Don: The April 9, 1962, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that the premier of “The Music Man” was to be presented at the Palace Theatre in Mason City. The July 2 issue of the same publication reported on the event, which was held in conjunction with the North Iowa Band Festival and a national Music Man Band Competition.
About 125,000 people crowded into the town, and Meredith Wilson headed a three-hour parade, leading the Mason City band. A total of 8000 bandsmen participated in the parade, and the invitational press premier of the movie was held at the Palace that evening.
The Majestic was one of the theaters listed as being under construction in the March 26, 1949, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. It was slated to open in September. Listed seating capacity was 1,450, which sounds a bit high for the theater in the photos.
This is one of several multiplexes designed for Harkins by The Beck Group, a Dallas, Texas-based architecture, development, and construction company.
Joe Vogel
commented about
Mayanon
Mar 23, 2009 at 6:06 am
Ah, I didn’t see that. Well, even if they were just 1950s soft core porn movies, I think that should qualify the Belasco for a page. Lots of little store front porn houses from the 1970s are listed, and the Belasco is certainly more interesting as a theater than they are.
If this house is located in the Muscatine Shopping Center, then it was probably the twin opened as the 850-seat Plaza Cinema I & II by the L&M Circuit in 1971. It was listed among the new theaters opened the previous year, in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of May 15, 1972.
Muscatine had two Palace Theatres. An item in the May 5, 1945, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that Fox Midwest had announced that the opening of the new Palace Theatre was scheduled for May 8. The item said that the new house replaced a theater of the same name which had burned the previous year. It didn’t say if the new theater was on the same site as the original Palace.
An article about Ludy Bosten, a long-time Muscatine exhibitor, published in Boxoffice Magazine on April 9, 1962, said that he had operated the Palace Theatre for a time, but didn’t specify the period. It did say that the Palace had closed two years earlier, though, suggesting that he had taken over the second Palace, perhaps in the early 1950s when various Fox operating companies were required by the courts to divest themselves of many of their theaters.
The 1940s were a bad time for Muscatine’s historic theaters. The Grand burned down the same year the new Palace opened.
Muscatine’s Grand and Palace Theatres were sold by Midland Theatres to Fox West Coast Theatres in 1929, according to an item in Movie Age, November 2 that year. Both were among the Muscatine theaters operated at one time by Ludy Bosten, an exhibitor in the town from 1912 into the 1960s, according to an article about his career in the April 9, 1962, issue of Boxoffice Magazine.
The Grand Theatre’s demise was recorded by a brief item in the March 17, 1945, issue of Boxoffice, which said that the house had been destroyed by a fire the previous week.
Forgot to mention this: The October 16, 1948, issue of Boxoffice said the A-Muse-U had been completely remodeled and redecorated, with a new facade and marquee, new screen and alterations to the stage, an expanded balcony and new stairway, and new carpets.
An article about long-time Muscatine exhibitor Ludy Bosten, published in the April 9, 1962, issue of Boxoffice Magazine, says that he opened his first theater in Muscatine, a nickelodeon called the Princess (later renamed the Gayety) in 1912, and that “several years later” he opened the A-Muse-U Theater.
Bosten was interviewed for the article, and reminisced about the early days of the A-Muse-U, telling the interviewer of the ten-piece orchestra, and how on Sundays people would come from as far away as Cedar Rapids to attend the shows, and all the theater’s 543 seats would be filled.
Maybe when Bosten said he opened the A-Muse-U several years after opening the Princess in 1912, he meant that he took over the existing theater, as I’m sure Mr. Richman was not a time traveller, and could not have written, in a book published in 1911, about a theater not yet built.
That Bosten performed some alteration of the building and then reopened it is a possibility, of course, as Richman says the house was given over to moving pictures exclusively, and Bosten said he presented live acts as well as movies at his A-Muse-U. Richman also gives a bigger seating capacity (600) than Bosten does (543), suggesting that some of the seats might have been removed to make room for a stage.
