A movie house called the Princess Theatre was mentioned in the July 5, 1913 issue of The Nashville News. The most recent mention of the Princess I’ve found in that paper is from December 31, 1921. As we don’t have an address for the Princess, is it possible that it became the Liberty, which opened in 1922?
The April 4, 1939 issue of The Film Daily had an article about the recent expansion of the K. Lee Williams Theatres circuit, which had just added seven houses to the chain. This paragraph concerns the theaters in Nashville:
“Also purchased was the New theater at Nashville, Ark., from H. H. Baker of Emerson, Ark. Baker had been operating the house under a lease agreement with R. V. McGinnis. Williams theaters secured a closed town by also purchasing the Liberty and Gem theaters at Nashville, Ark., from R. B. Hardy. The Gem will be closed for complete remodeling. Temporary manager for Nashville is O. P. Peachey.”
It has occurred to me that the “New theater” mentioned in the article could have been the Howard, which actually was a new theater at the time. The house might have actually operated under the name New Theatre for a while before Williams took it over, or maybe Film Daily was just careless with the capitalization and meant only to indicate that it was a new theater. One can never be sure with these hastily-assembled trade journals.
I just had a belated thought. It seems quite possible that the New Theatre that H. H. Baker had been leasing for an unspecified period of time before April, 1939 (perhaps for only a few months) was the house that K. Lee Williams began operating in 1939 as the Howard. It actually was a new theater at that time.
rebeldj: 1946-48 would make more sense for the Elberta’s construction date than the 1943 I’ve seen cited in several places on the Internet. Permission to build new theaters during the war was often granted to builders in towns that had large military bases or war-related manufacturing facilities nearby, but I haven’t found references to any such facilities near Nashville. It seems very unlikely that permission to build a large, new theater in Nashville would have been given in 1942 or 1943, especially since it already had two (possibly three) functioning movie houses.
Our new description for the Gem puzzles me though. The Film Daily item I cited says that the Gem and Liberty had been operated by R. B. Hardy and that the New had been operated under lease from owner R. V. McGinnis by H. H. Baker. Unless the Daily had gotten the information terribly garbled (which is always a possibility) I don’t see how New Theatre could have been only an aka for the remodeled Gem. In the article it sounds like all three were already in operation when K. Lee Williams took them over around the beginning of April, 1939.
A timeline history of Robertson’s Department Store says that the store moved to the former site of the Auditorium Theatre in 1923.
The book South Bend in Vintage Postcards (Google books preview) says that the Auditorium was built in 1898 by the Studebaker family, and seated 1,635. It suffered major damage in a fire in December, 1920, and though rebuilt for movies did not last long before being demolished for the department store project.
A Gem Theatre at Clinton, North Carolina, was mentioned in the March 10, 1923 issue of The Moving Picture World, but since no address was given I don’t know if it was the Gem that was at 109 N. Wall Street from the 1930s to the 1950s or not.
The September 23, 1950 issue of Boxoffice said that the K. Lee Williams Theatres circuit had begun construction of a 350-car drive-in on the Murfreesboro Highway a mile north of Nashville, Arkansas.
The caption of This photo of the Howard Theatre uploaded by dallasmovietheatres says that the Howard, 118 N. Main St., was formerly the Gem. The walking tour I cited in my previous comment also lists the buildings at 114-122 Main and says that by 1919 there was a movie theater in one of them. An item in the July 1, 1922 issue of The Film Daily says that the Liberty Theatre in Nashville had just opened, which was close to the 1923 opening date for the bank at 103 N. Main. Could it be that the theater behind the bank was the Liberty? dallasamovietheatres doesn’t cite the source for the claim that the Gem was the house at 118 Main, but given that their contributions are typically well researched and accurate, it does seem possible that it was.
Also perhaps pertinent, an April 4, 1939 Film Daily article about recent expansion by the K. Lee Williams theater circuit of Oklahoma had this paragraph mentioning theaters in Nashville:
“Also purchased was the New theater at Nashville, Ark., from H. H. Baker of Emerson, Ark. Baker had been operating the house under a lease agreement with R. V. McGinnis. Williams theaters secured a closed town by also purchasing the Liberty and Gem theaters at Nashville, Ark., from R. B. Hardy. The Gem will be closed for complete remodeling. Temporary manager for Nashville is O. P. Peachey.”
An April 28 Daily item mentioned air conditioning being installed in Williams' Gem and Liberty Theatres at Nashville. I’m also wondering if the “New theatre” mentioned in the article could have been the Elberta? Most Internet sources say that the Elberta opened around 1943, but given the severe wartime limits on new construction imposed by the Federal government in early 1942, it seems likely the house was built earlier. Perhaps the New Theatre was renamed Elberta in 1943.
