Bismarck Theatre
202 N. 3rd Street,
Bismarck,
ND
58501
202 N. 3rd Street,
Bismarck,
ND
58501
2 people
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I think I’ve just solved the mystery here. According to evidence (by newspapers and my head), it appears to be that the Bismarck Theatre may’ve replaced the Paramount Theatre a block away. The Paramount closed sometime in 1938 in connection to the opening to the Bismarck Theatre that year.
The Bismarck Theatre is the dominant first-run theater for the city of Bismarck throughout World War II and into the beginning of the Korean War era, but right when CinemaScopes came in the hard way, the Dakota Theatre (which opened its doors on October 12, 1951) was the first in Bismarck to install CinemaScope in the first week of January 1954 with “The Robe” leaving the poor normal-sized screen out of its misery at the Dakota after a bit more than two years.
Throughout most of 1954 leaving the Dakota only having CinemaScope, it wasn’t until 10 months later in October 1954 that the Bismarck Theatre finally had its chance to install CinemaScope. It did, after playing “On The Waterfront”, “The Black Shield” on October 16, 1954 was the Bismarck Theatre’s first CinemaScope film.
The Bismarck Theatre closed its doors for the final time on August 31, 1970 with the last film being the Peanuts gang in “A Boy Named Charlie Brown”. However, the theater was originally set to close for repairs inside the theater on September 2, 1970 but it didn’t unfortunately.
For the other Bismarck theatre:
Found on Newspapers.com
Another Bismarck theatre opened on February 21st, 1912 with ads stopping in 1921.
A remodeling of the Bismarck Theatre is listed as a 1929 project in the finding aid to the Liebenberg & Kaplan papers at the University of Minnesota. I’ve been unable to discover who designed the 1937 remodeling.
“H. O. Mugridge’s Bismarck, Bismarck, N. D.” was on a list of new theaters scheduled to open in the next thirty days, published in Boxoffice of December 11, 1937.
The 1937 project must have been a renovation or rebuild, as Boxoffice of September 28, 1970, ran an item saying that the Bismarck Theatre had recently closed after 52 years of operation, and that it had been built in 1918 for $50,000. The September 14 issue of Boxoffice had said that the theater was to be demolished.
The last operator of the Bismarck was the R&D Amusement Company. R&D was a partnership of Mid-Continent Theatres and the Dubinsky circuit. The partnership opened the new Plaza Twin, later to be the Plaza 3, in Bismarck’s Kirkwood Mall on October 30, 1970.