Frank Cullen’s Vaudeville Old and New lists a Fox-Lyric Theatre at Anniston as a house on the Keith vaudeville circuit, but with no dates for its operation, so it’s possible that William Fox had control of the theater for a while.
The “New Theaters” column of the February 16, 1927, issue of The Film Daily said “Earl R. Collins has opened the New Lyric” at Anniston, Alabama. Apparently, the “new theaters” listed in the magazine were not always brand new, but merely under new management.
CinemaTour has several photos of the Capitol Theatre, and gives the opening date as March 6, 1924.
However, I don’t know what to make of an item, datelined Plant City, from the “New Theaters” section of the February 16, 1927, issue of The Film Daily, which says: “Work has started on Universal’s new Capitol to cost $50,000.” Did the magazine give the wrong name for a different theater project, or was the Capitol actually built in 1927, or did Universal spend $50,000 to upgrade a three-year-old theater? CinemaTour doesn’t cite a period source for the 1924 opening date, so we can’t double check to see if there was some mistake there.
The Middlesex Theatre in Middletown was to be immediately rebuilt following a recent fire, according to the February 16, 1927, issue of The Film Daily. The item did not indicate the extent of the fire damage to the theater.
The 1914 and 1915 reports of the Chief of the Massachusetts District Police list three theaters operating at Clinton: the Globe and the Star, both operated by the Clinton Amusement Company, and the Town Hall. All three were listed as being in good condition.
The 1920 edition of the New England Business Directory listed the Globe, Star, and Strand Theatres at Clinton.
The stretch of Arkansas Avenue where the DeSoto Theatre was located has been wiped off the face of the earth, along with most of the neighborhood around it. Given the name, I suspect that the theater was at or near the corner of De Soto Street, several hundred feet north of the spot where Google Maps has placed the pin icon.
The obliteration took place sometime between 1958 and 1963, judging from a comparison of images from those years at Historic Aerials.
Recent comments on the State Theatre page indicate that it was the Washington Theatre, not the State, that was renovated and renamed the Penn Theatre. The Washington reopened as the Penn in March, 1961, and closed in April, 1973. It was demolished shortly after closing.
RSM3853’s list of movies shown at the State and Penn Theatres indicates that the State closed at the end of May, 1960, and the Penn opened in March, 1961. The operators must have decided to close the larger State Theatre and renovate and rename the smaller Washington Theatre to be their first-run house. With the decline in theater attendance that took place in the 1950s and 1960s, that would have made economic sense.
There were two houses called the Orpheum in Danvers. The annual report of the Peabody Institute published in March, 1912, mentioned an event with movies held at the Orpheum Theatre in Danvers the previous November. I’ve also found references from 1916 to a Danvers house called Brown’s Orpheum, operated by Louis Brown.
However, various issue of The Film Daily from 1926 and 1927 say that a house called either the Danvers Theatre or the Elm Theatre in various items was destroyed by fire in 1926, and was replaced by a 1000-seat theater which was originally to have been called the Capitol (issue of January 9) but which opened as the Orpheum (issue of February 9.)
The owner was Louis Brown, presumably the same who was the operator of Brown’s Orpheum in 1916, so it seems likely that the house destroyed by fire was the original Orpheum using a different name. A 1922 directory of New England businesses lists only one theater for Danvers, that being the Elm, though its address was 12 High Street. Mr.Brown might have acquired extra frontage for his rebuilding project, or perhaps simply shifted the theater entrance to a different part of the lot.
Auction site WorthPoint was recently offering a movie program from the Orpheum Theatre in Danvers for the week of October 20, 1940. The house had three changes a week at that time. The Orpheum is also mentioned in a 2011 article about the 50th reunion of a local high school’s class of 1961, and the author mentions attending the Orpheum during his high school years, so the house probably operated at least into the early 1960s.
Chuck, if the Penn was torn down and replaced by a parking lot in 1973 then it must have been the Washington that was renamed the Penn, not the State. The only parking lot on this block of Chestnut Street is the one where the Washington Theatre used to be, right across the street from the State. The State’s entrance building, at least, is still standing.
A paragraph about the Washington Theatre on this web page says that it did become the Penn Theatre, and this earlier comment by sgtjim says that he thought the Washington and the Penn were the same house, too.
