During Pine Bluff’s heyday, Second Avenue served as the local theater district, attracting hundreds of movie patrons and theater goers. Local residents and visitors alike could stroll down Second Avenue and visit one of the many outstanding theaters, including the Community Theatre, the Saenger Theatre, and the Vester Theatre.
Left to Right: the Theatorium (www.ragpiano.com), the Community Theatre, & the Saenger Theatre
During Pine Bluff’s heyday, Second Avenue served as the local theater district, attracting hundreds of movie patrons and theatergoers. Local Pine Bluff residents and visitors alike, could stroll down Second Avenue and visit one of the many outstanding theaters.
In February 1907, the Theatorium opened on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Main Street, on the top floor of the Central Pharmacy building. It later moved to Second Avenue. During its time, the Theatorium was the first movie theater in Pine Bluff and the Delta Lowlands. In 1909, ragtime piano composer Leon M. Block, best known for composing the Louisiana Rag, produced his first self-published composition, Theatorium Rag. The cover featured a photograph of the Theatorium in Pine Bluff. In February 1909, The Daily Graphic in Pine Bluff reported that Block provided music for the Grand Opera at the Theatorium.
In 1914, Otto C. Hauber opened The Gem Theater on Second Avenue in Pine Bluff. The Gem Theater had a seating capacity of 500, ensuring that both locals and visitors would be drawn to Second Avenue’s theater district. In 1917, it became the Miller Theater. Later it was renamed the Strand Theater. Haber also owned the A-Muse-U Theater at 208 West Second Avenue.
In 1912, Hauber sold his A-Muse-U Theater and leased a brick building from the Simmons estate. He later converted the building into the Hauber Theatre, building a stage with a frame designed for moving pictures. In addition to featuring moving pictures, the Hauber Theater was also a vaudeville show venue.
In 1917, the Arkansas Democratic Gazette reported that Hauber, expecting to be drafted as a soldier in the First World War, leased the Hauber Theatre to Rudolph Lewine for a price equal to receipts for the five years the theater was in business. Lewine employed numerous vaudeville acts until January 1918, when he surrendered his lease to Hauber, who owned theaters in Camden and other towns in Arkansas.
The Community Theatre, housed on 207 West Second Street, right next to the A-Muse-U Theater, was the oldest one-screen theater still operating in Arkansas in 2019 when it changed ownership. It is housed in a Pine Bluff building originally built in 1889 that served as the home of S.H. Kress's five-and-dime store until 1918. In 1922, the building was converted into a silent movie theater called The Berbig. Later that same year, the name changed to The Community Theatre. The theater is unique because the movie screen is at the back of the auditorium. It also had a soundproof room where mothers could take their crying children and continue to watch the movie. In 1963, the Community Theater closed, but a local nonprofit, Old Towne Theater Centre, led restoration efforts that brought it back into full operation in 2013. The Pine Bluff Film Festival, an annual silent movie festival, utilized both the Community and Saenger theaters from the fall of 1994 to 2008.
The Vester Theatre was located on the corner of East Second Avenue and Main Street. It opened in the late 1930s or early 1940s and operated until the 1950s. It was owned by P.K. Miller, the owner of the first and only casket factory owned by African Americans in Pine Bluff. Miller established the first cemetery, hotel, restaurant, and theater for African Americans in Pine Bluff. The Vester Theatre was named in honor of Miller’s wife, Vester. During its time, the theater provided movies and entertainment for African Americans during segregation and seated 380 people.
Lastly was the Saenger Theater, the most well-known of all Pine Bluff’s theaters. On November 17, 1924, the Saenger Theater called “The Showplace of the South'', opened in Pine Bluff. It drew patrons from towns across southeast Arkansas, making Pine Bluff an entertainment hub. It was a “motion picture palace” that cost almost $200,000 (almost $3.6 million in today’s market), seated over 1,500 patrons on its lower floor and segregated balcony (“crow’s nest”), and featured Italian marble floors, ornate plasterwork, and a crystal prism chandelier.
During its prime, the Saenger Theater’s full-sized Broadway stage featured famous acts like magician Harry Houdini, humorist Will Rogers, composer John Phillips Sousa, and Western star Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger. The Ziegfeld Follies musical revue, Al G. Fields Minstrels, and other traveling theatrical groups performed at the Saenger Theater. The Theater also catered to the Pine Bluff community children by hosting school plays, high school graduations, and dance recitals.
The Saenger Theater was especially memorable to Pine Bluff’s youth because of its Saturday “Coke Shows” where the price of entry was an empty Coke bottle. The theater doors would open to swarms of children holding Coke bottles and ready to watch their favorite show. Many still reminisce about the Saenger Theater’s “Coke Shows” even today.
Sources:
www.arkansasonline.com - Old News: Pine Bluff’s first Saenger Theater went up in flames 100 years ago
Cunningham Jr., J., Cunningham, D. (2015). Delta Music and Film: Jefferson County and the Lowlands. United States: Arcadia Publishing Incorporated.
Written by: Ninfa O. Barnard
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