It looks like the Onate Theatre opened around September, 1939. Here is an item from the October 2, 1948 issue of Boxoffice: “BELEN, N. M.— The Onate Theatre celebrated its ninth anniversary recently with a change of program every day and a stage show at each evening performance.”
A house called the Vista Theatre was listed at Altavista in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but it was not this one. It’s possible that the 1914 Vista was the same house that was later called the Liberty Theatre.
The modern Vista Theatre was built in 1936, according to this article from The News & Advance of May 29, 2021. At that time, the City of Altavista had recently bought the property and intended to fund a study for a possible renovation and reuse of the house as a multi-purpose theater. The article features about three dozen photographs of the derelict theater.
The Liberty Theatre in Altavista was mentioned in the September 14, 1918 issue of Moving Picture World. The only theater listed at Altavista in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Vista. It’s possible that it was the same house, as a great many theaters in the United States were renamed Liberty during WWI.
Ken Layton’s capsule history of this house at CinemaTour says that it was built by Ralph Peel in 1982, the operation was taken over by Luxury Theatres around 1986, it was acquired by Act III Theatres in 1991, and then Regal Cinemas bought the Act III chain in 1998 and operated the house for about four years. In 2002 local resident Daryl Lund, owner of the downtown Chehalis Cinema, took over and made many improvements, including installing stadium seating. Lund closed it in March, 2009, but it was then reopened by independent operators Scott White and Jeff Frias.
Layton’s history ends there, but an article in the Chehalis Daily Chronicle of December 30, 2009 said that the house had closed again after a six month attempt to draw customers by showing English language movies with Spanish subtitles. I’ve found no later information about the place, so that closure might have been final. The Midway Cinema had opened on October 10, 2008
The name of this house was Cinema 3, and the Yard Birds shopping center was its location. All the newspaper references I’ve found to it call it Cinema 3 in Yard Birds or at Yard Birds or, after Regal took over, Regal Cinema 3. The newspaper was still referring to it as the Regal Cinema 3 after Lund took over, so it might be that Regal still owned the master lease and Lund was operating with a sublease.
Here is untimely news from the August 4, 1917 issue of Moving Picture World:
“Rialto Opening Delayed.
“Medford, Ore.— The Rialto, Percy-Moran Company’s new theater, which was scheduled to open July 25, will not be completed until August 5, when the grand opening will be held. The new seats for the big show house were unloaded at Chico, Cal., by mistake, causing the delay.”
This Facebook page has a 1934 photo of the Sunset Theatre. The accompanying text is from an interview with Jack Williams, long-time owner of the house, who also operated the Ilwaco Theatre in Ilwaco.
Another Facebook post is about Walter Strauhal, who owned the theater before Williams. It says that the Strauhals “…took over the old tent showhouse in 1910, replacing it with a building that became known as the Sunset Theater, and later as the Long Beach Theater….” Long Beach Theatre was the final name of this house. A June 26, 1956 Boxoffice item about Williams closing the Ilwaco Theatre said that he intended to focus on running his Long Beach Theatre.
It appears that the Sunset had opened under a different name as well. An item datelined Long Beach in the August 4, 1917 Moving Picture World said “C. B. Strauhal has opened the Row theater.” I’ve found no indication that Long Beach (or the Strauhals) ever had any other theaters, so the item must have been about the house that became the Sunset/Long Beach. The second Facebook page says that the building was demolished in 1974, but doesn’t say when the theater closed.
The first Madera Theatre was either a rebuild of or a replacement for the Madera Opera House on the same site. It opened in 1913 and was destroyed by fire on November 30, 1940. The rebuilt Madera, designed by Cantin & Cantin, opened on September 5, 1941. It closed in 1991 and was demolished in 1997.
The reopening of the former Vista Theatre as the Forum Theatre was noted in the July 20, 1931 issue of Film Daily. The name change apparently turned out to be temporary.
The January 30, 1931 issue of Film Daily says that Royal is the new name of an Oakland theater formerly called the Fern. I’ve checked the 1926 and 1927 FDY’s and no houses called either the Elmhurst or the Fern are listed, and the only theaters listed on 14th Street (former name of International Boulevard) are nowhere near 94th Avenue, which is where 9411 would be. The Fern Theatre is first listed in the 1928 yearbook, without details, but in the 1929 edition it is listed at 9719 E. 14th Street, with 240 seats.
So there’s a puzzle. Was there an address change? (unlikely, given that the address numbers match up with the cross street numbers.) Did either Garrett Murphy or the FDY (an FDY mistake would not surprise me) get the address wrong? Did the Royal move from the 9700 bock to the 9400 block at some point? Was the Royal really in the same building as the old Elmhurst? Why wasn’t the Elmhurst listed in 1926 and 1927?
