81 Theatre
81 Decatur Street SE,
Atlanta,
GA
30303
81 Decatur Street SE,
Atlanta,
GA
30303
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This 1958 photo was replaced by a crisper version and should be removed.
http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/17658/photos/89594
Bessie Smith is one of the many blues legends to perform here regularly.
An exterior photo and a newspaper ad suggest that this should be listed as the 81 Theatre (instead of with the number written out).
Actually it was a 4 rank Kimball, The console and some of the pipework still exist from this organ. I have the string and vox. For a small two manual organ it had a complete toy counter and percussion department. Graham Jackson was the first organist as well as the music director for the 81. He was also organist at the Crystal theatre just up the street which also had a small Kimball organ and that opened a year or so before the 81 was remodeled.
Graham Jackson is best remembered for the photograph of him playing the accordian at the train depot in Warm Springs Georgia when Franklin Roosevelt’s funeral train left for Washington D.C.
Mr. Jackson is also the 1985 inductie in the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.
On June 15, 2007, the AJC had a nice picture of this theater in an article about former movie palaces in Atlanta. The article said the theater lasted until about 1965 when it demolished for the expansion of Georgia State.
During the 1970’s when I attended Georgia State, they had a series of movies that played almost everyday. Sometimes the movies were in the Student Center Auditiorum (Current Cinefest), The Urban Life Auditorium or worse 602 BA where you heard the projector in the background. This theater could have been used for that or since it was also a live theater, the GSU players could have performed there.
What is bad is thinking of what you could have done.
The Eighty-One Theatre first opened as a vaudeville theatre in around 1908. It was re-modelled in 1928 and was listed in Film Daily Yearbook’s from at least 1930 until at least 1955.