Worthpoint displays a real photo postcard of the Navarro Theatre. The theater was showing the Mary Pickford movie Lena and the Geese, which IMDb says was released on July 17, 1912. The Navarro, being a neighborhood house, probably got the film somewhat later. The single-story building featured an ornate, arched theater entrance flanked by two storefronts.
The Wonderland closed at this location in very early January, 1910. The December 28, 1909, issue of the Newport News Daily Press said that the operators of the Wonderland Theatre had taken over the Leath Company’s unexpired lease on the Academy of Music and would move to that house on January 3.
The Wonderland company intended to move its operation to an entirely new theater, then under construction at Washington Avenue and 31st Street, later in 1910. I suspect that the new house was the later Downtown Theatre, which opened as the Olympic Theatre on October 17, 1910.
After its stint as a motion picture and vaudeville house the Academy of Music returned to its original policy as a live theater, and was listed in the 1913-1914 edition of the Cahn guide. I haven’t discovered what became of the original Star/Wonderland building after the theater moved out.
The Palace Theater was built and long operated by R. J. Cooper, who had previously operated the Opera House, which opened around 1901. Cooper was still running the Palace in 1954, when the April 17 issue of Boxoffice reported that he had reopened the house following the installation of a new Miracle Mirror screen and a new projection system.
This web page from The American WideScreen Museum web site has information about the Miracle Mirror screen, from a promotional booklet about CinemaScope published in 1953.
This page at Water Winter Wonderland has a vintage photo of the Roxy as it looked after Ted Rogvoy’s ca.1948 remodeling job, though the photo was taken after the theater had closed and fallen into disrepair.
The 1950 Boxoffice article about Rogvoy’s remodeling of the Roxy and two other Detroit houses has before and after photos of the Roxy on this page, though the text about the Roxy is on this page.
CareyVigor: For at least part of the 1930s and 1940s the Martha Washington was owned by the Manteufel family. A Florian Manteufel was the manager in 1942. It might have been him that you met. Manteufel is a German surname, but many German surnames- mine, for one example- are used by both Germans and Jews.
But the waitress must have gotten her stories garbled. Paramount Pictures was founded in 1914 by Utah theatre owner, W. W. Hodkinson, so someone arriving in the 1930s couldn’t have been a founder.
Also, IMDb says that Kim Novak was married twice, first to the English actor Richard Johnson, from March, 1965, to May, 1966, and then to a Dr. Robert Malloy, from March, 1976, to present. Of course it’s possible that she had an earlier marriage that was kept secret by the studio, and remains secret, but it would have to have been over before she signed with Columbia Pictures in 1954, at the age of 21. Not a very big window of opportunity for a secret marriage.
Jessey Lasky was associated with Paramount from very early in its history, but I don’t know if he is related to the Jacob Lasky who built the Lasky Theatre, but it seems doubtful, as Jesse Lasky was a native of San Francisco.
The Cine Encanto was featured in the “Better Theatres” section of the September 18, 1937, issue of Motion Picture Herald, but the magazine got the name wrong, labeling it Cine Elcanto (scan at Internet Arcnive.) There are two photos of the cavernous, strikingly modern interior. The architect was Francisco J. Serrano.
The 1937 ad Broan linked to must depict the results of a renovation of the Buckingham. The photo shows some detailing along the auditorium’s back wall and adjacent to the ceiling vault, but not enough to determine what the original interior style might have been. More of the original design might have survived at the screen end of the auditorium, at least until wide screens came along in the 1950s.
I’ve come across a couple of references to burlesque shows running at the Broadway Strand in 1928. That may be why I’ve found no references to the house in movie industry trade journals after 1927. The theater probably closed as a burlesque house.
Two decent photos of the Broadway Strand can be found on this page at Water Winter Wonderland.
