The Princess Theatre was mentioned in the March 29, 1924 issue of Exhibitors Herald. Owners Pinkelman and Cory also operated the Gem and Savoy theaters and had a new, 500-seat house under construction, which must have been the Washington Square Theatre.
This item from March 29, 1924 issue of Exhibitors Herald mentions the Savoy and Gem as well as the Princess:
“Messrs. Pinckelman [sic] and Cory, who operate the Savoy, Gem and Princess theatres, Quincy, Ill., have another house under construction at Quincy. It will seat 500 and they expect to open in June. Rube Levine is the architect.”
Pinkelman and Cory opened the new Washington Square Theatre later that year. But the item indicates that the Gem operated far beyond 1912.
We also don’t yet have a listing for the Savoy Theatre at 522 Hampshire. The Gem and Savoy were still listed in the 1926 FDY, but not later.
Blanchard’s Theatre and the Strand were two different houses, and the Strand’s predecessor, the Hippodrome, was not a theater but a multi-use public hall. Blanchard’s Theatre was a 1,100 seat house built behind the 1860 Edwards Block and opened on November 28, 1911. Its entrance was on Main Street, and can be seen in the 1927 post-fire photo on the photo page. Like the later Strand, Blanchard’s was designed by architect Louis Destremps, and though built primarily for stage productions it was equipped to show movies from the time of its opening.
The Blanchard Brothers built the Hippodrome on a large lot behind the Blanchard Theatre in 1916, and for about a decade it was used as a dance hall, skating rink, and exhibition space. In late 1925 the Blanchards decided to convert the Hippodrome building into a regular theater, and it opened as the Strand on January 14, 1926. A long entrance hall led from the entrance on Elm Street to the auditorium, which seated nearly 2,000. A commodious stage with a proscenium forty feet wide was provided for vaudeville and other theatrical productions.
The Blanchard brothers operated the Strand until their retirement, after which it became part of the Interstate Theatres chain (the one based in New England, not to be confused with the Interstate Theatres chain based in Texas.) The last show at the Strand was on February 28, 1965. Historic aerial views show that the theater’s entrance building had been demolished by 1966, but the auditorium building was still standing as late as 1977. By 1992 it too was gone, replaced by a parking lot.
Blanchard’s Theatre operated at least until the fire of January 13th, 1927. I don’t know if it reopened after that, but the building was rebuilt and the likely address of the theater, 293 Main Street, is today the home of a Spanish language Evangelical church, but it’s impossible to tell from the street views whether the church is in the old auditorium or merely in the storefronts where (and adjacent to) the theater’s entrance was.
The vanished Strand Theatre is still recalled in Southbridge’s street nomenclature. The alley that runs between the rebuilt Blanchard building and the site of the Strand appears on maps as Strand Place.
This web page has a description of the Strand from a Southbridge Evening News article published at the time if its opening. This page has a few photos and some ads and flyers published by the theater in its heyday.
The 1926 Film Daily Yearbook lists houses at E Dorado called the Washignton Theatre and the Manhattan Airdome, but no addresses or seating capacities are given for either.
There is a house called the Majestic Theater listed at El Dorado in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but the address and seating capacity are not given.
The July 16, 1949 issue of Boxoffice made mention of “Paul Ketchum, operator of the Century, Texarkana, Ark., and former owner of the Oaklawn and Queen theatres there….”
MerlinV’s memory of the final operators of the Pix is confirmed by the November 16, 1955 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor, which said “[t]he Pix, a neighborhood showcase, shuttered. It was operated by Anthony Fiorito.”
The Winn got a name change in 1955, as noted in the November 16 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor:
“The remodeled Winn, renamed the Princess, Winnfield, La., opened in grand style, under the management of Mrs. Edith Ann Long, who is also manager [of the] Parkway Drive-In there. Buying and booking will be handled by Theatres Service Company.”
Motion Picture Exhibitor of November 16, 1955 said “Joy’s Theatres shuttered the Ritz, Texarkana, Ark.” I haven’t found anything saying that this closure was final, but it likely was. The beginning of the wide-screen era saw the demise of many small downtown theaters, especially in cities of moderate size.
