Gayle Faulkner Kosalko’s brief history of Whiting’s theaters says that the Capitol Theatre opened in 1922. Owner A.J. Obreshk was already operating the Star Theatre, which he had opened around 1917.
The December 24, 1920, issue of Variety ran this notice:
“The A.J. Obreshk Theatre Co., of Whiting, Ind., has been incorporated in Indiana. Capital $100,000. Directors A.J. Obreshk, Alta Obreshk and Chris Petrof.”
A Rex Theatre was operating in Corry as early as 1919. I’ve also found a house called the Family Theatre which opened in December, 1913; a 526-seat house called the Lyric Theatre opened in 1914 and mentioned again in 1916; a Grand Theatre in operation in 1919; and an Amuse-U Theatre in operation in 1915 and 1926. The 1913-1914 Cahn guide lists a 731-seat, ground-floor house at Corry called the Library Theatre. The town appears to have had a fairly busy theatrical history, but the Rex is the only indoor house we have listed as yet.
In 2006, lostmemory posted th is comment on May 21:
“NYC issued a c/o to a 498 seat motion picture theater at this address in March of 1936. It was an existing building so this theater was most likely operating prior to that date. The owner at that time was Ben-Jim Amusement Corp.”
Then, on August 4, 2008, AlAlvaraez posted this:
“In early 1937 there was a 47th Street Cinema operating at 104 West 47th Street and showing Irish films. Could this have been the Miami?”
Now I’ve come across an item in The New York Clipper of December 6, 1913:
“THEATRE FOB SIXTH AVENUE.
“Walter J. Salamon, as president of Manhattan Fee Co., will build a one-story moving picture theatre at No. 821 Sixth Avenue, L shaped to Nos. 102-104 West Forty- seventh Street, New York, to seat five hundred and seventy-two. Thos. W. Lamb, as architect, filed plans for an outlay of $125,000.”
I don’t know if the address 821 Sixth Avenue was a typo or part of some earlier numbering system, but the place did apparently sit at least partly on the site of the 47th Street Cinema AlAlvarez mentioned. I wonder if these could all have been the same theater? As the 1913 building was L-shaped, the entrance might have been moved from one street to the other for a while.
The Oglethorpe Theatre was on the list of theaters opened the previous year that appeared in the January 19, 1970, issue of Boxoffice. The house most likely opened between September and December, 1969.
Unfortunately, the last three months of that years' issues of Boxoffice are missing from the magazine’s online archive. The opening of the Oglethorpe Theatre might have been noted in one of those missing issues.
I was unaware that there had been two houses called the Lyric in Binghamton. As David W. Jones was the architect of the new Lyric Theatre of 1929, then Sanford O. Lacey had to have been the architect of the 1893 Bijou Theatre, which became the first Lyric in 1908.
Here is a brief biography of Jones, first published in 1924, which notes that he worked in the office of T.I. Lacey & Sons in 1919 and 1920.
Shellimcgeheegray: Thanks for your comment. I’m sorry it took so long for me to respond, but when this site was relaunched a couple of years ago all of our subscriptions to individual theater pages were canceled, so we no longer got notifications of new comments until we re-subscribed, and this is the first time I’ve been back to this page since then.
Another Cinema Treasures member found another Boxoffice article about the UltraVision Theatre in Charleston, and on this page of it there is a photo of five of the people involved in the project, including your Grandfather. The scan is a bit blurry, but I thought you would enjoy seeing it, if you haven’t already. And, perhaps for the only time, the magazine spelled your family’s name correctly in the caption.
Fans of Cinema Treasures are always glad to hear anything about the architects who designed the marvelous theaters we admire. Although I’ve never visited any of the regions where the theaters your Grandfather designed are located, I’ve been impressed by the photos I’ve seen of them, and the reports of other Cinema Treasures members who remember attending them.
This Yahoo Groups page lists a number of theaters that used the UltraVision process, with dates of opening, or of the installation of Ultravision in some cases (<Boxoffice is cited as the source for the information.)
The Oglethorpe Theatre was dated August, 1969, which must have been when its UltraVision equipment was installed, as the very first UltraVision Theatre wasn’t opened until September that year, at Charleston, South Carolina. The Savannah house must have opened not long after, as installation of the screen and projectors would have been done when the project was nearing completion.
Being among the first of its kind, it’s also likely that this theater followed the Charleston prototype closely, using the elliptical auditorium that was developed for UltraVision by architect William B. McGehee, of the firm Six Associates. If anyone recalls the Oglethorpe Theatre looking like the Charleston house as seen in this article from Boxoffice of September 29, 1969, I think we could safely credit William B. McGehee as its architect.
OCRon’s link. Both locations of the Esquire Theatre are listed, with small photos. This one, at 546 Main, was on a corner lot, while the second Esquire, in the former State Theatre, was mid-block.
