The Crest Theatre opened on February 26, 1949. The opening program featured the Errol Flynn movie, “The Adventures of Don Juan.”
The architect of this remarkable Art Moderne theater was Julius Myerberg, who was also one of the theater’s owners. His brother Harry Myerberg was the head of the operating company, and for many years the manager of the house. Boxoffice Magazine gave a two-page spread to the Crest in its issue of November 5, 1949.
Among the Crest’s unusual features was a spacious, semi-circular television lounge on the second floor, with a 6'x8' screen set in the wall over the curving stairway leading up from the lobby. This lounge could accommodate 200 seated patrons. Near the bottom of this web page, Jerry Shargel, who grew up in the neighborhood, tells of seeing television for the first time in the Crest’s lounge, on the theater’s opening night.
The large, four-aisled auditorium of the Crest also had some unusual features. Passage between the auditorium and lobby was through several pairs of doors at the center of the back wall, where there was a broad standee area. The central third of the standee area was surmounted by a semi-circular canopy, with the projection booth above it, recessed to minimize the noise reaching the audience from the projectors.
Each side wall was divided into four sections, each gracefully curved, and between each section were vertical lighting coves which extended in troughs across the ceiling. The walls were covered in a forest green fabric, partly painted with decoration in an over-sized, abstract floral pattern, providing additional interest. The proscenium end of the house featured flaring side wings which concealed the lighting for the plush curtain, which was fuchsia.
The interior decoration of the Crest was done by the Paramount Decorating Company of Philadelphia. The Boxoffice article cites the seating capacity as 1700, but judging from the photo of the auditorium that seems a bit large. Still, the figure of 1000 cited by Cinema Treasures seems a bit small for this auditorium. Perhaps seating was reduced in the theater’s later years.
The December 15, 1975 issue of Boxoffice carried an announcement that the Crest would reopen on Christmas Day, after having been closed for eight months, and would be operated by Rome Theatres. However, the item noted that the theater was still owned by a company headed by Harry D. Myerberg.
The New Moon was a wartime theater, featured in an article published in the December 2, 1944, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. It was designed in a simplified Art Moderne style by Omaha architect H.A. Raapke, a member of the Modern Theatre Planning Institute’s board of architectural advisors.
Materials used in construction were confined largely to those not restricted by the War Production Board. Raapke chose to use a stone base surmounted by glazed brick in black and cream for the facade, and the entrance lobby was floored with asphalt tile in a herringbone pattern.
Pre-war carpet was found for the inner lobby and the auditorium’s aisles, and both inner and outer lobbies received wallboard paneling with an imitation walnut finish. The ceiling of the 552-seat auditorium featured three offsets concealing indirect lighting from fluorescent tubes, and the walls were paneled in an acoustic material. The auditorium’s decoration was mostly stenciled, some of it using the crescent moon shape which was the theater’s signature. The theater’s facade had a small central tower surmounted by a neon crescent moon.
The original owner-operator of the new Moon was Mr. W.B. Bradley. The town of Neligh had a population of 1,649 at the time the theater was built.
The November 5, 1949, issue of Boxoffice magazine devoted a page to the Cheswick Theatre. Owner-operator Joseph F. Mulone had done most of the labor of building the original Cheswick Theatre himself, because his financial backer had pulled out of the deal after construction had begun. It took Mulone three years of work to complete this fairly large house, which opened with 722 seats.
It turns out that Ted Rogvoy was the associate architect for the Paradise, and the lead architect was Arthur Froelich. Two articles in Boxoffice Magazine, from July 22, 1950, and from August 26, 1950, both name Froelich as the architect, and the earlier issue even has a photo of Froelich holding his rendering of the theater. Only the later article mentions Rogvoy as the associate architect, but misspells his name.
The Lakeport Theatre opened with about 600 seats, according to Boxoffice Magazine, but the number has been reduced. Some part of the orchestra seating was removed to make room for the stage. I’ve been unable to discover the current seating capacity, or what it will be when remodeling is complete, but I doubt it will end up much more than half the original 600.
