An article about Crowley’s theaters in the June 16, 2013, issue of The Crowley Post-Signal (PDF here) says that the Acadia Theatre was in operation from 1919 to 1955.
A couple of issues of The Film Daily in 1936 said that the Southern Amusement Co. had reopened the Acadia after remodeling it, but both items got the theater’s name wrong, one calling it the Arcade and the other the Arcadia.
An article about Crowley’s theaters in the June 16, 2013, issue of The Crowley Post-Signal (PDF here) says that the Rice Theatre had its last show as a movie theater in late October, 1983. The feature was a science fiction movie called Horror Planet (this movie was originally released in the UK in 1981 as Inseminoid.)
CinemaTour lists the Joy Theatre at 200 E. Texas Avenue, and displays two photos, dated May, 2014, from the Adam Martin collection.
In 1946, the Joy Theatre in Rayne was being operated by New Orleans-based Ritz Theatres, headed by L. C. Montgomery. The August 10, 1946, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review had this item about the Joy:
“It has been learned here that fire Aug. 3 destroyed the Joy Theatre, only house in Rayne, Louisiana, owned by L. C. Montgomery.”
Montgomery had a second house under construction at the time of the fire, to be called the Acadia Theatre. The April 10, 1948, issue of STR reported that Joy Houck had traded his interest in the Joy Theatre in New Orleans to Levere Montgomery (Montgomery already owned a part interest in the house) for his interests in theaters in Rayne and two other cities.
What I have been unable to discover is if the Acadia Theatre opened under that name and the Joy was rebuilt, or if Montgomery opened the proposed Acadia as the new Joy. I have also been unable to determine if any of four earlier names for theaters in Rayne were aka’s for the pre-fire Joy. These names were the Moulin Rouge (mentioned 1916), the Craig Theatre (mentioned 1924), the Opera House (mentioned 1934 and 1935) and the Evangeline Theatre (mentioned 1935.) A May 4, 1935, item said that the Evangeline was to be renamed the Roxy. Another item that year mentions Earl Craig as operating a theater in opposition to the Evangeline/Roxy. That might have been the Opera House or the Craig Theatre, or Opera House might have been an aka for the Craig.
The July 8, 1946, issue of Motion Picture Daily mentioned this theater, but datelined the item Everett, Washington, which is a few miles north of Lynnwood:
“$50,000 Coast Drive-in
Everett, Wash., July 7. — Clearing and grading has started at a 10-acre site on the Everett-Seattle highway, for a $50,000 ‘Sno-King’ Drive-In Theatre, which is now in the hands of Otis Hancock, architect. C. L. Rockey and Lewis A. Argono are the owners. The theatre will provide space for 650 automobiles.“
The July 5, 1946, issue of Motion Picture Daily said that “Newman R. Robinson, ex-serviceman, formerly affiliated with Robb and Rowley, at Little Rock, Ark., is reported as building a new 275-seat house at West Rutland, Vt.”
The photo currently displayed at the top of this page depicts Michigan Avenue in Battle Creek, about a block away from the Post Theatre on McCalmly Street. The sign reading “Post Theatre” was attached to the Post Tavern at the corner of Michigan and McCalmly.
There are three photos of the Post Theatre on this page at Water Winter Wonderland.
The Acme was one of several Maine theaters owned and/or operated in the early 20th century by Wilbor A. Shea, who had houses at Eastport, Lubec, Calais, and Pembroke.
The usually reliable Cinemadata project provides this page about the Acme Theatre, but some of the information on the page apparently conflates the Acme with another Eastport theater, the Memorial Opera House, which was also operated by Wilbor Shea. The Memorial Opera House burned down in 1913.
An item in the “Rep Ripples” column of The Billboard for January 3, 1942, mentioned the new theater under construction in Eastport, Maine, that was to be named for Wilbor A. Shea. It said that Shea had for many years had dramatic repertoire troupes traveling through Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.
