A three-alarm fire roared through the Rio Theater here in pre-dawn hours Thursday, completely gutting the 900-seat movie house and causing damage estimated from $75,000 to as high as $200,000. Two firemen were taken to Medical Center Hospital suffering from exposure, but were released shortly afterward and sent home.
The fire apparently broke out about 1 a.m., firemen said. Firemen fought the roaring blaze until about 4:30 a.m. Cause of the fire was not immediately determined. Several firemen miraculously escaped injury in a backdraft explosion which blew out the southwest upper wall. Falling timbers twice almost trapped firemen in the roaring inferno.
A passing cab driver, unidentified, reported the blaze at 1:25 a.m. After seeing the blaze, then confined within the building, he radioed his dispatcher, who alerted firemen. Firemen quickly pulled two additional alarms, the second coming at 1:30 and the third at 1:35 a.m.
The fire completely gutted the building leaving only the brick walls and a small portion of the roof remaining. Streams of water poured onto the fire quickly turned into icicles and sheets of ice in the 14-degree weather.
Wallace Scott, a co-owner of the Rio and the adjoining Scott Theater, which was damaged slightly by smoke, estimated damage “at about $125,000 to the equipment and the building.†Plans for remodeling the Rio were announced immediately after the fire on Thursday.
The Oakland City Council last night refused to issue a business license to a downtown theater which specializes in “adult” films. Backing up its staff, the council declined to give a license to Pussycat Theaters Inc. to operate the Art Cinema Theatre at 1118 Broadway. City Hearing Officer George Dini said the denial was based on seven arrests in the theater of men charged with lewd conduct in the theater while watching films. He also claimed the theater had a “buzzer” system warning employees when police officers arrived to check the audience.
An attorney for the firm, which operates 14 such movie nooses in the west, said the council’s action violated the First Amendment. Its owner, Vince Miranda, said he will appeal the council action. He also told the council that he was a native Californian and religious. Mayor John H. Reading asked Miranda, “You don’t hold any Scout merit badges, do you?” Miranda did not reply.
The Cumberland MD Evening Times had the same story but also included a quote from Marty:
Wiseman quoted the former grid great, now a salesman for a wholesale drug company, “Why don’t you guys give me a break? I’m a married man with three kids. I haven’t done anything like this since I was a kid. I don’t know why I grabbed hold of you tonight. I’m Marty Brill, the famous football player.”
Here is a May 1972 item from the San Antonio Express:
Santikos Theaters Inc. has acquired the former Cinematex Theater in Colonies North and will reopen it Thursday under the new name of Colonies North Theater. The new addition to the theater chain will show first-run and top-quality movies, said Ken Higgins, one of the executives of Santikos.
The theater will open with Walt Disney’s “Pinocchio” and “The Barefoot Executive.” Following that double bill the theater will show “Hans Christian Anderson” beginning June 16, followed by “The Garden of Fitzi Continis,” which won an Oscar this year for the best foreign film.
John Crawford, former assistant manager of Santikos' San Pedro Outdoor Theater, will be the manager of the new 500-seat theater. Other theaters in the Santikos chain are Century South, Olmes, and the San Pedro, Fredericksburg Road, Trail and Town-Twin outdoor theaters.
Here is part of a June 1989 article from the Illinois Daily Herald:
GIBSON CITY, Ill. – With the reopening of a local drive-in theater, “a dinosaur is coining back,” and people once again will be able to enjoy summer evenings and movies simultaneously, says operator Michael Harroun. “There’s been a whole decade of people who haven’t seen them,” said the 33-year-old Onarga resident, who is re-opening the Harvest Moon Drive-In this month with state-of-the art equipment. Harroun and his next-door neighbor, 34-year-old John Talbert, are leasing and remodeling the Harvest Moon on Illinois Route 47 near this east-central Illinois community of 3,500.
