Eagle Theatre

The State was sold by the Minnesota Amusement Company, a Paramount affiliate, to comply with the terms of the Paramount consent decree. The February 18, 1950, issue of Boxoffice reported the sale, saying that the State had been MAC’s “C” house in Austin. The buyers were the Donovan Brothers.

According to a 1966 article from the Austin Daily Herald, quoted by ken mc in a comment of Dec 16, 2006, on the Paramount Theatre page, the State actually opened as the Lyric sometime around 1912, and operated until about 1962. It was converted into a Goodwill store in 1966.

I’m now doubting the accuracy of the 1966 Daily Herald article that said the Lyric Theatre had become the State Theatre. Both the Lyric and the State are listed in FDYs in 1926 and 1927, and I’ve found the State mentioned in Universal Weekly as far back as April 5, 1924. The Lyric goes back to at least as early as 1914, having been listed in the AMPD that year. In the FDYs, the Lyric and State have wildly different seating capacities (600 and 1,500 respectively, though I suspect the latter is a wild exaggeration.) The 600-seat Lyric is last listed in 1927, and in 1928 a 600-seat Eagle Theatre makes its first appearance. Eagle is thus a likely new name for the Lyric, but State is not.

Opened or placed its first ad as Eagle on December 16th, 1925.