I’m sure this is the same house that was listed as the Alpine Theatre, 834 Alpine Street, in the Moving Picture Theatres section of the 1926 city directory, and at 826 Alpine Street in the 1929 city directory. It’s back at 834 Alpine in the 1936 and 1938 directories. In 1939, the Alpine Theatre is gone and the first listing for the Carmen Theatre at 722 N. Figueroa Street appears. No theaters are listed under any name at either address in the 1927 or 1932 directories.
The February 29, 1936, issue of Motion Picture Herald said that D. F. Lyon was reopening the Alpine Theatre in Los Angeles, which had been closed for some time. The place apparently closed and reopened multiple times. I remember seeing this theater in the early 1960s, but I can’t remember if it was open or closed, nor can I remember what name, if any, was on the marquee.
Boxoffice of July 27, 1935, said that the Beverly Theatre was designed by architects Ronald F. Perry and Helmuth Bartsch. >This web page about Helmut [sic] Bartsch has seven photos of the Beverly Theatre (and also four apparently unrelated photos mistakenly labeled as depicting the Beverly Theatre.)
Helmuth Bartsch was an associate of Holabird & Root or its successor firms from 1928 through 1965. Ronald Perry was not mentioned in an exhaustive list of the Holabird & Root’s associates, so he must have been an independent architect.
I don’t know why I wrote Joe Goodman in my previous comment. The songwriter’s name was Joe Goodwin.
The Worcester Theatre isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures, and I’ve been unable to discover if it ever showed movies, other than a single exhibition of an early sound film process in 1913. Here’s a page with a photo of it anyway. It had a somewhat more ornate front than the Fine Arts, with some nice Romanesque detailing. Almost every comment on the page conflates it with either the Lothrop’s/Olympia/Fine Arts or the Poli/Hanover Theatre.
Volume two of History of Worcester and its People, by Charles Nutt, published in 1919, says that the Strand Theatre was opened in 1916. It was devoted primarily to movies, but sometimes presented vaudeville acts as well.
bbatty: The 1986 photo linked to by lostmemory in the comment of May 15, 2009, shows the same building that is in the Google Street View currently displayed at the top of this page. The Google view shows Pleasant Street, and is dated August, 2007. I believe that the Worcester Theatre on Exchange Street was long gone by that time. The theater in our photos has to be the Lathrop’s/Olympia/Fine Arts.
Here is a photo of this theater when it was the Olympia. The John Wayne movie Flame of the Barabary Coast is advertised on the marquee, which dates the photo to about 1945.
The photo comes from this weblog post about songwriter Joe Goodman, which is worth a visit in its own right, as are Chet Williamson’s other posts about Worcester’s songwriters.
The July 24, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World spells the name Dorris, with two r’s, as does an item in the August 26, 1916, issue of the same publication saying that the Dorris Theatre at Roseville had been sold to J. E. Edmonds, formerly of Los Gatos, and had been combined with the Rose Theatre (listed here as the Roxie.) Those are the only two references to this theater in publications of the period that I can find.
The December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World said that a group of Williamsburg exhibitors had met at the Progress Theater, 116 Graham Avenue, on November 20 to establish a branch of the New York City Exhibitors' Association.
I don’t know if the addresses have been shifted since 1913, or if the entrance to the theater actually was once in the other store building that fronts the auditorium. It must have been the same house, in any case.
Cezar DelValle’s Brooklyn Theatre Index says that this house was in operation as the Progress Theatre in 1912-1913, became the Variety Theatre from 1914-1917, and returned to being the Progress Theatre from 1918 until 1933, when it became the Lindy Theatre, closing in 1954.
This house didn’t make it into Cezar Del Valle’s Brooklyn Theatre Index, but it did get mentioned in the December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World. The Leonard Theatre was to host the second meeting of the recently-formed Williamsburg branch of the New York City Exhibitor’s League.
The first meeting, which had been held at the Progress Theatre, was attended by representatives of the Leonard Theatre and of the Broadway Lyceum, Graham Palace, Tompkins Amusement Company, Bushwick Casino, and the Progress, Metropolitan, Lewis, Williamsburg, Owl, Sutter, Bushwick, Old Postoffice, Greenpoint, and Kensington Theatres.
Rumors that Shubert might take over the old Warner Hollywood have been around for more than a decade. An August 31, 2001, item in the Los Angeles Times said that the idea had been floated by Leron Gubler, executive director of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. It’s been floating ever since.