I’ve also found several references in issues of Boxoffice from the 1950s which say that Robert Reese was the operator of the Lakeport. He was most likely Leo Reese’s son, but I’ve got no confirmation of that. There are a couple of more recent references on the Internet to a Margaret Reese being the operator of the Lakeport Auto Movies and the twin (later five-screen) adjacent to it, so the Reese family probably ran all the theaters in Lakeport from the 1920s until recently.
There are still many Reeses in Lake County, so maybe one of them will find this page and fill in the details for us. I’d especially like to know more about Leo Reese’s Orpheum Theatre, and about the Rio Theatre in Merced, which one issue of Boxoffice mentions him operating.
From Boxoffice, December 3, 1949: “The new Cedar Theatre will be opened November 25, according to John E. Keegan, manager for the Naify Theatre interests. Installation of projection equipment at the 630 seat house is scheduled for this week, Keegan said.”
Boxoffice of April 28, 1956, had this to say: “Vern Sandow will lease from T&D the Cedar Theatre at Nevada City. Sandow is installing a wide screen and will run his theatre seven nights a week.”
Then, from the February 17, 1958, issue of Boxoffice: “Vernon Sandow, owner of the Cedar Theatre, will cease operations March 1 because of financial loss.”
After that, I can’t find any more references to a theater in Nevada City.
I’ve found a reference to a theater in Merced called the Lindsay. The October 2, 1948, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that the managers of the Strand and Lindsay Theatres in Merced had switched jobs. I suppose it’s possible that the reference was actually to the Lindsay Theatre in Lindsay, and Boxoffice just got the location wrong, but the two towns are quite some distance apart.
There’s also a Boxoffice reference to a theater called the Rio, in the August 29, 1942, issue, which mentioned Leo Reese as the operator of the Orpheum in Lakeport and the Rio in Merced. In the twelfth paragraph down on this Rootsweb page, a long-time resident of Merced recalls there being three theaters in the town in the 1940s; the Merced, the Strand, and the Rio.
The October 15, 1949, issue of Boxoffice Magazine published an article about the new Bronson Theatre, with three small photos. The pitched roof in recent photos is an addition. The original facade was pure streamlined Art Moderne. The interiors were also streamlined, with indirect lighting from round ceiling domes in the lobby and one large oval covering the auditorium. There is very little decorative detail visible in the magazine photos, but the carpet was fairly ornate.
The 606 seat Bronson Theatre was the eighth Michigan house to be operated by E.J. Pennell, and was a replacement for the smaller Coliseum Theatre.
It looks like Stanley Steck was still (or once again) running theaters in Utah in 1951, when the November issue of Boxoffice said that he had returned from a trip to check on his theater interests in Ogden and Salt Lake City.
The magazine also misspells his name as “Stack” from time to time. A 1945 item says that S.B. Stack, of the Adams Theatre, had returned to town after attending the funeral of his brother Elmer in Del Rio, Texas.
Most interesting to Mr. Steck’s fan base will be the item in the March 17, 1945, issue of Boxoffice. The brief profile of his career up to that time features a small photo of him- a respectable looking gentleman with a receding hairline and wire-rimmed glasses. The scan of the magazine is poor and partly unreadable, but I can make out that he began operating a theater in a small town in Idaho in 1911, and two years later became the owner the Lyceum in Ogden. In the next two years he added the Rex and the Cozy.
The years he quit running the Rex and Cozy are illegible, but both look to be in the 1930s. The year he took over the Adams is also very muddy, but appears to be 1928. In Los Angeles he was also a director and treasurer of the ITO of Southern California.
Stanley Steck doesn’t have any mentions in the California Index, but he does show up in various issues of Boxoffice. In the November 9, 1940, issue there’s an item saying that he was returning to Los Angeles after visiting friends in Utah, where he had formerly operated theaters.
That’s the earliest reference to him I’ve found. The most recent reference was in the February 26, 1955, issue, which said that he was closing the Adams and had no plans to reopen in the foreseeable future.
Robert Boller un-reversed this theater when he remodeled it, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine, March 19, 1944. It was originally a reverse theater, with patrons entering the auditorium from the screen end.
Oh, here’s something that sounds a bit omenous, from this page: “Deconstruction of the historic Strand Theatre at 1102 Main has begun with renovations to follow.”