Two different Rialto Theatres are conflated on this page, and I think it’s partly because Google Maps has the addresses for Thornton Street totally screwed up. 106 W. Thornton was probably the address of the original Rialto, built in the 1920s and closed in 1948 when the new Rialto opened. It also probably had the 260 seats. The 1948 Rialto is at 613 E. Thornton, but good luck getting Google to realize that.
Boxoffice of May 29, 1948, reported that Hall Industries had opened their new Rialto at Three Rivers on May 14. The 800-seat house featured a section of stadium seating and charged an admission price of 44 cents.
This web page from the Live Oak County Historical Commission has a history of this Rialto, and also a few lines about Three Rivers' original Rialto. Hall Industries had also operated the first Rialto.
Hall Industries closed the second Rialto in 1981, and it remained dark until 2001, after it was acquired and restored by the Economic Development Corporation of Three Rivers. The most recent operator, Virginia Herring, closed the house in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and decided not to renew her lease when it was up in July that year. I don’t know if the EDC has found another lessee yet, but none of the cinema web sites currently list any showtimes for the Rialto. This could be a good opportunity for someone who wants to run a vintage movie theater in a small town. It would be a shame if the place doesn’t get reopened.
The December 6, 1941 issue of Motion Picture Herald had news from Monroeville:
“Fire Damages Theatre
“Fire caused when a film ignited in the Monroeville [sic] theatre, an 800-seat house in Monroeville, Ala., early Sunday night, November 9th, destroyed the building and resulted in water damage to a hardware store. It was reported $50,000 worth of damages resulted from the fire.”
The name “Monroeville theatre” was probably a mistake the magazine made.
Relevant news from the April 4, 1947 issue of Film Daily:
“Rebuild Texas Stand
“Texarkana, Tex. — C. C. Bounds and his son Leo, partners with Joy Houck in the operation of the Princess here, have announced plans for the complete re-building of the house. The theater was totally destroyed about a month ago by fire which also resulted in the death of one patron.”
The “Theater Changes” section of the January 15, 1938 issue of Film Daily listed the Ritz at El Dorado as a new theater. Possibly opened in late 1937, given the trade journals' tendency to be late in their reporting.
303 W. Broad Street is in Texarkana, Texas, not Arkansas. The “Theater Changes” column of Film Daily for October 4, 1937, listed the Palace, Texarkana, Texas, as a new theater.
Internet says that the Capri Theatre was at 818 East Street, Texarkana, Arkansas, 91854. This location is in a strip mall a mile or so south of downtown. The building has been remodeled, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same one seen in Don Lewis’s photo. I can’t tell from the Google street view what’s in there now, but it might be either retail or offices.
Given it’s location in a fairly modern building, it’s possible that the Capri was never anything but one of those “adult” cinemas that cropped up in storefronts around the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I also suspect that the seating capacity of 1,122 seats we give is quite exaggerated. In the satellite view the building just isn’t that big.
This house has been extensively researched by Bill Counter and has this page at his web site. Under the name Little Theatre it was used as a movie house in the summer of 1914, and perhaps for a short time thereafter, but for the remainder of its history it was a legitimate house.
The Little Theatre opened on January 26, 1913, and the building, which included studio spaces as well as the theater, was designed by Morgan, Walls & Morgan. From 1923, the house was listed as the Egan Theatre, or sometimes Egan Little Theatre. It became the Musart Theatre in 1933, and was one of the venues for the depression era WPA’s Federal Theatre Project. In 1950 it was briefly known as the Teatro Fine Arts, presenting stage productions in Spanish. That appears to have been its last use as a theater, though in the 1970s it was in use as a rehearsal hall for the original Los Angeles Ballet Company, which existed from 1974 to 1985.
The building might still have been standing in the early 1980s, and it’s possible that I was once in it, though I’m not positive. I visited an art gallery on an upper floor of a building in this block while on a downtown gallery tour in 1984. It was an interesting old building, and I planned to go back and take a closer look at it sometime but never got around to it before I left Los Angeles. I wish now that I’d paid closer attention to it when I was there. The entire block has since been demolished.
217 Pine Street is the address of the Leo Theatre, which opened in 1948 to replace a theater that burned down in early 1947. That burned theater must have been the Princess.
Incidentally, the address 217 Pine Street is on the Texas side of the Texas-Arkansas state line, which bisects downtown Texarkana.
