Elbs Theatre

Joe Vogel on October 30, 2018 at 1:14 am

A clip from his 1947 obituary in the entry for Lloyd Elgin Scobell at Ancient Faces says that he was the “[o]wner operator Cozy Theater/aka ELBS Theater in Wagner.” There was a Cozy Theatre listed at Wagner in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory, but it was not the same house as the later Elbs. Mr. Scobell’s widow sold the Elbs Theatre in 1959, as noted in this item from the June 3 issue of The Daily Republic from Mitchell, South Dakota, which provides another fragment of the theater’s history:

“Mrs. Scobell was in the theater business here for 30 years, associated with her late husband, Lloyd, and after his death with his brother, Mark. Their first place of business was the Cozy, and later they purchased a brick building on Main St., and made a completely modern building, which they called The Elbs.”

The purchaser of the Elbs in 1959 was likely O. R. Eleeson, who had been running the house at the time of his death, which was noted in the April 10, 1961 issue of Boxoffice. His widow inherited the house, but I haven’t been able to discover if she kept it open, or for how long it continued in operation after that.