Pacific’s Royal Theater got its start in the infancy of the moving picture industry.
In 1913 St. Louis Street was a din of activity. Shoppers visiting 50 or more stores, where they could find every daily need, were treated to a cacophony of train whistles and the horns of automobiles that more and more residents were buying.
Adding to the hubbub Lorenz Leber and Henry Hirth bought a hand-cranked movie projector and a few dozen folding chairs and began showing movies in the ground floor of the Knobel building at St. Louis and Second street. This was the newest of new fangled ideas.
Silent movies, mostly short little flickers of shootem up western scenes and damsels in distress, were being shown in makeshift theaters in every town in America.
The industry took a giant step forward the year Leber and Hirth entered the field. D. W. Griffith was busy creating the first full length feature film Birth of a Nation and everybody with a movie camera copied.
Some 52 feature length silent movies were released in 1913 so the partners could show a different movie every week. The Pacific newspaper listed on its front page the movies that were showing at the Royal that week.
Pacific movie goers saw Barney Oldfield’s Race for Life; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; The Hurricane in Galveston and six movies featuring Louise Lester in her Calamity Anne series.
Movie historians say that most every American went to the movies once a week in those early years. Pacific was no different.
Business was so brisk that within two years Leber and Hirth built a frame theater with 250 theater seats at 301 West St. Louis Street.
Eleven years after that the movie industry and the entire country were tilted on their ear. Sound brought new life to movies. Movie goers could see Al Jolson move his lips as he belted out the words to his familiar tune, Mammy. To keep up with the industry Leber and Hirth needed new equipment. They moved their frame building to the west side of St. Louis Street so they could continue to show movies while they constructed a brick theater that could seat 500.
Leber and Hirth turned to the St. Louis architect team of Gill and Jackson to design their building. The architects had built a slew of stately buildings in St. Louis. For the Pacific theater, they decided to mimic the big art deco movie palaces that were being built in New York, Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles.
The Pacific movie men named their theater, the Royal. Inside was wonder. A second floor projection room placed the projector out of sight of the audience. A concession stand in the front foyer offered the ubiquitous theater popcorn. Playbills depicting the movies and actors lined the wall.
By the time the new Royal opened 1929, moving picture studios were cranking out more movies in a week than they had in all of 1913. So many movies were made that by the 1930s the Royal showed new movies three times a week.
By 1936 the number of new movies playing at the Royal changed every day. In July of that year a large banner headline in the newspaper reminded audiences that the week’s movies were the place to keep cool. From 7:00 p.m. to 10:30 there were two shows a night, plus news reels (another newfangled idea), short serial adventures, cartoons, and sports snippets. The titles of the full bill were published on the front page of the Transcript along with the names of the movie stars.
Like the rest of the country, Pacific movie goers were treated to all the greats; Joe E. Brown, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Buster Keaton, Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O’ Sullivan, Bing Crosby, Fredrick Marsh, Mickey Rooney, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Olivia de Havilland, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Cost to see the show was originally ten cents for adults and a nickel for kids. By the early 1930s admission was increased to adults 15 cents, children ten cents.
In the daytime when movies weren’t showing, Leber and Hirth also offered the Royal for every conceivable public gathering. High school and junior high graduation ceremonies were held there, as were church revivals and occasional funerals.
On Nov. 7, 1930 Pacific high school musicians presented a live program that was free to the public. Mar. 2, 1934 Pacific Junior High students performed a play titled The Empty House, which was also free.
The late Jessie Preiss once told me that although she never cared a lot for movies, she remembered high times at the Royal, especially on one night in 1934, “When Mrs. Helen Murray sang in the amateur show. I thought she was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. I’ll never forget it,”
On Aug. 13, 1935 the public was invited to live music entertainment titled Tom Thumb’s Wedding.
In 1946 when Motion Picture Showman Biography published a list of people who had been in the movie business for more than twenty years, Lorenz Leber and Henry Hirth made the list. They would continue to show movies for the next 40 years.
The Royal was still showing movies in 1985 when Terry Graham and his wife Joanne bought the building from Ken Hirth, son of the founder. With Hirth’s help they continued to show movies for a couple of years. Graham built a regular stage, cleaned the stage curtain and put in a good sound system for live music.
Graham, an Elvis impersonator, bought the building as a showplace for his Route 66 Family Music Show. He hoped to eventually build a new state-of-the art theater.
Local writer Joe Vogel wrote a story about the transition in the landmark building from movies to live shows in 1994. The golden age of movies he said, “was a brief era, as golden ages go, swept in on a flood tide of splendor, fantastic architecture, music, laughter and dreams . . . it brought pleasure and escape from boredom to a whole generation of Americans who wanted desperately to believe in make-believe.”
Grahams troupe brought audiences to the Royal for less than a decade. The troupe staged eight live variety shows a year in the building, including Graham’s trademark Elvis show. They staged their final show in December 2000 and building was listed for sale.
Vogel noted that when he visited the Royal in 1994, photographs, newspaper clips and vintage movie posters adorned the lobby and back wall of the auditorium. At that time the building was painted brick red.
In October, 2000 Dave Brengard painted over the red brick facade with a bold mustard and white design that emphasized the art deco lines and moved his Brengard Custom Flooring business into the building. After Brengard closed the flooring business, the stately building stood empty.
Recently four partners have bought the building and say they plan to open it as a rental venue for public events.
The two movie pioneers passed away three weeks apart, in 1951. Henry Hirth died June 19, 1951 at age 72 and is buried in Pacific Cemetery. Lorenz Leber died three weeks later on July 10, 1951 at age 61 and is buried in Sunset Cemetery.
As I understand it, part of the current building is built with locally produced silica brick. Silica sand (of which Pacific has an abundance) is heated to 1450 degrees, and formed under pressure, and then slowly cooled. Next time you are walking up 3rd street, take a look at the building wall and see what you think.