Harroun and Talbert think the movie-going public isn’t ready to give up on the drive-in. “I honestly believe these things go in cycles,” said Harroun. “We’ve missed a whole generation. There’s a whole generation that should be able to enjoy a drive-in.” They plan to start showing movies under the stars on June 16, charging $2 a person. The theater will be open Friday through Monday nights through October.
The Harvest Moon Drive-In was closed in 1977 by owner Clifford Orr, who said he quit the business for health reasons. It reopened for a few years in the early 1980s under a lease. It is in relatively good shape, according to Harroun, because it was rebuilt after the screen and concession stand were destroyed by a tornado in 1965.
Harroun and his brother, Patrick, own and operate the Onarga Mode theater, which they opened in 1984, and the Watseka Bon Aire, which opened in 1987. Both are indoor theaters. Harroun and Talbert believe people will travel up to 30 minutes from as far away as Champaign-Urbana and Bloomington-Normal â€" two towns without drive-in movies.
Here is part of a September 1989 article from the Illinois Daily Herald:
Jeffrey Kohlberg is a drive-in movie nut. He began working at his father’s drive-in when he was eight years old â€" painting, cutting grass, working the concession stands, picking up golf balls at the driving range that was part of the old 53 Drive-In in Palatine. His dad, Stanford Kohlberg, at one time operated 50 theaters. Today, Kohlberg, 42, is back in the drive-in business after being out of it since 1987, when a Palatine drive-in .that he and his sister, Jarrol Cataldo, rented from their dad, was sold. The two own 53 Drive-In Management Inc., in Lincolnshire, which has operated the Des Plaines Theatre since 1985 and which this year took over operation of the Cascade Drive-In in West Chicago.
“The finest drive-in in the U.S.,” Kohlberg calls it, speaking admiringly of how well maintained it was by its previous operator. While it was built in the 1950s, it looks new, he said. “That place is like it’s been in a time capsule all these years,” he said.The previous owner, Spiro Charuhas, sold the drive-in to an investment group when he decided to retire, and Kohlberg was able to lease the theater until some other plan comes along for the land.
This is a March 1950 story in the Dixon Evening Telegraph:
Los Angeles, March 15â€"(AP)â€"Marty Brill, 44, Notre Dame football star of 20 years ago and former Loyola at Los Angeles coach, was charged today with misdemeanor, vagrancy and lewd conduct in a theatre. Officer A. G. Wiseman of the police vice squad accused Brill, married and the father of three children, of making an improper advance. Brill told a reporter he had several drinks and vaguely recalled being jostled by someone in the theater. He is at liberty on $500 bail, pending a court appearance later today. A complaint was issued by the city attorney’s office on the basis of Wiseman’s statement.. The latter and two other vice squad officers, H. E. Dorrall and G. H Yorham, made the arrest at the Art Theater on South Main street.
This is part of an article in the Coshocton Tribune dated 5/14/59:
The final curtain goes down tonight on the historic, tradition-laden Sixth Street theater, for more than a half-century Coshocton’s chief center of entertainment, drama and movies. The building was recently sold to the Coshocton Tribune by Warner Bros. for $13,500. The Pastime theater on Main st. is to be reopened by Warner Bros, tomorrow night.
The Tribune has announced it has no immediate plans for the property, but that it could prove useful in any future expansion, since it is adjacent to the newspaper plant. Under terms of the sale, the building cannot be used as a movie theater. And so, James Salmans, local manager, has announced that tonight’s show will mark the end of the Sixth. Street as a theater.
The huge brick structure was erected in 1903 by a group of local promoters called the Coshocton Theater Co. Heading the company for many years was the late T. J. Hanley, whose flour mill at Second and Main streets was long a Coshocton landmark, until destroyed by fire. In later life, Mr. Hanley lived in Mansfield.
For the last 30 years, the Sixth Street has been devoted largely to movies. But before that, during the first 26 years of its existence, it was Coshocton’s home of the legitimate stage. And during that glamorous period some of the greatest actors and actresses in American stage history trod the boards of the old Sixth Street house.