Boxoffice Magazine has mentions of the A-Muse-U in various issues, the last as late as November 20, 1954, when it said that the house had been reopened after having been closed for some unspecified length of time.
A biographical sketch of the original owner of the Uptown, Ludy Bosten, appeared in the April 9, 1962, issue of Boxoffice Magazine, on the occasion of his fiftieth anniversary in the theater business.
The Uptown opened in 1929, and was located in a former National Guard armory. An 11-inch concrete floor had to be ripped out in order to convert the building into a theater.
Bosten opened his first theater in Muscatine, a nickelodeon called the Princess, in 1912. Later, the Princess was known as the Gayety. A few years later he opened the A-Muse-U Theatre, and at one time operated the Family Theatre in partnership with Carl Laemmle Jr., who would later found Universal Pictures.
Other Muscatine theaters operated by Bosten included the Grand and the Palace, which had closed two years before the article was published. In 1962, he was still operating the Uptown Theatre and the Hilltop Drive-In in Muscatine, and the Wapello Theatre in Wapello, Iowa.
A little bit more information turned up in the February 20, 1967, issue of Boxoffice. An item said that Deb Coble, who had recently taken over the Jewell Theatre in Valentine, was also taking over the Valentine Drive-In that had been owned by Roy Metzger of Winner, South Dakota.
The June 11, 1955, issue of Boxoffice said that the Valentine Drive-In had opened for its second year, and that over the winter CinemaScope equipment had been installed. The drive-in was then operated by a Mr. and Mrs. Robert Sharp.
From at least early 1938, the Jewell Theatre was owned and operated by a Mr. and Mrs. Harold Dunn (Mrs. Dunn’s name was Hazel.) They are mentioned in several issues of Boxoffice Magazine from that period. The February 26, 1938, issue said that Harold Dunn had begin remodeling the theater, and intended to redecorate the lobby, enlarge the foyer, install a new box office, and build lounges on the lower floor.
The April 2, 1938, issue said that Mrs. Dunn had been in Omaha to pick out some “…snappy blue and black leather and chromium furniture at Quality Theatre Supply for the remodel job on the Jewel Theatre.” (Boxoffice sometimes spelled the name Jewel and sometimes Jewell.)
There are various other mentions of the Dunns into the 1950s, but the December 18, 1961, issue of Boxoffice says that Mrs. Hazel Dunn, owner of the Jewel Theatre, had been visiting old friends in Omaha, so I guess that Harold was gone by then.
Finally, the June 30, 1969, issue of Boxoffice says that Deb Coble, operator of the Jewell Theatre, was closing the house for the summer and would operate only the drive-in. That’s the last mention of the Jewell I’ve found.
Joe Vogel
commented about
Mayanon
Mar 22, 2009 at 10:52 pm
LawMann, do you know the general period in which the Belasco ran movies? They surely would have been advertised in the L.A. Times, and somebody who has access to the Times archives at the L.A. Library could probably find some of those ads if they knew where to look.
If the place did run movies for a couple of years, or even a few months, then it certainly deserves a page here. Somehow, the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium got a page, and all they ever did was four-wall an occasional surf or ski movie, and a few of the Hollywood beach movies of the 1960s, long after they’d had their theatrical runs. (By those standards, practically every civic auditorium in the country should qualify.)
I think the photo Ken linked to in the first comment above might depict the Hiland Theatre in Des Moines, Iowa. There’s a night shot of it on this weblog. The marquee is the same. Also, the architectural style is very similar to other theaters by architects Wetherell & Harrison, who designed the Des Moines Hiland.
This theater replaced an earlier Hiland Theatre which was at 3602 Sixth Avenue. The second Hiland was expected to open by September, 1939, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of April 9 that year. The plans for the new house were being drawn by the architectural firm of Wetherell & Harrison.
The Rocket Theatre was featured in an article by theater decorator Hanns Teichert in the March 2, 1940, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The new Tri-States Theatres house was designed by the Des Moines architectural firm Wetherell & Harrison.
