MANAGER OF PARK HAS HEADED THEATERS FOR LAST 13 YEARS
Four men will take major roles in the “Hollywood Premier” opening of Mansfield’s new Park theater on South Park street. Brought here from Canton by Interstate Theaters, Inc., operators of the new theater, Ralph H. Shaffer will be manager of the Park theater. Shaffer until recently was manager of the Palace theater in Canton, another theater owned by the Interstate company. He was transferred here to take charge of the new show. Shaffer comes to Mansfield with 13 years of experience in the theater business. He formerly managed theaters in Washington and Charleroi, Pa, and Salem, East Liverpool, Portsmouth and Canton.
On 9/10/50, the Merrimack was showing “Stella” with Ann Sheridan and Victor Mature. The Merrimack Drive-In on Lawrence Boulevard was showing “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and “It Happened One Night”.
Here is an article from the Long Beach Press-Telegram dated 7/29/68:
Not every old New York movie palace is condemned to die to make way for a glass and steel monolith. Nor must it fade away into the sad anonymity reserved for theaters that play last run commercial films or first-run sex movies. Now, amoeba-like, it may split up into two or three new theaters, each equipped with â€" as one exhibitor
said proudly recently, “the last word in new projection and sound
systems, and in luxurious appointments for the ladies' lounges”.
Tuesday night, the Warner Cinerama Theater on Times Square will be
formally unveiled as three separate new theaters, the 1,000-seat Cinerama, the 1,200-seat Penthouse, and the 400-seat Orleans. Another Broadway theater, Loew’s State, which was built in 1921, will close Sept. 8. It will reopen as two theaters, Loew’s State
one and Loew’s State Two.
The new theaters are examples of what the film trade calls “piggy-back conversions,” and they will mean a new lease on life for the Broadway movie house. With the recent demolition of the Paramount
and Roxy thaters, and the planned closing of the Capitol in September, the fear had been expressed that Broadway was doomed to extinction as the moviegoing center of New York and the world. Apparently this is not happening.
Broadway movie business is bigger than ever,“ according to Matthew
Polon, the short, stocky, ebullient president of the Pro-Stanley Warner Corporation. "But Broadway movie business has changed,” Polon
said. “Because of taxes and the rising value of real estate, it’s no longer economical to operate theaters with more than 1,000 or 1,200 seats.” As the movies themselves have become more specialized (and occasionally more adult) in themes, there have been changes in the theaters in which they are exhibited.
Today’s movie houses are less eclectic than were the Rococo movie palaces of the teens and twenties. Those were very special structures with their unembarrassed mixtures of Byzantine, Baroque and Moorish architecture, their fountains, paintings and statuary, even their ceiling clouds that hypnotized several generations of move-struck children.
Here is a 1956 article from the Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram:
In Long Beach after midnight the brightest lights blaze from the Palace Theater at 30 Pine Ave and the Roxy at 127 W. Ocean. They are open all night. Who are the people on the streets after midnight? What sort of people go to all-night theaters? The range of opinion on this subject is as wide as the difference between Mickey Mouse
and Mamie Van Doren.
A plainclothes officer expressed a one sided and extreme view
about the character of the night strollers. “It’s been my experience that 90 per cent of the people regularly on the streets after midnight have police records of one kind or another, if only for minor violations.” He added, “The managements of ihe theaters co-operate with authorities 100 per cent, but I can’t say as much for all of their late customers.”
The policeman’s view was quoted to Jack Feder, owner-manager of the Roxy. “He’s completely wrong!” Feder stated emphatically. “We know who our late customers are, and most of them are swing shift workers and service men. Then, too, we have restaurant and bar workers who want to relax a little before they go home. All-night theaters are under an aura of suspicion because they are open all-night. That isn’t a very good reason. Our standards are high here. We constantly turn away customers. We don’t allow drunks or rowdies and neither do we allow the Roxy to be used as a flop house. Offhand I can’t think of anything happening in an all-night theater that can’t happen in a
first-run house.”