Only five years after its birth, the Sixth Street was the scene of one of the most spectacular and shocking tragedies in Coshocton history. The victim was William “Fearnaught” Wilson, 30, also known as the “legless wonderâ€. A local youth,, Wilson went to Columbus when he was 20 to enlist for the Spanish-American war. Hopping a freight to return to Coshocton, he fell under the wheels and lost both legs.
He learned to ride a bicycle and created an act called, prophetically, “The Whirl of Deathâ€. Wilson scheduled his first two official performances for local viewers at the Sixth Street on August 3, 1908. On his first attempt, he performed the feat perfectly. On his second try, something went wrong and his bicycle came loose from its track at the top of a loop, leaving Wilson swinging in a pendulum, helplessly and head down, his skull crushing against a beam. In full view of a horrified audience, many of them children, he was killed instantly, his head crushed to a pulp.
But that was the only blot on the Sixth Street’s history. On thousands of nights it brought entertainment, drama and comedy to countless thousands of people. The late Jim Hagans, native of Roscoe, circus musician and showboat operator, returned to Coshocton in 1912 as manager of the Sixth Street, and remained in that capacity until 1926.
And thus, the last show at the Sixth Street tonight marks the end of an era in Coshoctonâ€"an era of glamour, glitter, grease paint, footlights and stage stars, most of whom live only in memory.
This is from the Mansfield News Journal, dated 5/23/58:
The Park Theater closed its doors to the public today for an indefinite period. Skirball Brothers, Inc., owners and operators of the Park Theater, announced: “Due to the fact that management cannot meet the demands of the moving picture machine operators' union, the theater will be closed until further notice.” It was explained that the “demands” centered around wages for the four-day work week which was started at the theater recently. A few weeks ago the Park management announced the theater would close Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of each week. Skirball spokesmen said no plans have been made for using the theater in the near future.
This is from the Lima News dated 5/29/55. There should be an aka of Orpheum Theater, also an address change to 118 W. Market.
The State Theater, 118 W. Market St., once the Orpheum Theater playing Gus Sun and Keith-Albee vaudeville acts, will close its doors “indefinitely” Thursday night. Stanley Warner Pictures Inc., New York, operator of the State, Sigma and Ohio theaters in Lima, has notified its Lima manager, W. J. (Doc) Elliott to close the State. The lease on the building expires Aug. 31.
Plans for the building, owned by Miss Jessie M. Boone, Lima; William K. Boone, who lives in Mexico, and Mrs. Frances B. Holland, Miami, Fla., are not known. Leases held by three other businesses having space in the building also expire Aug. 31. Mrs. Margaret McBarron, manager of the State, will return to the Ohio as assistant manager, a job she held prior to moving to the State in April 1953. The other Warner theaters in Lima will absorb as many of the other 16 State employes as possible, Elliott added.
Here is an April 3, 1946 item from the San Antonio Express:
The Alamo Drive-In Theater, built at a cost of $100,000 one mile north on Austin Hwy., will be formally opened Thursday at 7 p.m. Arthur Landsman, manager and co-owner, along with C.A. Richter and E.L. Pack, said the screen, employing a new plaster, provides more clearly defined pictures with realistic depth. Five hundred can be accommodated at the theater, he said.
Here is a recent story from the Indianapolis Star:
http://tinyurl.com/ctk6p6
If you enter www.alamotheatre.org you get this site http://www.oldfilm.org/ which as karan pointed out in 2006 owns the theater.
Is the address 85 Main or 379 Main? The theater website says 85. Additionally, the Bittersweet Gift Shop seen in the 6/4/08 photo is at 81 Main.
The theater recently received a $32,500 grant:
http://tinyurl.com/ar925d
Renovation is discussed in this 2/11/09 article:
http://tinyurl.com/arsejx
This story was posted by the Charleston Gazette:
http://tinyurl.com/cjp2au
A story about the hotel published yesterday in the Daily Telegraph included this 1953 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/cmqc7j
There is a view of the Onarga on this site:
http://tinyurl.com/c4jxt2
I hit the preview button about six or seven times to fix the typos, but I missed that one.
