Empress Theatre

Joe Vogel on March 26, 2024 at 1:57 am

This item, from the July 22, 1916 issue of Moving Picture World mentions both the Empress and the Happy Hour/American Theatre:

“Exhibitor Ferris Prospers

“Cherokee, Ia.-A. G. Ferris of Cherokee, Iowa, recently bought the Empress theater, which was three doors from his former house, the Happy Hour. He sold the Happy Hour to Sisk & James, with the understanding that the name was to be changed; that theater is now the American. Mr. Ferris took the name Happy Hour with him to his new theater, where he is continuing his former policy as to pictures. He is refurnishing the Grand, and will open it in the fall with spoken drama and feature pictures. Another instance of Mr. Ferris’s enterprise is the fact that he will present the ‘Birth of a Nation’ during July at the Grand for four days-as long a run as the picture had in the largest cities of the immediate territory.”

A 1920 court case involving Mr. Ferris and the Happy Hour and Grand gives the address of the Happy Hour as 222 Main Street, so it seems he did take the name with him, but as the only theaters listed at Cherokee in the 1926 FDY are the American, the Rialto and the Empress, this house must have gotten its earlier name back.

Joe Vogel on March 26, 2024 at 10:27 pm

The statewide “Moving Picture Theatres” section of Polk’s 1918 Iowa directory list the American, Empress and Happy Hour theaters at Cherokee, though the local listings for Cherokee itself don’t include the American but do include the Grand Opera House. In the Cherokee listings, a J. T. Cummings is listed as proprietor of the Empress, and an M. G. Grone (probably a misspelling of Groen) as manager of the Happy Hour. Mr. Ferris was listed as proprietor of the Grand Opera House. Unfortunately no addresses were provided for any of the theaters. A Mrs. Allie Groen was the other party in the 1920 court case involving Mr. Ferris which I noted in my earlier comment. A March 24, 1917 Moving Picture World item said that an F. W. Groen had bought the Happy Hour Theatre from A. G. Ferris.

A ca. 1930 photo of the Empress is found on this page at Flickr, posted by user Historic Cherokee, Iowa. The caption says that the Empress closed on June 1, 1916 and reopened two weeks later as the Happy Hour. I haven’t been able to discover when the name Empress was restored to the house, but it was certainly by 1926, as the Empress is one of three houses listed at Cherokee in the FDY that year, along with the American and the Rialto (aka Grand Theatre/Grand Opera House.)