This appears to have been a replacement for an earlier Rialto Theatre. The February 1, 1939, issue of Boxoffice magazine said that Jack Bouma, operator of the Rialto Theatre in Pocahontas, planned to begin construction on a new theater there that spring. The plans for the new house were being drawn by the Des Moines architectural firm Wetherell & Harrison.
The November 3, 1940, issue of Boxoffice Magazine ran an item saying that excavation had begun for a theater on Church Street in Ottumwa. Although the name of the theater was not given, the photos match the description of the facade of the proposed house, which was to be a brick building faced with glazed tile and glass blocks. The theater was designed by the Des Moines firm Wetherell & Harrison, and was to have 525 seats.
The Collegian Theatre was designed by the Des Moines architectural firm Wetherell & Harrison, according to this page about the Varsity Theatre at the Ames Historical Society web site.
Here’s an illustrated web page about the Varsity Theatre</a>, courtesy of the Ames Historical Society. It says that the Varsity was designed by the Des Moines architectural firm Wetherell & Harrison, and that the same firm also designed the Collegian Theatre in Ames.
The Capitol Theatre was extensively altered in 1942, removing shops from the building front, extending the balcony, and increasing its original seating capacity by 300. An article with photos appeared in the July 18, 1942, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The renovated interior was in the Art Moderne style. The project was designed by the Des Moines architecture firm Wetherell & Harrison.
An article about the Esquire Theatre appeared in the December 9, 1939, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The article includes some information about the Columbia as well.
The Columbia opened on Christmas Day, 1913, with 1000 seats. The article says that the Esquire was built “within the walls” of the Columbia, as a single-floor theater. The Columbia had seated only about 600 in the orchestra and 400 in the balcony, so getting the Esquire’s 835 seats onto one floor necessitated the removal of most of the Columbia’s stage. The roof was lowered as well, but the auditorium still had a fairly high ceiling.
The new theater was thoroughly Moderne in style, with just a lingering hint of Art Deco in some of the details. The Esquire was designed by the Des Moines architectural firm Wetherell & Harrison.
Don: The April 9, 1962, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that the premier of “The Music Man” was to be presented at the Palace Theatre in Mason City. The July 2 issue of the same publication reported on the event, which was held in conjunction with the North Iowa Band Festival and a national Music Man Band Competition.
About 125,000 people crowded into the town, and Meredith Wilson headed a three-hour parade, leading the Mason City band. A total of 8000 bandsmen participated in the parade, and the invitational press premier of the movie was held at the Palace that evening.
The Majestic was one of the theaters listed as being under construction in the March 26, 1949, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. It was slated to open in September. Listed seating capacity was 1,450, which sounds a bit high for the theater in the photos.
This is one of several multiplexes designed for Harkins by The Beck Group, a Dallas, Texas architecture, development, and construction company.
This is one of several multiplexes designed for Harkins by The Beck Group, a Dallas, Texas architecture, development, and construction company.
This is one of several multiplexes designed for Harkins by The Beck Group, a Dallas, Texas-based architecture, development, and construction company.
Ah, I didn’t see that. Well, even if they were just 1950s soft core porn movies, I think that should qualify the Belasco for a page. Lots of little store front porn houses from the 1970s are listed, and the Belasco is certainly more interesting as a theater than they are.
If this house is located in the Muscatine Shopping Center, then it was probably the twin opened as the 850-seat Plaza Cinema I & II by the L&M Circuit in 1971. It was listed among the new theaters opened the previous year, in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of May 15, 1972.
Muscatine had two Palace Theatres. An item in the May 5, 1945, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that Fox Midwest had announced that the opening of the new Palace Theatre was scheduled for May 8. The item said that the new house replaced a theater of the same name which had burned the previous year. It didn’t say if the new theater was on the same site as the original Palace.
An article about Ludy Bosten, a long-time Muscatine exhibitor, published in Boxoffice Magazine on April 9, 1962, said that he had operated the Palace Theatre for a time, but didn’t specify the period. It did say that the Palace had closed two years earlier, though, suggesting that he had taken over the second Palace, perhaps in the early 1950s when various Fox operating companies were required by the courts to divest themselves of many of their theaters.
