Lyric Theatre

2707 Lee Street,
Greenville, TX 75401

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Joe Vogel on April 5, 2014 at 3:49 pm

The Facebook account “Greenville Texas Revisited” has an album of theater and theater-related images here (if the link works, Facebook being Facebook.) There are photos of the Texan, the Crystal, the Opera House, the Rialto, and the Lyric.

The caption to the Lyric photo says that it had two locations. The one in the photo was on Stonewall Street, just south of Washington. It doesn’t say which of the two theaters was earlier, but the hats and dresses on the women in the photo look to be from the 1910s, so the Lee Street location, having been called the Savoy in the 1910s, must have been the second Lyric.

Joe Vogel on April 4, 2014 at 2:36 pm

An article titled “Touring Texas Small Towns” in the September 30, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World has a paragraph about E.J. Lamkin, operator of the Savoy:

“At Greenville I found to my surprise that the city had turned around since my last visit there five years ago. E. J. Lamkin, who is perhaps the oldest exhibitor in Texas, has for numerous years back been the leading amusement man in this city. I do not recall any man in the business who has been at it longer than Lamkin. He opened the first show in Greenville about fifteen years ago, and has had first one and then sometimes two and sometimes three shows at one time there. Since five years ago the business part of town has shifted several blocks leaving what was once the old Savoy Theatre now away off on a side street. Needless to say it is not there now. Mr. Lamkin has built one of the most magnificent little theatres in Texas in the heart of the city. It is the most perfectly ventilated place I was ever in and he has two expert musicians with some kind of musical contrivance that furnishes the best music I have ever listened to. It sounds really like an orchestra and yet there are but two musicians, but they are certainly artists. I understand that these are not bought contrivances but were invented by the&e two geniuses. Mr. Lamkin also has another theatre across the street and his competition houses are run by a local corporation. These houses were formerly managed by Johnny Jones, now of Amarillo, but I was unable to find the present manager while in Greenville, as it was very late at night. All the theatres in Greenville are up-to-date as befits one of the most up-to-date little cities in Texas. Cement roads extend for ten miles in every direction and I could still see the bright glow of Greenville even when I was forty miles away.”

The March 18 issue of MPW had mentioned an E. J. Lumpkin, operating the Colonial Theatre in Greenville. An item in the local newspaper in 1921 refers to a Mrs. E. J. Lamkin, so I would imagine that is the correct spelling. The Colonial Theatre was at 2608 Lee, so it was probably the house “across the street” from the Savoy.

Joe Vogel on April 4, 2014 at 2:20 pm

The Savoy Theatre in Greenville, Texas, was playing vaudeville in early 1920, as noted in the January 31 issue of The Billboard.