According to a walking tour of Nashville’s historic district (PDF here,) the bank at 103 N. Main Street was built in 1923, and a 1930 Sanborn map shows the theater behind it. However, the theater operation predates the bank, as an “air dome cinema” opened on the site toward the end of May, 1919. It seems likely that the indoor theater would have been built at the same time as the bank building.
As near as I can puzzle out from the sources on the Internet, Huss M. Beutell must have been the half-brother of Russell L. Beutell of the Atlanta firm Daniell & Beutell, architects of at least three theaters in Georgia.
The July 15, 1937 issue of Film Daily had this item about the Gem Theatre:
“Merchants in Film Biz
“Beemer, Neb. — Rather than let the town be without a theater, local business men got together and took over the Gem when J. F. O'Neill announced he planned to close the house.”
One possible error remains on this page, probably derived from the one item on the photo page noting Davis & Wilson as the architects. That is the 1934 grand opening ad for the first Varsity Theatre on O Street. While it’s possible that Davis & Wilson did draw the plans for the radical post-war remodeling of the second Varsity (they definitely designed the remodeling of the Stuart Theatre across the street in 1941,) I haven’t found any sources confirming their involvement in the second Varsity project.
Correction to my previous comment: The extensive alterations to the second Varsity took place some years after it had been renamed. We have photos of it before the remodeling on the photo page. The photo page has pictures of both the first and second Varsity on it, so it’s a hybrid, just like the description page.
I just found this Lincoln Journal-Star article about the second Varsity. It opened on November 23, 1891 as the Lansing Theatre, became the Oliver in 1899, was renamed the Liberty during WWI, and the New Varsity in 1941, after extensive alterations.
Before becoming the Orpheum the house at 1500 O Street had operated as the Bijou. I haven’t discovered when it opened, or the exact year it was renamed the Orpheum, but the Bijou was mentioned in The Billboard in 1906 and 1907. After closing as the Orpheum in 1915 the house reopened as the Majestic, then around 1920 became the Rialto. The Rialto closed for about two months in 1934 for remodeling, and then reopened on November 1st as the Varsity Theatre. The Varsity closed in 1941, and its name was moved to the former Liberty Theatre, originally the Oliver, at 15th and P Street. The theater at 1500 O Street was demolished in early 1942 to make way for a northward extension of 15th Street, which is today called Centennial Mall.
Though I can’t remember which towns they were in, I do recall a couple of small towns where school auditoriums were shared with movie theater operations. A small school district with limited revenues might be happy to collect some rent from a movie operator for a facility that would otherwise have sat empty most nights and weekends.
I’ve also come across a number of instances of the opposite situation, where a school that had no auditorium had an arrangement with a movie theater owner to use the theater for school functions. And a candy counter doesn’t need much space. One theater I used to attend, the Capri, in Alhambra, California, had its concession stand tucked into a semi-circular alcove that must have been no more than eight or nine feet across.
An item datelined Bicknell, Indiana, in the August 16, 1913 issue of The Moving Picture World said that “[t]he new Colonial Theater on No. Main Street has just opened for business.”
The Strand Theatre in Hastings was mentioned in the October 14, 1922 issue of Exhibitors Herald. Hastings also had a house called the Regent Theatre during this period. The June 19, 1926 issue of the Herald mentioned the Strand and Family Theatres in Hastings. The only theater listed at Hastings in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Star, also located on W. State Street.
In 1925 a Mr. J. H. Kelly was operating a movie house called the Garden Theatre at Wakeeney, mentioned in the May 9 issue of The Moving Picture World. Then the April 14, 1945 issue of Boxoffice brought further news of a Mr. Kelly in Wakeeney, though his initials are different:
“C. B. Kelly, who entered the theatre business by buying one at Wakeeney, Kas., back in 1923, was on Filmrow this week, accompanied by W. K. Heyl, with whom he is associated in ownership of the Kaw at Junction City. Kelly built a theatre to replace the old Kelly when it burned in 1929, and now he is planning another new house to be built after the war. He will use the present building for a skating rink.”
I’ve been unable to find a followup article telling whether Kelly did or did not carry out his plans to replace his theater with a new one, so the house at 211 Main could date from around 1930, or from the post-war period.
The April 2, 1973 edition of the Kossuth County Advance had an article about the April 28, 1937 fire that destroyed the Call Opera House. It said that the operators of the opera house also operated a small movie house called the Iowa Theatre, located two doors north of the Call.
