Roxy Theatre

Pearliemae: Fascinating finds you posted! I have hoped to see an interior picture of the Roxy but had given up that one existed. My brothers and I saw many a movie there. There was never much patronage which was probably due to the racial prejudice so prevalent at the time. Pls. contact me at .com, and we can chat further.

Irvl - I’ve been following on Historic Orlando the Original regarding the ad you posted above. Started digging in newspapers dot com - have you seen the picture of the interior I posted here? I adjusted it the best I could. Also I found the same exterior shot and managed to tweak it a little bit too and posted it.

The theater opened on December 25, 1937.

The Roxy, Rialto, Astor and Beacham theaters in downtown Orlando were for whites only. Blacks saw second run movies at the Lincoln and Carver theaters on Church Street.

1941 ad for Florida State Theatres, showing its theatres in Orlando/Winter Park posted to photo section.

One of the last movies I saw at the Roxy was “The Mouse that Roared,” with Peter Sellers, probably shown Spring 1960, when I was 13. I vaguely remember a jungle movie at the Roxy with a white lady in a revealing leopard-skin get-up, maybe 1958-59. The Roxy was close to the great racial divide, Division Street, and in the late 50s, this area was the most integrated street I knew of; near the Roxy or perhaps the Rialto, there was an African-American clothing store for men where my father sometimes shopped for unique styled suits—one was chartreuse—and for spectator shoes that the owner called Stacy Adams. The Roxy was elegant and tattered during its final days.

A friend of mine “lived” in the Roxy for several weeks in the late 1940s when he was an usher there. He had run away from home, and the manager allowed him to stay in one of the dressing rooms backstage. He said he was kept awake all night by the ghosts of vaudeville artists who had performed in the theatre.