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Ten years after Chicago saw its first full-time comedy club open, the landscape was decidedly different. "Stand-up comedy has exploded in the last couple of years, " a club owner told the Chicago Tribune in 1985, "that's the only way to describe it: exploded." It was truly a comedy boom, with as many as 16 clubs operating at once, and it lasted nearly a decade before fading, taking with it some of Chicago's oldest comedy stages, including the Comedy...
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Theaters have always been the places where memories are made. There, on Saturday afternoons, children could escape the pressures of growing up to live for two hours in a fantasy world of daring heroes, dastardly villains, and dazzling magic. They were the places where awkward teenage boys could nervously, and often clumsily, put their arms around equally nervous girls. In years past, every neighborhood had its own local theater. Downtown was home...
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The great American composer George Gershwin was a product of the energetic Jazz Age city of New York. Yet Pittsburgh may have been his adopted town, through road tours of his Broadway shows, his appearances as a concert pianist, and his myriad associates with ties to the Steel City. Meticulously researched, Gershwin in Pittsburgh chronicles these surprisingly consequential connections. Theatrical venues such as the Nixon and Alvin Theatres and colleagues...
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In 1957, WHO-TV asked staff performer Duane Ellett to come up with an idea to help teach children how to better care for their pets. Ellett created Floppy, a high-voiced beagle dog puppet that became his sidekick for the next 30 years. Together, the iconic duo made 200 personal appearances every year at community festivals and events. The Floppy Show aired weekday afternoons in part of four decades, featuring a live studio audience of children telling...
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The Delta Lowlands, a place of stunning innovation and creativity in music and film, has laid an incredible foundation for American entertainment. Talented singers, producers, and musicians from a narrow stretch of Arkansas Delta land-traversing U.S. Highway 65 south near England down to Pine Bluff and on through Lake Village/Eudora-have garnered every conceivable distinction, including Grammys as well as Country Music Association (CMA), Gospel Music...
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For over 100 years, Paramount Pictures has been captivating movie and television audiences worldwide with its alluring imagery and compelling stories. Arising from the collective genius of Adolph Zukor, Jesse L. Lasky, and Cecil B. DeMille during the 1910s, Paramount Pictures is home to such enduring classics as Wings, Sunset Boulevard, The Ten Commandments, Love Story, The Godfather, the Indiana Jones series, Chinatown, Forrest Gump, Braveheart,...
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For over 100 years, the Elks Opera House has been a landmark of the cultural scene in Prescott, Arizona, and the western United States. In 1904, the people of Prescott raised $15,000 toward a performance hall to be included in the Elks Building. The original structure featured opera boxes that were later removed to adapt to the demands of motion pictures, and the entire proscenium arch was covered with wood paneling. In 2010, the Elks Opera House...
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Memphis has always been a theatrical town-a crossroads in the center of America for entertainment as well as commerce. Movies are among the many things that travel through the city, both for distribution and exhibition. Thousands of people who have lived here or just passed through, especially during and after World War II, found their way to the movie theatres. From the vaudeville palaces on Main Street to the nickelodeons on Beale Street, these...
9) Thalian Hall
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Thalian Hall is one of the oldest and most beautiful theaters in America. Forming the east wing of Wilmington's iconic city hall, this dual-purpose building has been at the center of the community's cultural and political life since it first opened in 1858. Thalian Hall is the only surviving theater designed by John Montague Trimble, one of America's foremost 19th-century theater architects. It was built at a time when Wilmington was the largest city...
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As they watched construction of the block-long flatiron building brick by brick throughout 1927, African American residents of Indianapolis could scarcely contain their pride. This new headquarters of the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, with its terra-cotta trimmed facade, was to be more than corporate offices and a factory for what then was one of America's most successful black businesses. In fact, it was designed as "a city within a city,"...