A brief article about the opening of the Leo Theatre appeared in the February 21, 1948 issue of Boxoffice it said that the new, 540-seat house was a replacement for a theater that had burned a year previously. The Leo was a partnership of Joy Houck and local exhibitors C. C. and Leo Bounds, L. O. Powers, and Frank G. Mullin. The Leo Theatre was dismantled around 1961 and the building converted for use as part of an adjacent bank.
Incidentally, the Texas-Arkansas state line runs right through the middle of downtown Texarkana, at an angle that doesn’t align with the street grid, so some buildings are partly in both states. However, the Google map shows that 217 Pine Street is entirely in the state of Texas, not Arkansas, which may be why Apple is not fetching a map for this page.
Boxoffice of February 21, 1948 noted the opening of the Melody Theatre at Inkster by brothers Leonard and Bernard Brooks. The November 27 issue of the same journal noted that the Melody, which had opened on January 1, marked the establishment of the Affiliated Theatres circuit, which took over operation of four other Michigan houses the same day. Owners Leonard and Bernard Brooks and their nephew Arnold Brooks London had owned the Admiral and President theaters in Detroit for some time.
The January 3, 1948 issue of Boxoffice said that “Robert C. Wilson opened the new Rowelsburg, Rowelsburg W. Va.”
Boxoffie of November 9, 1957 said “Bill Zinn closed the Rowlesburg Theatre, Rowlesburg, when flu spread through that area.”
The February 4, 1963 issue of Boxofficepublished a list of theaters that had recently undergone renovations, and the nine listed for West Virginia included the Rowlesburg, Rowlesburg, then operated by Ralph Stewart.
So far I’ve been unable to find any mentions in the trade journals of either a Wilson Theatre or a Rex Theatre at Rowlesburg. An Amusu Theatre is listed at Rowlesburg in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, and a house called the American Theatre is mentioned in trade journals from 1920 to 1929. An Alpine Theatre is listed at Rowlesburg in the 1940 FDY.
Can anyone shed any light on this item from Boxoffice of February 10, 1940? “Aberdeen — Earl Elkin opened a new 750-seater. It is called the Elkin Junior.”
Another likely rebuild. Boxoffice of February 10, 1940 had this item: “Madelia — The new Madelia has been opened by Bernard L. Larkin.” FDY’s from 1931 and 1932 list no theaters at Madelia, but the 1929 edition lists the Star Theatre with 275 seats.
The Princess Theatre was mentioned in the March 29, 1924 issue of Exhibitors Herald. Owners Pinkelman and Cory also operated the Gem and Savoy theaters and had a new, 500-seat house under construction, which must have been the Washington Square Theatre.
This item from March 29, 1924 issue of Exhibitors Herald mentions the Savoy and Gem as well as the Princess:
Pinkelman and Cory opened the new Washington Square Theatre later that year. But the item indicates that the Gem operated far beyond 1912.We also don’t yet have a listing for the Savoy Theatre at 522 Hampshire. The Gem and Savoy were still listed in the 1926 FDY, but not later.
Blanchard’s Theatre and the Strand were two different houses, and the Strand’s predecessor, the Hippodrome, was not a theater but a multi-use public hall. Blanchard’s Theatre was a 1,100 seat house built behind the 1860 Edwards Block and opened on November 28, 1911. Its entrance was on Main Street, and can be seen in the 1927 post-fire photo on the photo page. Like the later Strand, Blanchard’s was designed by architect Louis Destremps, and though built primarily for stage productions it was equipped to show movies from the time of its opening.
The Blanchard Brothers built the Hippodrome on a large lot behind the Blanchard Theatre in 1916, and for about a decade it was used as a dance hall, skating rink, and exhibition space. In late 1925 the Blanchards decided to convert the Hippodrome building into a regular theater, and it opened as the Strand on January 14, 1926. A long entrance hall led from the entrance on Elm Street to the auditorium, which seated nearly 2,000. A commodious stage with a proscenium forty feet wide was provided for vaudeville and other theatrical productions.