The Fox and the Strand at Hays are both mentioned in the 1951 consent decree pertaining to the various Fox theater chains. The text of the decree was published in the June 9, 1951, issue of Boxoffice. Unfortunately, the scan of it available on the Internet has a page fold obscuring too much of the text, and I can’t figure out exactly what it says, but possibly Fox was running both this theatre and the Strand at that time. The Strand was apparently still open, though.
The Strand’s address of 1102 Main Street sounds like it was a corner lot. If that’s so, then the Muriel, being directly across the street, might have been across either Main Street or across the cross street. Maybe somebody from Hays will know.
From the March 4, 1950, issue of Boxoffice: “R.W. Steen, whose Atlantic Theatre in Atlantic, Iowa, burned recently, is to rebuild. O.C.Johnson, manager of the wrecked showhouse, and of the Strand of Atlantic, made the announcement.”
I can’t find any other references to a Strand Theatre in Atlantic, but there are quite a few references to a Grand Theater, so I think “Strand” might have been an error in this particular article. Both houses were operated by Pioneer Theatres.
Here’s something from a later issue of Boxoffice, April 1, 1950: “The Iosco, 200-seater at Oscoda, Michigan, has not been closed, says owner Mrs. A.A. Affelt, wife of the late owner of the house.” They got the second initial wrong, though. Back in 1932, Mr. A.F. Affelt of Oscoda was shopping for rectifiers through the want-ad section of the New England Film Journal. I can’t find any post-1950 references to the Iosco, though.
Here’s another interesting tidbit about Oscoda, from the August 6, 1973, issue of Boxoffice: “The Mini Art Theatre, Oscoda, has been renamed the Variety.” I wonder if maybe somebody reopened the Iosco as an art house? Wherever it was, the Mini-Art might have been opened in late 1972 or early 1973, as they were seeking 16mm projectors in a want ad published in the November 27, 1972, issue of Boxoffice.
The May 21, 1973, issue of Boxoffice said that Mr. and Mrs. Jack Brown of Oscoda had bought the Family Theatre in East Tawas, Michigan, and added that the Browns also owned the Lake and Mini-Art Theatres in Oscoda and the Gem Theatre in Hale. I’ve found no references to the Mini-Art/Variety after 1973.
Evidence of a couple of early Hays, Kansas theaters not yet included in the Cinema Treasures database, from the March 13, 1926, issue of The Reel Journal, a regional predecessor of Boxoffice Magazine:[quote]“M.G. Kirkman will open his new Murial Theatre in Hays, Kansas, on April 1, the opening picture being "Tumbleweeds” a United Artists release.
“‘Every effort will be made to make this house one of the best in the west,’ Mr. Kirkman writes The Reel Journal. The new Murial will be directly across the street from Kirkman’s Strand Theatre.”[/quote] Does anybody know anything more about either of these early Hays theaters?
From Boxoffice, March 11, 1950: “William Frank scheduled March 13 for the opening of his new 423-seat Lake Theatre here. Frank, who is a partner with R.V. Rule in the Alco at Harrisville, will operate the new house on his own. The Old Iosco, a 200-seater operated by the late A.F. Affelt, has been closed.”
The Bradford Theatre burned, along with a nearby diner, on January 18, 1959. The May 4, 1959, issue of Boxoffice says the theater had been a quonset hut structure.
Back in 1931, Bradford’s only theater had been a 425 seat house called the Colonial, which was offered for sale in the Clearing House section of the January 20 issue of Exhibitor’s Forum that year. I don’t think quonset huts existed before WWII, so the Colonial had to have been a different theater.
The Strand was operated by the Silverman Brothers. Isaac “Ike” Silverman had opened Altoona’s first movie house, a nickelodeon called the Pastime Theatre, in 1906. He closed the Pastime in 1917, the year after opening the Strand, which was on the same block as the Pastime.
I came across a PDF file in the Pennsylvania State University’s digital library. Published in 1922, it is a program booklet published for a local event called Old Home Week, and it mentions ten Altoona theaters by name, and includes an illustrated advertisement for the Strand on page 49. Unfortunately it gives no addresses for any of the theaters, but the ten it mentions were:
Mishler (stage productions featuring Chicago stock companies)
Orpheum (Keith vaudeville, and movies)
movie houses:
Strand
Capitol
Olympic
New Victoria
Palace
Boyer
Colonial
Lyric
The PDF is in three parts: Part 1 includes the list of theaters, and also has a picture of the Mishler. Part 3 has several ads (all of them text-only except for the Strand’s ad) for several theaters. Part 2 doesn’t have anything about theaters, but is interesting in any case.