And for additional puzzlement, although Oakland annexed the formerly independent town of Elmhurst in 1909, the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory still lists it separately (the FDY’s don’t– I checked) and it lists two theaters at Elmhurst: the Elm, with no details, and the Grand Theatre at… 94th and E. 14th Street! Was Grand a previous name for the Elmhurst Theatre that opened in 1916? Or was it a different theater nearby?
I’m at a loss, but something doesn’t add up. This is where some old city directories or telephone books would come in handy.
The March 6, 1941 issue of The Sauk Center Herald reported that the Oxford Theatre had been bought by F. W. Parsons & Sons, owners of the Main Street Theatre. Parsons was quoted as saying that the Oxford and the Main Street had both been losing money because Sauk Center was too small to support two full-time movie houses. He planned to keep the Oxford open, but only two days a week.
The premier of “Wings” at the Biltmore was to be a low-key event, according to this belated item from the January 24, 1928 issue of Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World:
“No Kliegs for $2.20 Top at Hollywood ‘Wings’
“(Special to Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World)
“HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 10.— There will be no Klieg lights or traffic jams at the Hollywood road show of ‘Wings’ at the Biltmore theatre January 15.
‘There will be none of the customary ballyhoo,’ says A. Griffith Grey, of the Paramount road show department, ‘and no invitations will be given to celebrities. The top price will be $2.20.’"
The recent opening of the Rialto was mentioned at the end of this item from the January 3, 1920 issue of Moving Picture World:
“Vivian Forms Corporation
“The Vivian Theatres Corporation, of Seattle, was incorporated last October for $100,000 and took over its first theatre on November 23. This was the Madison Theatre, one of the most beautiful suburban houses near Seattle. President Brian B. Vivian has operated theatres for several years on the West Coast. His brokerage department handles a big percentage of the deals turned in the Northwest. The Rialto Theatre, just constructed at a cost of $15,000, has very recently been opened at Anacortes, Wash.”
The June 26, 1956 issue of Boxoffice said that J. G. Williams had decided to close the Ilwaco Theatre after having run it for the previous thirty years. Despite his having made improvements to the house, patronage had continued to decline, and he would close it that month to concentrate on his theater in Long Beach, Washington.
That house was called the Sunset Theatre.
An interview with theater owner Jack Williams, part of which is on this Facebook page, reveals that the Ilwaco Theatre building was built in 1923. An earlier storefront theater called the Bell had opened as early as 1914 at 691 Main Street.
An article published in 2006 said that the Ilwaco Theatre had been in the building which by then was occupied by the Sea Hag Bar. The Sea Hag is still in business, at 209 First Avenue South.
The caption of a photo showing the Grand Theatre on this Facebook page says that it was located at Burleson Avenue and E. 6th Street. The entire block has been demolished.
This Facebook page has a circa 1926 photo showing a smaller McCamey movie house called the Star Theatre. It was probably also on Burleson Avenue.
There appears to have been two houses called the Ford Theatre in Rankin, opened four years apart. The December 20, 1952 issue of Boxoffice listed the 580-seat Ford Theatre as one of the many new movie houses opened in the United States that year. But then there is this item from the February 27, 1948 issue of The Rankin News:
“New Theatre Opens On Friday Night To Packed Audience
“The new ‘Ford’ Theatre held its grand opening here last Friday night, playing to a packed house. The theatre has had good attendance every show since. H. Ford Taylor, of Ballinger, who owns the theatre, announced that he will build a second show house across the street when it is needed. He says he has purchased two lots across the street from the new one for that purpose. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were here several days prior and after the opening of the show.”
The May 14, 1952 issue of The Exhibitor confirms the opening of the Ford Theatre early that month. I’ve been unable to discover what then became of the 1948 Ford Theatre, but it probably closed. In the 1940s and 1950s, Rankin was an oil patch boomtown, but its population now is probably less than half its peak. Not much remains of the business district along Main Street, which is most likely where the theaters were located.
The first Ford was not Rankin’s first movie theater. The July 13, 1929 issue of Motion Picture News mentioned a house called the Palace Theatre.
The January 13, 1940 issue of Boxoffice listed the Empire Theatre as one of three downtown Mobile houses then being operated by the Saenger Theatres Corporation. The other two were the Crown and the Saenger.
The January 13, 1940 issue of Boxoffice listed the Crown Theatre as one of three downtown Mobile houses then being operated by the Saenger Theatres Corporation. The other two were the Empire and the Saenger.
An item in the December 31, 1955 issue of Boxoffice revealed that the Texas Theatre and Sky-Vue Drive-In at Haskell were both owned by Frontier Theatres.
