Wyo Theatre

Joe Vogel on January 11, 2010 at 5:08 am

Boxoffice of November 12, 1949, said that Mrs. Carl Ray, owner of the Princess Theatre, had hired local architect Frederic H. Porter to prepare plans for rebuilding the house. Since the death of her husband, a long-time Cheyenne theater operator who had died in 1948, the theater was being operated by Fox Wyoming Theatres.

Carl Ray had bought the Princess in 1940. Boxoffice doesn’t reveal how long it had been in operation before that, but Chuck1231’s link above has a photo of the Princess and the building it was in looked very old.

The September 23, 1950, issue of Boxoffice said that the Princess had been closed for two months and was being virtually rebuilt, and would reopen under Fox Intermountain’s management as the Wyo Theatre. The Wyo was included on the list of theaters opened in recent months in Boxoffice of December 16, 1950.

There after Boxoffice called the house the Wyo Theatre except for one instance of Wyoming Theatre in a 1964 issue. I think that instance was an error.

Joe Vogel on April 14, 2018 at 1:46 pm

The May 11, 1918, issue of The Moving Picture World had this item about the Princess:

“Princess Theater Will Open in June.

“The interior stucco work for the new Princess theater, Cheyenne, arrived this past week and is being put in place. Manager Todd has issued a statement that the new theater will be ready by the first of June and sooner if possible.”

If, as the newspaper item dontaylor50 cited above said, the Princess was “prosperous” in March of 1918, perhaps the theater opened later in 1918 was the second of that name in Cheyenne.