The Strand ad boasts of “..the most comfortable seats west of New York…” and of the theater’s “…$47,000 Hope Jones Organ.”
I came across a couple of PDF files at Pennsylvania State University’s digital library. One is a 1949 booklet from Altoona’s centennial, and it mentions in passing that, at that time, Altoona had ten theaters and movie houses. It doesn’t give their names, though.
The other PDF includes a 1922 ad for the Strand in it, so I’m going to comment about it on the Strand’s page.
Like the Belle Meade, its twin, the Melrose Theatre was an Art Moderne house designed by the Nashville architectural firm Marr & Holman. The Melrose opened on July 1, 1942, according to the July 11 issue of Boxoffice Magazine. Marr & Holman also designed the adjacent shops and bowling alley.
Marr & Holman partner Joseph W. Holman was also a partner in the Crescent Amusement Company, and according to his obituary in the October 25, 1952, issue of Boxoffice Magazine, designed all the circuit’s major theaters. The obituary said that he had designed about 100 theatres altogether, for Crescent and other exhibitors.
The Wheaton Plaza Playhouse was built by John J. Broumas, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine, December 25, 1961. The single-screen house was expected to be open by March, 1962. The comment above indicates that it opened several months behind schedule.
The article said that the architect, Edmund W. Dreyfuss had designed many other theaters, but I can’t find any references to any of them on the Internet, and not even in any other issues of Boxoffice. A tantalizing mystery.
The July 4, 1966, issue of Boxoffice said that Ira Sichelman and Louis Heon had acquired John Broumas’s stock in the Wheaton Plaza Playhouse, and would operate the theater.
The Wheaton Plaza was being operated by S&H Theatres in 1974, when the October 28 issue of Boxoffice said that a 600 seat two-screen addition adjacent to the original theater was scheduled for an early November opening. The architectural firm of Gitlin & Canton designed the addition. The theater was to be renamed the Wheaton Plaza 3.
I can’t find any references to when, or how, the complex was converted to four screens.
The Princess Theatre was designed by the Nashville architecture firm Marr & Holman.
This house was either opened or reopened in 1948. The October 6, 1945, issue of Boxoffice said that J.C. Tune had hired Marr & Holman to prepare plans for a complete rebuilding of his Princess Theatre at Shelbyville.
Then the March 2, 1946 issue of Boxoffice had carried the following notice: “Last rites were held in Shelbyville, Tenn. for J.C. Tune, who operated the Princess there.”
And then Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of November 13, 1948, carried a brief announcement that the new Princess Theatre in Shelbyville had recently opened after seven months of construction. The seating capacity was given as 800. The owner-manager of the house was named J.T. Tune.
A J.M. Tune is briefly mentioned as the operator of the Princess and of the 41 Drive-In at Shelbyville, in the March 24, 1958, issue of Boxoffice.
The Tune family’s operation of the Princess came to an end by 1968, according to an item in the January 22 issue of Boxoffice that year. It said that Morton Tune had sold the house to Fred H. Massey, president of Masco, operators of the Belcourt Cinema in Nashville. Massey planned an extensive remodeling of the Princess, with the plans to be done by the original architectural firm, Marr & Holman.
I can’t find any references to the Princess in Boxoffice, or anywhere else on the Internet, earlier than 1945, so I have no idea how long the place was around before the 1940s rebuilding, but if it needed a rebuilding then I’d guess it was already pretty old.
This was one of at least four 1970s multi-screen theaters designed for Plitt Theatres by the Chicago architectural firm of Finck, Stowell & Frolichstein. The others were:
The Crest Theatre opened on February 26, 1949. The opening program featured the Errol Flynn movie, “The Adventures of Don Juan.”
The architect of this remarkable Art Moderne theater was Julius Myerberg, who was also one of the theater’s owners. His brother Harry Myerberg was the head of the operating company, and for many years the manager of the house. Boxoffice Magazine gave a two-page spread to the Crest in its issue of November 5, 1949.
