The photo CSWalczak linked to in the previous comment is gone, but I suspect that it might have been the photo referred to in a correction at the end of the MPW article I linked to three comments earlier, which said:
“[As the above description was published on page 1017 of the issue dated June 7, with a photograph of the Rex theater in Spokane, Wash., we are republishing it with a view of the right Rex theater]”
The March 29, 2014, issue of the Poteau Daily News said that the Victory Theatre was one of the buildings destroyed by a fire that swept much of the town’s business district in 1981.
This comment on a NitrateVille message board says that the Victory was the same house as the Comet Theatre, which I’ve found mentioned in the 1910s. The earliest mention of the Victory I’ve found so far is from 1924.
The name Comet Theatre dates back to 1911 or earlier in Poteau. That year the March 17 issue of the Mulhall Enterprise ran a brief item saying that a $15,000 theater was to be built in Poteau by Blair & Miller, operators of the Comet Theatre there. Either the old or the new building might have been the house that eventually became the Victory.
Scroll up on the NitrateVille page to see a ca.1916 photo of a theater that might have been the Comet/Victory.
Thanks for the comment, Dale. Information about the theaters in Coolidge has been pretty sparse so far. We don’t have a page for the Studio, but we do have a page for a Mauk Theatre that opened in the mid-1930s. We haven’t been able to find out very much about it.
My first comment on the Mauk’s page has a link to a photo of it. I have been wondering if the Mauk was the theater that later was renamed the Studio. Perhaps you could take a look at the photo and let us know if it was the Studio or not (assuming it hadn’t been remodeled and become unrecognizable before you saw it?)
I don’t believe the Sho-To-All Theatre building has been demolished. If you compare Idc’s 1914 photo with the building at the southwest corner of Main and 4th you can see a distinctive transom window still intact above a disused door on the Main Street side. The theater was next door to that building, and its building and two other buildings along Main Street have had their upper floors covered by a grille of some sort, but the old brick fronts and windows can be seen through the grille. That has to be the old theater building, though the only door in it currently has the address 109.
I suspect that the only original parts of the theater building still standing are the facade and the common wall shared with the narrow shop next door. Most of the wall along Chamberlain Street appears to be of concrete rather than the brick that would have been used in the original 1893 structure. That wall, and probably the back wall as well, must have been part of the 1970 post-fire rebuilding by J. C. Penney’s.
The original Strand, which burned in 1925, was created in 1916 by the combination of two smaller theaters, the Bijou and the Star, as described in this item from the May 20, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
“PARKERSBURG. W. VA.— P. W. Barrett, manager of the Star and Bijou theaters, will combine structures and operate as one house; remove partitions; install steel beams and cross-beams resting on pilasters, etc. The stage will measure 38 by 100 feet; heating and ventilating systems; upholstered opera chairs; electric sign: marquis; indirect lighting system: projection machines ordered from Nicholas Powers Company, New York.”
I doubt that the stage was actually 38x100. More likely that was the size of the entire combined theater. The Bijou and the Star had both been in operation as movie theaters by 1912, the Star already being operated by P. W. Barrett.
According to an article in the September 28, 2014, issue of Roane County News, the Lyric Theatre was the same house that was later known as the Ritz, which operated at least as late as 1953. An artist who goes by the single name Susanne has a few paintings of Rockwood posted online, and this street scene dated around 1940 shows the Lyric. Her painting of the Ritz is a close view that doesn’t show the details of the upper part of the building or its surroundings, but it’s the same red brick front. The house had a different marquee as the Ritz.
This item from the “Picture Theaters Projected” column of The Moving Picture World, May 20, 1916, is probably about the remodeling project that became the Lyric:
“ROCKWOOD, TENN.— J. M. Colvin and Walter Howard are reported to remodel building for moving picture theater; construct stage; provide seating capacity of 500, etc. The alterations will cost $4,000.”
Colvin & Howard were mentioned as operators of the Lyric Theatre at Rockwood in the July 2, 1921, issue of Exhibitor’s Herald. Then, Motion Picture Herald of November 14, 1936, mentioned Mr. W. L. Howard, manager of “…the local theater….” in Rockwood. The Roan Theatre had apparently not yet been opened.
The March 8, 1919, issue of Exhibitor’s Trade Review had this item about the Wyoming Theatre:
“New Theatre in Mullens
“A splendid moving picture house and a new hotel, both named the Wyoming, have been opened in Mullens. W. Va., by Mr. Sizemore. The theatre charges 20 cents admission and is putting on some of the best features.”