It now appears that this house opened as the Broadway Theatre in 1913 and the name was changed to Broadway-Strand Theatre in 1915, per the article linked by rivest266. It was also probably 1915 when a Wurlitzer Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra was installed in the Broadway-Strand. The instrument was featured in an ad for the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company that appeared in the August 14, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World (scan at Google Books.)
The Silver Theatre page at the Cinema Data Project gives the address as 14 Silver Street. I’ve found multiple sources for the address 14 Silver Street, but none for 11 Silver.
Also, we’ve got the sequence of names backwards. I’ve found multiple references to the Silver Theatre in the 1910s and the mid-1920s. Cinema Data has a reference to the State Theatre in the 1956 FDY. The house must have opened as the Silver Theatre and was renamed State Theatre sometime prior to 1941.
This Facebook page has a photo of the house as the State Theatre, the marquee advertising the 1946 film The Return of Monte Cristo, and a recent photo as the Cancun Mexican Restaurant. The current Google Street View showing the building as Steve’s Grill & Pub is obsolete.
“Architect” didn’t used to be a verb, and I doubt if many, (and maybe not any) building architects use it as such yet, but it has been used as a verb for quite a while now in the IT industry. I don’t know that many actual software architects use it as a verb, either, but people in IT management commonly do. At one time “engineer” and “doctor” were not used as verbs, either, but both are standard usage now. “To architect” is still at a stage where it sounds like jargon to most people, including me.
But language does drift, so maybe it will catch on, and maybe it won’t. I wouldn’t want to bet that “to architect” won’t eventually become common usage. Popular usage is unpredictable. As Calvin said, verbing weirds language, and that can be both fun and useful. Of course, as an English major, I will go on using designed, and keep architect as a noun. If, fifty years hence, my traditional usage sounds stodgy and old fashioned, well, I doubt anything I’ve written will survive that long, and even if it does, something will have deaded me by then, so I won’t be around to care.
A collection of drawings and blueprints assembled by Herman Gundlach, Inc., the construction firm for the Lode Theatre, dates the project’s design to 1939. The house might not have opened until 1940, though.
The Princess Theatre was either rebuilt or remodeled in 1939-1940, with plans by Kaplan & Sprachman. The Ontario Jewish Archives has seven photos of the project, but they are not available online.
This biographical sketch of Charles DePaul, onetime head of the Soo Amusement Company, written sometime after 1926, has this information:
“In 1921 he erected and equipped the Princess theater at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and in 1923 he formed a partnership with W. George Cook and they purchased both the Temple and Strand theaters in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.”
An article in the December 14, 1973, issue of The Evening News about the fire which destroyed the theater had additional information:
“The Temple Theatre, built by George Cook in 1911, played a major role in the history of Sault Ste. Marie’s cultural growth. The theatre was purchased by Charles DePaul in the early 1920’s and in December of 1928 became the first theatre in the Upper Peninsula to have talking movies when a bristolphone movietone machine was purchased at the cost of $10,000. In 1934, the Soo Theatre, Temple and the old Colonial Theatres were consolidated into the Soo Amusement Company with Charles DePaul, his son Joseph, present owner of the company and Edward Saether as partners. The Temple was remodeled in 1935 and again in 1950. The front of the building received a face-lifting in 1940 and the Cinemascope screen was installed in 1956.”
A rather long and chatty article about the Saint Croix Opera House can be found in this PDF. The house was built around 1871, following a general conflagration that destroyed its predecessor along with much of the town of Calais. Movies were shown as early as 1903, but it did not become a regular movie house until somewhat later. The last performance was on May 2, 1935. Later that night the Opera House was destroyed by a fire.
This page from the same web site has several photos of the Opera House, including some depicting its ruins following the fire. Near the bottom of the page are a few photos of the State Theatre, which was in operation by 1931, and which, on March 4, 1958, also met a fiery fate.
State Cinemas is still in operation, and must be a different house than the original State Theatre. It’s possible that it was built on the same site as the original State, but I’m not sure.