Feder has been a resident of Long Beach for 26 years. Part of this time he traveled with George Jessel and more recently he produced network television shows in addition to operating the Roxy. “The Roxy was the first allnight theater in Long Beach and it became one because we felt the service men needed such a theater. We started keeping open all night in 1942 when there was a big storm and
thousands of sailors were stranded because they couldn’t get back to their ships”.
Here is a 1999 article from the Doylestown Intelligencer, edited for length:
Bob Hope and Jack Benny played the Palace. So did Mae West, Jimmy Durante and Sophie Tucker, in an era when vaudeville was the lifeblood of a thriving theater district in downtown Chicago.
Seventy years later, that theater is back as the Cadillac Palace â€"
the latest chapter in the city’s push to recreate past glory by restoring once-grand showplaces and building new ones.
“This is an opportunity to evoke that historical love of theater that
Chicago’s always had,” said Marj Halperin, executive director of the
League of Chicago Theaters. “We would love to see theater be so
much of the Chicago experience that you wouldn’t come to the city
without seeing a show.” The Cadillac Palace recently reopened with the Elton John-Tim Rice revamp of “Aida.”
As the western anchor of the district along Randolph Street, the
the Cadillac is the third downtown theater to reopen after costly renovations. The Chicago Theater reopened in the mid-‘80s and the
Oriental reopened last year as the Ford Center for the Performing
Arts.
The Palace was modeled after the French palaces of Fontainbleau
and Versailles. In restoring it, architect Daniel P. Coffey sought to retain the theater’s former grace while meeting the demands of Broadway productions.
Seating was slightly reduced for comfort, to 2,370, and its stage
enlarged. Its interior remains decorated with gold leaf and marble.
Built in 1926, the Palace was once part of one of the liveliest
theater districts in the country. “There was a time when there
were dozens of theaters in and around the north Loop,” said Becky Carroll, a spokeswoman for the city’s Planning Department. “To play the Palace in Chicago was to play the big time,” added Richard Sklenar, head of the Theater Historical Society of America.
But the district was hit hard by the Depression and never recovered.
Many of the once-great theaters were demolished. Others, including the Oriental and Chicago, became run-down movie houses, while surrounding downtown blocks, a center of business,finance and government, were usually deserted at night. The city hopes the Randolph Street theater district will change all that.
“It’s our hope that theaters will continue to build off and around
Randolph Street,” Carroll said of the city’s push to give the Big
Apple a run for its money. Architect Coffey, who’s had a hand in the renovations of the Palace, Oriental and Chicago theaters, said the new theater district secures “Chicago’s place as a world city with the best of everything.”
Here is an article from the Lowell Sun dated 11/5/55:
An investigation by the state fire marshal’s office was ordered today into the general alarm fire which swept through Cantor’s Garage on George street, at Towers' corner area early this morning and completely destroyed two dozen trucks, a number of cars and much merchandise at a loss approximating §300,000. The spectacular blaze which was discovered at l:30 this morning kept every available Lowell fireman battling for two hours, with aid being summoned from four Greater Lowell towns to provide stand-by protection to the city.
The block-long building, which extends from George Street to Central street, with Green and Williams streets on either side, is sub-divided by thick, brick fire walls which were greatly responsible
for preventing much greater property damage, including the gutting of the Rialto theater and the Bissonette showroom with three new model cars on the Central street end.
It was the presence of a fire wall which did extend above the roof that saved the Rialto theater. The theater boiler room in the back of the stage was flooded by water to a depth of several feet and the heating plant was killed. The water also penetrated behind the theater stage and firemen today are pumping out the building.
On July 8, 1954, the feature was Walt Disney’s “Rob Roy” in Technicolor, shown on the Park’s “Panoramic Wide Screen”. The Holland Theater was advertising “Demetrius and the Gladiators”, in Cinemascope.
The theater burned in 1959, according to this 1963 article:
A large downtown lot, its emptiness partially hidden from view by a rough fence which bears a sign proclaiming “Paradise”, would serve a variety of uses if Benningtonians had their way.
The roughly graded lot is all that remains of a busy downtown corner which once accommodated a portion of the General Stark theater as well as the Vermont Savings Bank building. The theater block was destroyed by fire in 1959 and the bank building was demolished last spring when it proved unadaptable to modern business uses. The current owner, John B. Harte, has no prospective tenants or future plans.