The Blanchard brothers operated the Strand until their retirement, after which it became part of the Interstate Theatres chain (the one based in New England, not to be confused with the Interstate Theatres chain based in Texas.) The last show at the Strand was on February 28, 1965. Historic aerial views show that the theater’s entrance building had been demolished by 1966, but the auditorium building was still standing as late as 1977. By 1992 it too was gone, replaced by a parking lot.
Blanchard’s Theatre operated at least until the fire of January 13th, 1927. I don’t know if it reopened after that, but the building was rebuilt and the likely address of the theater, 293 Main Street, is today the home of a Spanish language Evangelical church, but it’s impossible to tell from the street views whether the church is in the old auditorium or merely in the storefronts where (and adjacent to) the theater’s entrance was.
The vanished Strand Theatre is still recalled in Southbridge’s street nomenclature. The alley that runs between the rebuilt Blanchard building and the site of the Strand appears on maps as Strand Place.
This web page has a description of the Strand from a Southbridge Evening News article published at the time if its opening. This page has a few photos and some ads and flyers published by the theater in its heyday.
Texarkana, Arkansas, actually. I lost focus while writing the caption.
The 1926 Film Daily Yearbook lists houses at E Dorado called the Washignton Theatre and the Manhattan Airdome, but no addresses or seating capacities are given for either.
There is a house called the Majestic Theater listed at El Dorado in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but the address and seating capacity are not given.
A house called the Princess Theatre is listed at El Dorado in the 1926 Film Daily yearbook, but without an address.
The July 16, 1949 issue of Boxoffice made mention of “Paul Ketchum, operator of the Century, Texarkana, Ark., and former owner of the Oaklawn and Queen theatres there….”
The Joy at Texarkana (though it’s in Texas, not Arkansas) was mentioned in the January 8, 1962 issue of Boxoffice. New carpeting had been installed.
MerlinV’s memory of the final operators of the Pix is confirmed by the November 16, 1955 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor, which said “[t]he Pix, a neighborhood showcase, shuttered. It was operated by Anthony Fiorito.”
The Winn got a name change in 1955, as noted in the November 16 issue of Motion Picture Exhibitor:
Motion Picture Exhibitor of November 16, 1955 said “Joy’s Theatres shuttered the Ritz, Texarkana, Ark.” I haven’t found anything saying that this closure was final, but it likely was. The beginning of the wide-screen era saw the demise of many small downtown theaters, especially in cities of moderate size.
Two different Rialto Theatres are conflated on this page, and I think it’s partly because Google Maps has the addresses for Thornton Street totally screwed up. 106 W. Thornton was probably the address of the original Rialto, built in the 1920s and closed in 1948 when the new Rialto opened. It also probably had the 260 seats. The 1948 Rialto is at 613 E. Thornton, but good luck getting Google to realize that.
Boxoffice of May 29, 1948, reported that Hall Industries had opened their new Rialto at Three Rivers on May 14. The 800-seat house featured a section of stadium seating and charged an admission price of 44 cents.
This web page from the Live Oak County Historical Commission has a history of this Rialto, and also a few lines about Three Rivers' original Rialto. Hall Industries had also operated the first Rialto.
Hall Industries closed the second Rialto in 1981, and it remained dark until 2001, after it was acquired and restored by the Economic Development Corporation of Three Rivers. The most recent operator, Virginia Herring, closed the house in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and decided not to renew her lease when it was up in July that year. I don’t know if the EDC has found another lessee yet, but none of the cinema web sites currently list any showtimes for the Rialto. This could be a good opportunity for someone who wants to run a vintage movie theater in a small town. It would be a shame if the place doesn’t get reopened.
The December 6, 1941 issue of Motion Picture Herald had news from Monroeville:
The name “Monroeville theatre” was probably a mistake the magazine made.Relevant news from the April 4, 1947 issue of Film Daily:
The “Theater Changes” section of the January 15, 1938 issue of Film Daily listed the Ritz at El Dorado as a new theater. Possibly opened in late 1937, given the trade journals' tendency to be late in their reporting.
303 W. Broad Street is in Texarkana, Texas, not Arkansas. The “Theater Changes” column of Film Daily for October 4, 1937, listed the Palace, Texarkana, Texas, as a new theater.
Internet says that the Capri Theatre was at 818 East Street, Texarkana, Arkansas, 91854. This location is in a strip mall a mile or so south of downtown. The building has been remodeled, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same one seen in Don Lewis’s photo. I can’t tell from the Google street view what’s in there now, but it might be either retail or offices.