The Kittanning, Pennsylvania Simpson’s Leader-Times of December 20, 1975, said that the Vernon Theatre building in Barnesboro had been destroyed by a fire the previous day. Another source indicates that the house had closed in 1974.
Click on the “Photos” button between “Overview” and “Comments” above.
On the new page scroll down to the “Add New Photo” button, click it, and follow the instructions. Title and description are optional. I believe the default license is Creative Commons (Attribution) but it should tell you if it’s something else. You can select a different license from the drop-down menu if you want.
Once you’ve selected the photo’s location on your computer, click “Upload” and it should take only a few seconds to a minute or so, depending on the speed of your Internet connection.
If everything’s working properly a thumbnail will then appear on the theater’s photos page. Your photo won’t appear on the theater’s main page unless and until it gets enough views to displace the one that’s showing now.
A “Fifty Years Ago” feature in the August 28, 1987, issue of The Baytown Sun said that the Alamo Theatre opened on that date in 1937. It replaced a house called the Nu-Gulf Theatre which had burned to the ground the previous year. A similar feature in the April 7, 1987, issue of the paper had said this:
“A new movie theater will be built in Pelly to replace the Nu Gulf which was destroyed by fire last year. H.E. Brunson, local manager of the East Texas Theaters Inc. and Jefferson Amusement Co., says the theater will cost $15,000 and it will be a duplicate of the Port Theater in La Porte.”
The Alamo Theatre was located on W. Main Street in Pelly. I haven’t been able to pin down the exact location, but like the Port Theatre it was on a corner lot. No buildings fitting its description are standing in the area today, so it has probably been demolished.
The Garfield’s machines were of the ordinary push-button type. I don’t recall ever seeing one with a dial selector anywhere. But the cups still came down crooked pretty often. The Garfield’s first machine had only ordinary soft drink brands, but it proved so popular that they installed a second machine, and that was the one that had the burgundy in it.
On weekend nights the theater was still very busy in those days- at least it was after they had dropped their ninety cent top price to fifty cents for all seats- and at intermission there were usually lines for both machines. But I don’t remember them ever running out of burgundy. Most of my fellow suburbanites probably weren’t adventurous enough to even try it.
Akronflicks: I’ve read tens of thousands of comments on Cinema Treasures over the years, and yours is the first in which anyone has mentioned burgundy pop (or soda, as we called it in California.) There was burgundy soda in the machine at the Garfield Theatre in Alhambra, California, in the late 1950s. I don’t remember it being available in any of the other dozen or so theaters I frequented in those days, nor have I seen it anywhere since.
I’m glad to hear they also had it in Akron, as I was beginning to think I’d just imagined it. Burgundy soda must have been mass produced if it appeared in both Alhambra and Akron, but I can’t find it mentioned anywhere on the Internet. It was indeed tasty, and I always especially looked forward to going to the Garfield so I could get a cup or two of it. I wonder whatever became of it?
This PDF has a walking tour of downtown Stillwater and mentions several of the town’s theaters. This paragraph is about the Fireboys Theatre:
“Herb Ricker’s Garage was at 915 South Main. Herb Ricker owned the first automobile in town (a 1905 Oldsmobile), and at one time used his garage to house all the automobiles in Stillwater. An ordinance prohibited gasoline storage in residential sections of town, including that which was stored in automobile tanks. Ricker would start the cars for the owners, and also gave driving lessons. Ricker later bought the Pastime Theatre which had been located at 612 South Main, and moved it to this location after 1910. He renamed it the Gem Theatre, but then sold it to the Fire Department, and it became the Fireboys Theatre which raised money for the Fire Department.”
915 S. Main is the address at which we currently list the Stillwater Nickelodeon. I’m not sure if that is an actual aka, or if there is just some reference somewhere in which the Pastime/Gem/Fireboys was referred to generically as a Stillwater nickelodeon. I’ve found no references to a house of that name except at Cinema Treasures.