Maybe the Shubert organization was just waiting for the church’s lease to end, but then with their deep pockets it seems they would have been able to buy out the church’s lease twelve years ago, before the Shubert Theatre in Century City was demolished, if they’d really wanted the place.
Because the Warner’s auditorium is set at a 45 degree angle, the stage is rather oddly shaped and small, being stuck into a corner of the building. That could be a deterrent to conversion. There is a parking lot next door, so there would be room to expand the stage (if the land is available), but it would be very costly.
It’s likely that the Dominion Theatres were part of the original group of houses operated by Famous Players when the company was chartered in 1920. This 1945 article from the Montreal Gazette lists among the 18 theaters the circuit began with two houses in Vancouver, one in Victoria, and one in Nanaimo.
Manjunath Pendakur’s Canadian Dreams and American Control: The Political Economy of the Canadian Film Industry mentions J. R. Muir twice, once as managing director of Famous Players subsidiary B.C. Paramount Theatres in 1926, and once as district manager of Famous Players in British Columbia in 1929. Muir might well have been one of N. L. Nathanson’s original associates in the circuit.
John Ritchie Muir was the original operator of the Dominion Theatre. He joined the Dominion Theatre Company of Vancouver in 1906, and later became its president, managing director, and principal stockholder. He built the Dominion Theatre in Victoria several years later. Later, he opened a third house of the same name at Nanaimo, B.C.
A brief notice in the October, 1912 issue of The Pacific Coast Architect said that Edwin W. Houghton had prepared plans for a theater at Victoria for a company promoted by J. A.[sic] Muir. A recent article in the Victoria Times Colonist about events in the city in 1913 has a few paragraphs about entertainment, and one says that the Dominion Theatre opened in May, 1913.
The Anniston Star of Sunday, April 7, 1918, ran several pages about the Lyric Theatre, which was set to open with a matinée program of Keith vaudeville the following day. The paper included a full-page all-text ad which read
Here is a photo of the stage tower with ghost signs reading Lyric Theatre and Keith Vaudeville.Frank Cullen’s Vaudeville Old and New lists a Fox-Lyric Theatre at Anniston as a house on the Keith vaudeville circuit, but with no dates for its operation, so it’s possible that William Fox had control of the theater for a while.
The “New Theaters” column of the February 16, 1927, issue of The Film Daily said “Earl R. Collins has opened the New Lyric” at Anniston, Alabama. Apparently, the “new theaters” listed in the magazine were not always brand new, but merely under new management.
CinemaTour has several photos of the Capitol Theatre, and gives the opening date as March 6, 1924.
However, I don’t know what to make of an item, datelined Plant City, from the “New Theaters” section of the February 16, 1927, issue of The Film Daily, which says: “Work has started on Universal’s new Capitol to cost $50,000.” Did the magazine give the wrong name for a different theater project, or was the Capitol actually built in 1927, or did Universal spend $50,000 to upgrade a three-year-old theater? CinemaTour doesn’t cite a period source for the 1924 opening date, so we can’t double check to see if there was some mistake there.
The Middlesex Theatre in Middletown was to be immediately rebuilt following a recent fire, according to the February 16, 1927, issue of The Film Daily. The item did not indicate the extent of the fire damage to the theater.
The 1914 and 1915 reports of the Chief of the Massachusetts District Police list three theaters operating at Clinton: the Globe and the Star, both operated by the Clinton Amusement Company, and the Town Hall. All three were listed as being in good condition.
The 1920 edition of the New England Business Directory listed the Globe, Star, and Strand Theatres at Clinton.
The stretch of Arkansas Avenue where the DeSoto Theatre was located has been wiped off the face of the earth, along with most of the neighborhood around it. Given the name, I suspect that the theater was at or near the corner of De Soto Street, several hundred feet north of the spot where Google Maps has placed the pin icon.
The obliteration took place sometime between 1958 and 1963, judging from a comparison of images from those years at Historic Aerials.
I just noticed that, in my second comment of June 7, I wrote Chestnut Street when I meant to write Main Street.
Recent comments on the State Theatre page indicate that it was the Washington Theatre, not the State, that was renovated and renamed the Penn Theatre. The Washington reopened as the Penn in March, 1961, and closed in April, 1973. It was demolished shortly after closing.