Given it’s location in a fairly modern building, it’s possible that the Capri was never anything but one of those “adult” cinemas that cropped up in storefronts around the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I also suspect that the seating capacity of 1,122 seats we give is quite exaggerated. In the satellite view the building just isn’t that big.
This house has been extensively researched by Bill Counter and has this page at his web site. Under the name Little Theatre it was used as a movie house in the summer of 1914, and perhaps for a short time thereafter, but for the remainder of its history it was a legitimate house.
The Little Theatre opened on January 26, 1913, and the building, which included studio spaces as well as the theater, was designed by Morgan, Walls & Morgan. From 1923, the house was listed as the Egan Theatre, or sometimes Egan Little Theatre. It became the Musart Theatre in 1933, and was one of the venues for the depression era WPA’s Federal Theatre Project. In 1950 it was briefly known as the Teatro Fine Arts, presenting stage productions in Spanish. That appears to have been its last use as a theater, though in the 1970s it was in use as a rehearsal hall for the original Los Angeles Ballet Company, which existed from 1974 to 1985.
The building might still have been standing in the early 1980s, and it’s possible that I was once in it, though I’m not positive. I visited an art gallery on an upper floor of a building in this block while on a downtown gallery tour in 1984. It was an interesting old building, and I planned to go back and take a closer look at it sometime but never got around to it before I left Los Angeles. I wish now that I’d paid closer attention to it when I was there. The entire block has since been demolished.
217 Pine Street is the address of the Leo Theatre, which opened in 1948 to replace a theater that burned down in early 1947. That burned theater must have been the Princess.
Incidentally, the address 217 Pine Street is on the Texas side of the Texas-Arkansas state line, which bisects downtown Texarkana.
A brief article about the opening of the Leo Theatre appeared in the February 21, 1948 issue of Boxoffice it said that the new, 540-seat house was a replacement for a theater that had burned a year previously. The Leo was a partnership of Joy Houck and local exhibitors C. C. and Leo Bounds, L. O. Powers, and Frank G. Mullin. The Leo Theatre was dismantled around 1961 and the building converted for use as part of an adjacent bank.
Incidentally, the Texas-Arkansas state line runs right through the middle of downtown Texarkana, at an angle that doesn’t align with the street grid, so some buildings are partly in both states. However, the Google map shows that 217 Pine Street is entirely in the state of Texas, not Arkansas, which may be why Apple is not fetching a map for this page.
Boxoffice of February 21, 1948 noted the opening of the Melody Theatre at Inkster by brothers Leonard and Bernard Brooks. The November 27 issue of the same journal noted that the Melody, which had opened on January 1, marked the establishment of the Affiliated Theatres circuit, which took over operation of four other Michigan houses the same day. Owners Leonard and Bernard Brooks and their nephew Arnold Brooks London had owned the Admiral and President theaters in Detroit for some time.
The January 3, 1948 issue of Boxoffice said that “Robert C. Wilson opened the new Rowelsburg, Rowelsburg W. Va.”
Boxoffie of November 9, 1957 said “Bill Zinn closed the Rowlesburg Theatre, Rowlesburg, when flu spread through that area.”
The February 4, 1963 issue of Boxofficepublished a list of theaters that had recently undergone renovations, and the nine listed for West Virginia included the Rowlesburg, Rowlesburg, then operated by Ralph Stewart.
So far I’ve been unable to find any mentions in the trade journals of either a Wilson Theatre or a Rex Theatre at Rowlesburg. An Amusu Theatre is listed at Rowlesburg in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, and a house called the American Theatre is mentioned in trade journals from 1920 to 1929. An Alpine Theatre is listed at Rowlesburg in the 1940 FDY.
Can anyone shed any light on this item from Boxoffice of February 10, 1940? “Aberdeen — Earl Elkin opened a new 750-seater. It is called the Elkin Junior.”
Another likely rebuild. Boxoffice of February 10, 1940 had this item: “Madelia — The new Madelia has been opened by Bernard L. Larkin.” FDY’s from 1931 and 1932 list no theaters at Madelia, but the 1929 edition lists the Star Theatre with 275 seats.