Rogers60

Five Spokane Theaters in 40's and 50's
(Click a picture to enlarge it)
Fox	Bandbox	Liberty	Orpheum	Grenada

Wyatt, since we touched on the subject of Spokane’s movie theaters, and the ball is in my court, let’s discuss theaters some more.

 

I have a nagging feeling that I’m missing one, but I told my wife that we had 11 theaters in Spokane. She was aghast because her little town had just one. She was a PK who wasn’t allowed to attend movies … or play cards ... or dance, but that’s another story. We met in East Lansing, Michigan, a town of 35,000 that doubled to 70,000 when collage was in session. It had only two theaters. They wanted 90 cents admission. Highway robbers! I was accustomed to something closer to 65 cents in Spokane. Maybe it was due to more competition. East Lansing bumps into Lansing, which added two theaters to make a total of four to serve over 200,000 people. Maybe the eastern low theater count was because some nearby little towns had a theater also. Compare this to Spokane, the only sizeable metropolis between Seattle and Minneapolis. Maybe Spokane’s 11 theaters had to serve more people than I think. Lansing did score one on Spokane. One of its two theaters had an orchestra pit and an organ that rose out of the floor. A guy would play it during intermission (remember intermission?). My wife still thinks that was the coolest.