A 1911 book called Monarchs of Minstrelsy, from ‘Daddy’ Rice to Date" (scan at Google Books,) by Edward Le Roy Rice, has this biographical sketch of Wilbor Shea’s father, who was also in show business:
“Pete Lee (Shea) was conceded to be one of the greatest tambourinists in minstrelsy; as a comedian, he was excellent.
“As early as February, 1858, he was touring with Pete Lee’s Empire Minstrels.
“He joined Buckleys Serenaders in the 6o’s, and continued with them for several seasons.
“August 28, 1871, he made his first appearance in Philadelphia, as a member of Simmons and Slocum’s Minstrels.
“He was also prominently identified with the companies of Morris Brothers, and Sharpley’s. In 1872 he opened Bishop’s Opera House in St. Johns, N. B., renaming it Lee’s Opera House, and conducting it for several years.
“His last professional appearance was about 1878.
“A son, Wilbor F. Shea, is manager of the Memorial Opera House, Eastport, Me.
“Pete Lee was born in Cambridge, Mass., January 6, 1838; he died in Eastport, Me., October 11, 1896.”
The building on the right, part of which housed the Colonial Theatre around 1915, is still standing. It’s called the Gryphon Building. The building adjoining it at the corner of Merchant’s Row is the New Gryphon Building. All three structures are part of the NRHP-listed Rutland Downtown Historic District.
docchapel: The theater at Slauson and Vermont must have been the Temple. This is a link to the Temple’s page. Be sure to also click on the “view all comments” link.
This link reaches the Lincoln Theatre page. It also has additional comments, plus several photos you can reach by clicking the “Photos” link in the box just above the theater photo on the main page.
There might have been two theaters called the Bill Robinson on Central Avenue. We have only one of them listed: Here is the link. It was listed at 4219 S. Central (the former Tivoli Theatre) in the Film Daily Yearbook of 1941. In 1950 the Bill Robinson was being advertised as being at 4319 S. Central (possibly the former Casino Theatre, once listed at 4317 Central) so the name might have been moved during the 1940s. We just don’t know for sure.
docchapel: Did you ever attend the Regent Theatre on Vermont near 40th Place? We have a page for it, but nobody familiar with the theater has ever shown up to comment on it, so we know next to nothing about it. It might have closed sometime in the 1950s. I don’t remember ever having seen it myself.
The 1941 description is quite different from that in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide. The larger ground floor capacity listed in the MGM report was probably achieved by removing the stage house and extending seating into the space it had occupied. The upper part of the building was probably removed at the same time, accounting for the disappearance of the gallery and the reduction of balcony seating from 402 to 120.
That amounts to an almost complete rebuilding of all but the front of the theater sometime between 1913 and 1941. It makes me wonder if maybe there was a fire or other disaster that forced the rebuilding, but I’ve been unable to find anything about such an event.
In Google’s satellite and street views it is the Broadway Federal Bank that is on the site of the Figueroa Theatre, with a large housing complex just west of it along MLK Jr. Blvd and another housing complex to the south across 40th Place.
A couple of times in the 1950s when we were on our way to visit my grandparents, who lived on 99th Street west of Normandie, we drove past the Figueroa Theatre about the time the house was opening for a Saturday or Sunday matinée, and there would be a huge crowd waiting in the line for the box office. It must have been a very popular theater in those days.
I’ve finally have discovered who was the architect of the Apollo Theatre, in this item from the August 11, 1920, issue of Building & Engineering News:
“Contract Awarded.
“THEATRE AND STORE, Cost, $40,000
“HOLLYWOOD, Los Angeles Co. Cal. Hollywood Blvd. near St. Andrews Two-story brick theatre and store building, 50x174. Owner- Hollywood Theatres. Inc. Architect— C. S. Albright. 5910 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles.”
This was apparently the second building for the Apollo Theatre, which was in operation as early as 1919 either on the same site or nearby. According to a brief article in the November 8, 1919, issue of a local magazine called Holly Leaves, the Apollo, located east of St. Andrews Place, was to get a new building on the south side of the boulevard 140 feet east of Wilton Place. That project, also to have been designed by Albright, apparently fell through, as the 1920 project as built was still located east of St. Andrews Place.
