The July 2, 1938, issue of The Film Daily had this item about the modernization of the Essaness Theatre:
“Rushville Publisher-Exhib. Will Modernize Theater
“Denver — William Barnes, who also publishes the newspaper at Rushville, Neb., has bought the Essaness Theater there, and as a part of his remodeling job has ordered from the National Theater Supply Co. two new Simplex Acme sound projectors, a Walker White sound screen, new carpet and padding as well as new Ezy rug mats.”
Another item in the same issue noted the name change to Plains Theatre:
“The Esseness Theater at Rush-
ville, Neb., has been changed to the Plains, and has been taken over by William Barnes from John C. Gates.”
I’m a bit puzzled by this item from the July 16, 1926, issue of The Film Daily:
“Martinez House Opens Martinez, Cal — The Martinez, a West Coast Theaters, Inc., house, has opened.”
Was this the State? I know that West Coast took over the original Turner & Dahnken circuit sometime in the 1920s, and that the later T&D Jr. circuit later took over a number of West Coast houses in northern and central California, but I’ve never found the exact dates of these events.
The “Theater Changes” column of the October 4, 1937, issue of The Film Daily reported the change of name of the movie theater at Rushville, Illinois, from Princess to Lloyd.
The contents of the building, including the theater’s old seats and other equipment, were auctioned off by the Masons on September 21. The lodge sold the building to the City of Rushville in August. The city plans to put a new roof on the building and perform other maintenance immediately, but the long term plan includes the restoration of the theater as a multi-use venue. Grants are bing sought for the project, according to this article in the the August 25, 2014, issue of the Rushville Republican.
Now if we could get Rushville, Nebraska, to renamed the Plains Theatre, then all four Rushvilles listed at Cinema Treasures could have Princess Theatres.
The September 2, 1927, issue of The Escanaba Daily Press said that the Community Theatre in Gladstone had been purchased by Fischer-Paramount Theatres of Milwaukee, the company that had been operating it under a lease. The house would be renamed the Rialto Theatre, and extensive improvements were planned, including the installation of a Barton Organ.
The building had been built several years earlier by the Northwestern Cooperage and Lumber Company as a community center for its workers.
July 14, 1929, issue of the paper featured several pages of ads placed by various businesses offering congratulations to the Rialto Theatre on its opening.
The May 8, 1938 issue of the Daily Illini reported that Alger Brothers, operators of the Princess and Park Theatres, and the A. J. Balaban Co., would remodel and expand a building at 614-616 Green Street, Champaign, for a movie theater to be called the Co-Ed. The project was designed by the architectural firm of Monberg & Wagner, who the article referred to as “Chicago theater specialists.”
The September 12, 1972, issue of The Escanaba Daily Press carried an ad placed by the Network Cinema Corporation soliciting an investor/operator for the new Jerry Lewis Cinema then nearing completion in Escanaba. $17,500 dollars would get you into the theater business with this 350-seat house (additional working capital required.)
The February 22, 1972, issue of The Escanaba Daily Press said that plans to build a new, 408-seat indoor movie theater in Manistique had been announced. Construction was to begin in April, and the operators hoped to have the house open by September. The town had been without an indoor theater since the closing of the Oak Theatre in November, 1970.
The July 24, 1956, issue of The Escanaba Daily Press had an article about Manistique’s theaters, and is says that the Oak Theatre was located on Maple Street. The Cedar Theatre, somewhat more reasonably, was located on Cedar Street. I don’t have an address, but I suspect that the Oak Theatre was located at or very near the corner of Oak Street, which is the only way the name would make sense.
The article also says that, until 1942, when it was bought by Mr. and Mrs. J. L. LeDuc, who had bought the Cedar Theatre in 1937, the Oak Theatre had been called the Gero Theatre.
The November 1, 1934, issue of the same paper said that Benjamin Gero had bought the Manistique Opera House in 1908, and had converted it into a full-time movie house in 1916, renaming it the Gero Theatre that year.
This page has a photo of the auditorium of the opera house and a photo of the exterior after it became the Gero Theatre.
An article in the February 22, 1972, issue of the Daily Press said that the town had been without an indoor theater since the Oak had closed in November, 1970. I haven’t been able to discover what became of the Oak Theatre’s building, but I suspect that it has been demolished. There’s nothing resembling it on Maple Street in Google street view.