In our photo section, all the exterior shots except this one depict the second Esquire. I don’t know which theater is shown in the single interior shot.
Lang’s Theatre had probably been closed for about four years when this 1943 photo was made, but the arched entrance that Henry Lang had built in 1920 was still intact.
Roddkay: Information about Shafter’s theaters has been hard to find. It’s good to hear from someone who knew them firsthand. Thanks for your contribution.
I found a 1947 directory for Kern County, and it lists the Shafter Theatre at 148 Central Avenue. However, the directory has the State Theatre listed at 634 James, while its current address is 726 James. Shafter must have changed its numbering system sometime after 1947, which means the Shafter Theatre might have been in what is now the 200 block, between James Street and Munzer Street. Is that where you remember it being?
The April, 2009, issue of Mohave Memories says that the State Theatre was built by Harry Nace and opened in September, 1939. It was designed by Phoenix architects Alexander & Burton, and was erected by local contractors I.M. George and W.S. Ford.
The newsletter doesn’t say when Lang’s Theatre closed (it opened in 1917), but the impression I’ve gotten from various sources is that it closed around the time the State opened. Movies had been shown in Kingman as early as 1907, at the Elk’s Hall.
The April 27, 1911, issue of the City and County of San Francisco’s Municipal Recordreported that Samuel Loverich had been granted a motion picture permit for the Princess Theatre, Ellis Street.
The October, 2012, issue of the Mohave Museum of History & Arts newsletter, Mohave Memories, indicates that the State Theatre at Kingman was in operation by 1940. In 1946, Ira Rawlings was the name of the manager.
The photo labeled RM:17 on this page of the 1985 book The Architectural History of Randolph County North Carolina depicts the former Royal Theatre building. Photo RM:16 also shows the building, plus the building next door which is still standing today. Presumably the photos date from shortly before the book’s publication, so the Royal was demolished sometime after the mid-1980s.
As Google Maps has seen fit to place the Royal Theatre in Franklinville, the next town west of Ramseur, here is a corrected Street View. Oddly, Google Maps has no trouble finding the correct location from its own search page.
According to a document prepared for Arkansas Preservation, the Avon Theatre was located at the southeast corner of West Broadway and Rhodes Street. The site is now occupied by part of a Sonic Drive-in restaurant. Prior to being taken over by Malco and renamed the Avon in 1953, the Joy Theatre sometimes presented live burlesque shows which had been banned in Memphis.
Gayle Faulkner Kosalko’s brief history of Whiting’s theaters says that the Capitol Theatre opened in 1922. Owner A.J. Obreshk was already operating the Star Theatre, which he had opened around 1917.
The December 24, 1920, issue of Variety ran this notice:
A Rex Theatre was operating in Corry as early as 1919. I’ve also found a house called the Family Theatre which opened in December, 1913; a 526-seat house called the Lyric Theatre opened in 1914 and mentioned again in 1916; a Grand Theatre in operation in 1919; and an Amuse-U Theatre in operation in 1915 and 1926. The 1913-1914 Cahn guide lists a 731-seat, ground-floor house at Corry called the Library Theatre. The town appears to have had a fairly busy theatrical history, but the Rex is the only indoor house we have listed as yet.
In 2006, lostmemory posted th is comment on May 21:
Then, on August 4, 2008, AlAlvaraez posted this:Now I’ve come across an item in The New York Clipper of December 6, 1913:I don’t know if the address 821 Sixth Avenue was a typo or part of some earlier numbering system, but the place did apparently sit at least partly on the site of the 47th Street Cinema AlAlvarez mentioned. I wonder if these could all have been the same theater? As the 1913 building was L-shaped, the entrance might have been moved from one street to the other for a while.The Oglethorpe Theatre was on the list of theaters opened the previous year that appeared in the January 19, 1970, issue of Boxoffice. The house most likely opened between September and December, 1969.
Unfortunately, the last three months of that years' issues of Boxoffice are missing from the magazine’s online archive. The opening of the Oglethorpe Theatre might have been noted in one of those missing issues.
The Encyclopedia of New York State credits architect Sanford O. Lacey with the design of the Bijou Theatre (Google Books preview.)
I was unaware that there had been two houses called the Lyric in Binghamton. As David W. Jones was the architect of the new Lyric Theatre of 1929, then Sanford O. Lacey had to have been the architect of the 1893 Bijou Theatre, which became the first Lyric in 1908.
Here is a brief biography of Jones, first published in 1924, which notes that he worked in the office of T.I. Lacey & Sons in 1919 and 1920.
Shellimcgeheegray: Thanks for your comment. I’m sorry it took so long for me to respond, but when this site was relaunched a couple of years ago all of our subscriptions to individual theater pages were canceled, so we no longer got notifications of new comments until we re-subscribed, and this is the first time I’ve been back to this page since then.
