Crescent Theater

johnmead on July 31, 2010 at 10:39 pm

Crescent Theater, Pampa, Texas

The White Deer Land Museum in Pampa has a paper on the Crescent and LaNora Theaters, written by local historian Eloise Lane. She says that in 1919 Howard A. Gilliland and his wife Nora came to Pampa. In the 1920s they operated the Crescent Theater at 114 North Cuyler Street, the main street of the then little town. I am not certain exactly when the theater was built; no Pampa newspapers exist dated before 1925. The movies shown were silents, and a player piano was used to supply the accompanying music. Sometimes dances were held in the theater to the music of the piano and maybe someone playing a drum.

When the Gillilands came to Pampa it was a small town of maybe
1, 000 people. In 1925-1926 the oil boom transformed the town, and the population grew ten-fold. Pampa also became the county seat of Gray County, in 1928. The need for a modern movie theater must have been apparent. That need was supplied by the Griffith Amusement Company of Oklahoma City. In 1926 Griffth already had theaters in the Texas Panhandle towns of Borger, Stinnett, and Panhandle. In the fall of 1926 they acquired and refurbished the Rex Theater in Pampa. The Rex was the first theater in Pampa to have the capacity for showing talkies; this occurred in February 1929.

An article in the Pampa paper for 14 April 1929 says that H. A. Gilliland has sold the Crescent Theater to the Griffith Amusement Company. Miss Lane’s article says that Gilliland still owned the building, and only leased it to the Griffith Company to operate. Whatever may have been the case, the “Pampa News” for 6 December 1929 says that the Griffith Company has refurbished the Crescent Theater, which will reopen as the “New Crescent” Theater. The new theater, like the Rex, would have the ability tio show talkies, and some of the refurbishment had to do with dampening noises and making the new sound system audible. There were new carpets everywhere, side panels on the walls were draped to do away with echoes and reverberations, and the ceiling was covered with acoustic felt and drapes. An additional 150 seats were added. The first talkie shown in the refurbished theater was “The Romance of the Rio Grande”, with Warner Baxter, Mary Duncan, and Antonio Moreno. The theater had a new price schedule: adults, 30 cents for matinees and 40 cents at night; and children, 10 cents at any time. The manager of the Crescent, as well as the Rex, was C. B. Akers.

With the reopening of the Crescent, the prosperous town of Pampa had two theaters wired for sound. This did not last long, for on 16 May 1930 the Crescent was destroyed by fire. It was replaced within a few months by the LaNora Theater, on the same site. The White Deer Land Museum in Pampa has a picture of the front facade of the Crescent, but I am not certain whether it was taken when H. A. Gilliland managed it or when it was managed by Mr. Akers.

John A. Mead, Lovett Library, Pampa, Texas.

Joe Vogel on September 4, 2023 at 5:17 am

I’ve been unable to find any references to the Crescent in theater industry trade journals before 1926, when the March 20 issue of Exhibitor Herald reported that its owner, H. A. Gilliland, was having the house remodeled. However, the hand-lettered caption “Home of Mutual Movies” on the vintage photo of the theater shows that it had to have been operating earlier.

The Mutual studio (1913-1918) was absorbed by a company called Robinson-Cole in 1919, which in turn became Film Booking Offices of America (FBO Pictures) in 1922. R-C did use the Mutual name on some releases after taking over the studio in 1919, but I’ve been unable to discover for how long. Still, the photo must have been made before 1922, and is most likely a few years earlier.