Here is an article from a local paper on 7/19/61 re the conversion from theater to films:
“Bennington is going to have a movie theater”, John R. Harte,
attorney for Harte Realty Corp. announced yesterday. Projected
opening date is after Labor Day.
Harte said the Harte Theater at 481 Main St. has been leased to
Lloyd H. Bridgham of Dover, N.H., a theater-chain owner and operator who has theaters in the Vermont cities of Rutland and Barre.
Two weeks ago Bridgham stored 250 movie theater chairs inside the Harte Thealer in anticipation of completing negotiations with Harte.
“We are going to completely modernize the theater,” Harte said. He described renovating and refurbishing the theater as “a joint venture.”
Harte said he was happy to announce signing of the lease agreement and said it was a result of “the insistence of the public. We are going into this with our fingers crossed since we are opening a theater when people are still closing movie houses all around the country,” Harle said. Bridgham, as leasee of the theater, will have complete control, Harte said, “from the marquee straight on through."
"I am sure he desires to make every effort to supply people with
first-class entertainment,” Harte added.
Harte said his efforts to secure a lease for the theater were influenced “by an honest attempt to provide a place for young people
to have an entertainment outlet”. Picking up the current slogan
of movies, Harte added, “after all, TV leaves a lot to be desired.”
On 5/28/17, the Alhambra was featuring Alice Brady in “Maternity”. The Indianapolis Star listed several other venues of the day, but some seem to be a mixture of vaudeville and films or vaudeville only, so it’s hard to say which would be an actual movie theater:
The Circle – “Shrine of the Silent Art"
Lyric
Colonial
Isis
Regent (Last Time – Dorothy Phillips in "The Flashlight”)
Park – Summer Vaudeville (perhaps no films at all)
BF Keiths – “Patriotic Photoplays, World News Weekly"
English’s – Universal News Weekly
Majestic – Burlesque
Here is an article about the renovation from the Northwest Arkansas Times, dated 1/22/68:
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra will no longer have to compete with
rock ‘n’ roll musicians in the battles of the bands. The symphony has a new home, a glittering palace complete with crystal chandeliers
and a very proper bar salvaged from the New York Metropolitan Opera building which is now just a memory.
“It’s a dream, it’s just a dream”, said Walter Susskind, new conductor for the orchestra. The dream becomes reality Wednesday night when the symphony presents its first concert in Powell Hall, named for Walter S. Powell, whose widow provided a generous endowment for the project.
The orchestra’s new home was built more than 40 years ago as a movie theater to end them all with a 70-foot domed ceiling in the auditorium, Italian marble floors, carved and gilded mouldings. But its history wasn’t as happy as its promise, until now. The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Society purchased the theater two years ago for about $400,000. Renovation has cost about $2 million.
The Ozark was showing “How Sweet It Is!” with James Garner and Debbie Reynolds on 10/4/68. Other local theaters were the Uark, Palace and the 71 Drive-In.
We had a theater like that in Bargaintown, NJ when I was a teenager. The projectionist was the same guy that took the tickets at the front door. He also came down from the booth occasionally to sell popcorn, so you had to catch him when he was manning the snackbar if you were hungry.
Here is a 2005 photo from the LA Library:
http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics28/00063879.jpg
Thanks.
Carol Burnett was a movie usher in LA when she was in high school. I would be curious to know which theater, if anybody is a fan.
Here is the text of an ad from the Atlanta Constitution on 11/27/24:
TODAY
FOUR VAUDEVILLE SHOWS
AT 2â€"4â€"7â€"9 P.M.
THE LAUGH SENSATION OF THE YEAR
BUSTER KEATON
â€"INâ€" “THE NAVIGATOR"
AT 1â€"3â€"5â€"8â€"10 P.M.
From the Mansfield, Ohio News Journal on 9/15/38:
MANAGER OF PARK HAS HEADED THEATERS FOR LAST 13 YEARS
Four men will take major roles in the “Hollywood Premier” opening of Mansfield’s new Park theater on South Park street. Brought here from Canton by Interstate Theaters, Inc., operators of the new theater, Ralph H. Shaffer will be manager of the Park theater. Shaffer until recently was manager of the Palace theater in Canton, another theater owned by the Interstate company. He was transferred here to take charge of the new show. Shaffer comes to Mansfield with 13 years of experience in the theater business. He formerly managed theaters in Washington and Charleroi, Pa, and Salem, East Liverpool, Portsmouth and Canton.
