Victory Theatre
164 Dewey Avenue,
Poteau,
OK
74953
164 Dewey Avenue,
Poteau,
OK
74953
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This was first opened as the Comet Theatre on October 2, 1909, although some papers like to call it the Comet Electric Theatre for pretty much a short period of time. It was originally scheduled to open on September 30 of that year but was postponed to two days later.
Exactly 10 years and two days later on October 4, 1919, the theater reopened as the Victory Theatre with a 6-reel presentation of “Beneath of the Fire Boys”. Tom Blair was the owner of the Victory. It was a silent movie theater until July 11, 1930 when sound was installed there. This is mostly a first-run theater, but sometimes films there arrive much later than usual in portions of the 1940s, and the nearby Kemp sometimes gets a twist.
The theater was later taken over by W.O. Kemp, and later by O.K. Kemp, who had attempted to install CinemaScope there, and it did. “The Robe” was the first CinemaScope film there on May 30, 1954.
Its closing date hasn’t been found yet but still in operation into the 1960s.
The Victory Theater and the Comet Theater are really one in the same.
The Comet theater eventually became the Victory Theater, but there’s a story there.
Originally, the Comet was a vaudeville theater, and was built as such. Shortly afterwards, moving pictures became more popular. Around WWI, the owners of the Comet purchased land to the right of the theater and built the first “Victory Theater”. In fact, it didn’t have a name, but for those couple of years it was considered part of the Comet Theater. This was a temporary measure though.. the owners then shut down the Victory Theater and converted it in to a “high class” moving picture theater. Once the work was done on the Victory, the Comet closed for good and that building was leased for a retail establishment.
The Victory Theater was renamed as such because of WWI.
Google Street View is from 2008. Link wouldn’t post here, without spoofing another theatre’s name in the link’s URL.
2nd to last paragraph mentions the Victory.
https://firsthumanwrites.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/have-you-ever-had-an-oklahoma-hello/
One redevelopment plan refers to it as the Victory Theater area. Copy & paste to view.
http://historicdowntownpoteau.com/?page_id=19
Poteau History confirms it stood where Dewey Plaza is today. But they have the block number wrong as 200. 164 is correct. Copy & paste to view.
http://www.poteauchamber.com/Community/History/tabid/87/Default.aspx
The March 29, 2014, issue of the Poteau Daily News said that the Victory Theatre was one of the buildings destroyed by a fire that swept much of the town’s business district in 1981.
This comment on a NitrateVille message board says that the Victory was the same house as the Comet Theatre, which I’ve found mentioned in the 1910s. The earliest mention of the Victory I’ve found so far is from 1924.
The name Comet Theatre dates back to 1911 or earlier in Poteau. That year the March 17 issue of the Mulhall Enterprise ran a brief item saying that a $15,000 theater was to be built in Poteau by Blair & Miller, operators of the Comet Theatre there. Either the old or the new building might have been the house that eventually became the Victory.
Scroll up on the NitrateVille page to see a ca.1916 photo of a theater that might have been the Comet/Victory.