The building has been remodeled again, now with a bland front, and it houses an animal hospital and a State Farm insurance agency. I would expect that the floor has been leveled, so there probably won’t be a theater here again. At least that appalling diagonal wood front from the 1970s is gone.
Among dozens of vintage photos on this web page are two shots of the Midcentury Modern Capri Theatre front of 1960, which the diagonal wood covered up later. I like Midcentury design, and the Capri was nicely done, but my personal preference would have been to see the original 1935 Streamline Modern facade preserved and restored. Hardly anybody valued Streamline Modern in 1960, though.
The five theaters listed at Green Bay in the 1939 Film Daily Yearbook included a 700-seat Grand Theatre. In 1940, the Grand vanishes and the 700-seat Packer appears. I suspect a name change.
The August 28, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that August 10 had been set as the tentative opening date of the New Grand Theatre in Green Bay. The “New Theaters” column of the September 25, 1915, issue of The Billboard says: “The Grand Theater, Green Bay, Wis., a new $75,000 moving picture house, has been opened.”
I haven’t been able to find any specific source saying that the Grand Theatre became the Packer, but neither have I found anything saying that a new theater was built in Green Bay in 1939 or 1940. A renovation and name change seems the most likely event.
The picturesque, cottage-like front the Majestic Theatre has in the old photo has been removed from the building, but I believe that part of the theater is still standing. It now has the address 121 over the door of the totally modernized front, but there is a setback above the entrance, beyond which you can see what was probably the end wall of the auditorium.
In the vintage photo, the end wall, which then had a checkerboard pattern, was taller than it is in modern street view. This makes me suspect that the change in seating capacity from 300 in the late 1920s to 450 by the mid-1930s might have been accomplished by extending the auditorium upward and installing a balcony. The upper part of the auditorium must have been removed, along with the picturesque front, when the building was converted to retail use.
This page at Facebook has four photos, including one showing the theater building when it still housed a livery stable.
Here is the exact text of the March 5, 1938, item from Motion Picture Herald I cited in my earlier comment:
“W. R. Vincent opened his new 499-seat De Pere theatre at De Pere, Wis., constructed in a building formerly a storage garage. Geniesse and Connell, Green Bay, Wis., were the architects. The new theatre gives Mr. Vincent six houses in Wisconsin. Incidentally, there are six theatres in De Pere, a town of 5,000, while Green Bay, just adjoining and a city of 28,000, also has six theatres.”
I now suspect that the item was mistaken. The 1938 Film Daily Yearbook lists six theaters at Green Bay, but only the 450-seat Majestic and the 370-seat Pearl at De Pere. The FDY, not always too accurate itself, didn’t get around to listing the De Pere Theatre until 1941, but the Pearl and Majestic were still both listed then, too, so De Pere had three theaters during that period (if the FDY is to be believed.) Green Bay dropped to five in 1939.
Well, duh. I forgot that this comment and this comment by CT member Pens on the Wayne Cinema page both say that the State Theatre was on Third Street. It replaced the Trainor Opera House, which was destroyed by fire in 1926, so it probably opened that year or in 1927. The State’s entrance building in the photo at Facebook looks 19th century, and might have been the Opera House entry as well. The Opera House was built by the IOOF in 1873.
I’ve come across two sources that say the State Theatre was on Third Street. This obituary of former manager Stockton Shafer says that it was on West Third, and the caption of this photo at Facebook just says Third Street. A commenter remembers seeing The Shining at the State, so it must have been in operation at least as late as 1975.
The 300-seat Majestic and the 400-seat Pearl were the only theaters listed for De Pere in the 1927 Film Daily Yearbook. By 1935, the Majestic was being listed with 450 seats.
A two-page article about the 1940 remodeling of the Empire Theatre appears in the April 27 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review. Here is a scan from the Internet Archive. There are photos from before and after the streamlining designed by architect Michael J. DeAngelis.
As much as I like DeAngelis’s work, I must say that in this case I wish he’d left more of the original detail in place. Tabor & Baxter’s design had some very nice features.
The September 7, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald said that the Schine circuit’s New Strand Theatre at Hudson Falls, New York, had opened over the weekend. It was not clear from the item whether this was an entirely new theater, or if Schine had simply taken over and renovated the older Strand Theatre.
I’ve now found the State Theatre mentioned in the September 14, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald. It was being operated by Chakeres Theatres at that time.