On 9/10/50, the Merrimack was showing “Stella” with Ann Sheridan and Victor Mature. The Merrimack Drive-In on Lawrence Boulevard was showing “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and “It Happened One Night”.
Here is an article from the Long Beach Press-Telegram dated 7/29/68:
Not every old New York movie palace is condemned to die to make way for a glass and steel monolith. Nor must it fade away into the sad anonymity reserved for theaters that play last run commercial films or first-run sex movies. Now, amoeba-like, it may split up into two or three new theaters, each equipped with â€" as one exhibitor
said proudly recently, “the last word in new projection and sound
systems, and in luxurious appointments for the ladies' lounges”.
Tuesday night, the Warner Cinerama Theater on Times Square will be
formally unveiled as three separate new theaters, the 1,000-seat Cinerama, the 1,200-seat Penthouse, and the 400-seat Orleans. Another Broadway theater, Loew’s State, which was built in 1921, will close Sept. 8. It will reopen as two theaters, Loew’s State
one and Loew’s State Two.
The new theaters are examples of what the film trade calls “piggy-back conversions,” and they will mean a new lease on life for the Broadway movie house. With the recent demolition of the Paramount
and Roxy thaters, and the planned closing of the Capitol in September, the fear had been expressed that Broadway was doomed to extinction as the moviegoing center of New York and the world. Apparently this is not happening.
Broadway movie business is bigger than ever,“ according to Matthew
Polon, the short, stocky, ebullient president of the Pro-Stanley Warner Corporation. "But Broadway movie business has changed,” Polon
said. “Because of taxes and the rising value of real estate, it’s no longer economical to operate theaters with more than 1,000 or 1,200 seats.” As the movies themselves have become more specialized (and occasionally more adult) in themes, there have been changes in the theaters in which they are exhibited.
Today’s movie houses are less eclectic than were the Rococo movie palaces of the teens and twenties. Those were very special structures with their unembarrassed mixtures of Byzantine, Baroque and Moorish architecture, their fountains, paintings and statuary, even their ceiling clouds that hypnotized several generations of move-struck children.
Here is a 1956 article from the Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram:
In Long Beach after midnight the brightest lights blaze from the Palace Theater at 30 Pine Ave and the Roxy at 127 W. Ocean. They are open all night. Who are the people on the streets after midnight? What sort of people go to all-night theaters? The range of opinion on this subject is as wide as the difference between Mickey Mouse
and Mamie Van Doren.
A plainclothes officer expressed a one sided and extreme view
about the character of the night strollers. “It’s been my experience that 90 per cent of the people regularly on the streets after midnight have police records of one kind or another, if only for minor violations.” He added, “The managements of ihe theaters co-operate with authorities 100 per cent, but I can’t say as much for all of their late customers.”
The policeman’s view was quoted to Jack Feder, owner-manager of the Roxy. “He’s completely wrong!” Feder stated emphatically. “We know who our late customers are, and most of them are swing shift workers and service men. Then, too, we have restaurant and bar workers who want to relax a little before they go home. All-night theaters are under an aura of suspicion because they are open all-night. That isn’t a very good reason. Our standards are high here. We constantly turn away customers. We don’t allow drunks or rowdies and neither do we allow the Roxy to be used as a flop house. Offhand I can’t think of anything happening in an all-night theater that can’t happen in a
first-run house.”
Feder has been a resident of Long Beach for 26 years. Part of this time he traveled with George Jessel and more recently he produced network television shows in addition to operating the Roxy. “The Roxy was the first allnight theater in Long Beach and it became one because we felt the service men needed such a theater. We started keeping open all night in 1942 when there was a big storm and
thousands of sailors were stranded because they couldn’t get back to their ships”.
Here is a 1999 article from the Doylestown Intelligencer, edited for length:
Bob Hope and Jack Benny played the Palace. So did Mae West, Jimmy Durante and Sophie Tucker, in an era when vaudeville was the lifeblood of a thriving theater district in downtown Chicago.