Despite the current building’s somewhat theatrical look, it is not the original structure occupied by the Aggie Theatre/Centre Twin Theatre. This paragraph from a brochure for a walking tour of historic downtown Stillwater says the Teubner & Associates building was built after the theater was demolished in 1994:
“The Aggie Theatre was located at 619-621 South Main from 1926-1980. The building was built by Dr. D.H. Selph and leased by the Leachman and Griffith Brothers. In 1980 it was changed to the Centre Twin theatre, but closed in 1987. In 1994, the building that housed the Aggie and Centre Twin was demolished, and Teubner & Associates took over the space, while maintaining the old theater look.”
The brochure (PDF here) mentions several of Stillwater’s theaters and has small photos of a few.
The Motor Vu Twin might have been the last drive-in operating in Imperial County, but it was not the only one the county ever had. There was also the Family Motor Vu Drive-In at Brawley, only a few miles north of Imperial.
Worthpoint displays a real photo postcard of the Navarro Theatre. The theater was showing the Mary Pickford movie Lena and the Geese, which IMDb says was released on July 17, 1912. The Navarro, being a neighborhood house, probably got the film somewhat later. The single-story building featured an ornate, arched theater entrance flanked by two storefronts.
The Wonderland closed at this location in very early January, 1910. The December 28, 1909, issue of the Newport News Daily Press said that the operators of the Wonderland Theatre had taken over the Leath Company’s unexpired lease on the Academy of Music and would move to that house on January 3.
The Wonderland company intended to move its operation to an entirely new theater, then under construction at Washington Avenue and 31st Street, later in 1910. I suspect that the new house was the later Downtown Theatre, which opened as the Olympic Theatre on October 17, 1910.
After its stint as a motion picture and vaudeville house the Academy of Music returned to its original policy as a live theater, and was listed in the 1913-1914 edition of the Cahn guide. I haven’t discovered what became of the original Star/Wonderland building after the theater moved out.
The Palace Theater was built and long operated by R. J. Cooper, who had previously operated the Opera House, which opened around 1901. Cooper was still running the Palace in 1954, when the April 17 issue of Boxoffice reported that he had reopened the house following the installation of a new Miracle Mirror screen and a new projection system.
This web page from The American WideScreen Museum web site has information about the Miracle Mirror screen, from a promotional booklet about CinemaScope published in 1953.
This page at Water Winter Wonderland has a vintage photo of the Roxy as it looked after Ted Rogvoy’s ca.1948 remodeling job, though the photo was taken after the theater had closed and fallen into disrepair.
The 1950 Boxoffice article about Rogvoy’s remodeling of the Roxy and two other Detroit houses has before and after photos of the Roxy on this page, though the text about the Roxy is on this page.
CareyVigor: For at least part of the 1930s and 1940s the Martha Washington was owned by the Manteufel family. A Florian Manteufel was the manager in 1942. It might have been him that you met. Manteufel is a German surname, but many German surnames- mine, for one example- are used by both Germans and Jews.
But the waitress must have gotten her stories garbled. Paramount Pictures was founded in 1914 by Utah theatre owner, W. W. Hodkinson, so someone arriving in the 1930s couldn’t have been a founder.
Also, IMDb says that Kim Novak was married twice, first to the English actor Richard Johnson, from March, 1965, to May, 1966, and then to a Dr. Robert Malloy, from March, 1976, to present. Of course it’s possible that she had an earlier marriage that was kept secret by the studio, and remains secret, but it would have to have been over before she signed with Columbia Pictures in 1954, at the age of 21. Not a very big window of opportunity for a secret marriage.
Jessey Lasky was associated with Paramount from very early in its history, but I don’t know if he is related to the Jacob Lasky who built the Lasky Theatre, but it seems doubtful, as Jesse Lasky was a native of San Francisco.