From the article’s description of the theater’s block of Thorington Street, the Opera House must have been the second building north of State Street, as the balcony of the theater had a fire exit door leading into the second floor of the Security State Bank building, which was on the corner of State Street. The bank is still there, but in a modern building, but the Opera house must have been on the site of what is now the bank’s parking lot. The Iowa Theatre might have been in the building now occupied by an optometrist’s office, Eyes on Thorington, at 112 N. Thorington. The address of the Opera House was probably 108 N. Thorington.
A movie house called the Princess Theatre was mentioned in the July 5, 1913 issue of The Nashville News. The most recent mention of the Princess I’ve found in that paper is from December 31, 1921. As we don’t have an address for the Princess, is it possible that it became the Liberty, which opened in 1922?
The April 4, 1939 issue of The Film Daily had an article about the recent expansion of the K. Lee Williams Theatres circuit, which had just added seven houses to the chain. This paragraph concerns the theaters in Nashville:
It has occurred to me that the “New theater” mentioned in the article could have been the Howard, which actually was a new theater at the time. The house might have actually operated under the name New Theatre for a while before Williams took it over, or maybe Film Daily was just careless with the capitalization and meant only to indicate that it was a new theater. One can never be sure with these hastily-assembled trade journals.I just had a belated thought. It seems quite possible that the New Theatre that H. H. Baker had been leasing for an unspecified period of time before April, 1939 (perhaps for only a few months) was the house that K. Lee Williams began operating in 1939 as the Howard. It actually was a new theater at that time.
rebeldj: 1946-48 would make more sense for the Elberta’s construction date than the 1943 I’ve seen cited in several places on the Internet. Permission to build new theaters during the war was often granted to builders in towns that had large military bases or war-related manufacturing facilities nearby, but I haven’t found references to any such facilities near Nashville. It seems very unlikely that permission to build a large, new theater in Nashville would have been given in 1942 or 1943, especially since it already had two (possibly three) functioning movie houses.
Our new description for the Gem puzzles me though. The Film Daily item I cited says that the Gem and Liberty had been operated by R. B. Hardy and that the New had been operated under lease from owner R. V. McGinnis by H. H. Baker. Unless the Daily had gotten the information terribly garbled (which is always a possibility) I don’t see how New Theatre could have been only an aka for the remodeled Gem. In the article it sounds like all three were already in operation when K. Lee Williams took them over around the beginning of April, 1939.
A timeline history of Robertson’s Department Store says that the store moved to the former site of the Auditorium Theatre in 1923.
The book South Bend in Vintage Postcards (Google books preview) says that the Auditorium was built in 1898 by the Studebaker family, and seated 1,635. It suffered major damage in a fire in December, 1920, and though rebuilt for movies did not last long before being demolished for the department store project.
A Gem Theatre at Clinton, North Carolina, was mentioned in the March 10, 1923 issue of The Moving Picture World, but since no address was given I don’t know if it was the Gem that was at 109 N. Wall Street from the 1930s to the 1950s or not.
The Central Theatre was designed for John Locatelli by architect Frank Bignotti, and opened in November, 1921.
The September 23, 1950 issue of Boxoffice said that Jimmie Austin and Roy Rosser would open the Austin Theatre at Clinton,North Carolina, “next week.”
The September 23, 1950 issue of Boxoffice said that the K. Lee Williams Theatres circuit had begun construction of a 350-car drive-in on the Murfreesboro Highway a mile north of Nashville, Arkansas.
The caption of This photo of the Howard Theatre uploaded by dallasmovietheatres says that the Howard, 118 N. Main St., was formerly the Gem. The walking tour I cited in my previous comment also lists the buildings at 114-122 Main and says that by 1919 there was a movie theater in one of them. An item in the July 1, 1922 issue of The Film Daily says that the Liberty Theatre in Nashville had just opened, which was close to the 1923 opening date for the bank at 103 N. Main. Could it be that the theater behind the bank was the Liberty? dallasamovietheatres doesn’t cite the source for the claim that the Gem was the house at 118 Main, but given that their contributions are typically well researched and accurate, it does seem possible that it was.
Also perhaps pertinent, an April 4, 1939 Film Daily article about recent expansion by the K. Lee Williams theater circuit of Oklahoma had this paragraph mentioning theaters in Nashville:
An April 28 Daily item mentioned air conditioning being installed in Williams' Gem and Liberty Theatres at Nashville. I’m also wondering if the “New theatre” mentioned in the article could have been the Elberta? Most Internet sources say that the Elberta opened around 1943, but given the severe wartime limits on new construction imposed by the Federal government in early 1942, it seems likely the house was built earlier. Perhaps the New Theatre was renamed Elberta in 1943.According to a walking tour of Nashville’s historic district (PDF here,) the bank at 103 N. Main Street was built in 1923, and a 1930 Sanborn map shows the theater behind it. However, the theater operation predates the bank, as an “air dome cinema” opened on the site toward the end of May, 1919. It seems likely that the indoor theater would have been built at the same time as the bank building.
