Dreamland Theatre
875 Broad Street,
Augusta,
GA
30901
875 Broad Street,
Augusta,
GA
30901
1 person
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Additional Info
Previously operated by: Paramount Pictures Inc.
Previous Names: Superba Theatre
Nearby Theaters
Augusta’s Dreamland Theatre was sorta like a step-child. Not as jazzy as the Imperial Theatre or Miller Theatre. In fact, to look at it with the Dreamland marquee…very plain. It could pass for a drug store or clothing store. Nonetheless it was one of Augusta’s first theatres showing one and two reelers.
The vertical lettering of Dreamland Theatre was above the marquee with one-sheet standees on the side walk showing folks who were walking Broad Street what was playing. Along with the Modjeska Theatre it lacked the big movie experience playing a lot of B-movies while the Imperial Theatre and Miller Theatre would show the bigger epics.
In the early-1940’s, the Dreamland Theatre theatre was operated by Paramount Pictures Inc., throught their subsidiary Lucas & Jenkins. The Dreamland Theatre held a lot of memories for many young boys. Projectionist Albert Peters remembered in a 1974 conversation with me, "like so many youngsters we enjoyed the Dreamland Theatre and Lakeview Theatre, and sadly both are long gone."
Yep, Mr. Pete, all my theatres in Augusta that I have great memories of are gone. Long gone!
Contributed by
Mike Rogers
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Recent comments (view all 52 comments)
That Sunday School must have been an “electrifying” experience! (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) Where was this church located? There were a couple of other retired trolley cars I remember, one used as a diner and the other at a private club outside of town. I think that the only car to survive today is in the Augusta Museum; it’s been heavily (and inauthentically) restored, of a type known to us trolley nuts as a single-truck Birney car.
The car was at the Crawford Ave. Baptist Church off of Broad St. in the Harrisburg mill section of town. If I remember correctly the Augusta transit system was run at that time by Georgia Power Co. with garages on 15th St. near the canal. At some point it was taken over by Augusta Coach Co. My grandfather told me that much of the streetcar tracks were taken up and scrapped for WW2 production.
Aha, yes, I know where that is. Harrisburg GA not PA! There were trolley tracks still in upper Broad St. in that section of town, and all the way almost to Milledge Rd. at Lake Olmstead Park, where they turned into the curbing and disappeared. And yes, Georgia Power did run the bus system after the streetcars went out, and the garage was located as you said, near the head of Greene St. and the Archibald Butt Memorial Bridge. When I got a little older, but still a young lad, I would ride those busses on the Walton Way route from the Hill to the Broad St. business district to go to the Miller on Saturdays. And I used to pass by the bus garage when I rode with my grandparents in their ‘41 Ford Super Deluxe V8 coupe to take my Grandpa to work on Reynolds St. He was the bookkeeper for a cotton factor. I remember the cotton bales lining the curb on Reynolds in those years (late '40s-early '50s). (My g-parents lived at 2504 Helen St., which was unpaved then; their house stood where the Methodist Church parking lot is today, across the street from St. Mary’s-on-the-Hill school.) BTW, I can’t believe how Greene St. is messed up today with that dumb expressway!
It was great growing up in Augusta during the forties and fifties and I can remember in extreme detail much of it, but can hardly remember now what I am going into the next room for!
thanks guys any more Theatre stories on the other screens in Downtown.
Cable TV channel Turner Classic Movies has been showing episodes of the classic movie serials on saturdays at noon. Currently, it’s the 1937 15 chapter “Dick Tracy” from Republic Pictures. As a child in the forties and fifties I saw a lot of the serials at saturday matinees downtown. The program consisted of a serial chapter, b-western and a two reel comedy. The Modjeska showed both Columbia and Republic releases while the Rialto showed mostly Columbia product. The Imperial showed the highly touted original “Superman” serial from Columbia Pictures in 1948. That was the only serial I ever remember being shown there and none ever at the Miller during my childhood. The Miller did have a saturday matinee called the Sancken’s Youth Revue which was a kid’s talent contest broadcast live over radio and followed by a kiddie feature.
I remember the Youth Revue (Review?), sponsored by Sancken’s Dairy. It was broadcast from the stage of the Miller Theater over radio station WRDW (I think; might have been WGAC), followed by a cartoon (Bugs Bunny, hopefully) and a feature film suitable for kids. Saturday mornings at the Miller was “prime time” growing up in Augusta in the 1940s!
thanks Henry,these old stories are great on here..
Hi Mike. Yeah, they’re old and getting older. But better. Merry Christmas!
dig up more,HENRY….lol.