Among the Crest’s unusual features was a spacious, semi-circular television lounge on the second floor, with a 6'x8' screen set in the wall over the curving stairway leading up from the lobby. This lounge could accommodate 200 seated patrons. Near the bottom of this web page, Jerry Shargel, who grew up in the neighborhood, tells of seeing television for the first time in the Crest’s lounge, on the theater’s opening night.
The large, four-aisled auditorium of the Crest also had some unusual features. Passage between the auditorium and lobby was through several pairs of doors at the center of the back wall, where there was a broad standee area. The central third of the standee area was surmounted by a semi-circular canopy, with the projection booth above it, recessed to minimize the noise reaching the audience from the projectors.
Each side wall was divided into four sections, each gracefully curved, and between each section were vertical lighting coves which extended in troughs across the ceiling. The walls were covered in a forest green fabric, partly painted with decoration in an over-sized, abstract floral pattern, providing additional interest. The proscenium end of the house featured flaring side wings which concealed the lighting for the plush curtain, which was fuchsia.
The interior decoration of the Crest was done by the Paramount Decorating Company of Philadelphia. The Boxoffice article cites the seating capacity as 1700, but judging from the photo of the auditorium that seems a bit large. Still, the figure of 1000 cited by Cinema Treasures seems a bit small for this auditorium. Perhaps seating was reduced in the theater’s later years.
The December 15, 1975 issue of Boxoffice carried an announcement that the Crest would reopen on Christmas Day, after having been closed for eight months, and would be operated by Rome Theatres. However, the item noted that the theater was still owned by a company headed by Harry D. Myerberg.
The New Moon was a wartime theater, featured in an article published in the December 2, 1944, issue of Boxoffice Magazine. It was designed in a simplified Art Moderne style by Omaha architect H.A. Raapke, a member of the Modern Theatre Planning Institute’s board of architectural advisors.
Materials used in construction were confined largely to those not restricted by the War Production Board. Raapke chose to use a stone base surmounted by glazed brick in black and cream for the facade, and the entrance lobby was floored with asphalt tile in a herringbone pattern.
Pre-war carpet was found for the inner lobby and the auditorium’s aisles, and both inner and outer lobbies received wallboard paneling with an imitation walnut finish. The ceiling of the 552-seat auditorium featured three offsets concealing indirect lighting from fluorescent tubes, and the walls were paneled in an acoustic material. The auditorium’s decoration was mostly stenciled, some of it using the crescent moon shape which was the theater’s signature. The theater’s facade had a small central tower surmounted by a neon crescent moon.
The original owner-operator of the new Moon was Mr. W.B. Bradley. The town of Neligh had a population of 1,649 at the time the theater was built.
The November 5, 1949, issue of Boxoffice magazine devoted a page to the Cheswick Theatre. Owner-operator Joseph F. Mulone had done most of the labor of building the original Cheswick Theatre himself, because his financial backer had pulled out of the deal after construction had begun. It took Mulone three years of work to complete this fairly large house, which opened with 722 seats.
It turns out that Ted Rogvoy was the associate architect for the Paradise, and the lead architect was Arthur Froelich. Two articles in Boxoffice Magazine, from July 22, 1950, and from August 26, 1950, both name Froelich as the architect, and the earlier issue even has a photo of Froelich holding his rendering of the theater. Only the later article mentions Rogvoy as the associate architect, but misspells his name.
The Lakeport Theatre opened with about 600 seats, according to Boxoffice Magazine, but the number has been reduced. Some part of the orchestra seating was removed to make room for the stage. I’ve been unable to discover the current seating capacity, or what it will be when remodeling is complete, but I doubt it will end up much more than half the original 600.
I’ve also found several references in issues of Boxoffice from the 1950s which say that Robert Reese was the operator of the Lakeport. He was most likely Leo Reese’s son, but I’ve got no confirmation of that. There are a couple of more recent references on the Internet to a Margaret Reese being the operator of the Lakeport Auto Movies and the twin (later five-screen) adjacent to it, so the Reese family probably ran all the theaters in Lakeport from the 1920s until recently.