RSM3853’s list of movies shown at the State and Penn Theatres indicates that the State closed at the end of May, 1960, and the Penn opened in March, 1961. The operators must have decided to close the larger State Theatre and renovate and rename the smaller Washington Theatre to be their first-run house. With the decline in theater attendance that took place in the 1950s and 1960s, that would have made economic sense.
There were two houses called the Orpheum in Danvers. The annual report of the Peabody Institute published in March, 1912, mentioned an event with movies held at the Orpheum Theatre in Danvers the previous November. I’ve also found references from 1916 to a Danvers house called Brown’s Orpheum, operated by Louis Brown.
However, various issue of The Film Daily from 1926 and 1927 say that a house called either the Danvers Theatre or the Elm Theatre in various items was destroyed by fire in 1926, and was replaced by a 1000-seat theater which was originally to have been called the Capitol (issue of January 9) but which opened as the Orpheum (issue of February 9.)
The owner was Louis Brown, presumably the same who was the operator of Brown’s Orpheum in 1916, so it seems likely that the house destroyed by fire was the original Orpheum using a different name. A 1922 directory of New England businesses lists only one theater for Danvers, that being the Elm, though its address was 12 High Street. Mr.Brown might have acquired extra frontage for his rebuilding project, or perhaps simply shifted the theater entrance to a different part of the lot.
Auction site WorthPoint was recently offering a movie program from the Orpheum Theatre in Danvers for the week of October 20, 1940. The house had three changes a week at that time. The Orpheum is also mentioned in a 2011 article about the 50th reunion of a local high school’s class of 1961, and the author mentions attending the Orpheum during his high school years, so the house probably operated at least into the early 1960s.
Chuck, if the Penn was torn down and replaced by a parking lot in 1973 then it must have been the Washington that was renamed the Penn, not the State. The only parking lot on this block of Chestnut Street is the one where the Washington Theatre used to be, right across the street from the State. The State’s entrance building, at least, is still standing.
A paragraph about the Washington Theatre on this web page says that it did become the Penn Theatre, and this earlier comment by sgtjim says that he thought the Washington and the Penn were the same house, too.
I’m sure this is the same house that was listed as the Alpine Theatre, 834 Alpine Street, in the Moving Picture Theatres section of the 1926 city directory, and at 826 Alpine Street in the 1929 city directory. It’s back at 834 Alpine in the 1936 and 1938 directories. In 1939, the Alpine Theatre is gone and the first listing for the Carmen Theatre at 722 N. Figueroa Street appears. No theaters are listed under any name at either address in the 1927 or 1932 directories.
The February 29, 1936, issue of Motion Picture Herald said that D. F. Lyon was reopening the Alpine Theatre in Los Angeles, which had been closed for some time. The place apparently closed and reopened multiple times. I remember seeing this theater in the early 1960s, but I can’t remember if it was open or closed, nor can I remember what name, if any, was on the marquee.
Here is a postcard view of the Court Theatre, Washington, Pennsylvania, probably from around 1920.
Comments on this theater from before August 2, 2007, seem to have gone missing. I think that this 1949 photo must have been the one Chuck linked to.
Boxoffice of July 27, 1935, said that the Beverly Theatre was designed by architects Ronald F. Perry and Helmuth Bartsch. >This web page about Helmut [sic] Bartsch has seven photos of the Beverly Theatre (and also four apparently unrelated photos mistakenly labeled as depicting the Beverly Theatre.)
Helmuth Bartsch was an associate of Holabird & Root or its successor firms from 1928 through 1965. Ronald Perry was not mentioned in an exhaustive list of the Holabird & Root’s associates, so he must have been an independent architect.
I don’t know why I wrote Joe Goodman in my previous comment. The songwriter’s name was Joe Goodwin.
The Worcester Theatre isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures, and I’ve been unable to discover if it ever showed movies, other than a single exhibition of an early sound film process in 1913. Here’s a page with a photo of it anyway. It had a somewhat more ornate front than the Fine Arts, with some nice Romanesque detailing. Almost every comment on the page conflates it with either the Lothrop’s/Olympia/Fine Arts or the Poli/Hanover Theatre.
