1891 Fredonia Opera House

Could this building have been the insperation for Fredonia in the Marx Brothers film “Duck Soup”?

Did this building open in 1891?

I have printed out your lengthy information and will present it to Dalton, Jr. at his office!

Dalton Burgett owned the Regent Theater in Dunkirk, a sporting goods store just a block or so from the Regent and a post office/general store in the Van Buren beach community around 1950.
He then acquired lease to the Capitol Theater in Dunkirk and a few years later the lease for the Winter Garden Theater in Fredonia. His Regent Theater had the best screen. It covered most of the front of the auditorium. For CinemaScope the top and bottom masking was lovered and raised to form than scope shape. The Regent also had a great stereo sound system. The Capitol was the wrong shape for CinemaScope. It had a small balcony and box seating lined the side walls. That left a rather narrow stage.
The Winter Garden got its scope screen rather late. I helped put the screen in place while an employee of the theater. The first scope picture was an Alan Ladd western for Warner’s and it recieved no fanfare. A backlog of scope pictures played off quickly and did not do the business it could have with some imaginative showmanship.
The Shermans managed the Winter Garden from the thrities to the late
fifties. She ran the place while he was in WWII service. They lived next door to me. Fredonia being a college town helped make the theater profitable for many years. When the studios were sending their stars out on road trips in the early fifties to get people away from their TV sets some of those stars stopped in Fredonia, would you believe? I remember meeting Pat O'Brian and Sally Forrest. Roy Rogers and Trigger made an appearance, also. Getting Trigger up all those outside steps into the building was a chore. Then Rogers rode him down the center aisle, over the orchestra pit on a platform my father built for the occasion, and onto the stage. The Durango Kid was also in town one day and signed lots of autographs. His son was a student at the college. I mentioned earlier in this piece “showmanship”. Mr Sherman taught me the rudiments of newspaper ad layout and promotions. I was in junior high at the time. GOOD MORNING, MISS DOVE, a Jennifer Jones film about a dedicated school teacher based on a best-selling novel had played in Dunkirk at the Regent to poor grosses. Fredonia always got the pictures at least thirty days after Dunkirk playdates. The Winter Garden got the film for a Wednesday-Thursday playdate, or four evening performances. I plastered large ads from the pressbook all over the college campus. Oh, the college at that time was a training school for teachers. I also did the newspaper ads heralding “The Book-of-the Month Club School Teacher”. We had four nearly sold out performances. Years later I would operate movie houses at Army bases around the country and then return to Silver Creek NY to operate the closed Geitner Theater for two years. The first year was moderaltely successful. The second year was a disaster. That was the year that the TV networks began their MONDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES, TUESDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES…etc.
Most of the working people in Silver Creek worked out of town. By the time they got home evenings they were not going to go back out to see a movie when there was one on their TV sets. The distributors were also playing hardball with all theaters back then. You want to play the big hits you had to play the dogs also. And in the 1960s there were a lot of dogs. Thus I closed. My memories of the Winter Garden are probably what keeps me interested in old movie houses. I remember going into the theater after school when a cleaning lady would take a break. She and I would sit on the stairs to the balcony and she would tell me stories of the stars who once performed or made appearances at the Winter Garden. Much of the memorabilia from the theater’s history is housed beneath the stage near the new dressing rooms. The old boxoffice window can be seen in the rear wall of the auditorium. My only regret with the marvelous restoration was that they chose to replace the side wall lights. Before and after the show the lights were white. During the short subjects they were amber. During the feature they were blue and red. Lots of memories. James Manuel

It seems this Opera House was the only one that Enoch A. Curtis built.

This theatre doesn’t have the Marr & Colton organ today nor does it have any organ after its renovation.

With a name like Fredonia, I hope the theater showed DUCK SOUP on a regular basis (ha, ha!).

The renovation began in ‘89, during the dark year for Dunkirk. The filming of “Gone in 60 seconds II”, and the sudden ending of that production; and the loss of 6 kids who lost a race with a train in the 4th ward. I remember that last night, as while the kids were meeting their end, there was a guy up on the scaffolds around the Opera House threatening to jump. The only “Jaws of Life” in the area was on a truck that was assisting the jumper situation. Not that it would have mattered anyway. The kids were beyond help, anyway. Too many big funerals that, it seemed half the town went to them.

The Hobby Shop closed in 1995. The owner was died in the early 1990’s, and his wife tired of the business. She was unable to find a buyer, and so she just closed the business.

Also, Bill managed the Hoby Shop, but it was his father that ran the theaters. Bill the elder was deceased by the time I met his wife in 1983.

What can I say, I loved movies, computers, and plastic models. :)

Don: I haven’t contacted Mr. Burgett or Mr. Tallman, but hope to this summer. Mr. Burgett is still an attorney in Jamestown, but not sure if Mr. Tallman manages The Hobby Shop in Fredonia or if that store still exists. With your memories of the Regent and other local theatres are you still in western NYS? If you want to contact me, my email is included on my profile page.

I believe his son Dalton, Jr. is the one that I would be contacting in the coming weeks to see if he has any theatre memorabilia and also anything on my former hometown theatre, the Grand Theatre in Westfield NY.

Don: I was given the name of Dalton Burgett, Jr. whose family owned the theatres in Dunkirk/Fredonia. Have you heard of this name? I also posted a Regent Theatre photo on the Regent Theatre link that shows a movie that came out much later so had wondered when the Regent officially closed. I will try to locate the Tallman name.

I was by the Fredonia Opera House this afternoon and looked close to see if any metal work was still on the building to show where the marquee once hung on the Temple St. side, but didn’t see any. I then went to the Regent Theatre site on E. Third St. in nearby Dunkirk and took a photo. I was told that it remained an operating theatre into the mid 60’s. The exterior is brick and looks to be in good sound shape though forlorn looking and delected.