This is from the Odessa American on 1/17/57:
A three-alarm fire roared through the Rio Theater here in pre-dawn hours Thursday, completely gutting the 900-seat movie house and causing damage estimated from $75,000 to as high as $200,000. Two firemen were taken to Medical Center Hospital suffering from exposure, but were released shortly afterward and sent home.
The fire apparently broke out about 1 a.m., firemen said. Firemen fought the roaring blaze until about 4:30 a.m. Cause of the fire was not immediately determined. Several firemen miraculously escaped injury in a backdraft explosion which blew out the southwest upper wall. Falling timbers twice almost trapped firemen in the roaring inferno.
A passing cab driver, unidentified, reported the blaze at 1:25 a.m. After seeing the blaze, then confined within the building, he radioed his dispatcher, who alerted firemen. Firemen quickly pulled two additional alarms, the second coming at 1:30 and the third at 1:35 a.m.
The fire completely gutted the building leaving only the brick walls and a small portion of the roof remaining. Streams of water poured onto the fire quickly turned into icicles and sheets of ice in the 14-degree weather.
Wallace Scott, a co-owner of the Rio and the adjoining Scott Theater, which was damaged slightly by smoke, estimated damage “at about $125,000 to the equipment and the building.†Plans for remodeling the Rio were announced immediately after the fire on Thursday.
Sorry, that should be movie houses, not nooses. I missed that one.
Here is a May 1970 item from the Oakland Tribune:
The Oakland City Council last night refused to issue a business license to a downtown theater which specializes in “adult” films. Backing up its staff, the council declined to give a license to Pussycat Theaters Inc. to operate the Art Cinema Theatre at 1118 Broadway. City Hearing Officer George Dini said the denial was based on seven arrests in the theater of men charged with lewd conduct in the theater while watching films. He also claimed the theater had a “buzzer” system warning employees when police officers arrived to check the audience.
An attorney for the firm, which operates 14 such movie nooses in the west, said the council’s action violated the First Amendment. Its owner, Vince Miranda, said he will appeal the council action. He also told the council that he was a native Californian and religious. Mayor John H. Reading asked Miranda, “You don’t hold any Scout merit badges, do you?” Miranda did not reply.
The Cumberland MD Evening Times had the same story but also included a quote from Marty:
Wiseman quoted the former grid great, now a salesman for a wholesale drug company, “Why don’t you guys give me a break? I’m a married man with three kids. I haven’t done anything like this since I was a kid. I don’t know why I grabbed hold of you tonight. I’m Marty Brill, the famous football player.”
Here is a May 1972 item from the San Antonio Express:
Santikos Theaters Inc. has acquired the former Cinematex Theater in Colonies North and will reopen it Thursday under the new name of Colonies North Theater. The new addition to the theater chain will show first-run and top-quality movies, said Ken Higgins, one of the executives of Santikos.
The theater will open with Walt Disney’s “Pinocchio” and “The Barefoot Executive.” Following that double bill the theater will show “Hans Christian Anderson” beginning June 16, followed by “The Garden of Fitzi Continis,” which won an Oscar this year for the best foreign film.
John Crawford, former assistant manager of Santikos' San Pedro Outdoor Theater, will be the manager of the new 500-seat theater. Other theaters in the Santikos chain are Century South, Olmes, and the San Pedro, Fredericksburg Road, Trail and Town-Twin outdoor theaters.
I guess he had a wide stance.