Seventy years later, that theater is back as the Cadillac Palace â€"
the latest chapter in the city’s push to recreate past glory by restoring once-grand showplaces and building new ones.
“This is an opportunity to evoke that historical love of theater that
Chicago’s always had,” said Marj Halperin, executive director of the
League of Chicago Theaters. “We would love to see theater be so
much of the Chicago experience that you wouldn’t come to the city
without seeing a show.” The Cadillac Palace recently reopened with the Elton John-Tim Rice revamp of “Aida.”
As the western anchor of the district along Randolph Street, the
the Cadillac is the third downtown theater to reopen after costly renovations. The Chicago Theater reopened in the mid-‘80s and the
Oriental reopened last year as the Ford Center for the Performing
Arts.
The Palace was modeled after the French palaces of Fontainbleau
and Versailles. In restoring it, architect Daniel P. Coffey sought to retain the theater’s former grace while meeting the demands of Broadway productions.
Seating was slightly reduced for comfort, to 2,370, and its stage
enlarged. Its interior remains decorated with gold leaf and marble.
Built in 1926, the Palace was once part of one of the liveliest
theater districts in the country. “There was a time when there
were dozens of theaters in and around the north Loop,” said Becky Carroll, a spokeswoman for the city’s Planning Department. “To play the Palace in Chicago was to play the big time,” added Richard Sklenar, head of the Theater Historical Society of America.
But the district was hit hard by the Depression and never recovered.
Many of the once-great theaters were demolished. Others, including the Oriental and Chicago, became run-down movie houses, while surrounding downtown blocks, a center of business,finance and government, were usually deserted at night. The city hopes the Randolph Street theater district will change all that.
“It’s our hope that theaters will continue to build off and around
Randolph Street,” Carroll said of the city’s push to give the Big
Apple a run for its money. Architect Coffey, who’s had a hand in the renovations of the Palace, Oriental and Chicago theaters, said the new theater district secures “Chicago’s place as a world city with the best of everything.”
Here is an article from the Lowell Sun dated 11/5/55:
An investigation by the state fire marshal’s office was ordered today into the general alarm fire which swept through Cantor’s Garage on George street, at Towers' corner area early this morning and completely destroyed two dozen trucks, a number of cars and much merchandise at a loss approximating §300,000. The spectacular blaze which was discovered at l:30 this morning kept every available Lowell fireman battling for two hours, with aid being summoned from four Greater Lowell towns to provide stand-by protection to the city.
The block-long building, which extends from George Street to Central street, with Green and Williams streets on either side, is sub-divided by thick, brick fire walls which were greatly responsible
for preventing much greater property damage, including the gutting of the Rialto theater and the Bissonette showroom with three new model cars on the Central street end.
It was the presence of a fire wall which did extend above the roof that saved the Rialto theater. The theater boiler room in the back of the stage was flooded by water to a depth of several feet and the heating plant was killed. The water also penetrated behind the theater stage and firemen today are pumping out the building.
On July 8, 1954, the feature was Walt Disney’s “Rob Roy” in Technicolor, shown on the Park’s “Panoramic Wide Screen”. The Holland Theater was advertising “Demetrius and the Gladiators”, in Cinemascope.
Here is the lineup on 11/21/40:
IDAN-HA THEATRE
“The Pick of the Pictures"
New Admission Prices – 10c and 30c – Defense Tax Included
Friday and Saturday – “It All Came True"
Sun, Mon & Tues – "East of the River”
plus Terry Tune, Pathe News, Selected Short Subjects
This was a Schine theater in 1939. There was some kind of remodeling as the local paper had a page of ads saluting the grand opening of the Manring.
The theater burned in 1959, according to this 1963 article:
A large downtown lot, its emptiness partially hidden from view by a rough fence which bears a sign proclaiming “Paradise”, would serve a variety of uses if Benningtonians had their way.
The roughly graded lot is all that remains of a busy downtown corner which once accommodated a portion of the General Stark theater as well as the Vermont Savings Bank building. The theater block was destroyed by fire in 1959 and the bank building was demolished last spring when it proved unadaptable to modern business uses. The current owner, John B. Harte, has no prospective tenants or future plans.