The February 13, 1915, issue of The American Contractor had this item about the Chalk Beeson Theatre:
“Dodge City, Kans.—Theater: 2 sty. & has. 70x75. $30M. Archt. R. A. Curtis, Reserve Bank bldg., Kansas City, Mo. Owner Merritt Beeson, Dodge City. Plans finished; owner will take bids on sub-contracts.”
Merritt L. Beeson operated this theater himself. On the occasion of his visit to Kansas City in 1916, the September 9 issue of The Moving Picture World called his house “…one of the most beautiful and picturesque moving picture theaters in the West….”
The Crown Theatre in Dodge City is on David & Noelle Soren’s list of known Boller Brothers theater designs as a 1923 project, with the aka Cooper Theatre.
In 1939, the Crown was one of three Dodge City houses (along with the Dodge and the Cozy) that co-hosted the world premier of the Warner Bros. film Dodge City. Star Errol Flynn and numerous other movie stars attended the event.
According to an article in the January 28, 1954, issue of the Hutchinson, Kansas News Herald, Fox Kansas Theatres operated the Crown under a lease from 1935 to 1949, at which time they sub-leased the house to Fox Plains Theatres which in turn sub-leased it to Glenn Cooper. It must have been at that time that it was renamed the Cooper Theatre. The Cooper Theatre was in operation at least as late as 1958.
An item in the July 3, 1927, issue of The Film Daily said that the Sutherlin Theatre in Sutherlin, Oregon, had been sold to J, Higginbottom, so the Rand was not the town’s first movie theater. The 1927 Film Daily Yearbook lists a 300-seat Gem Theatre at Sutherlin. As the town was still quite small (1927 FDY lists the population as 515,) it is unlikely to have had two theaters, so the Sutherlin Theatre Mr. Higginbottom bought around the middle of the year was probably the same house as the Gem the FDY listed in January.
Here’s an example from the De Luxe Theatre at Hutchinson, Kansas, of old-school, local movie publicity, or “ballyhoo,” as the industry called it in those days, as reported in the July 24, 1923, issue of The Film Daily:
“Street Cars Boost ‘Souls’
“Hutchinson, Kans — The street car system of Hutchinson, was roped 100 percent, into helping exploit ‘Souls for Sale’ at the De Luxe. Each car on the system carried a four foot banner on the front fender.
“At a cost of $1.75 an hour an old street car was chartered and each side covered with a 24-sheet poster. The car was run through the city between the hours of 11 to 2, and from 5 to 8 the day before the opening and each day of the run.
“Cut-outs from the one-sheet were placed in 10 conspicuous windows; a shadow-box, 25 feet long, with lettering patterned after that on the six-sheet, was placed in front of the theater; a register was placed in the lobby in which girls who wished to receive a letter from Eleanor Boardman wrote their names.”
A Flickr album with eight photos showing the rough condition of the third floor space of the Johnson Hall Theatre can be found at this link. Mike Miclon, head of the Johanson Hall Performing Arts Center, was reported in the local newspaper last May saying that the organization intended to have the third-floor opera hall ready for full time operation within five years.
This articleposted at centralmaine.com on September 14 shows the auditorium set up with temporary seating for the first performance in three decades, a concert held last Saturday.
The July 2, 1938, issue of The Film Daily had this item about the modernization of the Essaness Theatre:
Another item in the same issue noted the name change to Plains Theatre:I’m a bit puzzled by this item from the July 16, 1926, issue of The Film Daily:
Was this the State? I know that West Coast took over the original Turner & Dahnken circuit sometime in the 1920s, and that the later T&D Jr. circuit later took over a number of West Coast houses in northern and central California, but I’ve never found the exact dates of these events.The “Theater Changes” column of the October 4, 1937, issue of The Film Daily reported the change of name of the movie theater at Rushville, Illinois, from Princess to Lloyd.
The contents of the building, including the theater’s old seats and other equipment, were auctioned off by the Masons on September 21. The lodge sold the building to the City of Rushville in August. The city plans to put a new roof on the building and perform other maintenance immediately, but the long term plan includes the restoration of the theater as a multi-use venue. Grants are bing sought for the project, according to this article in the the August 25, 2014, issue of the Rushville Republican.
How odd that three small towns called Rushville all have or had movie theaters called the Princess:
Rushville, Illinois
Rushville, Indiana
Now if we could get Rushville, Nebraska, to renamed the Plains Theatre, then all four Rushvilles listed at Cinema Treasures could have Princess Theatres.
