Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 3, 1993 TAG: 9403090019
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MELANIE S. HATTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
\ IN the early 1900s, Roanoke was rich with stately theater buildings. Most of those graceful edifices are gone now, but they left behind plenty of memories in newspaper clippings, photographs and artifacts collected by theater lovers.
It's with fond recollections and the desire to preserve them that some Roanokers came together to form the Roanoke Valley Museum of Theatre History. It was artist John Will Creasy who raised the curtain on the idea.
"I was in Center in the Square one day and made some remarks" to friends, including Betty Dye, the current president of the group, he says. He'd had the idea for years. He already had a vast collection of photographs and theater memorabilia that he didn't know what to do with.
"When I pass on I'd like them preserved," he said. "It shouldn't be a family thing. It's for the public."
His home is filled with items he's saved over the years, including a ceiling light that once hung in the lavish American Theatre. Most of the artifacts are in Creasy's attic because the Museum of Theatre History doesn't have a home. Members are looking for a permanent place to exhibit their treasures.
The group was officially formed Nov. 12, 1990, with a reception at the Roanoke Valley History Museum, which displayed some items. It was thought, then, that the History Museum was to be the group's permanent home, but that didn't last. The History Museum has a full-time staff of only two, and it couldn't handle a museum within a museum, explained its director, Nancy Connelly.
"We celebrate theater history," Connelly said. But it's the museum's mission to present all of Roanoke's history. "While theater is a part of it, it's a small part of it," she said.
"That's been a tremendous disappointment to us," Creasy says. The logical place for MOTH, as the group calls itself, is Center in the Square, he says, but there's just no space.
While the group has memorabilia, much of Roanoke's theater history is missing because nearly all the buildings were torn down. When theaters such as the Roanoke (razed in 1961) and the Jefferson (leveled in 1978) were about to be knocked down, Creasy wasted little time trying to save some of their contents.
"I went down with a crowbar and got them before they tore it down," he said of the sculptured faces of women that now hang in the dining room of his Roanoke County home. "When I got them they were solid ugly green,'' he said. He painted them gray. When they adorned the walls of the old theaters they were colorful faces of gold, flesh tones and red lips.
Earlier this century, there were at least 21 theaters offering movies and live theater in and around downtown, with 11 once in operation at the same time.
Perhaps the most celebrated was the American Theatre, which opened on March 26, 1928, with much pomp. Creasy has a program from the opening, which in the back lists "patrons and patronesses" - all prominent Roanokers.
Creasy said his family couldn't have afforded to go. More than 1,000 people paid $10 for a seat, and the proceeds went to a hospital fund for crippled children.
The theater, which replaced the original American, converted from a YMCA building in 1913, was plush. It had miles of red velvet curtains, gilded statues, marble walls, a lobby fountain with goldfish and canaries in the ladies' powder room. The group is working on a coffee-table type book on the theater, written by retired Roanoke Times & World-News Commentary page editor Bob Fishburn.
The American Theatre was closed Sept. 30, 1971, and razed in 1973 to make way for the First National Exchange Bank building on Jefferson Street, which later became the Dominion Bank building. The old American Theatre stood in the spot from 1913 until 1927.
The large oval light fixture - which lies flat to the ceiling and is surrounded by ornate black metal - in Creasy's kitchen was one of many that hung beneath the balcony of the American Theatre. "There was a big scramble for lighting fixtures," he said. "I don't remember how I got this one." The marble that lined its hallways all disappeared just before the theater was demolished. The marble was never accounted for, Creasy said.
Among Creasy's collection of black-and-white photographs is an artist's rendition of a 15-story office building that was planned to replace the old American. The picture's caption says the building was to have three elevators, seating for 2,000, and a stage equipped for live performances, but, "motion pictures will be principal amusement offered." Creasy guesses lack of money stopped the project.