Here is an article from a local paper on 7/19/61 re the conversion from theater to films:
“Bennington is going to have a movie theater”, John R. Harte,
attorney for Harte Realty Corp. announced yesterday. Projected
opening date is after Labor Day.
Harte said the Harte Theater at 481 Main St. has been leased to
Lloyd H. Bridgham of Dover, N.H., a theater-chain owner and operator who has theaters in the Vermont cities of Rutland and Barre.
Two weeks ago Bridgham stored 250 movie theater chairs inside the Harte Thealer in anticipation of completing negotiations with Harte.
“We are going to completely modernize the theater,” Harte said. He described renovating and refurbishing the theater as “a joint venture.”
Harte said he was happy to announce signing of the lease agreement and said it was a result of “the insistence of the public. We are going into this with our fingers crossed since we are opening a theater when people are still closing movie houses all around the country,” Harle said. Bridgham, as leasee of the theater, will have complete control, Harte said, “from the marquee straight on through."
"I am sure he desires to make every effort to supply people with
first-class entertainment,” Harte added.
Harte said his efforts to secure a lease for the theater were influenced “by an honest attempt to provide a place for young people
to have an entertainment outlet”. Picking up the current slogan
of movies, Harte added, “after all, TV leaves a lot to be desired.”
This was the lineup on 1/29/77:
WES MER DRIVE IN
MERCEDES
NO. 1
JOHN WAYNE IN
“THE SHOOTIST”
NO. 2
“THE BIG BOSS"
NO. 3
"EMPEROR OF THE NORTH"
$3 PER CARLOAD
This was the lineup on 1/29/77:
H.BENITEZ THEATRES
GRANDE THEATRE
HARLINGEN
NO. 1
“LOS POLIVOCES"
NO. 2
"SOMOS DEL OTRO LAREDO"
NO. 3
"EL PARDRINO ES MI COMPADRE”
On 5/28/17, the Alhambra was featuring Alice Brady in “Maternity”. The Indianapolis Star listed several other venues of the day, but some seem to be a mixture of vaudeville and films or vaudeville only, so it’s hard to say which would be an actual movie theater:
The Circle – “Shrine of the Silent Art"
Lyric
Colonial
Isis
Regent (Last Time – Dorothy Phillips in "The Flashlight”)
Park – Summer Vaudeville (perhaps no films at all)
BF Keiths – “Patriotic Photoplays, World News Weekly"
English’s – Universal News Weekly
Majestic – Burlesque
Here is an article about the renovation from the Northwest Arkansas Times, dated 1/22/68:
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra will no longer have to compete with
rock ‘n’ roll musicians in the battles of the bands. The symphony has a new home, a glittering palace complete with crystal chandeliers
and a very proper bar salvaged from the New York Metropolitan Opera building which is now just a memory.
“It’s a dream, it’s just a dream”, said Walter Susskind, new conductor for the orchestra. The dream becomes reality Wednesday night when the symphony presents its first concert in Powell Hall, named for Walter S. Powell, whose widow provided a generous endowment for the project.
The orchestra’s new home was built more than 40 years ago as a movie theater to end them all with a 70-foot domed ceiling in the auditorium, Italian marble floors, carved and gilded mouldings. But its history wasn’t as happy as its promise, until now. The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Society purchased the theater two years ago for about $400,000. Renovation has cost about $2 million.
Fair enough. Hopefully we can keep to a minimum the number of new additions that are blatant advertisements.
There was also a 71 Drive-In operating in the 1960s in Fayetteville. I assume would have been off Highway 71?
The Ozark was showing “How Sweet It Is!” with James Garner and Debbie Reynolds on 10/4/68. Other local theaters were the Uark, Palace and the 71 Drive-In.
Do you show films? Has this venue ever been a movie theater?
We had a theater like that in Bargaintown, NJ when I was a teenager. The projectionist was the same guy that took the tickets at the front door. He also came down from the booth occasionally to sell popcorn, so you had to catch him when he was manning the snackbar if you were hungry.
That’s a very good timeline. Well done.