The 1940s were a bad time for Muscatine’s historic theaters. The Grand burned down the same year the new Palace opened.
Muscatine’s Grand and Palace Theatres were sold by Midland Theatres to Fox West Coast Theatres in 1929, according to an item in Movie Age, November 2 that year. Both were among the Muscatine theaters operated at one time by Ludy Bosten, an exhibitor in the town from 1912 into the 1960s, according to an article about his career in the April 9, 1962, issue of Boxoffice Magazine.
The Grand Theatre’s demise was recorded by a brief item in the March 17, 1945, issue of Boxoffice, which said that the house had been destroyed by a fire the previous week.
Forgot to mention this: The October 16, 1948, issue of Boxoffice said the A-Muse-U had been completely remodeled and redecorated, with a new facade and marquee, new screen and alterations to the stage, an expanded balcony and new stairway, and new carpets.
An article about long-time Muscatine exhibitor Ludy Bosten, published in the April 9, 1962, issue of Boxoffice Magazine, says that he opened his first theater in Muscatine, a nickelodeon called the Princess (later renamed the Gayety) in 1912, and that “several years later” he opened the A-Muse-U Theater.
Bosten was interviewed for the article, and reminisced about the early days of the A-Muse-U, telling the interviewer of the ten-piece orchestra, and how on Sundays people would come from as far away as Cedar Rapids to attend the shows, and all the theater’s 543 seats would be filled.
Maybe when Bosten said he opened the A-Muse-U several years after opening the Princess in 1912, he meant that he took over the existing theater, as I’m sure Mr. Richman was not a time traveller, and could not have written, in a book published in 1911, about a theater not yet built.
That Bosten performed some alteration of the building and then reopened it is a possibility, of course, as Richman says the house was given over to moving pictures exclusively, and Bosten said he presented live acts as well as movies at his A-Muse-U. Richman also gives a bigger seating capacity (600) than Bosten does (543), suggesting that some of the seats might have been removed to make room for a stage.
Boxoffice Magazine has mentions of the A-Muse-U in various issues, the last as late as November 20, 1954, when it said that the house had been reopened after having been closed for some unspecified length of time.
A biographical sketch of the original owner of the Uptown, Ludy Bosten, appeared in the April 9, 1962, issue of Boxoffice Magazine, on the occasion of his fiftieth anniversary in the theater business.
The Uptown opened in 1929, and was located in a former National Guard armory. An 11-inch concrete floor had to be ripped out in order to convert the building into a theater.
Bosten opened his first theater in Muscatine, a nickelodeon called the Princess, in 1912. Later, the Princess was known as the Gayety. A few years later he opened the A-Muse-U Theatre, and at one time operated the Family Theatre in partnership with Carl Laemmle Jr., who would later found Universal Pictures.
Other Muscatine theaters operated by Bosten included the Grand and the Palace, which had closed two years before the article was published. In 1962, he was still operating the Uptown Theatre and the Hilltop Drive-In in Muscatine, and the Wapello Theatre in Wapello, Iowa.
A little bit more information turned up in the February 20, 1967, issue of Boxoffice. An item said that Deb Coble, who had recently taken over the Jewell Theatre in Valentine, was also taking over the Valentine Drive-In that had been owned by Roy Metzger of Winner, South Dakota.
The June 11, 1955, issue of Boxoffice said that the Valentine Drive-In had opened for its second year, and that over the winter CinemaScope equipment had been installed. The drive-in was then operated by a Mr. and Mrs. Robert Sharp.
From at least early 1938, the Jewell Theatre was owned and operated by a Mr. and Mrs. Harold Dunn (Mrs. Dunn’s name was Hazel.) They are mentioned in several issues of Boxoffice Magazine from that period. The February 26, 1938, issue said that Harold Dunn had begin remodeling the theater, and intended to redecorate the lobby, enlarge the foyer, install a new box office, and build lounges on the lower floor.