I don’t know why Boxoffice said in 1955 that the Ritz had been Arcola’s first theater when it opened in 1933. Not only does the 1926 Film Daily Year Book list a 300-seat house called the Olympia there, but the July 29, 1922 issue of The Billboard says that a house called the New Lyric Theatre had recently opened in Arcola. Not only that, but the Olympia was mentioned in the January 3, 1914 issue of Moving Picture World, and listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory as the Olympian Theatre. Then the April 9, 1921 MPW mentions an Arcola Theatre, while the August 13 issue that year mentions the sale of the “Olympic” (undoubtedly a typo for Olympia.)
This item is from the July 29, 1922 issue of The Billboard: “The Temple Theater, Viroqua, Wis., was formally opened early this month and has been enjoying excellent patronage.”
It looks like the Onate Theatre opened around September, 1939. Here is an item from the October 2, 1948 issue of Boxoffice: “BELEN, N. M.— The Onate Theatre celebrated its ninth anniversary recently with a change of program every day and a stage show at each evening performance.”
A house called the Vista Theatre was listed at Altavista in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but it was not this one. It’s possible that the 1914 Vista was the same house that was later called the Liberty Theatre.
The modern Vista Theatre was built in 1936, according to this article from The News & Advance of May 29, 2021. At that time, the City of Altavista had recently bought the property and intended to fund a study for a possible renovation and reuse of the house as a multi-purpose theater. The article features about three dozen photographs of the derelict theater.
The Liberty Theatre in Altavista was mentioned in the September 14, 1918 issue of Moving Picture World. The only theater listed at Altavista in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Vista. It’s possible that it was the same house, as a great many theaters in the United States were renamed Liberty during WWI.
Ken Layton’s capsule history of this house at CinemaTour says that it was built by Ralph Peel in 1982, the operation was taken over by Luxury Theatres around 1986, it was acquired by Act III Theatres in 1991, and then Regal Cinemas bought the Act III chain in 1998 and operated the house for about four years. In 2002 local resident Daryl Lund, owner of the downtown Chehalis Cinema, took over and made many improvements, including installing stadium seating. Lund closed it in March, 2009, but it was then reopened by independent operators Scott White and Jeff Frias.
Layton’s history ends there, but an article in the Chehalis Daily Chronicle of December 30, 2009 said that the house had closed again after a six month attempt to draw customers by showing English language movies with Spanish subtitles. I’ve found no later information about the place, so that closure might have been final. The Midway Cinema had opened on October 10, 2008
The name of this house was Cinema 3, and the Yard Birds shopping center was its location. All the newspaper references I’ve found to it call it Cinema 3 in Yard Birds or at Yard Birds or, after Regal took over, Regal Cinema 3. The newspaper was still referring to it as the Regal Cinema 3 after Lund took over, so it might be that Regal still owned the master lease and Lund was operating with a sublease.
Here is untimely news from the August 4, 1917 issue of Moving Picture World:
This Facebook page has a 1934 photo of the Sunset Theatre. The accompanying text is from an interview with Jack Williams, long-time owner of the house, who also operated the Ilwaco Theatre in Ilwaco.
Another Facebook post is about Walter Strauhal, who owned the theater before Williams. It says that the Strauhals “…took over the old tent showhouse in 1910, replacing it with a building that became known as the Sunset Theater, and later as the Long Beach Theater….” Long Beach Theatre was the final name of this house. A June 26, 1956 Boxoffice item about Williams closing the Ilwaco Theatre said that he intended to focus on running his Long Beach Theatre.
It appears that the Sunset had opened under a different name as well. An item datelined Long Beach in the August 4, 1917 Moving Picture World said “C. B. Strauhal has opened the Row theater.” I’ve found no indication that Long Beach (or the Strauhals) ever had any other theaters, so the item must have been about the house that became the Sunset/Long Beach. The second Facebook page says that the building was demolished in 1974, but doesn’t say when the theater closed.
The first Madera Theatre was either a rebuild of or a replacement for the Madera Opera House on the same site. It opened in 1913 and was destroyed by fire on November 30, 1940. The rebuilt Madera, designed by Cantin & Cantin, opened on September 5, 1941. It closed in 1991 and was demolished in 1997.
The reopening of the former Vista Theatre as the Forum Theatre was noted in the July 20, 1931 issue of Film Daily. The name change apparently turned out to be temporary.
The July 20, 1931 issue of Film Daily reported this theater’s name change from Lincoln Theatre to Daly Theatre.
Correct date of the Film Daily report of the name change at (what might have been) this house was July 20, 1931.
The January 30, 1931 issue of Film Daily says that Royal is the new name of an Oakland theater formerly called the Fern. I’ve checked the 1926 and 1927 FDY’s and no houses called either the Elmhurst or the Fern are listed, and the only theaters listed on 14th Street (former name of International Boulevard) are nowhere near 94th Avenue, which is where 9411 would be. The Fern Theatre is first listed in the 1928 yearbook, without details, but in the 1929 edition it is listed at 9719 E. 14th Street, with 240 seats.