Here is the theater’s website:
http://www.onargatheater.com/
Here is part of a June 1989 article from the Illinois Daily Herald:
GIBSON CITY, Ill. – With the reopening of a local drive-in theater, “a dinosaur is coining back,” and people once again will be able to enjoy summer evenings and movies simultaneously, says operator Michael Harroun. “There’s been a whole decade of people who haven’t seen them,” said the 33-year-old Onarga resident, who is re-opening the Harvest Moon Drive-In this month with state-of-the art equipment. Harroun and his next-door neighbor, 34-year-old John Talbert, are leasing and remodeling the Harvest Moon on Illinois Route 47 near this east-central Illinois community of 3,500.
Harroun and Talbert think the movie-going public isn’t ready to give up on the drive-in. “I honestly believe these things go in cycles,” said Harroun. “We’ve missed a whole generation. There’s a whole generation that should be able to enjoy a drive-in.” They plan to start showing movies under the stars on June 16, charging $2 a person. The theater will be open Friday through Monday nights through October.
The Harvest Moon Drive-In was closed in 1977 by owner Clifford Orr, who said he quit the business for health reasons. It reopened for a few years in the early 1980s under a lease. It is in relatively good shape, according to Harroun, because it was rebuilt after the screen and concession stand were destroyed by a tornado in 1965.
Harroun and his brother, Patrick, own and operate the Onarga Mode theater, which they opened in 1984, and the Watseka Bon Aire, which opened in 1987. Both are indoor theaters. Harroun and Talbert believe people will travel up to 30 minutes from as far away as Champaign-Urbana and Bloomington-Normal â€" two towns without drive-in movies.
Here is part of a September 1989 article from the Illinois Daily Herald:
Jeffrey Kohlberg is a drive-in movie nut. He began working at his father’s drive-in when he was eight years old â€" painting, cutting grass, working the concession stands, picking up golf balls at the driving range that was part of the old 53 Drive-In in Palatine. His dad, Stanford Kohlberg, at one time operated 50 theaters. Today, Kohlberg, 42, is back in the drive-in business after being out of it since 1987, when a Palatine drive-in .that he and his sister, Jarrol Cataldo, rented from their dad, was sold. The two own 53 Drive-In Management Inc., in Lincolnshire, which has operated the Des Plaines Theatre since 1985 and which this year took over operation of the Cascade Drive-In in West Chicago.
“The finest drive-in in the U.S.,” Kohlberg calls it, speaking admiringly of how well maintained it was by its previous operator. While it was built in the 1950s, it looks new, he said. “That place is like it’s been in a time capsule all these years,” he said.The previous owner, Spiro Charuhas, sold the drive-in to an investment group when he decided to retire, and Kohlberg was able to lease the theater until some other plan comes along for the land.
This is a March 1950 story in the Dixon Evening Telegraph:
Los Angeles, March 15â€"(AP)â€"Marty Brill, 44, Notre Dame football star of 20 years ago and former Loyola at Los Angeles coach, was charged today with misdemeanor, vagrancy and lewd conduct in a theatre. Officer A. G. Wiseman of the police vice squad accused Brill, married and the father of three children, of making an improper advance. Brill told a reporter he had several drinks and vaguely recalled being jostled by someone in the theater. He is at liberty on $500 bail, pending a court appearance later today. A complaint was issued by the city attorney’s office on the basis of Wiseman’s statement.. The latter and two other vice squad officers, H. E. Dorrall and G. H Yorham, made the arrest at the Art Theater on South Main street.
There are some before and after photos on this site:
http://tinyurl.com/cmbzcn
It’s 85 degrees today-ready to move here? Nice photos.
This is part of an article in the Coshocton Tribune dated 5/14/59:
The final curtain goes down tonight on the historic, tradition-laden Sixth Street theater, for more than a half-century Coshocton’s chief center of entertainment, drama and movies. The building was recently sold to the Coshocton Tribune by Warner Bros. for $13,500. The Pastime theater on Main st. is to be reopened by Warner Bros, tomorrow night.
The Tribune has announced it has no immediate plans for the property, but that it could prove useful in any future expansion, since it is adjacent to the newspaper plant. Under terms of the sale, the building cannot be used as a movie theater. And so, James Salmans, local manager, has announced that tonight’s show will mark the end of the Sixth. Street as a theater.