The first name of architect A. F. Wysong was Alphonso. Wysong had offices in Princeton and Bluefield, and designed a number of significant buildings in the region, but so far the Wyoming is the only movie theater I’ve found among his works. He did design the Municipal Auditorium at Charleston, West Virginia, built in 1939 and now listed on the NRHP.
This item from the March 23, 1918, issue of The American Contractor could be about the Wyoming Theatre:
“Contract Awarded. Mullens, W. Va.—M. P. Theater & Garage: $25,000. Archt. A. F. Wysong, Princeton. W. Va. Owner Wyoming Realty & Impr. Co., care D. D. Moran, Mullens. Gen. contr. let to D. J. Phipps, Kirk a, Roanoke, Va.”
The NRHP Registration Form for the Mullens Historic District, of which the Wyoming Theatre is a contributing structure, says that the Wyoming was built in 1922, but Exhibitors Trade Review announced the opening of the house in the spring of 1919. Possibly something happened to the original theater and it was replaced in 1922, or maybe the Registration Form is simply mistaken.
More news about the Lyric Airdome, from the March 1, 1913, issue of amusement industry trade journal The New York Clipper:
“Neal S. ANDERSON has purchased the Grand Opera House and Lyric Airdome, at Carthage, Mo. This venture is independent of his interest in the Elite Theatre Co., owning one-half interest. He will continue as manager of Elite theatre (motion pictures), and have full charge of Grand and Airdome.”
As the Roxy probably was the same house as the earlier Delphus Theatre, I’ll put this item from The Nickelodeon of May, 1909, here:
“Carthage, Mo. — I. P. Williams of this city and C. O. Williams of Webb City, owners of the Delphos [sic] Theater here, will conduct a moving picture theater at the corner of Fourth and Lincoln.”
I believe Fourth and Lincoln was the location of the Grand Opera House, so the Williamses might have been leasing the Opera House for showing movies.
This earlier comment by jsheehy454 cites a 1914 death certificate mentioning the Hippodrome Theatre at Fourth and Lincoln, so I think Hippodrome might have been an aka for the Grand Opera House.
The 1913 Airdome built behind the Delphus Theatre was to be called the Delphus Hippodrome, according to the MPW item I cited in this comment. That item names one of the operators of the Delphus as J. P. Williams (the J was most likely a typo that should have been an I.) It looks like Williams might have used the name Hippodrome at two different theaters in Carthage.
I see that the ad for the Photoplay spells the co-owner’s name McDurmeit. As the standard spelling of that surname is McDermeit, I had thought that MPW might have made a typo, but a local ad with that spelling suggests that he did use a variant spelling of his name. Other sources do use McDermeit, though, including an item in the September 25, 1915, issue of The Billboard which said that Ben and Porter Blackford had bought the Photoplay Theatre in Carthage from James A. McDermeit.
The Lyric Airdome in Carthage was mentioned in an issue of Variety (an act, probably vaudevillian, called Kelly, Sam & Ida were appearing,) but I have only one page of the issue and there is no date on it. It was from the latter part of 1907, though, as another act on the list was appearing in Mexico City “…to Jan 4, 1908.” A couple of other acts on the list were scheduled at various places through dates as early as October, so the issue might have been from early that month or late September. In any case, the Lyric Airdome was in operation at least as early as the fall of 1907.
The description of this theater says it was a Cinerama twin, but the Holiday does not appear on Cinerama Theatres which lists only two Cinerama houses in Buffalo; the Teck Theatre (converted for Cinerama in 1955) and the United Artists Century Theatre, converted in 1967. An April 3, 1967, Boxoffice article about the conversion of the Century said that the opening of Grand Prix at the Century just before Easter would be the first Cinerama movie seen in Buffalo since How the West Was Won in the spring of 1963.
Holiday Theaters Inc., the original owners of this house, had owned the Aero Drive-In, on the site of which this theater was built. An article in the February 9, 1964, issue of the Buffalo Courier-Express said that Holiday Theaters had just broken ground on a restaurant on the site of the Aero Drive-In and planned to build a twin indoor theater on the site in the future. Holiday had just taken a lease on the Elmwood Theatre, which was their first indoor location. In addition to the Aero, the company operated the West Twin, East Twin, and Buffalo Drive-Ins in the Buffalo area, and the TePee Drive-In in Pickering, Ontario.
This house was advertised as the Royal Theatre, 18th and Main, in the “Moving Picture Theatres of Los Angeles” ad in the Los Angeles Times of March 13, 1914.
