Dillsburg Theatre

kencmcintyre on March 12, 2007 at 4:11 pm

According to the East Berlin News Comet, edition of 3/31/50, the following local businesses offered best wishes to Bill Snyder and the Dillsburg theater on its grand opening. It appears that the Dillsburg Meat Market opened on the same date as congrats were offered to both:

Dillsburg National Bank
Nesbitt’s Restaurant
Central Cut Rate
J.H. Rearick Building Materials
Fisher & Son Lumber
Castles Building Material

Silicon Sam on February 11, 2010 at 12:41 am

According to another site, the Dillsburg Theater was at 5 S. Baltimore, possibly Serradella’s Family Pizza which would be right across the street fro the Citizens Bank, which is at 4 S. Baltimore.

LorinWeigard on May 11, 2016 at 6:08 pm

Well this long since demolished movie house is hitting very close to home, as I lived in the town of Dillsburg, and this was very much a part of movie going as Haars Drive-In was in the summer months.

The entrance would have been where the Citizens Bank Auto-Banking lanes emerge onto Baltimore Street. As I recall, it had a very simple V-shaped marquee—no changing letters, but a yellow neon “D” facing the street.

I don’t remember anything about the interior, except that the projection room was just off the walkway to the seating with the door usually open, and I was completely overtaken with the machinery and this bright bluish light coming from these machines—which may explain my fascination with movie projection and why I wound up as a projectionist many years later.

My mother told me I was given to running down the aisles to the screen and checking everything out closeup, before running back to my seat— which probably ticked a lot of people off, but this was as close I could get to showbiz at that age!

I was very young and don’t remember much of what I saw there, except for the Ma and Pa Kettle features, and a whole myriad of B&W detective mysteries that probably would be considered “film noir”; I think I fell asleep on most of these.

The Dillsburg Theatre shuttered very early, and stood like a lonely dinosaur which I passed every day on my way home from school until it was finally demolished. Very sad, but was the precursor of all the demolition of neighborhood theatres that would come.