Ritz Theatre

710 Hutchins Avenue,
Ballinger, TX 76821

Unfavorite 1 person favorited this theater

Showing 5 comments

dorstar
dorstar on October 7, 2022 at 7:32 pm
  1. Ford Taylor was the owner of the Ritz. He mentioned in the 9 January 1947 issue of the Ballinger Ledger that the Ritz Theatre was a total loss.
dorstar
dorstar on October 6, 2022 at 6:35 pm

The Princess Theatre was located at the corner of 8th Street and Railroad Avenue in Ballinger according to the 1913 phone book.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on July 25, 2022 at 1:58 am

A page citing a 1952 San Angelo Standard-Times article said that downtown Ballinger then had three theaters in operation, the Palace, the Texas, and the Ritz. The Ritz was rebuilt and reopened after the 1946 fire. A November 27, 1948 Boxoffice item mentioned H. Ford Taylor as “owner of the new Ritz” in Ballinger.

dorstar says the Ritz was on Hutchings (the correct spelling) Avenue. That opens the possibility that Ritz was an aka for the Princess/Maeroy Theatre, which we have listed on Eighth Street, but a 1936 edition of The Ballinger Ledger says was on Hutchings. I’m still trying to puzzle out the history of Ballinger’s theaters, much of which we have apparently gotten quite wrong so far. The pre-fire Ritz still might have been an entirely new house built in the 1930s, of course.

I haven’t been able to discover anything about the Rex/Ford Theatre, which I haven’t yet found mentioned by either name in any trade publications, but perhaps H. Ford Taylor had something to do with that house as well.

dorstar
dorstar on July 24, 2022 at 7:35 pm

The Ritz was located on Hutchins Avenue. The Rex Theatre name was lated changed to the Ford Theatre according to an article on the history of Ballinger Theaters printed in 1977.

Joe Vogel
Joe Vogel on February 9, 2018 at 6:04 pm

Though destroyed in 1946, the Ritz appears in the 1948 Film Daily Yearbook in the “Negro Theaters” listings. Most likely FDY simply hadn’t kept its records up-to-date, which was not unusual.