved in the conflagration, and the total loss was estimated at $300,000. The fire is believed to have started in a movie house called the Family Theatre, located at 108 Main Street. Formerly called the Airdome, the once-outdoor theater had been given a makeshift wood and canvas roof, which allowed the fire to grow rapidly.
In addition to the Family Theatre, an adjacent building called the Opera House was destroyed, as was another nearby theater called Goldstein’s Opera House. However, newspaper reports from the following day indicate that Goldstein’s, which suffered a loss of $6,000, was also a moving picture theater.
The Crescent Theatre is listed in the 1916-1917 edition of the Indiana State Gazetteer and Business Directory. Frank Newport & Son were listed as proprietors. I’ve found the Crescent mentioned in The Moving Picture World as early as August 17, 1918.
In 1963, Boxoffice published numerous capsule movie reviews submitted by James Hardy, manager of the Crescent,
The Crescent and Amusu Theatres were mentioned in the November 23, 1921 issue of The Jasonville Leader.
The 1922-1923 Film Yearbook listed the Crescent Theatre at Jasonville as one of five houses in Indiana and two in Illinois then operated by J. B. Stine of Clinton, Indiana.
The Instagram page for the Clyde Theatre has a few photos, including an interesting aerial view and several excellent interior views.
Also interesting with regards to the architects, notices of the formation of the firm Braverman & Havermaet published in 1922 give their names as S. Braverman and K. Van Havermaet. The Van does not appear to have ever been used in the firm name, though.
However, a Google search on the name K. Van Havermaet turns up a number of pages in Dutch which make reference to an architect of that name having designed at least one project in the region (a “Huis in art-decostijl….”) in the mid-1930s. As near as I can tell he was based in the Belgian town of Sint-Niklaas. So far I’ve been unable to get Google to open any of these pages, let alone translate them, so all this information comes from the snippets in the search results. I wonder if this was the same K. Van Havermaet? He might have returned to Europe due to the difficulty of getting work in the U.S. in the early ears of the depression.
Actually Braverman would have been only 13 or 14 when the Pastime opened. An advertisement in the February 17, 1929, issue of The Coshocton Tribune, placed by Chacos Bros. Amusement Company, operators of the Pastime, said that the company was celebrating the 21st anniversary of the opening of the house. The events were scheduled for the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd, so it was probably one of those dates in 1908 that the Pastime opened.
It’s possible that Braverman and Havermaet’s work on the theatre came as early as 1922. Though it doesn’t name any architects, an item datelined Coshocton in the February 2, 1922, issue of The Moving Picture World said that “Chacos Amusement Company will make alterations and construct an addition to Pastime Theatre.”
retroali is correct. The Shoals is open again with a variety of live performances. Website update.
This web page dated August 1, 2007, says that East Coast Entertainment had just taken over operation of this house from Phoenix Entertainment. Phoenix operated the house for only about a year.
The project had originally been planned for West Virginia-based Marquee Cinemas, but they pulled out of the deal before the theater opened. As Phoenix not only operates its own theaters but also provides management services for other theater owners, I suspect that they were brought in at the last minute with a short-term deal by the owners of the mall after Marquee pulled out.
Either the theater owners or Phoenix probably became dissatisfied with the arrangement, and East Coast Entertainment, a company which operates an amusement park in Myrtle Beach, was brought in to take over the theater. Ten years later, this is still that company’s only cinema. Various reports and theater reviews from around the web suggest that they don’t put much effort into it, and the cinema is now in bad shape.
With major chain competition nearby, this independent probably doesn’t have much power with movie distributors, so it isn’t surprising that the place is getting run down. It has been suggested that the theater is being kept open only as a tax shelter. It seems a plausible claim to me.
Renaissance Rialto’s web page says the balcony was converted for a second screen in 1981 and that storefronts in the building were converted into screens three and four in 1985.