C. S. Albright was probably both an architect and a builder, as I’ve found a few references to him receiving construction contracts for various projects during this period.
The 1919 article can be found at the lower left of this page at Google Books.
The July 21, 1920, issue of Building & Engineering News had an item saying that the contract had been awarded for construction of a reinforced concrete theater and store building, 118x40 feet, on Main Street in Ferndale for Boyd & Pollock. The project had been designed by Eureka architect Frank T. Georgeson.
This web page at Waymarking confirms that the project was the Hart Theatre. The theater is part of the NRHP-listed Ferndale Main Street Historic District.
I’ve finally discovered what happened to the original Kinema Theatre designed by G. H. King and opened in 1913, and why it was rebuilt in 1920. Here is an item from the July 21, 1920, issue of Building & Engineering News:
“FRESNO, Fresno Co., Cal.— The immediate rehabilitation of the Kinema Theatre is planned, according to Frank Purkett, Manager. The structure was recently destroyed by fire with a loss of approximately $75,000.”
The City of Chowchilla’s web site says that the Sierra Theatre was built in 1941 and demolished in the summer of 2006. It doesn’t give the year the house closed. It displays this photo.
About halfway down this web page are two photos of the Sierra from 1997. The caption says that the theater closed sometime in the mid to late 1970s.
Various newspaper and magazine items from the 1940s and 1950s name R. B. Smith as the owner and operator of the Sierra and Chowchilla Theatres. The older and smaller Chowchilla Theatre was closed in late 1953 and apparently never reopened.
This page is still missing the architects (Walker & Eisen, 1922, and alterations by H. L. Gogerty, 1924) as well as the aka’s: Empire Theatre (opening name) Mission Theatre, (by 1924) and Major Theatre (around 1929, according to Bill Counter’s page about it.) Counter also notes that in later years the house was advertised as the Fox Long Beach Theatre.
I don’t know why completion of the Empire Theatre was delayed until 1922. The July 14, 1920, issue of Building & Engineering News carried this notice that the contracts for construction of the project had been let:
“Contract Awarded.
“THEATRE & OFFICE BLDG. Cost. $109,800.
“LONG BEACH, Los Angeles Co., Cal. American and Bronx [sic] Avenues. Three-story brick and steel theatre and office building, 50x250. Owner — Lineberger, Hite & Lineberger. Architects — Walker & Eisen, 1402 Hibernian Bldg., Los Angeles. Contractor — Christ Thoren, 1131 Fuller Ave., Hollywood.”
An article about the closing and impending demolition of the Windsor Theatre appeared in the May 14, 1961, issue of the Chicago Tribune (Tribune archives.) The original Windsor opened on September 20, 1886, and later suffered two major fires. It was after the second fire that the house was rebuilt and reopened as a movie theater in 1914.
The project architects for the Regal Hacienda Crossing Cinema were Michael S. Johnstone and Chester Fong of the Charlotte, North Carolina, architectural firm Atkinson/Dyer/Watson Architects. There is a rendering of the theater, plus three small photos, in the January, 2000, issue of CMU Profiles in Architecture, the quarterly house organ of the Concrete Masonry Association of California and Nevada (PDF here.
The reconfiguration of the main auditorium of the Chinese Theatre for IMAX was designed by the Laguna Beach, California, architectural firm Blair Ballard Architects. There is one photo of the auditorium in the slide show on this page of the firm’s web site. Francis X. Bushman would barely recognize the place.
Blair Ballard Architects has reconfigured its web site and the link in my previous comment no longer works, but they still have one photo of the Galaxy Tulare at the end of the slide show on this page.
One large and three small photos of the Mountain Village Stadium 14 can be found in the January, 2001, issue of CMU Profiles in Architecture, the quarterly house organ of the Concrete Masonry Association of California and Nevada (PDF at this link.)