Volume two of History of Worcester and its People, by Charles Nutt, published in 1919, says that the Strand Theatre was opened in 1916. It was devoted primarily to movies, but sometimes presented vaudeville acts as well.
bbatty: The 1986 photo linked to by lostmemory in the comment of May 15, 2009, shows the same building that is in the Google Street View currently displayed at the top of this page. The Google view shows Pleasant Street, and is dated August, 2007. I believe that the Worcester Theatre on Exchange Street was long gone by that time. The theater in our photos has to be the Lathrop’s/Olympia/Fine Arts.
Here is a photo of this theater when it was the Olympia. The John Wayne movie Flame of the Barabary Coast is advertised on the marquee, which dates the photo to about 1945.
The photo comes from this weblog post about songwriter Joe Goodman, which is worth a visit in its own right, as are Chet Williamson’s other posts about Worcester’s songwriters.
The July 24, 1915, issue of The Moving Picture World spells the name Dorris, with two r’s, as does an item in the August 26, 1916, issue of the same publication saying that the Dorris Theatre at Roseville had been sold to J. E. Edmonds, formerly of Los Gatos, and had been combined with the Rose Theatre (listed here as the Roxie.) Those are the only two references to this theater in publications of the period that I can find.
Ah, there it is. I must have overlooked it.
The December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World said that a group of Williamsburg exhibitors had met at the Progress Theater, 116 Graham Avenue, on November 20 to establish a branch of the New York City Exhibitors' Association.
I don’t know if the addresses have been shifted since 1913, or if the entrance to the theater actually was once in the other store building that fronts the auditorium. It must have been the same house, in any case.
Cezar DelValle’s Brooklyn Theatre Index says that this house was in operation as the Progress Theatre in 1912-1913, became the Variety Theatre from 1914-1917, and returned to being the Progress Theatre from 1918 until 1933, when it became the Lindy Theatre, closing in 1954.
This house didn’t make it into Cezar Del Valle’s Brooklyn Theatre Index, but it did get mentioned in the December 6, 1913, issue of The Moving Picture World. The Leonard Theatre was to host the second meeting of the recently-formed Williamsburg branch of the New York City Exhibitor’s League.
The first meeting, which had been held at the Progress Theatre, was attended by representatives of the Leonard Theatre and of the Broadway Lyceum, Graham Palace, Tompkins Amusement Company, Bushwick Casino, and the Progress, Metropolitan, Lewis, Williamsburg, Owl, Sutter, Bushwick, Old Postoffice, Greenpoint, and Kensington Theatres.
Rumors that Shubert might take over the old Warner Hollywood have been around for more than a decade. An August 31, 2001, item in the Los Angeles Times said that the idea had been floated by Leron Gubler, executive director of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. It’s been floating ever since.
Maybe the Shubert organization was just waiting for the church’s lease to end, but then with their deep pockets it seems they would have been able to buy out the church’s lease twelve years ago, before the Shubert Theatre in Century City was demolished, if they’d really wanted the place.
Because the Warner’s auditorium is set at a 45 degree angle, the stage is rather oddly shaped and small, being stuck into a corner of the building. That could be a deterrent to conversion. There is a parking lot next door, so there would be room to expand the stage (if the land is available), but it would be very costly.
It’s likely that the Dominion Theatres were part of the original group of houses operated by Famous Players when the company was chartered in 1920. This 1945 article from the Montreal Gazette lists among the 18 theaters the circuit began with two houses in Vancouver, one in Victoria, and one in Nanaimo.
Manjunath Pendakur’s Canadian Dreams and American Control: The Political Economy of the Canadian Film Industry mentions J. R. Muir twice, once as managing director of Famous Players subsidiary B.C. Paramount Theatres in 1926, and once as district manager of Famous Players in British Columbia in 1929. Muir might well have been one of N. L. Nathanson’s original associates in the circuit.
John Ritchie Muir was the original operator of the Dominion Theatre. He joined the Dominion Theatre Company of Vancouver in 1906, and later became its president, managing director, and principal stockholder. He built the Dominion Theatre in Victoria several years later. Later, he opened a third house of the same name at Nanaimo, B.C.
A brief notice in the October, 1912 issue of The Pacific Coast Architect said that Edwin W. Houghton had prepared plans for a theater at Victoria for a company promoted by J. A.[sic] Muir. A recent article in the Victoria Times Colonist about events in the city in 1913 has a few paragraphs about entertainment, and one says that the Dominion Theatre opened in May, 1913.
The Pacific Coast Architecture Database says that the Spokane Theatre was designed by Seattle architect Edwin W. Houghton.