In “Ginger: My Story”, Ginger Rogers' autobiography, she talks extensively about spending time backstage at the Majestic Theatre in Fort Worth (which was managed by a man named Bill Hart). However, I have seen claims about the Dallas theater of the same name as the place where Ginger “started her career”. Does anyone know whether this theater, the Majestic Theatre in Dallas, ever had a manager or owner by the name of Bill Hart?
“I have just seen one of the greatest emotion [sic] pictures of my life… I am filled with song and tears and I am sitting on a mountain peak watching a new sun rising over this land … with a new insight on kindness, greatness—a new realization of the meaning of truth and freedom.” (Theater owner C.T. Cooney, Jr. in the November 4th, 1939 edition of the Motion Picture Herald on watching Frank Capra’s "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington”)
Eric Smoodin, in “Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, and American Film Studies, 1930-1960” (Duke University Press 2004, p. 40) writes about the local promotional campaign for Frank Capra’s 1931 film “Dirigible”:
“(E)xhibitors developed some interesting advertising campaigns for Capra’s film. In Maynard, Massachusetts, Burt Coghlan mounted a model dirigible on an Austin automobile and had it driven through town by two men dressed in aviator outfits. Marshall Quint, from the Colonia (sic) Theater in Belfast, Maine, also used an automobile, but had his driver dress as a clown, and tied-in the entire stunt with a sale at a used-car dealership.”
About the manager’s community service during the Great Depression, and promotional campaign for Frank Capra’s film “Dirigible”:
“(T)oward the end of 1931 theater manager Jay H. Guthrie of Urichsville, Ohio, decided to do what he could to help the poor during hard times. For matinee showings of Capra’s then most recent film, Dirigible, Guthrie asked patrons for canned goods rather than money. Once the cans had been collected, but before they were distributed, Guthrie made a display of the contributions in the lobby of his State Theater, showing to the town’s filmgoers the result of their own good deeds. While the canned goods clearly qualified as charitable giving, they also worked as good ballyhoo for Guthrie’s movie house. Patrons now could view going to Guthrie’s theater as something of a community service—an image reinforced by the display of all the food—and this would certainly help attendance at other screenings that required a paid admission.
But Guthrie also made use of slightly more conventional publicity, that is, publicity tied directly to the subject of Capra’s movie. Guthrie mounted a cardboard cutout of a dirigible on a truck and drove it through Urichsville’s main streets. He also attached another cutout under the State Theater’s marquee, with one-sheet posters for the film placed above. The exhibitor’s trade journal, Motion Picture Herald, which always reported on successful and aesthetically pleasing examples of ballyhoo, commented that these displays “attracted a lot of attention, especially so in view of the new navy dirigible ‘Akron’ making flights over this territory” during the period of the screenings."
(Eric Smoodin, “Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, and American Film Studies, 1930-1960”, Duke University Press 2004, p. 38-39)
This is the theater where Nicholas Ray (director of “Rebel Without A Cause”) claims to have seen his first ever movie: D.W. Griffiths' “The Birth of a Nation”.
In “Ginger: My Story”, Ginger Rogers' autobiography, she talks extensively about spending time backstage at the Majestic Theatre in Fort Worth (which was managed by a man named Bill Hart). However, I have seen claims about the Dallas theater of the same name as the place where Ginger “started her career”. Does anyone know whether this theater, the Majestic Theatre in Dallas, ever had a manager or owner by the name of Bill Hart?
Director Franklin J. Schaffner had a part-time job here as an usher when he was young, according to biographer Erwin Kim
According to several of John Ford’s biographers, the future Hollywood director worked as an usher at this theater when he was young.
“I have just seen one of the greatest emotion [sic] pictures of my life… I am filled with song and tears and I am sitting on a mountain peak watching a new sun rising over this land … with a new insight on kindness, greatness—a new realization of the meaning of truth and freedom.” (Theater owner C.T. Cooney, Jr. in the November 4th, 1939 edition of the Motion Picture Herald on watching Frank Capra’s "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington”)
Eric Smoodin, in “Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, and American Film Studies, 1930-1960” (Duke University Press 2004, p. 40) writes about the local promotional campaign for Frank Capra’s 1931 film “Dirigible”:
“(E)xhibitors developed some interesting advertising campaigns for Capra’s film. In Maynard, Massachusetts, Burt Coghlan mounted a model dirigible on an Austin automobile and had it driven through town by two men dressed in aviator outfits. Marshall Quint, from the Colonia (sic) Theater in Belfast, Maine, also used an automobile, but had his driver dress as a clown, and tied-in the entire stunt with a sale at a used-car dealership.”
About the manager’s community service during the Great Depression, and promotional campaign for Frank Capra’s film “Dirigible”:
“(T)oward the end of 1931 theater manager Jay H. Guthrie of Urichsville, Ohio, decided to do what he could to help the poor during hard times. For matinee showings of Capra’s then most recent film, Dirigible, Guthrie asked patrons for canned goods rather than money. Once the cans had been collected, but before they were distributed, Guthrie made a display of the contributions in the lobby of his State Theater, showing to the town’s filmgoers the result of their own good deeds. While the canned goods clearly qualified as charitable giving, they also worked as good ballyhoo for Guthrie’s movie house. Patrons now could view going to Guthrie’s theater as something of a community service—an image reinforced by the display of all the food—and this would certainly help attendance at other screenings that required a paid admission.
But Guthrie also made use of slightly more conventional publicity, that is, publicity tied directly to the subject of Capra’s movie. Guthrie mounted a cardboard cutout of a dirigible on a truck and drove it through Urichsville’s main streets. He also attached another cutout under the State Theater’s marquee, with one-sheet posters for the film placed above. The exhibitor’s trade journal, Motion Picture Herald, which always reported on successful and aesthetically pleasing examples of ballyhoo, commented that these displays “attracted a lot of attention, especially so in view of the new navy dirigible ‘Akron’ making flights over this territory” during the period of the screenings."
(Eric Smoodin, “Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, and American Film Studies, 1930-1960”, Duke University Press 2004, p. 38-39)
This is the theater where Nicholas Ray (director of “Rebel Without A Cause”) claims to have seen his first ever movie: D.W. Griffiths' “The Birth of a Nation”.
This was likely the place where an 8-year old Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle made his first onstage appearance, in a travelling Frank Bacon vaudeville show