So there’s a puzzle. Was there an address change? (unlikely, given that the address numbers match up with the cross street numbers.) Did either Garrett Murphy or the FDY (an FDY mistake would not surprise me) get the address wrong? Did the Royal move from the 9700 bock to the 9400 block at some point? Was the Royal really in the same building as the old Elmhurst? Why wasn’t the Elmhurst listed in 1926 and 1927?
And for additional puzzlement, although Oakland annexed the formerly independent town of Elmhurst in 1909, the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory still lists it separately (the FDY’s don’t– I checked) and it lists two theaters at Elmhurst: the Elm, with no details, and the Grand Theatre at… 94th and E. 14th Street! Was Grand a previous name for the Elmhurst Theatre that opened in 1916? Or was it a different theater nearby?
I’m at a loss, but something doesn’t add up. This is where some old city directories or telephone books would come in handy.
This theater’s name change from Shamrock to Cameo was reported in the July 20, 1931 issue of Film Daily.
The March 6, 1941 issue of The Sauk Center Herald reported that the Oxford Theatre had been bought by F. W. Parsons & Sons, owners of the Main Street Theatre. Parsons was quoted as saying that the Oxford and the Main Street had both been losing money because Sauk Center was too small to support two full-time movie houses. He planned to keep the Oxford open, but only two days a week.
The premier of “Wings” at the Biltmore was to be a low-key event, according to this belated item from the January 24, 1928 issue of Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World:
The recent opening of the Rialto was mentioned at the end of this item from the January 3, 1920 issue of Moving Picture World:
The June 26, 1956 issue of Boxoffice said that J. G. Williams had decided to close the Ilwaco Theatre after having run it for the previous thirty years. Despite his having made improvements to the house, patronage had continued to decline, and he would close it that month to concentrate on his theater in Long Beach, Washington. That house was called the Sunset Theatre.
An interview with theater owner Jack Williams, part of which is on this Facebook page, reveals that the Ilwaco Theatre building was built in 1923. An earlier storefront theater called the Bell had opened as early as 1914 at 691 Main Street.
An article published in 2006 said that the Ilwaco Theatre had been in the building which by then was occupied by the Sea Hag Bar. The Sea Hag is still in business, at 209 First Avenue South.
The caption of a photo showing the Grand Theatre on this Facebook page says that it was located at Burleson Avenue and E. 6th Street. The entire block has been demolished.
This Facebook page has a circa 1926 photo showing a smaller McCamey movie house called the Star Theatre. It was probably also on Burleson Avenue.
There appears to have been two houses called the Ford Theatre in Rankin, opened four years apart. The December 20, 1952 issue of Boxoffice listed the 580-seat Ford Theatre as one of the many new movie houses opened in the United States that year. But then there is this item from the February 27, 1948 issue of The Rankin News:
The May 14, 1952 issue of The Exhibitor confirms the opening of the Ford Theatre early that month. I’ve been unable to discover what then became of the 1948 Ford Theatre, but it probably closed. In the 1940s and 1950s, Rankin was an oil patch boomtown, but its population now is probably less than half its peak. Not much remains of the business district along Main Street, which is most likely where the theaters were located.The first Ford was not Rankin’s first movie theater. The July 13, 1929 issue of Motion Picture News mentioned a house called the Palace Theatre.
The January 13, 1940 issue of Boxoffice listed the Empire Theatre as one of three downtown Mobile houses then being operated by the Saenger Theatres Corporation. The other two were the Crown and the Saenger.
The January 13, 1940 issue of Boxoffice listed the Crown Theatre as one of three downtown Mobile houses then being operated by the Saenger Theatres Corporation. The other two were the Empire and the Saenger.
By 1964, the Lobo Theatre was being operated by Frontier Theatres, as noted in the August 24 issue of Boxoffice.
The April 7, 1958 issue of Boxoffice said that the Tu-Vu Drive-In was designed by San Diego architect Stanley Burne.
An item in the December 31, 1955 issue of Boxoffice revealed that the Texas Theatre and Sky-Vue Drive-In at Haskell were both owned by Frontier Theatres.
I don’t know why Boxoffice said in 1955 that the Ritz had been Arcola’s first theater when it opened in 1933. Not only does the 1926 Film Daily Year Book list a 300-seat house called the Olympia there, but the July 29, 1922 issue of The Billboard says that a house called the New Lyric Theatre had recently opened in Arcola. Not only that, but the Olympia was mentioned in the January 3, 1914 issue of Moving Picture World, and listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory as the Olympian Theatre. Then the April 9, 1921 MPW mentions an Arcola Theatre, while the August 13 issue that year mentions the sale of the “Olympic” (undoubtedly a typo for Olympia.)
This item is from the July 29, 1922 issue of The Billboard: “The Temple Theater, Viroqua, Wis., was formally opened early this month and has been enjoying excellent patronage.”