\ 1907 saw the opening of two theaters in Roanoke, each claiming to be the first movie house: the Pike at 104 W. Salem Ave. and the Star on Salem Avenue near the Market. Both featured vaudeville acts.
One of the earliest theaters was Rorer Hall, built in 1878. It was gutted by fire in January 1894, rebuilt and later destroyed. In it were traveling shows and local dramatic plays.
"Time has a habit of obscuring details, but it seems certain that either the Academy of Music (opened Oct. 7, 1892) or Mountain Park Casino (June 15, 1903) gave the first showings of the first crude pictures known as Vitagraph," wrote Roanoke Times editor and author M. Carl Andrews in 1973.
The Amuzu and Lyric movie houses opened in 1908. Admission was five cents.
The Jefferson Theatre opened on Easter Monday, 1910. A year later, D.W. Persinger, A.P. Staples Jr. and W.P. Henritze built the Roanoke Theatre for $75,000. News reports described it as "the city's first really elaborate theater, complete with balcony."
Blacks were relegated to the balcony of the Roanoke Theatre then, but around 1914 the Boston movie house was built on Loudon Avenue for blacks. It was succeeded by the Virginia, which folded when desegregation was introduced in 1954.
Other theaters in Roanoke included the Wonderland on Salem, the Electric Parlor on Campbell, the Grand near the corner of Jefferson and Campbell, the Bijou, the Iris, the Comet, the Rialto and the Park. Only the Grandin Theatre, which opened in 1932, offers present-day moviegoers a reminder of the era.
"One person can remember only a part of all this," Dye said, "but getting a group together, names appear as if by magic."
\ Creasy's involvement in theater started when he was a youngster. "I was sort of stage struck when I was a child," he says. "I took drama as an elective and worked behind the stage, and then I became an actor," he says with a grin. His first big role was Henry VIII. He was a gangly youth, so he had to be heavily padded for the character. "Here were these two toothpick legs with this enormous body."
His love continued and he joined the Patchwork Players around 1946, an acting company at Hollins College that performed in the city parks. Creasy, who then was dressing windows at Heironimus department store, designed sets and costumes for many of the plays.
Betty Dye mostly appreciated theater from the audience. "I have nothing but memories" to contribute, she says, so she asks almost everyone she meets if they have items for the museum. But she does have something she cherishes that's worth adding to the museum. It's a photograph of herself with John Payne - the local actor who made it big in Hollywood. Payne was visiting Roanoke for the world premiere of his movie "Captain China" at the American Theatre in 1950, and Dye, who was working at WSLS Radio, was assigned to show him around the city. The picture was taken in the theater by its manager, Billy Fox.
Fred Corstaphney, who formed an advertising business with Creasy that lasted for more than 25 years, was invited to join the theater group by Dye. His memories of the Roanoke theaters are scored by the music that filled them.
Corstaphney headed the Freddie Lee Orchestra from 1948 to 1983 and because it wasn't feasible for artists to take full orchestras on tour Corstaphney, sometimes with his band, would play backup for performers. He played trumpet and has performed with Victor Borge at the Academy of Music, and backed up entertainers like Bob Hope and Red Skelton. He fondly remembers when Jimmy Dorsey's band came to the area. Corstaphney was invited to play with the group and got the surprise of his life when he discovered his favorite singer, Helen O'Connell, was with them.
Corstaphney was music director for the Miss Virginia pageants when they were held in the American Theatre from 1967 to 1977. To fit his orchestra into the theater, the first three rows of seats had to be removed. Corstaphney conducted while facing the audience and with the sound man right next to him. It was quite cozy, he says.
Roanoke was a completely different world back then, he says. "There was prestige to it. People dressed" to go out on the town.
"If we could ever get a home for this ... stuff it would be unveiled" for all to see, he says. "You mention names, [and young] people don't know who you're talking about."
A lot happened in Roanoke in those old days that was important to many people. And some of it is fading away as the years go by.
"I feel like I was part of an era that is no longer and will never come back," Creasy said.
by CNB