Carthage also had a house called the Photoplay Theatre, opened in late 1909 or early 1910 and still running in 1912 when a photo and brief description of it appeared on this page of the January 27 issue of The Moving Picture World. The Photoplay could, of course, have been an earlier name for one or another of Carthage’s other theaters.
Bill Counter’s research (at tovangar2’s link) indicates that this house was called the Cecil Theatre only in the 1910 directory. In 1908-1909 and again in 1911 it was the Royal Theatre. In the absence of any city directories from 1912-1914 I don’t know if the house went back to the name Cecil after 1911, but for now I’m inclined to think we should also list the theater as the Royal, with Cecil as an aka, even though that might cause a bit of confusion with the currently-operating Royal Theatre in Sawtelle.
The Columbia Theatre was in operation prior to 1919. An April 7, 1944, item in the Anadarko Daily News said that Ray Rector had sold the Columbia Theatre to Wesley and Maude Hodges. It said that Rector was only three months short of having operated the theater for 25 years, having bought it from Eddie Davis shortly after the first world war.
The Columbia Theatre was located on West Broadway, according to an item in the December 19, 1950, Daily News. The house had just been closed, but there were tentative plans to reopen it in January. I haven’t found anything confirming that it did reopen, though. The Redskin and Miler Theatres, both opened in 1947, were still in operation, but a fourth house, the Moore Theatre, had closed earlier in 1950.
Anadarko’s four movie theaters were sold to new operators in 1950. An article about the sale in the February 7 issue of the Anadarko Daily News said that Maurice DeFord had opened the Miller Theatre in May, 1947. The rival Redskin Theatre had been opened February 12 that same year by the Hodges family, operators of the Columbia and Moore Theatres. The Hodges family had also operated the Broadway Theatre, which they closed around the time they opened the Redskin.
A September 29, 1944, item in the Anadarko Daily News said that Wade Moore had sold the Moore Theatre, at 212 W. Main Street, to Mrs. Maude Hodges, operator of the Broadway Theatre for the previous twelve years, and her son Leroy. Moore, the article said, had owned the theater for nearly 34 years, which would give an opening year of about 1911, or earlier if Moore had taken over an existing theater.
Ritz Theatre was a new name for a house that was originally called the Princess Theatre, and which was in operation by early 1912. According to this page at Frankfort Place Forum, the Ritz building has been occupied by the Dan Caddell Jewelery store since the mid-1950s. The address is 54 N. Main Street.
The new name of this theater was styled De Ray, rather than DeRay, according to the congratulatory ads for its opening in the June 2, 1929 issue of The Joplin Globe. The old Lyric Theatre had been extensively remodeled, with plans by Joplin architect T. E. Martinie. The block on which it was located is now the site of the Joplin Public Library.
The Ritz Theatre was added to the Register of Historic Kansas Places on November 8, 2014. The Registration form (PDF here) says that the theater officially opened on April 30, 1926, and that Joplin architect T. E. Martinie handled the conversion of the building from its former use as a dry goods store into a movie theater.
The photo CSWalczak linked to in the previous comment is gone, but I suspect that it might have been the photo referred to in a correction at the end of the MPW article I linked to three comments earlier, which said:
The March 29, 2014, issue of the Poteau Daily News said that the Victory Theatre was one of the buildings destroyed by a fire that swept much of the town’s business district in 1981.
This comment on a NitrateVille message board says that the Victory was the same house as the Comet Theatre, which I’ve found mentioned in the 1910s. The earliest mention of the Victory I’ve found so far is from 1924.
The name Comet Theatre dates back to 1911 or earlier in Poteau. That year the March 17 issue of the Mulhall Enterprise ran a brief item saying that a $15,000 theater was to be built in Poteau by Blair & Miller, operators of the Comet Theatre there. Either the old or the new building might have been the house that eventually became the Victory.
Scroll up on the NitrateVille page to see a ca.1916 photo of a theater that might have been the Comet/Victory.
Thanks for the comment, Dale. Information about the theaters in Coolidge has been pretty sparse so far. We don’t have a page for the Studio, but we do have a page for a Mauk Theatre that opened in the mid-1930s. We haven’t been able to find out very much about it.
My first comment on the Mauk’s page has a link to a photo of it. I have been wondering if the Mauk was the theater that later was renamed the Studio. Perhaps you could take a look at the photo and let us know if it was the Studio or not (assuming it hadn’t been remodeled and become unrecognizable before you saw it?)
