We had a Paramount Theater in Hot Springs, with a marquee identical to the one above. In fact we had a total of five, the Paramount, the Malco, the Strand, the Central and the Roxy. |
Monday, February 16, 2009
Hot Springs, Arkansas 1952
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7 comments:
Few of the motion picture palaces survive intact today, victims of changing culture and society [two income families, longer work hours, video and mail order movies, expense, suburbanization after WWII, and most of all, television, which also killed all forms of outdoor show business in the early 1950s]. Some have survived by morphing into "cultural" performance venues, with and without changes. Thankfully, a few survive intact with all features, testimony to an age of grandeur that shall not be witnessed again. If there's one near you, go and enjoy the experience before it's lost entirely. If you don't know what they were like, get a book like Ben Hall's "Best Remaining Seats" or David Naylor's "American Picture Palaces," or another relating to these "motion picture palaces."
So, maybe a series on great indoor circus venues of the past is warranted?
If ya had leather jackets on, it would look like a clip from West Side Story!:)
Malco was a chain out of Memphis owned for the most part by M A Lightman, whose initials were used to form the name.
Lightman built exactly one theater in Nashville: the Hillsboro, which still stands. Local movie king Tony Sudekum soon ran Lightman out of town by building a fantastic theater the Belmont right around the corner.
The old Hillsboro was for a brief time the home of the Grand Old Opry back in the thirties. It is now a double or two-screen affair and is called the Belcourt.
For years now the theater has opened on the side street (Belcourt) and the original entrance on Hillsboro or 21st is a tavern. Over the door in the stonework you can still read "Hillsboro" and if you walk inside and toward the back you can see an interesting little atrium from the old days.
The State Theater in downtown Sandusky, Ohio is still intact. Having grown up there, I can attest to the many stage performances by local and big name acts including David Copperfield, the Amazing Kreskin, Rock bands, theatrical touring groups and when nothing else was scheduled we enjoyed the movies there as well.
Bob
Sadly, Beloit, WI has no theaters left. At one time there were vaudville and movie theaters, but they are all now parking lots. How sad.
Bob Kitto
"So, maybe a series on great indoor circus venues of the past is warranted?"
The Chicago Amphetheater gets my vote. Do show... hit Stockyard Inn bar... stagger back to train!
You look like you are about to kill the photographer.
Did you know the Clinton family?
Hotsprings makes Beebe look like a 'one horse town!'
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