History Trai • of Baltimore County •
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HISTORICAL SOCIETY HISTORY TRAI • OF BALTIMORE COUNTY • • 9811 Van Buren Lane • Cockeysville, MD 21030 ISSN 0889-6186 Editors: JOHN W. McGRAIN and WILLIAM HOLLIFIELD VOL. 36 FALL 2003 Numbers 1-2 Motion Picture Exhibition in Baltimore County By Robert K. Headley parks, and movies were a staple entertainment in many of these. Early movie venues in the county were the theaters at Bay Shore Park (c. 1907) and Hollywood Park (c. 1907) in Essex, the Casino (c. 1909) in Sparrows Point, the Recreation Theatre (1916) in Towson, the Odd Fellows Hall (c. 1917) in Catonsville, and Chesapeake Hall (c. 1920) in Towson. Movie exhibitions must have become common enough by 1914 that the county government felt the need to pass a law to regulate them. Title 44 of the Baltimore County Code stipulated, among other things, that no one could operate any moving picture exhibition in the county without first obtaining a license from the clerk of the Circuit Court. The cost of the licenses was graded — Collection of William Hollifield according to the seating capacity of the hall or theater. Moving Picture Pavilion, Bay Shore Park, about 1908. For buildings seating under 100 persons, the cost was $25 a year, and for those seating between 100 and 500, the This article will discuss the history of motion picture cost was $50 a year. Buildings seating over 800 would exhibition in Baltimore County within the context of have to pay $100 a year. The yearly licenses expired on movie exhibition in the Greater Baltimore area and the the first day of May. The applicant for a license also had state of Maryland. For purposes of this article, the theaters and motion picture venues considered must fall within the present-day boundaries of the county. Thus the early theaters of Highlandtown, Canton, Pimlico, Arlington, and other communities that were included in the county before the annexation of 1918 will be A 2003 view of the considered only peripherally. former Eagle Theater, 3610 Eastern Avenue, in The earliest exhibitions of projected motion pictures Baltimore County when in the Baltimore metropolitan area were not in theaters opened in 1908; now but rather in halls and amusement parks. The first docu- within the city. mented showing of movies was at Electric Park on Belvedere Avenue in Arlington in June 1896.1 These films proved very popular and continued intermittently during the next several summers. During the indoor theater season, which ran from September or late August until May, early movies were shown at many of the large legit- ;mate, vaudeville, and burlesque theaters in downtown 3altimore. The cooler summer climate of the county encouraged the construction of summer amusement — William Hollifield PAGE 2 HISTORY TRAILS OF BALTIMORE COUNTY FALL 2003 to file a detailed written application and provide a certifi- weather was too much for the theater's original heating cate signed by at least ten "reputable taxpayers, bona fide system, and an additional stove had to be installed less residents of the neighborhood in which the applicant than a week after it opened. All went well until mid- proposes to conduct the business, . certifying that the August 1916 when a fire forced the theater to close for location of the proposed moving-picture exhibition will two weeks. not be detrimental to the interests of the taxpayers in the In October 1916, the theater was acquired by new vicinity." management who changed the name to the Le-Roi. In As might be expected, the first movie theaters in the early 1917, after several months of "good-attendance," county were built in commercial centers like Catonsville, the Le-Roi closed. According to the Union News of Towson, and Dundalk. Credit for the first movie theater February 24, 1917, "The management of Le Roi in the county is difficult to establish. Since Highlandtown Theatre . found the moving picture business 'not all it was part of the county for the first 22 years of motion was cracked up to be,' and forsook the town last week, picture history, the early movie theaters in that area can much to the regret of many persons who had found make a legitimate claim for primogeniture. The Comic pleasure there." (Eastern Avenue, 1909), Eagle (Eastern Avenue, 1908), The next information on this theater was that it had Highland Academy (Eastern Avenue, 1909), Eastern been purchased by Father Philip H. Sheridan of the (Eastern Avenue, 1910), Monarch (Eaton Street, 1909), Church of the Immaculate Conception in October 1919.6 and Lombard (Lombard Street, 1909) were among the At that time it was described as a "building formerly used earliest theaters in Highlandtown. as a moving picture parlor." The name was changed to Columbia. The Columbia lasted until