I don’t believe the Sho-To-All Theatre building has been demolished. If you compare Idc’s 1914 photo with the building at the southwest corner of Main and 4th you can see a distinctive transom window still intact above a disused door on the Main Street side. The theater was next door to that building, and its building and two other buildings along Main Street have had their upper floors covered by a grille of some sort, but the old brick fronts and windows can be seen through the grille. That has to be the old theater building, though the only door in it currently has the address 109.
I suspect that the only original parts of the theater building still standing are the facade and the common wall shared with the narrow shop next door. Most of the wall along Chamberlain Street appears to be of concrete rather than the brick that would have been used in the original 1893 structure. That wall, and probably the back wall as well, must have been part of the 1970 post-fire rebuilding by J. C. Penney’s.
The original Strand, which burned in 1925, was created in 1916 by the combination of two smaller theaters, the Bijou and the Star, as described in this item from the May 20, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World:
I doubt that the stage was actually 38x100. More likely that was the size of the entire combined theater. The Bijou and the Star had both been in operation as movie theaters by 1912, the Star already being operated by P. W. Barrett.According to an article in the September 28, 2014, issue of Roane County News, the Lyric Theatre was the same house that was later known as the Ritz, which operated at least as late as 1953. An artist who goes by the single name Susanne has a few paintings of Rockwood posted online, and this street scene dated around 1940 shows the Lyric. Her painting of the Ritz is a close view that doesn’t show the details of the upper part of the building or its surroundings, but it’s the same red brick front. The house had a different marquee as the Ritz.
This item from the “Picture Theaters Projected” column of The Moving Picture World, May 20, 1916, is probably about the remodeling project that became the Lyric:
Colvin & Howard were mentioned as operators of the Lyric Theatre at Rockwood in the July 2, 1921, issue of Exhibitor’s Herald. Then, Motion Picture Herald of November 14, 1936, mentioned Mr. W. L. Howard, manager of “…the local theater….” in Rockwood. The Roan Theatre had apparently not yet been opened.The March 8, 1919, issue of Exhibitor’s Trade Review had this item about the Wyoming Theatre:
The first name of architect A. F. Wysong was Alphonso. Wysong had offices in Princeton and Bluefield, and designed a number of significant buildings in the region, but so far the Wyoming is the only movie theater I’ve found among his works. He did design the Municipal Auditorium at Charleston, West Virginia, built in 1939 and now listed on the NRHP.This item from the March 23, 1918, issue of The American Contractor could be about the Wyoming Theatre:
The NRHP Registration Form for the Mullens Historic District, of which the Wyoming Theatre is a contributing structure, says that the Wyoming was built in 1922, but Exhibitors Trade Review announced the opening of the house in the spring of 1919. Possibly something happened to the original theater and it was replaced in 1922, or maybe the Registration Form is simply mistaken.More news about the Lyric Airdome, from the March 1, 1913, issue of amusement industry trade journal The New York Clipper:
As the Roxy probably was the same house as the earlier Delphus Theatre, I’ll put this item from The Nickelodeon of May, 1909, here:
I believe Fourth and Lincoln was the location of the Grand Opera House, so the Williamses might have been leasing the Opera House for showing movies.This earlier comment by jsheehy454 cites a 1914 death certificate mentioning the Hippodrome Theatre at Fourth and Lincoln, so I think Hippodrome might have been an aka for the Grand Opera House.
The 1913 Airdome built behind the Delphus Theatre was to be called the Delphus Hippodrome, according to the MPW item I cited in this comment. That item names one of the operators of the Delphus as J. P. Williams (the J was most likely a typo that should have been an I.) It looks like Williams might have used the name Hippodrome at two different theaters in Carthage.
I see that the ad for the Photoplay spells the co-owner’s name McDurmeit. As the standard spelling of that surname is McDermeit, I had thought that MPW might have made a typo, but a local ad with that spelling suggests that he did use a variant spelling of his name. Other sources do use McDermeit, though, including an item in the September 25, 1915, issue of The Billboard which said that Ben and Porter Blackford had bought the Photoplay Theatre in Carthage from James A. McDermeit.
The Lyric Airdome in Carthage was mentioned in an issue of Variety (an act, probably vaudevillian, called Kelly, Sam & Ida were appearing,) but I have only one page of the issue and there is no date on it. It was from the latter part of 1907, though, as another act on the list was appearing in Mexico City “…to Jan 4, 1908.” A couple of other acts on the list were scheduled at various places through dates as early as October, so the issue might have been from early that month or late September. In any case, the Lyric Airdome was in operation at least as early as the fall of 1907.
