Granada Theatre’s history featured at museum event
By Bobbi Mlynar (Contact)
Originally published 01:56 p.m., May 12, 2008
Updated 01:56 p.m., May 12, 2008
The museum exhibit is named “On with the Show” in honor of the first movie shown when the Granada Theater opened in 1929, but the display includes far more than Granada memorabilia. The history of theaters in Emporia is wrapped up in a neat exhibit under painstaking construction by Rita Scribner and staff.
Scribner is curator and exhibit manager at the Lyon County Historical Museum.
The theater theme will be expanded into this month’s “Night at the Museum,” which will focus on the Granada and will be presented by the Granada Theatre Alliance. The event will begin at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at the museum, 118 E. Sixth Ave.
Duane Henrikson will talk about the history of the Granada, Bones Ownbey will talk about its restoration; Beth Thomas will talk about the molds she made to restore the theater, and Kim McDermott will discuss the stenciling she did, as well as give those who attend an opportunity to make their own stencils.
The Alliance and John Mallon lent the museum many of the items in the display, including original posters from “The Philadelphia Story,” and other popular movies, Scribner said.
The memorabilia ranges from intricate costumes lent by Community Theatre of Emporia, the Emporia State University Theatre Department, and the Young Thespian Players to popcorn boxes and hot dog wrappers from the Flinthills 8 Theatres. Commonwealth Theatre contributed a gaudy orange and gold double-knit outfit worn by concessions employees, and spotlights, projectors, and other essentials also are on display.
Much attention is focused on the original theaters that abounded in Emporia soon after it was built.
The Whitley Opera House was acknowledged as the most elegant of the many venues that Emporia and the surrounding area supported from the late 1800s through the 1950’s or so.
Scribner ticked off a list of some of them — the Bancroft, also known as Jay’s, at the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue and Commercial Street; the Aerdome, an open-air theater located across the street from The Gazette; the Eskridge, believed to have been at the current TFI Family Services location at Sixth Avenue and Commercial Street; the Star, the Electric, the Elite and more.
Plays, vaudeville skits, talent shows, dances and other events were held in them and, as technology progressed, silent movies were shown. Emporia was a major railroad stop and, since that was the fastest form of travel, everyone from politicians to performers took the trains and often stopped in Emporia.
“Back when we still had the railroad, Emporia was still a place to be,” she said.
An Emporia State University student tracked the celebrities who had made stops in Emporia, from Bette Davis to Boris Karloff, and came up with an extensive list of who they were and where they had performed.
“How much that meant to the town!” Scribner said. “There was something going on every night. The Whitley wasn’t the only performance place, it was the best.”
The Whitley had a balcony and ornate boxes tucked into the sidewalls of the theater.
A photograph hanging in the exhibit shows the stately opera house in its prime. Next to that photograph is a photo of the Whitley, with smoke still billowing up from the destruction and a cascade of bricks falling into the shell of the building.
The play that had performed the night of the fire was “The Kindling,” Scribner said. Though it presaged what was to come only hours later, she said arson was not suspected.
“Legend has it that it still had gas lights in the dressing rooms, and that one of them blew out and the gas built up,” Scribner said.
William Allen White asked Brock Pemberton to write a story about the blaze, she said, but the news story turned into a human-interest piece as Emporians flocked to the scene to watch.
“They were in pajamas, hair in curlers and cold cream,” she said. “Several rows deep, just watching in horror.”
Just left of the photographs hangs a stage-sized canvas colorfully painted with advertisements from businesses of the era. Some of them, though reconfigured like Roberts Blue funeral home and Hatcher’s Emporia Livestock Sale Barn, remain in business today.
“This, we do not know where it came from,” she said of the curtain. “It’s been down in the textile room, rolled up for the last 30 years. Someone told me that most area rural schools sold these as a fundraiser to get a curtain.”
The backdrop, with a landscape painting in the middle, was signed by H.J. Willis, 837 R.I. St., Lawrence. Scribner thought perhaps local historians could trace Willis and learn more about him; they tried to find the answers in Lawrence.
“Nobody at the Douglas County Historical Museum knew anything about it, or else they didn’t answer,” Scribner said.
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