Thanks, Gpowers205. The Boys and Girls Club is at 6241 Skyway, and the next building south is at 6197, so the theater’s address would have been between those numbers- say approximately 6225. Google Maps' address approximation is way off, though, with readouts of 6180-6192 for the parking lot (which also serves as an extension of Fir Street between Skyway and Inez Way.)
This house might have been twinned in its later years. A “25 years ago” feature in the May 5, 2013, issue of the Sioux City Journal said that the owner of the Cameo Theaters were temporarily closed and the owner was trying to decide whether to dispose of or continue operating the house, which had suffered water damage. The headline and brief article used the plural “theaters” three times, so it wasn’t just a typo.
It’s also possible that the Cameo opened in the 1910s. A brochure for a walking tour of central downtown Sioux City says that the Cameo Theatre was in a building erected in 1901-1902 as an annex to the Martin Department Store, the main building of which was on 4th Street. The store moved to an entirely new building in 1916 and its old buildings were then converted for other uses. The brochure doesn’t say when the theater opened, only that it was in the former department store annex, so it’s possible that it was installed there in 1916, maybe originally operating under a different name.
The original 1901 facade, designed in the Beaux Arts style by architect Henry Fisher, is still largely intact, but the building doesn’t show any signs of having once housed a theater.
An article about Crowley’s theaters in the June 16, 2013, issue of The Crowley Post-Signal (PDF here) says that the Acadia Theatre was in operation from 1919 to 1955.
A couple of issues of The Film Daily in 1936 said that the Southern Amusement Co. had reopened the Acadia after remodeling it, but both items got the theater’s name wrong, one calling it the Arcade and the other the Arcadia.
An article about Crowley’s theaters in the June 16, 2013, issue of The Crowley Post-Signal (PDF here) says that the Rice Theatre had its last show as a movie theater in late October, 1983. The feature was a science fiction movie called Horror Planet (this movie was originally released in the UK in 1981 as Inseminoid.)
CinemaTour lists the Joy Theatre at 200 E. Texas Avenue, and displays two photos, dated May, 2014, from the Adam Martin collection.
In 1946, the Joy Theatre in Rayne was being operated by New Orleans-based Ritz Theatres, headed by L. C. Montgomery. The August 10, 1946, issue of Showmen’s Trade Review had this item about the Joy:
Montgomery had a second house under construction at the time of the fire, to be called the Acadia Theatre. The April 10, 1948, issue of STR reported that Joy Houck had traded his interest in the Joy Theatre in New Orleans to Levere Montgomery (Montgomery already owned a part interest in the house) for his interests in theaters in Rayne and two other cities.What I have been unable to discover is if the Acadia Theatre opened under that name and the Joy was rebuilt, or if Montgomery opened the proposed Acadia as the new Joy. I have also been unable to determine if any of four earlier names for theaters in Rayne were aka’s for the pre-fire Joy. These names were the Moulin Rouge (mentioned 1916), the Craig Theatre (mentioned 1924), the Opera House (mentioned 1934 and 1935) and the Evangeline Theatre (mentioned 1935.) A May 4, 1935, item said that the Evangeline was to be renamed the Roxy. Another item that year mentions Earl Craig as operating a theater in opposition to the Evangeline/Roxy. That might have been the Opera House or the Craig Theatre, or Opera House might have been an aka for the Craig.
The July 8, 1946, issue of Motion Picture Daily mentioned this theater, but datelined the item Everett, Washington, which is a few miles north of Lynnwood:
The July 5, 1946, issue of Motion Picture Daily said that “Newman R. Robinson, ex-serviceman, formerly affiliated with Robb and Rowley, at Little Rock, Ark., is reported as building a new 275-seat house at West Rutland, Vt.”
The photo currently displayed at the top of this page depicts Michigan Avenue in Battle Creek, about a block away from the Post Theatre on McCalmly Street. The sign reading “Post Theatre” was attached to the Post Tavern at the corner of Michigan and McCalmly.
There are three photos of the Post Theatre on this page at Water Winter Wonderland.
