Roxy Theatre

If the rebuilt Roxy expanded onto the site of the adjacent building then the original theater’s sidewall could not have been incorporated in the project, and that makes it unlikely that any of the original back wall was saved either.

and reopened as Roxy on Christmas day, 1941. Ad: Roxy theatre opening · Wed, Dec 24, 1941 – 8 · The Leaf-Chronicle (Clarksville, Tennessee) · The Leaf Chronicle

This opened as the Lillian theatre on October 7th, 1915. article below: Linnian theatre opening · Wed, Oct 6, 1915 – 1 · The Leaf-Chronicle (Clarksville, Tennessee) · The Leaf Chronicle

The theater description should probably include the fire in the mid-1940s (the official web site says 1945) which destroyed the house for a second time, and the subsequent rebuilding and reopening in 1947. I suspect that almost the only part of the Lillian Theatre remaining might be the east wall, adjacent to the parking lot, and possibly part of the back wall.

The east wall was most likely a common wall with an adjacent building erected at the same time as the second Lillian (the 1914 fire destroyed a number of buildings in the area) and would have to have been retained to support that building when the theater was rebuilt following the 1940s fire. The west wall along First Street looks like more modern brickwork and might date from 1947. There is some possibility that the Franklin Street facade dates from the Speight & Hibbs remodeling in 1941, which was to include a new front for the theater, but I’ve found no sources to confirm that it does.

Back in 2007 msimpson83 asked if there were plans to demolish the Roxy and replace it with an entirely new theater. The official web site say yes, alas. The project has not yet gotten underway, probably due to the difficulty of raising funds in the slack economy of recent years.

David Bowers “Encyclopedia of Automated Musical Instruments” p. 551 mentions the installation of a Reproduco organ at the Lillian Theatre, Clarksville, Tennessee. There is no date on that reference, but certainly before 1930. In all likelihood it a was photoplayer: very similar to an orchestrelle.

I found a reference to this theater as the Lillian in the February 22, 1941, issue of Boxoffice. The item said that Crescent had acquired the theater three years earlier. They were having the house remodeled. Plans were by the local architectural firm of Speight & Hibbs. A new facade and marquee were planned, so this may be when the name was changed.

In any case, the theater had been renamed the Roxy by 1946, when its destruction by fire was reported in the January 19 issue of Boxoffice. So far I’ve been unable to find anything in Boxoffice about the reconstruction, but I suspect that Speight & Hibbs did the design for that, too. From the photos it certainly resembles their other work of the period.

Here is a postcard, circa 1940s:
http://tinyurl.com/2wrp85

I have been told that the Roxy is being torn down to be replaced with a new theater. Can anyone confirm this?

Leon Cole, a wonderful organist who was widely known in Central Tennessee, toured with a Hammond and played horse shows, carnivals, political events, etc.. He told me that the Roxy had an Orchestrelle. He said he used to play it. We were both playing at the Montomery County Fair at the time (1956, maybe). He for the horse shows and I for everything else, as I recall. It’s been a long time. Wow.

There is no evidence of the Roxy’s having an Orchestrelle in the Aeolian records. I would doubt the Roxy had anything like a Morton or Wurlitzer. The cost was prohibitive for a pipe organ. Orchestrelles offered players which could be used when there was no live organist. Also, there was the matter of space for a pipe organ. I was too young to have been in the Roxy that burned in the 1940’s, although I well remember seeing the ruins, and was old enough to be at the opening of the present theater.

It is hard to believe that they would have had the space for a small pipe organ. Some companies that made Orchestrelle-type instruments used reeds, like harmoniums. In fact, there was a difference in Orchestrelles between the reed models and a “Pipe Orchestrelle”.

I played the organ at the Capitol. They tried an electronic Wurlitzer in about 1956/57. I was eighteen and at Austin Peay. O.C. Terrell managed (owned?) the theater at the time and was who asked me to play there. I was paid in gasoline from his service station on 41-A near Beech Haven.

I grew up in Clarksville, leaving there in 1960.

The immediate predecessor to the Roxy was another Roxy that had replaced the Lillian which burned in the mid 1940’s. New and fireproof!

The Capitol, now defunct, was a true Art Deco building from the early 1930’s. Somewhere there is a film that was made of its opening. It is a B&W sound flick featurning some of the vivid personalities in Clarksville at that time. I remember seeing it.