There are still many Reeses in Lake County, so maybe one of them will find this page and fill in the details for us. I’d especially like to know more about Leo Reese’s Orpheum Theatre, and about the Rio Theatre in Merced, which one issue of Boxoffice mentions him operating.
From Boxoffice, December 3, 1949: “The new Cedar Theatre will be opened November 25, according to John E. Keegan, manager for the Naify Theatre interests. Installation of projection equipment at the 630 seat house is scheduled for this week, Keegan said.”
Boxoffice of April 28, 1956, had this to say: “Vern Sandow will lease from T&D the Cedar Theatre at Nevada City. Sandow is installing a wide screen and will run his theatre seven nights a week.”
Then, from the February 17, 1958, issue of Boxoffice: “Vernon Sandow, owner of the Cedar Theatre, will cease operations March 1 because of financial loss.”
After that, I can’t find any more references to a theater in Nevada City.
I’ve found a reference to a theater in Merced called the Lindsay. The October 2, 1948, issue of Boxoffice Magazine said that the managers of the Strand and Lindsay Theatres in Merced had switched jobs. I suppose it’s possible that the reference was actually to the Lindsay Theatre in Lindsay, and Boxoffice just got the location wrong, but the two towns are quite some distance apart.
There’s also a Boxoffice reference to a theater called the Rio, in the August 29, 1942, issue, which mentioned Leo Reese as the operator of the Orpheum in Lakeport and the Rio in Merced. In the twelfth paragraph down on this Rootsweb page, a long-time resident of Merced recalls there being three theaters in the town in the 1940s; the Merced, the Strand, and the Rio.
The October 15, 1949, issue of Boxoffice Magazine published an article about the new Bronson Theatre, with three small photos. The pitched roof in recent photos is an addition. The original facade was pure streamlined Art Moderne. The interiors were also streamlined, with indirect lighting from round ceiling domes in the lobby and one large oval covering the auditorium. There is very little decorative detail visible in the magazine photos, but the carpet was fairly ornate.
The 606 seat Bronson Theatre was the eighth Michigan house to be operated by E.J. Pennell, and was a replacement for the smaller Coliseum Theatre.
It looks like Stanley Steck was still (or once again) running theaters in Utah in 1951, when the November issue of Boxoffice said that he had returned from a trip to check on his theater interests in Ogden and Salt Lake City.
The magazine also misspells his name as “Stack” from time to time. A 1945 item says that S.B. Stack, of the Adams Theatre, had returned to town after attending the funeral of his brother Elmer in Del Rio, Texas.
Most interesting to Mr. Steck’s fan base will be the item in the March 17, 1945, issue of Boxoffice. The brief profile of his career up to that time features a small photo of him- a respectable looking gentleman with a receding hairline and wire-rimmed glasses. The scan of the magazine is poor and partly unreadable, but I can make out that he began operating a theater in a small town in Idaho in 1911, and two years later became the owner the Lyceum in Ogden. In the next two years he added the Rex and the Cozy.
The years he quit running the Rex and Cozy are illegible, but both look to be in the 1930s. The year he took over the Adams is also very muddy, but appears to be 1928. In Los Angeles he was also a director and treasurer of the ITO of Southern California.
Stanley Steck doesn’t have any mentions in the California Index, but he does show up in various issues of Boxoffice. In the November 9, 1940, issue there’s an item saying that he was returning to Los Angeles after visiting friends in Utah, where he had formerly operated theaters.
That’s the earliest reference to him I’ve found. The most recent reference was in the February 26, 1955, issue, which said that he was closing the Adams and had no plans to reopen in the foreseeable future.
Robert Boller un-reversed this theater when he remodeled it, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine, March 19, 1944. It was originally a reverse theater, with patrons entering the auditorium from the screen end.
Oh, here’s something that sounds a bit omenous, from this page: “Deconstruction of the historic Strand Theatre at 1102 Main has begun with renovations to follow.”
Don’t like that word “Deconstruction.”
I’ve submitted the Strand.
The Fox and the Strand at Hays are both mentioned in the 1951 consent decree pertaining to the various Fox theater chains. The text of the decree was published in the June 9, 1951, issue of Boxoffice. Unfortunately, the scan of it available on the Internet has a page fold obscuring too much of the text, and I can’t figure out exactly what it says, but possibly Fox was running both this theatre and the Strand at that time. The Strand was apparently still open, though.