The Cine Encanto was featured in the “Better Theatres” section of the September 18, 1937, issue of Motion Picture Herald, but the magazine got the name wrong, labeling it Cine Elcanto (scan at Internet Arcnive.) There are two photos of the cavernous, strikingly modern interior. The architect was Francisco J. Serrano.
The 1937 ad Broan linked to must depict the results of a renovation of the Buckingham. The photo shows some detailing along the auditorium’s back wall and adjacent to the ceiling vault, but not enough to determine what the original interior style might have been. More of the original design might have survived at the screen end of the auditorium, at least until wide screens came along in the 1950s.
I’ve come across a couple of references to burlesque shows running at the Broadway Strand in 1928. That may be why I’ve found no references to the house in movie industry trade journals after 1927. The theater probably closed as a burlesque house.
Two decent photos of the Broadway Strand can be found on this page at Water Winter Wonderland.
It now appears that this house opened as the Broadway Theatre in 1913 and the name was changed to Broadway-Strand Theatre in 1915, per the article linked by rivest266. It was also probably 1915 when a Wurlitzer Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra was installed in the Broadway-Strand. The instrument was featured in an ad for the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company that appeared in the August 14, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World (scan at Google Books.)
The Silver Theatre page at the Cinema Data Project gives the address as 14 Silver Street. I’ve found multiple sources for the address 14 Silver Street, but none for 11 Silver.
Also, we’ve got the sequence of names backwards. I’ve found multiple references to the Silver Theatre in the 1910s and the mid-1920s. Cinema Data has a reference to the State Theatre in the 1956 FDY. The house must have opened as the Silver Theatre and was renamed State Theatre sometime prior to 1941.
This Facebook page has a photo of the house as the State Theatre, the marquee advertising the 1946 film The Return of Monte Cristo, and a recent photo as the Cancun Mexican Restaurant. The current Google Street View showing the building as Steve’s Grill & Pub is obsolete.
CinemaTour gives the address of the Rex Theatre as 7 Cottage Street, and has one photo of it.
“Architect” didn’t used to be a verb, and I doubt if many, (and maybe not any) building architects use it as such yet, but it has been used as a verb for quite a while now in the IT industry. I don’t know that many actual software architects use it as a verb, either, but people in IT management commonly do. At one time “engineer” and “doctor” were not used as verbs, either, but both are standard usage now. “To architect” is still at a stage where it sounds like jargon to most people, including me.
But language does drift, so maybe it will catch on, and maybe it won’t. I wouldn’t want to bet that “to architect” won’t eventually become common usage. Popular usage is unpredictable. As Calvin said, verbing weirds language, and that can be both fun and useful. Of course, as an English major, I will go on using designed, and keep architect as a noun. If, fifty years hence, my traditional usage sounds stodgy and old fashioned, well, I doubt anything I’ve written will survive that long, and even if it does, something will have deaded me by then, so I won’t be around to care.
A collection of drawings and blueprints assembled by Herman Gundlach, Inc., the construction firm for the Lode Theatre, dates the project’s design to 1939. The house might not have opened until 1940, though.
The Princess Theatre was either rebuilt or remodeled in 1939-1940, with plans by Kaplan & Sprachman. The Ontario Jewish Archives has seven photos of the project, but they are not available online.
This biographical sketch of Charles DePaul, onetime head of the Soo Amusement Company, written sometime after 1926, has this information:
An article in the December 14, 1973, issue of The Evening News about the fire which destroyed the theater had additional information:A rather long and chatty article about the Saint Croix Opera House can be found in this PDF. The house was built around 1871, following a general conflagration that destroyed its predecessor along with much of the town of Calais. Movies were shown as early as 1903, but it did not become a regular movie house until somewhat later. The last performance was on May 2, 1935. Later that night the Opera House was destroyed by a fire.
This page from the same web site has several photos of the Opera House, including some depicting its ruins following the fire. Near the bottom of the page are a few photos of the State Theatre, which was in operation by 1931, and which, on March 4, 1958, also met a fiery fate.
