The Golden Age of Indianapolis Theaters

Preface

Preface I’ve decided that the desire to write this book is connected with what was going on in the theater world at the time of my birth. Movies were beginning to talk, and theaters soon began booking swing music orchestras that were becoming headliners themselves. In our homes, quite often we were introduced to entertainers on radio, which fired us up to see them in a film or on the stage. As for the orchestras, we heard them on radio and on our 78 rpm record players before we saw them in person. Theaters were elegantly built and offered us entertainment in the daytime and in the evening. Prices were within our budgets if we managed to have a paper route or worked in a drugstore or helped a neighbor with yard work. Dating usually began at the neighborhood theaters (where some of us were hired as ushers). But for me it was the downtown first-run palaces that were awesome. Maturity begins to add obligations that may weaken our less significant pleasures , but for my generation World War II didn’t chase movies and onstage entertainers away. They continued to be a part of our lives on military bases and for me on a ship. They made an important contribution to morale. Back home again, my interest continued but in a different way as television moved in and the theaters we once knew faded away or were converted to other uses. x All the early days of theater entertainment became happy memories. Those memories were subjects that interested not only my generation but some of the others, too. I began delivering talks about it all. Audiences began sharing their memories and were asking about locations and names of various theaters. The city lost a theater specialist early in 2009. Fredrick Vollrath lived to be eighty-six after converting his home to a private museum, bursting with theater and movie memorabilia. When Loew’s closed in 1970, Vollrath acquired the box office along with light fixtures, an urn, lion heads, signs, and post displays. He had a theater downstairs with a projection booth allowing him to show features from his large collection (4,000 on discs), most of them classic novels, musicals, and comedies spanning fifty years. Vollrath was the ultimate example of a passion that triggered his decision to retire at the age of fifty-eight. He served Indiana Bell for over forty years. It was one of the many reasons I decided to bring back those memories for others who might find them as fascinating as they have been for me. While Vollrath collected memorabilia, his brain was filled with theater knowledge. Call out the name of a theater, and he would tell you where it was, when it opened, and its contribution to theater history. This book was written with personal references that I hoped would make it a little clearer to those out of my age bracket. I think it needs to be told. It starts with little support from the city’s population. Slowly it begins to be accepted and fans begin to appear. Movies won them over quickly, and sound sent them to higher levels. Gradually they lost their dominance but never disappeared. They survived in spite of heavy competition. ...