The Acme was one of several Maine theaters owned and/or operated in the early 20th century by Wilbor A. Shea, who had houses at Eastport, Lubec, Calais, and Pembroke.
The usually reliable Cinemadata project provides this page about the Acme Theatre, but some of the information on the page apparently conflates the Acme with another Eastport theater, the Memorial Opera House, which was also operated by Wilbor Shea. The Memorial Opera House burned down in 1913.
An item in the “Rep Ripples” column of The Billboard for January 3, 1942, mentioned the new theater under construction in Eastport, Maine, that was to be named for Wilbor A. Shea. It said that Shea had for many years had dramatic repertoire troupes traveling through Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.
A 1911 book called Monarchs of Minstrelsy, from ‘Daddy’ Rice to Date" (scan at Google Books,) by Edward Le Roy Rice, has this biographical sketch of Wilbor Shea’s father, who was also in show business:
The building on the right, part of which housed the Colonial Theatre around 1915, is still standing. It’s called the Gryphon Building. The building adjoining it at the corner of Merchant’s Row is the New Gryphon Building. All three structures are part of the NRHP-listed Rutland Downtown Historic District.
docchapel: The theater at Slauson and Vermont must have been the Temple. This is a link to the Temple’s page. Be sure to also click on the “view all comments” link.
This link reaches the Lincoln Theatre page. It also has additional comments, plus several photos you can reach by clicking the “Photos” link in the box just above the theater photo on the main page.
There might have been two theaters called the Bill Robinson on Central Avenue. We have only one of them listed: Here is the link. It was listed at 4219 S. Central (the former Tivoli Theatre) in the Film Daily Yearbook of 1941. In 1950 the Bill Robinson was being advertised as being at 4319 S. Central (possibly the former Casino Theatre, once listed at 4317 Central) so the name might have been moved during the 1940s. We just don’t know for sure.
docchapel: Did you ever attend the Regent Theatre on Vermont near 40th Place? We have a page for it, but nobody familiar with the theater has ever shown up to comment on it, so we know next to nothing about it. It might have closed sometime in the 1950s. I don’t remember ever having seen it myself.
The 1941 description is quite different from that in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide. The larger ground floor capacity listed in the MGM report was probably achieved by removing the stage house and extending seating into the space it had occupied. The upper part of the building was probably removed at the same time, accounting for the disappearance of the gallery and the reduction of balcony seating from 402 to 120.
That amounts to an almost complete rebuilding of all but the front of the theater sometime between 1913 and 1941. It makes me wonder if maybe there was a fire or other disaster that forced the rebuilding, but I’ve been unable to find anything about such an event.
In Google’s satellite and street views it is the Broadway Federal Bank that is on the site of the Figueroa Theatre, with a large housing complex just west of it along MLK Jr. Blvd and another housing complex to the south across 40th Place.
A couple of times in the 1950s when we were on our way to visit my grandparents, who lived on 99th Street west of Normandie, we drove past the Figueroa Theatre about the time the house was opening for a Saturday or Sunday matinée, and there would be a huge crowd waiting in the line for the box office. It must have been a very popular theater in those days.
I’ve finally have discovered who was the architect of the Apollo Theatre, in this item from the August 11, 1920, issue of Building & Engineering News:
This was apparently the second building for the Apollo Theatre, which was in operation as early as 1919 either on the same site or nearby. According to a brief article in the November 8, 1919, issue of a local magazine called Holly Leaves, the Apollo, located east of St. Andrews Place, was to get a new building on the south side of the boulevard 140 feet east of Wilton Place. That project, also to have been designed by Albright, apparently fell through, as the 1920 project as built was still located east of St. Andrews Place.C. S. Albright was probably both an architect and a builder, as I’ve found a few references to him receiving construction contracts for various projects during this period.
The 1919 article can be found at the lower left of this page at Google Books.
The July 21, 1920, issue of Building & Engineering News had an item saying that the contract had been awarded for construction of a reinforced concrete theater and store building, 118x40 feet, on Main Street in Ferndale for Boyd & Pollock. The project had been designed by Eureka architect Frank T. Georgeson.