There could have been another operator between Holiday and AMC, though. I haven’t been able to discover what became of Holiday Theatres Inc.
The description of this theater says it was a Cinerama twin, but the Holiday does not appear on Cinerama Theatres which lists only two Cinerama houses in Buffalo; the Teck Theatre (converted for Cinerama in 1955) and the United Artists Century Theatre, converted in 1967. An April 3, 1967, Boxoffice article about the conversion of the Century said that the opening of Grand Prix at the Century just before Easter would be the first Cinerama movie seen in Buffalo since How the West Was Won in the spring of 1963.
Holiday Theaters Inc., the original owners of this house, had owned the Aero Drive-In, on the site of which this theater was built. An article in the February 9, 1964, issue of the Buffalo Courier-Express said that Holiday Theaters had just broken ground on a restaurant on the site of the Aero Drive-In and planned to build a twin indoor theater on the site in the future. Holiday had just taken a lease on the Elmwood Theatre, which was their first indoor location. In addition to the Aero, the company operated the West Twin, East Twin, and Buffalo Drive-Ins in the Buffalo area, and the TePee Drive-In in Pickering, Ontario.
This house was advertised as the Royal Theatre, 18th and Main, in the “Moving Picture Theatres of Los Angeles” ad in the Los Angeles Times of March 13, 1914.
Carthage also had a house called the Photoplay Theatre, opened in late 1909 or early 1910 and still running in 1912 when a photo and brief description of it appeared on this page of the January 27 issue of The Moving Picture World. The Photoplay could, of course, have been an earlier name for one or another of Carthage’s other theaters.
Bill Counter’s research (at tovangar2’s link) indicates that this house was called the Cecil Theatre only in the 1910 directory. In 1908-1909 and again in 1911 it was the Royal Theatre. In the absence of any city directories from 1912-1914 I don’t know if the house went back to the name Cecil after 1911, but for now I’m inclined to think we should also list the theater as the Royal, with Cecil as an aka, even though that might cause a bit of confusion with the currently-operating Royal Theatre in Sawtelle.
The Miller Theatre is at the southwest corner of W. Main and NW 2nd Street. Here is Google Street View.
The Columbia Theatre was in operation prior to 1919. An April 7, 1944, item in the Anadarko Daily News said that Ray Rector had sold the Columbia Theatre to Wesley and Maude Hodges. It said that Rector was only three months short of having operated the theater for 25 years, having bought it from Eddie Davis shortly after the first world war.
The Columbia Theatre was located on West Broadway, according to an item in the December 19, 1950, Daily News. The house had just been closed, but there were tentative plans to reopen it in January. I haven’t found anything confirming that it did reopen, though. The Redskin and Miler Theatres, both opened in 1947, were still in operation, but a fourth house, the Moore Theatre, had closed earlier in 1950.
Anadarko’s four movie theaters were sold to new operators in 1950. An article about the sale in the February 7 issue of the Anadarko Daily News said that Maurice DeFord had opened the Miller Theatre in May, 1947. The rival Redskin Theatre had been opened February 12 that same year by the Hodges family, operators of the Columbia and Moore Theatres. The Hodges family had also operated the Broadway Theatre, which they closed around the time they opened the Redskin.
A September 29, 1944, item in the Anadarko Daily News said that Wade Moore had sold the Moore Theatre, at 212 W. Main Street, to Mrs. Maude Hodges, operator of the Broadway Theatre for the previous twelve years, and her son Leroy. Moore, the article said, had owned the theater for nearly 34 years, which would give an opening year of about 1911, or earlier if Moore had taken over an existing theater.
Ritz Theatre was a new name for a house that was originally called the Princess Theatre, and which was in operation by early 1912. According to this page at Frankfort Place Forum, the Ritz building has been occupied by the Dan Caddell Jewelery store since the mid-1950s. The address is 54 N. Main Street.
The new name of this theater was styled De Ray, rather than DeRay, according to the congratulatory ads for its opening in the June 2, 1929 issue of The Joplin Globe. The old Lyric Theatre had been extensively remodeled, with plans by Joplin architect T. E. Martinie. The block on which it was located is now the site of the Joplin Public Library.
The Ritz Theatre was added to the Register of Historic Kansas Places on November 8, 2014. The Registration form (PDF here) says that the theater officially opened on April 30, 1926, and that Joplin architect T. E. Martinie handled the conversion of the building from its former use as a dry goods store into a movie theater.