The Strand’s address of 1102 Main Street sounds like it was a corner lot. If that’s so, then the Muriel, being directly across the street, might have been across either Main Street or across the cross street. Maybe somebody from Hays will know.
From the March 4, 1950, issue of Boxoffice: “R.W. Steen, whose Atlantic Theatre in Atlantic, Iowa, burned recently, is to rebuild. O.C.Johnson, manager of the wrecked showhouse, and of the Strand of Atlantic, made the announcement.”
I can’t find any other references to a Strand Theatre in Atlantic, but there are quite a few references to a Grand Theater, so I think “Strand” might have been an error in this particular article. Both houses were operated by Pioneer Theatres.
Here’s something from a later issue of Boxoffice, April 1, 1950: “The Iosco, 200-seater at Oscoda, Michigan, has not been closed, says owner Mrs. A.A. Affelt, wife of the late owner of the house.” They got the second initial wrong, though. Back in 1932, Mr. A.F. Affelt of Oscoda was shopping for rectifiers through the want-ad section of the New England Film Journal. I can’t find any post-1950 references to the Iosco, though.
Here’s another interesting tidbit about Oscoda, from the August 6, 1973, issue of Boxoffice: “The Mini Art Theatre, Oscoda, has been renamed the Variety.” I wonder if maybe somebody reopened the Iosco as an art house? Wherever it was, the Mini-Art might have been opened in late 1972 or early 1973, as they were seeking 16mm projectors in a want ad published in the November 27, 1972, issue of Boxoffice.
The May 21, 1973, issue of Boxoffice said that Mr. and Mrs. Jack Brown of Oscoda had bought the Family Theatre in East Tawas, Michigan, and added that the Browns also owned the Lake and Mini-Art Theatres in Oscoda and the Gem Theatre in Hale. I’ve found no references to the Mini-Art/Variety after 1973.
The Alco in Harrisville isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures yet, either, but the Michigan theaters web site has it. They don’t have the Iosco, though.
Evidence of a couple of early Hays, Kansas theaters not yet included in the Cinema Treasures database, from the March 13, 1926, issue of The Reel Journal, a regional predecessor of Boxoffice Magazine:[quote]“M.G. Kirkman will open his new Murial Theatre in Hays, Kansas, on April 1, the opening picture being "Tumbleweeds” a United Artists release.
“‘Every effort will be made to make this house one of the best in the west,’ Mr. Kirkman writes The Reel Journal. The new Murial will be directly across the street from Kirkman’s Strand Theatre.”[/quote] Does anybody know anything more about either of these early Hays theaters?
From Boxoffice, March 11, 1950: “William Frank scheduled March 13 for the opening of his new 423-seat Lake Theatre here. Frank, who is a partner with R.V. Rule in the Alco at Harrisville, will operate the new house on his own. The Old Iosco, a 200-seater operated by the late A.F. Affelt, has been closed.”
The Bradford Theatre burned, along with a nearby diner, on January 18, 1959. The May 4, 1959, issue of Boxoffice says the theater had been a quonset hut structure.
Back in 1931, Bradford’s only theater had been a 425 seat house called the Colonial, which was offered for sale in the Clearing House section of the January 20 issue of Exhibitor’s Forum that year. I don’t think quonset huts existed before WWII, so the Colonial had to have been a different theater.
The Strand was operated by the Silverman Brothers. Isaac “Ike” Silverman had opened Altoona’s first movie house, a nickelodeon called the Pastime Theatre, in 1906. He closed the Pastime in 1917, the year after opening the Strand, which was on the same block as the Pastime.
I came across a PDF file in the Pennsylvania State University’s digital library. Published in 1922, it is a program booklet published for a local event called Old Home Week, and it mentions ten Altoona theaters by name, and includes an illustrated advertisement for the Strand on page 49. Unfortunately it gives no addresses for any of the theaters, but the ten it mentions were:
Mishler (stage productions featuring Chicago stock companies)
Orpheum (Keith vaudeville, and movies)
movie houses:
Strand
Capitol
Olympic
New Victoria
Palace
Boyer
Colonial
Lyric
The PDF is in three parts:
Part 1 includes the list of theaters, and also has a picture of the Mishler.
