Liberty Theatre

cinecityposters on April 19, 2020 at 11:45 pm

A long shot, but does anyone out there know when any of the Frankenstein films showed here or anywhere in Coalinga. Trying to identifying the year when my mother had to leave a Frankenstein film to take her frightened younger sister home.

Joe Vogel on December 31, 2013 at 1:25 pm

The Liberty Theatre is listed in the 1913-1914 Cahn guide as a ground floor house with 651 seats. The stage was only 25 from footlights to back wall, and 48 feet between side walls, and a proscenium 14x28 feet, which seems more suited to vaudeville than to traveling stage shows.

Nevertheless, an article called “Coalinga, a Workingman’s Paradise” in the June, 1912, issue of Western Engineering describes a single theater at Coalinga, though it doesn’t give the name:

“For amusements, the town has a theatre which is on the Cort theatre circuit of San Francisco. Such performances as ‘Polly of the Circus,’ ‘The Squaw Man,’ and ‘The Chocolate Soldier’ appear once or twice a week, while moving pictures and vaudeville run every night.”

The 1913 Cahn guide did say that John Cort was the New York representative of the Liberty Theatre. But prior to the opening of the Liberty, the 1909-1910 Cahn guide listed the Opera House in Coalinga, with 1,200 seats and a stage “ample for any productions,” but no other details. Perhaps the author of the article had been in Coalinga before the Liberty opened, and it was the Opera House he described.