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Few American phenomena are more evocative of time, place, and culture than the drive-in theater. From its origins in the Great Depression, through its peak in the 1950s and 1960s and ultimately its slow demise in the 1980s, the drive-in holds a unique place in the country's collective past. Michigan's drive-ins were a reflection of this time and place, ranging from tiny rural 200-car "ozoners" to sprawling 2,500-car behemoths that were masterpieces...
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Movie Theaters of Washington, DC charts the storied history of motion picture exhibition in the nation's capital. In 1894, entertainment venues were repurposed to show newfangled moving images and continued to do so through the downtown heyday of such 1920s baroque movie palaces as the 3,400-seat Fox. In the late 20th century, shoebox theaters dotted the nearby suburbs. In a landscape that has transformed over the decades, majestic landmarks, such...
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Motion pictures came to Austin on October 10, 1896, debuting at the Hancock Opera House. Since then, movies have continued to enchant, entertain, and inform the citizens of the capital of Texas. And, the places-the movie houses and theaters-where people saw motion pictures played just as important a role in the moviegoing experience as the movies themselves. As the city's population grew and motion picture technology changed, so too did Austin's movie...
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Dallas was the show business capital of Texas and much of the South throughout the 20th century. More than 100 theatres served the city's neighborhoods, and Elm Street once boasted more than 15 vaudeville and movie theatres-second in number to Broadway. The quality of the show houses in Dallas were surpassed by few cities and all major, and most minor, Hollywood studios maintained Dallas offices. Notable names figuring in this history include Margo...
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The history of Tacoma's Theater District is nearly as long as that of the city of Tacoma itself, spanning from the opening of the Tacoma Theater in 1890 to the present day, with restored historical facilities anchoring a renewed cultural district. This telling of the district's history reflects a range of engaging topics, including the boundless enthusiasm of the initial residents of Tacoma (the "City of Destiny"), the changing ways in which culture...
16) Ford's Theatre
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Ford's Theatre in downtown Washington, DC, is best known as the scene of Pres. Abraham Lincoln's assassination on April 14, 1865. It is among the oldest and most visited sites of national tragedy in the United States. First constructed in 1833 as a Baptist church, the property was acquired by John T. Ford and converted into a theater in 1861. Presenting almost 500 performances before the assassination, Ford afterward sold the building to the federal...
17) Lakewood Theatre
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Beginning as a humble vaudeville hall in the Skowhegan-Madison trolley park, Lakewood Theatre has graced the southwestern shore of Lake Wesserunsett in Madison, Maine, since the turn of the 20th century. Under the masterful guidance of Herbert L. Swett, a Bangor native and Bowdoin graduate, Lakewood eventually developed into a nationally renowned playhouse that was called the "Broadway in Maine" by the New York Times in its heyday, from 1925 until...
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For decades, Newark and its environs have been lit up by the bright neon lights of grand movie palaces and theaters. In the early 20th century, stages that were originally built for vaudeville acts were turned over to silver screens and the flickering images from motion-picture projectors. This new technology ushered Hollywood movies to the East Coast and made cinema accessible for locals to enjoy. Movie houses and palaces provided moviegoers a new...
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Many entertainers launched their careers at Ciro's Nightclub, often referred as 'The Nightclub of the Stars.' Ciro's was patronized by both famous and non-famous guests who enjoyed dancing, dining, and comedy routines featuring top-name entertainers such as Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Sophie Tucker, Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, Liberace, Nat King Cole, Joe E. Lewis, and Sammy Davis Jr., just to name a few. The nightclub's house band was led by Dick Stabile,...
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Indiana Avenue was traditionally the host to some of America's premier, world-renown entertainment icons in various genres. Along this winding, brightly lit thoroughfare were nightclubs, lounges, supper clubs, taverns, juke joints, and holes-in-the-wall that celebrated the best of the best in entertainment that America had to offer, from the 1920s on into the 1970s. On the bandstand at Denver Ferguson's Sunset Terrace Ballroom, the elegantly attired...
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