Another Cinema Treasures member found another Boxoffice article about the UltraVision Theatre in Charleston, and on this page of it there is a photo of five of the people involved in the project, including your Grandfather. The scan is a bit blurry, but I thought you would enjoy seeing it, if you haven’t already. And, perhaps for the only time, the magazine spelled your family’s name correctly in the caption.
Fans of Cinema Treasures are always glad to hear anything about the architects who designed the marvelous theaters we admire. Although I’ve never visited any of the regions where the theaters your Grandfather designed are located, I’ve been impressed by the photos I’ve seen of them, and the reports of other Cinema Treasures members who remember attending them.
This Yahoo Groups page lists a number of theaters that used the UltraVision process, with dates of opening, or of the installation of Ultravision in some cases (<Boxoffice is cited as the source for the information.)
The Oglethorpe Theatre was dated August, 1969, which must have been when its UltraVision equipment was installed, as the very first UltraVision Theatre wasn’t opened until September that year, at Charleston, South Carolina. The Savannah house must have opened not long after, as installation of the screen and projectors would have been done when the project was nearing completion.
Being among the first of its kind, it’s also likely that this theater followed the Charleston prototype closely, using the elliptical auditorium that was developed for UltraVision by architect William B. McGehee, of the firm Six Associates. If anyone recalls the Oglethorpe Theatre looking like the Charleston house as seen in this article from Boxoffice of September 29, 1969, I think we could safely credit William B. McGehee as its architect.
OCRon’s link. Both locations of the Esquire Theatre are listed, with small photos. This one, at 546 Main, was on a corner lot, while the second Esquire, in the former State Theatre, was mid-block.
In our photo section, all the exterior shots except this one depict the second Esquire. I don’t know which theater is shown in the single interior shot.
Lang’s Theatre had probably been closed for about four years when this 1943 photo was made, but the arched entrance that Henry Lang had built in 1920 was still intact.
Roddkay: Information about Shafter’s theaters has been hard to find. It’s good to hear from someone who knew them firsthand. Thanks for your contribution.
I found a 1947 directory for Kern County, and it lists the Shafter Theatre at 148 Central Avenue. However, the directory has the State Theatre listed at 634 James, while its current address is 726 James. Shafter must have changed its numbering system sometime after 1947, which means the Shafter Theatre might have been in what is now the 200 block, between James Street and Munzer Street. Is that where you remember it being?
bwmoll3’s link.
The April, 2009, issue of Mohave Memories says that the State Theatre was built by Harry Nace and opened in September, 1939. It was designed by Phoenix architects Alexander & Burton, and was erected by local contractors I.M. George and W.S. Ford.
The newsletter doesn’t say when Lang’s Theatre closed (it opened in 1917), but the impression I’ve gotten from various sources is that it closed around the time the State opened. Movies had been shown in Kingman as early as 1907, at the Elk’s Hall.
The April 27, 1911, issue of the City and County of San Francisco’s Municipal Recordreported that Samuel Loverich had been granted a motion picture permit for the Princess Theatre, Ellis Street.
The October, 2012, issue of the Mohave Museum of History & Arts newsletter, Mohave Memories, indicates that the State Theatre at Kingman was in operation by 1940. In 1946, Ira Rawlings was the name of the manager.
The photo labeled RM:17 on this page of the 1985 book The Architectural History of Randolph County North Carolina depicts the former Royal Theatre building. Photo RM:16 also shows the building, plus the building next door which is still standing today. Presumably the photos date from shortly before the book’s publication, so the Royal was demolished sometime after the mid-1980s.
As Google Maps has seen fit to place the Royal Theatre in Franklinville, the next town west of Ramseur, here is a corrected Street View. Oddly, Google Maps has no trouble finding the correct location from its own search page.
The “Theater Changes” section of The Film Daily of October 4, 1937, listed the Garfield Theatre at Terre Haute, Indiana, as a new house.
The “Theater Changes” section of The Film Daily of October 4, 1937, listed the Morin Theatre at Brookville, Indiana, as a new house.
The “Theatre Changes” section of The Film Daily for October 4, 1937, listed the Holden Theatre in Chicago as a new house.
The October 4, 1937, issue of The Film Daily said that the Home Theatre in Los Angeles had been renamed the Arlin Theatre.
According to a document prepared for Arkansas Preservation, the Avon Theatre was located at the southeast corner of West Broadway and Rhodes Street. The site is now occupied by part of a Sonic Drive-in restaurant. Prior to being taken over by Malco and renamed the Avon in 1953, the Joy Theatre sometimes presented live burlesque shows which had been banned in Memphis.
Chuck, the photo you linked to shows the 1949 Curtis Theatre, which is now the Liberty Showcase Theatre.
There’s a photo of the Sunset Theatre as The Flick at upper left on this page of The Architectural History of Randolph County North Carolina.