Pix Theater

The major silent film house in town was the Warfield Theater from 1911 to June 20, 1921. On that date, a major fire started at a bakery wiping away 50 businesses and a number of houses in a matter of hours. That included the Warfield Theatre which had provided vaudeville and motion pictures over its ten years of operation. Charles E. Frederic decided to replace the Warfield with the new-build Nelson Theatre.

On the books, the Nelson was going to be a 1,000-seat theatre. But with a population of just 6,000 people, the Nelson was a more reasonable 600-seat venue. The Nelson Theatre launched on March 24, 1922. In September of 1929, operators Charles B. Crawford and a Mr. Richard made the expensive transition to talkies with the Vitaphone system. Likely overtaxed by the transition to sound’s cost coupled with the onset of the Depression, the pair sold out to J. Oliver Cole and E. Forest Grant. The pair would go on to open the Ritz Theatre in January of 1938.

Following the Ritz’s launch, the Nelson Theatre received a streamline moderne makeover that started in 1938 and finally was completed in 1939 reducing seat count to 450. That venue lasted until June 6, 1942 when it became the Pix Theatre with Johnny Mack Brown in “Undercover Man.” The Pix appears to have ceased operations on January 27, 1963 with a double feature of “Black Dragons” and “Belle Starr.”