Roxy Theatre
126 E. 4th Street,
Carthage,
MO
64836
126 E. 4th Street,
Carthage,
MO
64836
1 person
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Hi Joe I’m looking at google street view. and the book review simultaneously attempting to get an idea, the Hollbrook drugstore later bookstore was on south corner, I used to hangout there and a jewelry store was on the other end of the block. book review the Electric ? theater shown on the west side may be the Roxy, I’m checking to see if they may have the west mixed for the south. I’ll be searching the net. We rented a house from Murry Dunkin drug store, I was there in the 4th thru 7th grade and moved after the Kennedy assassination.
I should add that the name Delphus Theatre was in use in Carthage at least as late as 1946, when it was mentioned in an issue of The Billboard.
Hello Joe Thanks for your input, Somehow I seem to think it is the Roxy, at least during the 60’s when I went there, it was almost a long narrow almost shoe box one entrance to the auditorium, can’t remember if a single isle down the middle or seats in the middle. but it was definitely a small 200-300 seat theater. use to get in free with a potato chip sack on some promotions. I just retired and now are researching my old childhood theaters. Have been using IMDB to try to verify some dates. more later.
In 1913 there was a movie theater called the Delphus located in this block of 4th Street. The August 2nd issue of The Moving Picture World said that a new airdome had been built at the rear of the Delphus Theatre in Carthage, and would be known as the Delphus Hippodrome. The operators of the theaters were J.P. Williams and Joseph Logan.
The Arcadia Publishing company’s book “Carthage, Missouri,” by Michele Newton Hansford, has a ca.1914 photo of the south side of the square in Carthage (Google Books preview,) and the caption says that the Delphus Theatre was located in the three-story Cassaday Building, about in the middle of the block. Goggle Street View shows that the building is no longer there. Is it possible that the Delphus Theatre was the house that eventually became the Roxy?
If the Roxy was not in the same building as the Delphus of 1913, it’s possible that it was the unnamed theater mentioned in the April 27, 1921, issue of The American Architect, which said that F.B. Logan was taking bids for construction of a two-story, 80x100-foot brick theater building on East 4th Street in Carthage. The project had been designed by a Kansas City architect named A.C. Wiser.
As both the Delphus and the 1921 theater project were connected with someone named Logan, it might be that the 1921 project was a replacement for the Delphus, which appears to have been located in a building dating from the 1870s or 1880s, judging from the photo in Hansford’s book.
The only problem I can see with the original Delphus or the 1921 project, assuming it was built, having become the Roxy is the difference in size. The 1922 edition of Julius Cahn’s guide listed the Delphus as a 1000-seat house, and the 1921 project was certainly a large building, so the 300 seats attributed to the Roxy here would be quite a way off.
The last time I went to this theater was 1963. When I came back in 1972 it was gone, I think destroyed by fire, Google street view shows the empty space where the theater was. Film’s I saw in this movie house were “The Shaggy Dog”, “Flubber”, “Island of Dr. Moreau” and some other Jerry Lewis films. These are some of the shows I can remember, If I remember correctly the Fox off the town square from the north side had already been converted to the Star Lanes bowling alley. This was about a year before I ventured into a projection booth and began my lifelong job as a film projectionist, ending with 30 years with IMAX. I hope to return to Carthage library someday and look-up newspaper articles to update this thread.