The September 2, 1927, issue of The Escanaba Daily Press said that the Community Theatre in Gladstone had been purchased by Fischer-Paramount Theatres of Milwaukee, the company that had been operating it under a lease. The house would be renamed the Rialto Theatre, and extensive improvements were planned, including the installation of a Barton Organ.
The building had been built several years earlier by the Northwestern Cooperage and Lumber Company as a community center for its workers.
July 14, 1929, issue of the paper featured several pages of ads placed by various businesses offering congratulations to the Rialto Theatre on its opening.
The May 8, 1938 issue of the Daily Illini reported that Alger Brothers, operators of the Princess and Park Theatres, and the A. J. Balaban Co., would remodel and expand a building at 614-616 Green Street, Champaign, for a movie theater to be called the Co-Ed. The project was designed by the architectural firm of Monberg & Wagner, who the article referred to as “Chicago theater specialists.”
The September 12, 1972, issue of The Escanaba Daily Press carried an ad placed by the Network Cinema Corporation soliciting an investor/operator for the new Jerry Lewis Cinema then nearing completion in Escanaba. $17,500 dollars would get you into the theater business with this 350-seat house (additional working capital required.)
The February 22, 1972, issue of The Escanaba Daily Press said that plans to build a new, 408-seat indoor movie theater in Manistique had been announced. Construction was to begin in April, and the operators hoped to have the house open by September. The town had been without an indoor theater since the closing of the Oak Theatre in November, 1970.
The July 24, 1956, issue of The Escanaba Daily Press had an article about Manistique’s theaters, and is says that the Oak Theatre was located on Maple Street. The Cedar Theatre, somewhat more reasonably, was located on Cedar Street. I don’t have an address, but I suspect that the Oak Theatre was located at or very near the corner of Oak Street, which is the only way the name would make sense.
The article also says that, until 1942, when it was bought by Mr. and Mrs. J. L. LeDuc, who had bought the Cedar Theatre in 1937, the Oak Theatre had been called the Gero Theatre.
The November 1, 1934, issue of the same paper said that Benjamin Gero had bought the Manistique Opera House in 1908, and had converted it into a full-time movie house in 1916, renaming it the Gero Theatre that year.
This page has a photo of the auditorium of the opera house and a photo of the exterior after it became the Gero Theatre.
An article in the February 22, 1972, issue of the Daily Press said that the town had been without an indoor theater since the Oak had closed in November, 1970. I haven’t been able to discover what became of the Oak Theatre’s building, but I suspect that it has been demolished. There’s nothing resembling it on Maple Street in Google street view.
The building has been remodeled again, now with a bland front, and it houses an animal hospital and a State Farm insurance agency. I would expect that the floor has been leveled, so there probably won’t be a theater here again. At least that appalling diagonal wood front from the 1970s is gone.
Among dozens of vintage photos on this web page are two shots of the Midcentury Modern Capri Theatre front of 1960, which the diagonal wood covered up later. I like Midcentury design, and the Capri was nicely done, but my personal preference would have been to see the original 1935 Streamline Modern facade preserved and restored. Hardly anybody valued Streamline Modern in 1960, though.
The five theaters listed at Green Bay in the 1939 Film Daily Yearbook included a 700-seat Grand Theatre. In 1940, the Grand vanishes and the 700-seat Packer appears. I suspect a name change.
The August 28, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World said that August 10 had been set as the tentative opening date of the New Grand Theatre in Green Bay. The “New Theaters” column of the September 25, 1915, issue of The Billboard says: “The Grand Theater, Green Bay, Wis., a new $75,000 moving picture house, has been opened.”
I haven’t been able to find any specific source saying that the Grand Theatre became the Packer, but neither have I found anything saying that a new theater was built in Green Bay in 1939 or 1940. A renovation and name change seems the most likely event.
The picturesque, cottage-like front the Majestic Theatre has in the old photo has been removed from the building, but I believe that part of the theater is still standing. It now has the address 121 over the door of the totally modernized front, but there is a setback above the entrance, beyond which you can see what was probably the end wall of the auditorium.
In the vintage photo, the end wall, which then had a checkerboard pattern, was taller than it is in modern street view. This makes me suspect that the change in seating capacity from 300 in the late 1920s to 450 by the mid-1930s might have been accomplished by extending the auditorium upward and installing a balcony. The upper part of the auditorium must have been removed, along with the picturesque front, when the building was converted to retail use.
