Gallatin Theatre League

A house called the Courter Theatre was in operation in 1966, when the September 29 issue of the Albany Ledger from Albany, Missouri, mentioned the Courter Theatre at Gallatin as one of four movie houses operated by a Mr. and Mrs. Fred Wilcox, who had just bought the closed Rigney Theatre in Albany and planned to reopen it as the Wilcox Theatre.

The problem is that I don’t know if this article concerned the original Courter Theatre, or the current Courter Theatre, which has existed since 1965 according to this article from the Davies County Historical Society. The Society’s article notes that the theater had both a movie screen and a concession stand, and had been owned by a non-profit group since 1965 and was showing movies as late as 1983.

Indeed, the reopening of the Courter Theatre following a refurbishment that took about four weeks was mentioned in Boxoffice of August 12, 1974. Then-manager John Schwieger was the manager of the house until resigning in 1983, according to the Historical Society article.

I have been assuming that the address 211 N. Main was indeed the location of the original Courter Theatre, but I have not found any source saying that the current Courter Theatre either was or was not the original, nor any source other than Cinema Treasures saying that the building at 211 N. Main ever housed a theater (though it certainly does look like it could have.) Either way, the current Courter Theatre at 105 S. Main Street (east side of Main just south of the square) and now the home of the Gallatin Theatre League, was operated as a movie house as late as 1983.

There is a potential ID issue here. The 1921 Sanborn map identifies the current home of the Gallatin Theater League as ‘moving pictures’. It’s quite obvious that this building was purpose built as a theater. I can’t find a street address, but it’s likely either 103 or 105 S Main. It’s the second building from the corner. Chuck often has errors in his listings, and it’s entirely possible that 211 N Main was never a theater. It seems at least likely that by the ‘60s, the purpose-built theater was the Courter. I have pictures of both buildings, and am happy to add them, but only if we’re sure both were theaters.

It seems that the 211 N Main is an error, and that the Courter was the S Main structure. That corner was home to the Arbelia Opera House, which burned around 1910, and was then replaced by the bank and theater. That theater would have been in operation for at least 10 years before the supposed conversion of the old bus barn.

The Townsend Block and Arbelia Opera House burned in November, 1914, according to this web page. The fire was also noted in the December 9 issue of Fire and Water Engineering. The timing of the event late in the year would account for the Arbelia having been listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, which would have been published before the fire. It seems quite likely that the replacement theater was the house that later became the Courter. It also seems likely that the same house was the Star Theatre that John Courter took over in 1918.