Liberty Theatre

E.H. Collins launched the Liberty Theatre during World War I in a building built by the Sheldon family. The building was part of the community’s oil boom which saw the population jump almost 650% between 1910 and 1920 census from nearly 640 residents to nearly 5,000. Equipped with two Motiograph projectors and a $4,000 Wurlitzer pipe organ, the Liberty Theatre challenged the competing Crown Theatre. The theatre opened in January of 1918. It was recognisable with its arched front and likeness of the Statue of Liberty on its facade trimmed in patriotic red & blue.

The operators of the Crown Theatre one-upped the Liberty Theatre a year later by creating the Grand Theatre as Electra’s population continued to grow. After a ten-year lease, R.H. Sheldon took on the theatre and in August 1930, the theatre was converted to sound. Marthe McSpadden of the Roxy Theatre & Grand Theatre next took on the theatre. She appears to have closed it in April of 1954 after a showing of Bill Elliott in “Bitter Creek”, Bud Abbott & Lou Costello in “The Nifty Nineties” (aka “The Naughty Nineties”), Chapter 15 of the serial “Black Hawk” and a Walt Disney cartoon. The theatre sat vacant until the Sheldon family donated the venue to the Electra Chamber of Commerce in January 1962. After concluding the the building’s condition was worse than anticipated, the city razed the building in 1962.

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