State Cinemas is still in operation, and must be a different house than the original State Theatre. It’s possible that it was built on the same site as the original State, but I’m not sure.
The Kittanning, Pennsylvania Simpson’s Leader-Times of December 20, 1975, said that the Vernon Theatre building in Barnesboro had been destroyed by a fire the previous day. Another source indicates that the house had closed in 1974.
Click on the “Photos” button between “Overview” and “Comments” above.
On the new page scroll down to the “Add New Photo” button, click it, and follow the instructions. Title and description are optional. I believe the default license is Creative Commons (Attribution) but it should tell you if it’s something else. You can select a different license from the drop-down menu if you want.
Once you’ve selected the photo’s location on your computer, click “Upload” and it should take only a few seconds to a minute or so, depending on the speed of your Internet connection.
If everything’s working properly a thumbnail will then appear on the theater’s photos page. Your photo won’t appear on the theater’s main page unless and until it gets enough views to displace the one that’s showing now.
A “Fifty Years Ago” feature in the August 28, 1987, issue of The Baytown Sun said that the Alamo Theatre opened on that date in 1937. It replaced a house called the Nu-Gulf Theatre which had burned to the ground the previous year. A similar feature in the April 7, 1987, issue of the paper had said this:
The Alamo Theatre was located on W. Main Street in Pelly. I haven’t been able to pin down the exact location, but like the Port Theatre it was on a corner lot. No buildings fitting its description are standing in the area today, so it has probably been demolished.The Garfield’s machines were of the ordinary push-button type. I don’t recall ever seeing one with a dial selector anywhere. But the cups still came down crooked pretty often. The Garfield’s first machine had only ordinary soft drink brands, but it proved so popular that they installed a second machine, and that was the one that had the burgundy in it.
On weekend nights the theater was still very busy in those days- at least it was after they had dropped their ninety cent top price to fifty cents for all seats- and at intermission there were usually lines for both machines. But I don’t remember them ever running out of burgundy. Most of my fellow suburbanites probably weren’t adventurous enough to even try it.
Akronflicks: I’ve read tens of thousands of comments on Cinema Treasures over the years, and yours is the first in which anyone has mentioned burgundy pop (or soda, as we called it in California.) There was burgundy soda in the machine at the Garfield Theatre in Alhambra, California, in the late 1950s. I don’t remember it being available in any of the other dozen or so theaters I frequented in those days, nor have I seen it anywhere since.
I’m glad to hear they also had it in Akron, as I was beginning to think I’d just imagined it. Burgundy soda must have been mass produced if it appeared in both Alhambra and Akron, but I can’t find it mentioned anywhere on the Internet. It was indeed tasty, and I always especially looked forward to going to the Garfield so I could get a cup or two of it. I wonder whatever became of it?
This PDF has a walking tour of downtown Stillwater and mentions several of the town’s theaters. This paragraph is about the Fireboys Theatre:
915 S. Main is the address at which we currently list the Stillwater Nickelodeon. I’m not sure if that is an actual aka, or if there is just some reference somewhere in which the Pastime/Gem/Fireboys was referred to generically as a Stillwater nickelodeon. I’ve found no references to a house of that name except at Cinema Treasures.Linkrot repair: The brief 1939 Boxoffice article (with one photo) about the Campus Theatre that kencmcintyre linked to is now at this link.
Despite the current building’s somewhat theatrical look, it is not the original structure occupied by the Aggie Theatre/Centre Twin Theatre. This paragraph from a brochure for a walking tour of historic downtown Stillwater says the Teubner & Associates building was built after the theater was demolished in 1994:
The brochure (PDF here) mentions several of Stillwater’s theaters and has small photos of a few.The Motor Vu Twin might have been the last drive-in operating in Imperial County, but it was not the only one the county ever had. There was also the Family Motor Vu Drive-In at Brawley, only a few miles north of Imperial.