The huge brick structure was erected in 1903 by a group of local promoters called the Coshocton Theater Co. Heading the company for many years was the late T. J. Hanley, whose flour mill at Second and Main streets was long a Coshocton landmark, until destroyed by fire. In later life, Mr. Hanley lived in Mansfield.
For the last 30 years, the Sixth Street has been devoted largely to movies. But before that, during the first 26 years of its existence, it was Coshocton’s home of the legitimate stage. And during that glamorous period some of the greatest actors and actresses in American stage history trod the boards of the old Sixth Street house.
Only five years after its birth, the Sixth Street was the scene of one of the most spectacular and shocking tragedies in Coshocton history. The victim was William “Fearnaught” Wilson, 30, also known as the “legless wonderâ€. A local youth,, Wilson went to Columbus when he was 20 to enlist for the Spanish-American war. Hopping a freight to return to Coshocton, he fell under the wheels and lost both legs.
He learned to ride a bicycle and created an act called, prophetically, “The Whirl of Deathâ€. Wilson scheduled his first two official performances for local viewers at the Sixth Street on August 3, 1908. On his first attempt, he performed the feat perfectly. On his second try, something went wrong and his bicycle came loose from its track at the top of a loop, leaving Wilson swinging in a pendulum, helplessly and head down, his skull crushing against a beam. In full view of a horrified audience, many of them children, he was killed instantly, his head crushed to a pulp.
But that was the only blot on the Sixth Street’s history. On thousands of nights it brought entertainment, drama and comedy to countless thousands of people. The late Jim Hagans, native of Roscoe, circus musician and showboat operator, returned to Coshocton in 1912 as manager of the Sixth Street, and remained in that capacity until 1926.
And thus, the last show at the Sixth Street tonight marks the end of an era in Coshoctonâ€"an era of glamour, glitter, grease paint, footlights and stage stars, most of whom live only in memory.
Curtain!
This is from the Mansfield News Journal, dated 5/23/58:
The Park Theater closed its doors to the public today for an indefinite period. Skirball Brothers, Inc., owners and operators of the Park Theater, announced: “Due to the fact that management cannot meet the demands of the moving picture machine operators' union, the theater will be closed until further notice.” It was explained that the “demands” centered around wages for the four-day work week which was started at the theater recently. A few weeks ago the Park management announced the theater would close Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of each week. Skirball spokesmen said no plans have been made for using the theater in the near future.
This is from the Lima News dated 5/29/55. There should be an aka of Orpheum Theater, also an address change to 118 W. Market.
The State Theater, 118 W. Market St., once the Orpheum Theater playing Gus Sun and Keith-Albee vaudeville acts, will close its doors “indefinitely” Thursday night. Stanley Warner Pictures Inc., New York, operator of the State, Sigma and Ohio theaters in Lima, has notified its Lima manager, W. J. (Doc) Elliott to close the State. The lease on the building expires Aug. 31.
Plans for the building, owned by Miss Jessie M. Boone, Lima; William K. Boone, who lives in Mexico, and Mrs. Frances B. Holland, Miami, Fla., are not known. Leases held by three other businesses having space in the building also expire Aug. 31. Mrs. Margaret McBarron, manager of the State, will return to the Ohio as assistant manager, a job she held prior to moving to the State in April 1953. The other Warner theaters in Lima will absorb as many of the other 16 State employes as possible, Elliott added.
Here is an April 3, 1946 item from the San Antonio Express:
The Alamo Drive-In Theater, built at a cost of $100,000 one mile north on Austin Hwy., will be formally opened Thursday at 7 p.m. Arthur Landsman, manager and co-owner, along with C.A. Richter and E.L. Pack, said the screen, employing a new plaster, provides more clearly defined pictures with realistic depth. Five hundred can be accommodated at the theater, he said.