This web page at Waymarking confirms that the project was the Hart Theatre. The theater is part of the NRHP-listed Ferndale Main Street Historic District.
I’ve finally discovered what happened to the original Kinema Theatre designed by G. H. King and opened in 1913, and why it was rebuilt in 1920. Here is an item from the July 21, 1920, issue of Building & Engineering News:
The City of Chowchilla’s web site says that the Sierra Theatre was built in 1941 and demolished in the summer of 2006. It doesn’t give the year the house closed. It displays this photo.
About halfway down this web page are two photos of the Sierra from 1997. The caption says that the theater closed sometime in the mid to late 1970s.
Various newspaper and magazine items from the 1940s and 1950s name R. B. Smith as the owner and operator of the Sierra and Chowchilla Theatres. The older and smaller Chowchilla Theatre was closed in late 1953 and apparently never reopened.
This page is still missing the architects (Walker & Eisen, 1922, and alterations by H. L. Gogerty, 1924) as well as the aka’s: Empire Theatre (opening name) Mission Theatre, (by 1924) and Major Theatre (around 1929, according to Bill Counter’s page about it.) Counter also notes that in later years the house was advertised as the Fox Long Beach Theatre.
I don’t know why completion of the Empire Theatre was delayed until 1922. The July 14, 1920, issue of Building & Engineering News carried this notice that the contracts for construction of the project had been let:
An article about the closing and impending demolition of the Windsor Theatre appeared in the May 14, 1961, issue of the Chicago Tribune (Tribune archives.) The original Windsor opened on September 20, 1886, and later suffered two major fires. It was after the second fire that the house was rebuilt and reopened as a movie theater in 1914.
The project architects for the Regal Hacienda Crossing Cinema were Michael S. Johnstone and Chester Fong of the Charlotte, North Carolina, architectural firm Atkinson/Dyer/Watson Architects. There is a rendering of the theater, plus three small photos, in the January, 2000, issue of CMU Profiles in Architecture, the quarterly house organ of the Concrete Masonry Association of California and Nevada (PDF here.
The reconfiguration of the main auditorium of the Chinese Theatre for IMAX was designed by the Laguna Beach, California, architectural firm Blair Ballard Architects. There is one photo of the auditorium in the slide show on this page of the firm’s web site. Francis X. Bushman would barely recognize the place.
Blair Ballard Architects has reconfigured its web site and the link in my previous comment no longer works, but they still have one photo of the Galaxy Tulare at the end of the slide show on this page.
One large and three small photos of the Mountain Village Stadium 14 can be found in the January, 2001, issue of CMU Profiles in Architecture, the quarterly house organ of the Concrete Masonry Association of California and Nevada (PDF at this link.)
Thanks, Gpowers205. The Boys and Girls Club is at 6241 Skyway, and the next building south is at 6197, so the theater’s address would have been between those numbers- say approximately 6225. Google Maps' address approximation is way off, though, with readouts of 6180-6192 for the parking lot (which also serves as an extension of Fir Street between Skyway and Inez Way.)
This house might have been twinned in its later years. A “25 years ago” feature in the May 5, 2013, issue of the Sioux City Journal said that the owner of the Cameo Theaters were temporarily closed and the owner was trying to decide whether to dispose of or continue operating the house, which had suffered water damage. The headline and brief article used the plural “theaters” three times, so it wasn’t just a typo.
It’s also possible that the Cameo opened in the 1910s. A brochure for a walking tour of central downtown Sioux City says that the Cameo Theatre was in a building erected in 1901-1902 as an annex to the Martin Department Store, the main building of which was on 4th Street. The store moved to an entirely new building in 1916 and its old buildings were then converted for other uses. The brochure doesn’t say when the theater opened, only that it was in the former department store annex, so it’s possible that it was installed there in 1916, maybe originally operating under a different name.
The original 1901 facade, designed in the Beaux Arts style by architect Henry Fisher, is still largely intact, but the building doesn’t show any signs of having once housed a theater.