The April 2, 1938, issue said that Mrs. Dunn had been in Omaha to pick out some “…snappy blue and black leather and chromium furniture at Quality Theatre Supply for the remodel job on the Jewel Theatre.” (Boxoffice sometimes spelled the name Jewel and sometimes Jewell.)
There are various other mentions of the Dunns into the 1950s, but the December 18, 1961, issue of Boxoffice says that Mrs. Hazel Dunn, owner of the Jewel Theatre, had been visiting old friends in Omaha, so I guess that Harold was gone by then.
Finally, the June 30, 1969, issue of Boxoffice says that Deb Coble, operator of the Jewell Theatre, was closing the house for the summer and would operate only the drive-in. That’s the last mention of the Jewell I’ve found.
LawMann, do you know the general period in which the Belasco ran movies? They surely would have been advertised in the L.A. Times, and somebody who has access to the Times archives at the L.A. Library could probably find some of those ads if they knew where to look.
If the place did run movies for a couple of years, or even a few months, then it certainly deserves a page here. Somehow, the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium got a page, and all they ever did was four-wall an occasional surf or ski movie, and a few of the Hollywood beach movies of the 1960s, long after they’d had their theatrical runs. (By those standards, practically every civic auditorium in the country should qualify.)
I think the photo Ken linked to in the first comment above might depict the Hiland Theatre in Des Moines, Iowa. There’s a night shot of it on this weblog. The marquee is the same. Also, the architectural style is very similar to other theaters by architects Wetherell & Harrison, who designed the Des Moines Hiland.
The Charles Theatre was designed by the Des Moines architectural firm Wetherell & Harrison.
This theater replaced an earlier Hiland Theatre which was at 3602 Sixth Avenue. The second Hiland was expected to open by September, 1939, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of April 9 that year. The plans for the new house were being drawn by the architectural firm of Wetherell & Harrison.
The Rocket Theatre was featured in an article by theater decorator Hanns Teichert in the March 2, 1940, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The new Tri-States Theatres house was designed by the Des Moines architectural firm Wetherell & Harrison.
This appears to have been a replacement for an earlier Rialto Theatre. The February 1, 1939, issue of Boxoffice magazine said that Jack Bouma, operator of the Rialto Theatre in Pocahontas, planned to begin construction on a new theater there that spring. The plans for the new house were being drawn by the Des Moines architectural firm Wetherell & Harrison.
The November 3, 1940, issue of Boxoffice Magazine ran an item saying that excavation had begun for a theater on Church Street in Ottumwa. Although the name of the theater was not given, the photos match the description of the facade of the proposed house, which was to be a brick building faced with glazed tile and glass blocks. The theater was designed by the Des Moines firm Wetherell & Harrison, and was to have 525 seats.
The Collegian Theatre was designed by the Des Moines architectural firm Wetherell & Harrison, according to this page about the Varsity Theatre at the Ames Historical Society web site.
Here’s an illustrated web page about the Varsity Theatre</a>, courtesy of the Ames Historical Society. It says that the Varsity was designed by the Des Moines architectural firm Wetherell & Harrison, and that the same firm also designed the Collegian Theatre in Ames.
The Capitol Theatre was extensively altered in 1942, removing shops from the building front, extending the balcony, and increasing its original seating capacity by 300. An article with photos appeared in the July 18, 1942, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The renovated interior was in the Art Moderne style. The project was designed by the Des Moines architecture firm Wetherell & Harrison.
An article about the Esquire Theatre appeared in the December 9, 1939, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. The article includes some information about the Columbia as well.
The Columbia opened on Christmas Day, 1913, with 1000 seats. The article says that the Esquire was built “within the walls” of the Columbia, as a single-floor theater. The Columbia had seated only about 600 in the orchestra and 400 in the balcony, so getting the Esquire’s 835 seats onto one floor necessitated the removal of most of the Columbia’s stage. The roof was lowered as well, but the auditorium still had a fairly high ceiling.
The new theater was thoroughly Moderne in style, with just a lingering hint of Art Deco in some of the details. The Esquire was designed by the Des Moines architectural firm Wetherell & Harrison.