Part 3 has several ads (all of them text-only except for the Strand’s ad) for several theaters.
Part 2 doesn’t have anything about theaters, but is interesting in any case.
The Strand ad boasts of “..the most comfortable seats west of New York…” and of the theater’s “…$47,000 Hope Jones Organ.”
I came across a couple of PDF files at Pennsylvania State University’s digital library. One is a 1949 booklet from Altoona’s centennial, and it mentions in passing that, at that time, Altoona had ten theaters and movie houses. It doesn’t give their names, though.
The other PDF includes a 1922 ad for the Strand in it, so I’m going to comment about it on the Strand’s page.
The Shoals Theatre was designed by the Nashville architectural firm Marr & Holman, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine, April 10, 1948.
Like the Belle Meade, its twin, the Melrose Theatre was an Art Moderne house designed by the Nashville architectural firm Marr & Holman. The Melrose opened on July 1, 1942, according to the July 11 issue of Boxoffice Magazine. Marr & Holman also designed the adjacent shops and bowling alley.
Marr & Holman partner Joseph W. Holman was also a partner in the Crescent Amusement Company, and according to his obituary in the October 25, 1952, issue of Boxoffice Magazine, designed all the circuit’s major theaters. The obituary said that he had designed about 100 theatres altogether, for Crescent and other exhibitors.
The Wheaton Plaza Playhouse was built by John J. Broumas, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine, December 25, 1961. The single-screen house was expected to be open by March, 1962. The comment above indicates that it opened several months behind schedule.
The article said that the architect, Edmund W. Dreyfuss had designed many other theaters, but I can’t find any references to any of them on the Internet, and not even in any other issues of Boxoffice. A tantalizing mystery.
The July 4, 1966, issue of Boxoffice said that Ira Sichelman and Louis Heon had acquired John Broumas’s stock in the Wheaton Plaza Playhouse, and would operate the theater.
The Wheaton Plaza was being operated by S&H Theatres in 1974, when the October 28 issue of Boxoffice said that a 600 seat two-screen addition adjacent to the original theater was scheduled for an early November opening. The architectural firm of Gitlin & Canton designed the addition. The theater was to be renamed the Wheaton Plaza 3.
I can’t find any references to when, or how, the complex was converted to four screens.
The Princess Theatre was designed by the Nashville architecture firm Marr & Holman.
This house was either opened or reopened in 1948. The October 6, 1945, issue of Boxoffice said that J.C. Tune had hired Marr & Holman to prepare plans for a complete rebuilding of his Princess Theatre at Shelbyville.
Then the March 2, 1946 issue of Boxoffice had carried the following notice: “Last rites were held in Shelbyville, Tenn. for J.C. Tune, who operated the Princess there.”
And then Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of November 13, 1948, carried a brief announcement that the new Princess Theatre in Shelbyville had recently opened after seven months of construction. The seating capacity was given as 800. The owner-manager of the house was named J.T. Tune.
A J.M. Tune is briefly mentioned as the operator of the Princess and of the 41 Drive-In at Shelbyville, in the March 24, 1958, issue of Boxoffice.
The Tune family’s operation of the Princess came to an end by 1968, according to an item in the January 22 issue of Boxoffice that year. It said that Morton Tune had sold the house to Fred H. Massey, president of Masco, operators of the Belcourt Cinema in Nashville. Massey planned an extensive remodeling of the Princess, with the plans to be done by the original architectural firm, Marr & Holman.
I can’t find any references to the Princess in Boxoffice, or anywhere else on the Internet, earlier than 1945, so I have no idea how long the place was around before the 1940s rebuilding, but if it needed a rebuilding then I’d guess it was already pretty old.
This was one of at least four 1970s multi-screen theaters designed for Plitt Theatres by the Chicago architectural firm of Finck, Stowell & Frolichstein. The others were:
Cherryvale Mall Cinema, Rockford, Illinois.
Orland Square Cinemas, Orland Park, Illinois.
Hawthorne Theatres, Vernon Hills, Illinois.