This page at Facebook has four photos, including one showing the theater building when it still housed a livery stable.
Here is the exact text of the March 5, 1938, item from Motion Picture Herald I cited in my earlier comment:
I now suspect that the item was mistaken. The 1938 Film Daily Yearbook lists six theaters at Green Bay, but only the 450-seat Majestic and the 370-seat Pearl at De Pere. The FDY, not always too accurate itself, didn’t get around to listing the De Pere Theatre until 1941, but the Pearl and Majestic were still both listed then, too, so De Pere had three theaters during that period (if the FDY is to be believed.) Green Bay dropped to five in 1939.Well, duh. I forgot that this comment and this comment by CT member Pens on the Wayne Cinema page both say that the State Theatre was on Third Street. It replaced the Trainor Opera House, which was destroyed by fire in 1926, so it probably opened that year or in 1927. The State’s entrance building in the photo at Facebook looks 19th century, and might have been the Opera House entry as well. The Opera House was built by the IOOF in 1873.
I’ve come across two sources that say the State Theatre was on Third Street. This obituary of former manager Stockton Shafer says that it was on West Third, and the caption of this photo at Facebook just says Third Street. A commenter remembers seeing The Shining at the State, so it must have been in operation at least as late as 1975.
The 300-seat Majestic and the 400-seat Pearl were the only theaters listed for De Pere in the 1927 Film Daily Yearbook. By 1935, the Majestic was being listed with 450 seats.
A two-page article about the 1940 remodeling of the Empire Theatre appears in the April 27 issue of Showmen’s Trade Review. Here is a scan from the Internet Archive. There are photos from before and after the streamlining designed by architect Michael J. DeAngelis.
As much as I like DeAngelis’s work, I must say that in this case I wish he’d left more of the original detail in place. Tabor & Baxter’s design had some very nice features.
The September 7, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald said that the Schine circuit’s New Strand Theatre at Hudson Falls, New York, had opened over the weekend. It was not clear from the item whether this was an entirely new theater, or if Schine had simply taken over and renovated the older Strand Theatre.
I’ve now found the State Theatre mentioned in the September 14, 1935, issue of Motion Picture Herald. It was being operated by Chakeres Theatres at that time.
The February 13, 1915, issue of The American Contractor had this item about the Chalk Beeson Theatre:
Merritt L. Beeson operated this theater himself. On the occasion of his visit to Kansas City in 1916, the September 9 issue of The Moving Picture World called his house “…one of the most beautiful and picturesque moving picture theaters in the West….”The Crown Theatre in Dodge City is on David & Noelle Soren’s list of known Boller Brothers theater designs as a 1923 project, with the aka Cooper Theatre.
In 1939, the Crown was one of three Dodge City houses (along with the Dodge and the Cozy) that co-hosted the world premier of the Warner Bros. film Dodge City. Star Errol Flynn and numerous other movie stars attended the event.
According to an article in the January 28, 1954, issue of the Hutchinson, Kansas News Herald, Fox Kansas Theatres operated the Crown under a lease from 1935 to 1949, at which time they sub-leased the house to Fox Plains Theatres which in turn sub-leased it to Glenn Cooper. It must have been at that time that it was renamed the Cooper Theatre. The Cooper Theatre was in operation at least as late as 1958.
An item in the July 3, 1927, issue of The Film Daily said that the Sutherlin Theatre in Sutherlin, Oregon, had been sold to J, Higginbottom, so the Rand was not the town’s first movie theater. The 1927 Film Daily Yearbook lists a 300-seat Gem Theatre at Sutherlin. As the town was still quite small (1927 FDY lists the population as 515,) it is unlikely to have had two theaters, so the Sutherlin Theatre Mr. Higginbottom bought around the middle of the year was probably the same house as the Gem the FDY listed in January.
Here’s an example from the De Luxe Theatre at Hutchinson, Kansas, of old-school, local movie publicity, or “ballyhoo,” as the industry called it in those days, as reported in the July 24, 1923, issue of The Film Daily:
A Flickr album with eight photos showing the rough condition of the third floor space of the Johnson Hall Theatre can be found at this link. Mike Miclon, head of the Johanson Hall Performing Arts Center, was reported in the local newspaper last May saying that the organization intended to have the third-floor opera hall ready for full time operation within five years.
This articleposted at centralmaine.com on September 14 shows the auditorium set up with temporary seating for the first performance in three decades, a concert held last Saturday.