As near as I can puzzle out from the sources on the Internet, Huss M. Beutell must have been the half-brother of Russell L. Beutell of the Atlanta firm Daniell & Beutell, architects of at least three theaters in Georgia.
The July 15, 1937 issue of Film Daily had this item about the Gem Theatre:
One possible error remains on this page, probably derived from the one item on the photo page noting Davis & Wilson as the architects. That is the 1934 grand opening ad for the first Varsity Theatre on O Street. While it’s possible that Davis & Wilson did draw the plans for the radical post-war remodeling of the second Varsity (they definitely designed the remodeling of the Stuart Theatre across the street in 1941,) I haven’t found any sources confirming their involvement in the second Varsity project.
Correction to my previous comment: The extensive alterations to the second Varsity took place some years after it had been renamed. We have photos of it before the remodeling on the photo page. The photo page has pictures of both the first and second Varsity on it, so it’s a hybrid, just like the description page.
I just found this Lincoln Journal-Star article about the second Varsity. It opened on November 23, 1891 as the Lansing Theatre, became the Oliver in 1899, was renamed the Liberty during WWI, and the New Varsity in 1941, after extensive alterations.
Before becoming the Orpheum the house at 1500 O Street had operated as the Bijou. I haven’t discovered when it opened, or the exact year it was renamed the Orpheum, but the Bijou was mentioned in The Billboard in 1906 and 1907. After closing as the Orpheum in 1915 the house reopened as the Majestic, then around 1920 became the Rialto. The Rialto closed for about two months in 1934 for remodeling, and then reopened on November 1st as the Varsity Theatre. The Varsity closed in 1941, and its name was moved to the former Liberty Theatre, originally the Oliver, at 15th and P Street. The theater at 1500 O Street was demolished in early 1942 to make way for a northward extension of 15th Street, which is today called Centennial Mall.
Sorry, that second link isn’t working from here for some reason, but you should be able to reach it from this post at Facebook.
Clickable link to roof collapse story.
The second photo in the slide show at this link is an interior shot.
Though I can’t remember which towns they were in, I do recall a couple of small towns where school auditoriums were shared with movie theater operations. A small school district with limited revenues might be happy to collect some rent from a movie operator for a facility that would otherwise have sat empty most nights and weekends.
I’ve also come across a number of instances of the opposite situation, where a school that had no auditorium had an arrangement with a movie theater owner to use the theater for school functions. And a candy counter doesn’t need much space. One theater I used to attend, the Capri, in Alhambra, California, had its concession stand tucked into a semi-circular alcove that must have been no more than eight or nine feet across.
An item datelined Bicknell, Indiana, in the August 16, 1913 issue of The Moving Picture World said that “[t]he new Colonial Theater on No. Main Street has just opened for business.”
The Strand Theatre in Hastings was mentioned in the October 14, 1922 issue of Exhibitors Herald. Hastings also had a house called the Regent Theatre during this period. The June 19, 1926 issue of the Herald mentioned the Strand and Family Theatres in Hastings. The only theater listed at Hastings in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory was called the Star, also located on W. State Street.
In 1925 a Mr. J. H. Kelly was operating a movie house called the Garden Theatre at Wakeeney, mentioned in the May 9 issue of The Moving Picture World. Then the April 14, 1945 issue of Boxoffice brought further news of a Mr. Kelly in Wakeeney, though his initials are different:
I’ve been unable to find a followup article telling whether Kelly did or did not carry out his plans to replace his theater with a new one, so the house at 211 Main could date from around 1930, or from the post-war period.The April 2, 1973 edition of the Kossuth County Advance had an article about the April 28, 1937 fire that destroyed the Call Opera House. It said that the operators of the opera house also operated a small movie house called the Iowa Theatre, located two doors north of the Call.
From the article’s description of the theater’s block of Thorington Street, the Opera House must have been the second building north of State Street, as the balcony of the theater had a fire exit door leading into the second floor of the Security State Bank building, which was on the corner of State Street. The bank is still there, but in a modern building, but the Opera house must have been on the site of what is now the bank’s parking lot. The Iowa Theatre might have been in the building now occupied by an optometrist’s office, Eyes on Thorington, at 112 N. Thorington. The address of the Opera House was probably 108 N. Thorington.
Boxoffice of February 28, 1948, said that Al Cox had installed a candy counter and fountain in the foyer of his Silver Theatre at Deepwater, Missouri.
Deepwater, by the way, was the birthplace of the noted opera singer Gladys Swarthout. Between 1936 and 1939 she also appeared in five movies.