Noll Theatre
1513 Central Street,
Bethany,
MO
64424
1513 Central Street,
Bethany,
MO
64424
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Built on the site of the former Auditorium/Cozy Theatre which was destroyed by fire on February 2, 1934 (it has its own page on Cinema Treasures). The Noll Theatre was opened on October 17, 1934 with Aline MacMahon in “Big Hearted Herbert”. It was closed in December 1971 and has since been demolished.
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Lost Memory
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Recent comments (view all 10 comments)
I believe this one was later named the Royal, which burned in the 1970s. Last time I was in Bethany a Dollar General (or some such store) was on that site.
The address for the Noll Theatre was 1513 Central Street, Bethany, MO. 64424
Should be listed as demolished. The theater was a much larger building than the present store.
The theatre burned and was demolished and the Dollar General was built from the ground up.
Can you put a name to the theater that was on the SE corner of the square? The 1916 Sanborn map shows one in the left half (ground floor) of that big building which is still there (says Jesus is Lord or something up top).
I believe that was the Cozy Theatre.
Cozy is listed, but on Main. I moved the marker into downtown from where someone had dropped it about a mile west. If you could confirm, we could give that a quality listing.
This theater appears on the December 1892 Sanborn, where it is labeled ‘not finished’. The name on this and subsequent maps up to 1916 is ‘Auditorium’. The theater occupied the second and third stories of a large brick building which had an iron front and a large wooden porch covering the two storefronts as well as the neighboring buildings to the east. The stage was deep and bowed out in the center, and the large balcony was U-shaped. Capacity must have been above 550 at this point.
The small town of Bethany had a race to see which of its new streamline moderne theaters would open first. Lester Robinson and Joe Noll of the new Noll Theatre was technically crowned the winner by lunching with “Big Hearted Herbert” on October 17, 1934. I.W. Maple of the Castle Theatre was actually able to have his grand opening two weeks earlier with a political address. But Maple’s first showing at his new Roxy was nine days later on October 26, 1934.
The Auditorium Theatre took up about half of the footprint of the replacement Noll Theatre named after Jacob Noll. It was razed for the new venue. Operated by F.F. Chenoweth in the 1960s, the Noll operated seasonally with the Frontier Drive-In. The Noll closed part-year during the summer months. Subsequently, the Noll Theatre closed in the early 1970s and the building was razed.
The Noll closed in December, 1971.