at least June 1920 when the management engaged a professional pianist to play for the silent films. We have no first-hand descriptions of this theater and only a single photograph of the exterior. We can only guess what it was like inside. There was probably a single aisle with narrow rows of seats on either side. The seats were probably not upholstered. At one end of the long auditorium there would be a screen high on the wall. It would have been made of a piece of tightly stretched muslin or painted with flat white paint on the wall. There would be a projection booth at the other end of the auditorium; it might have been a fireproof box set up on the main floor, or it might have been "hung" from the ceiling. A piano set up near the base of the screen would have provided the music. There were no candy machines. — Collection of William Hollifield It was up to the patron to stop by a local confectionary Lyceum Theatre, Sparrows Point, in the 1920s. store and pick up some candy, peanuts, fruit, or perhaps a If we consider only the post-1918 boundaries of the big dill pickle to eat during the show. In addition to the county, then the open air theater on York Road, just south of Pennsylvania Avenue was probably the first movie theater in Baltimore County. The "airdrome" was short- lived; it opened on July 3, 1915, and closed about August 19, 1915, when the owner fled leaving behind a number of unpaid debts.' The Recreation Theatre, which opened in 1916 at 506 York Road in Towson, was the first perma- nent hard-top movie theater in the county. The history of the Recreation Theatre is remarkably well documented for an early movie theater.' It opened on Tuesday, January 11, 1916.4 The opening was announced by a band which was driven around town in an auto- mobile. Admission was 10 cents on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. At Saturday matinees and on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday it was reduced to five cents.' Children paid five cents at all times. Opening time was 6:30 every night, and there were matinees at 2 on — Dundalk-Patapsco Neck Historical Society Wednesdays and Saturdays. Apparently the cold January Interior; Lyceum Theatre, Sparrows Point, 1930s. PAGE 3 HISTORY TRAILS OF BALTIMORE COUNTY FALL 2003 constant tinkle of the piano, there would have been the May 15. Rather than risk arrest, the exhibitors decided to sound of many voices including those of children reading seek legislation at the next General Assembly to allow the subtitles for illiterate relatives. The silent show would Sunday movies. In the 1933 session of the legislature, have consisted of several short films and possibly one three counties—Baltimore Prince Georges, and longer one, lasting, perhaps, a total of 60 minutes. There Allegany—were working to get rid of their blue laws.' would be no movies on Sundays until 1933. The legislature passed a law legalizing Sunday movies in Baltimore County which went into effect on the first Sunday in June 1933.10 The first wave of theaters built just for motion pictures did not come to Baltimore County until the late 1920s. Riding the crest of the tremendous popularity of movies at that time came the Strand in Dundalk (1927), the Overlea (1927), the Alpha in Catonsville (1928), and the Towson (1928). In the next decade, theaters were built in Essex (Elektra, 1930, and New Essex, 1934), Reisterstown (New, 1934), Arbutus (Hollywood, 1936), and Pikesville (Pikes, 1938). These theaters were built in older commercial centers that had grown up on the major routes out of the city. The movie theaters of the twenties and thirties differed markedly from the earlier nick- elodeons. The new theaters were much larger. Even the — Collection of William lloWield smallest, the Elektra, seated about 300 and the largest, the Pikes Theatre in 1938 when Martha Raye was a familiar star, Strand, seated 900. The others seated between 450 and appearing in "Give Me a Sailor" 650. A few, like the Strand, had balconies, but balconies were on their way out. Virtually none of the movie Baltimore City got Sunday movies in May 1932 after theaters built after 1930 had a balcony. The facades of a long, long fight. The Sunday closing laws had been these theaters were often done in beige face brick. Neon vigorously enforced there with the churches acting as the became a popular way to illuminate the fronts of theaters Guardians of the blue laws. These laws were more lax in Baltimore County, but in December 1911 when Marshal Gorsuch found that moving picture theaters in Arlington had been open on Sundays, he ordered them closed.' Marshal Mahle of the county police force made a personal observation of methods of Sunday observance in Highlandtown and Canton in early 1912 and again ordered the movie theaters to close on Sundays.