Rodeo Theatre
320 W. Jefferson Street,
Louisville,
KY
40202
320 W. Jefferson Street,
Louisville,
KY
40202
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This one opened in 1910 as the Orpheum Theatre. The building was demolished around 1974.
By early 1916, a movie house called the Orpheum was operating on Jefferson Street between 3rd and 4th Streets. It had cost only $30,000 to build, so it was probably not a very big theater.
A 1917 article about Orpheum said that the Princess Amusement Company operated it, and the two other theaters in the area around 4th and Jefferson as well. The other theaters were called the Casino and the Columbia. No theater of these names are currently listed at Cinema Treasures, but any of them might have been the house that became the Rodeo.
Here is the 1917 article, which has two photos. Perhaps someone will recognize the building, though it was probably remodeled in later years.
I started attending the Rodeo Theatre in Louisville in 1965. At that time it was a real ‘dive’. For extremely low admission (I remember it being a quarter, definitely it was less than a dollar), it offered a place for men (never saw a woman there) to sit, relax, smoke, drink (not concession drinks!), and, very often, sleep. Sometimes the snoring threatened to drown out the movie’s soundtrack. But I got to see lots of great stuff there, mostly from a few years previously, but occasionally something that had just finished its first run.
I last attended the theatre in January of 1967. Not sure how long it remained open after that.
As I recall, there was no ‘style’ to the place. The front was a plain, flat entrance on a downtown street. The auditorium itself was boxy and rectangular with no decoration I recall. The 400 seats claimed in your breakdown seems very high. I recall it being smaller than that.