Wahoo Opera House
Wahoo,
NE
68066
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The Wahoo Opera House was likely where local residents saw their first motion pictures. The three-story building was built in 1890 with the Opera House on floors two and three. The Opera House experimented with traveling moving picture show bookings to great success. When veteran showman Charles Prokop became manager in 1908, he installed projectors and ran motion pictures along with live events. Prokop had worked with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show previously and ran a comedy troupe before relocating to Wahoo. Prokop also had the distinction of playing in last show in San Francisco Opera House before the notorious earthquake of 1906.
Prokop ran the Wahoo Opera House from 1908 into the 1920’s and launched the town’s first silent theatre in in 1913. The Opera House’s most significant film booking was the showing of “Birth of a Nation” with a 25-piece orchestra on March 25 and 26, 1916. In 1922, the town got a second full-time theatre in the Rex Theatre. Prokop would take on the Rex Theatre, closing town’s original full-time movie theatre while retaining the Opera House.
Both the Opera House and the Rex Theatre were sold by Prokop to the Interstate Theatre Circuit late in 1929. Interstate closed the Rex Theatre for a week to install Vitaphone for sound films reopening it as the Wahoo Theatre on November 17, 1929. The Opera House would also receive a sound system apparently closing as a movie house during the Depression. It continued with sporadic live community events.
Movies gravitated full-time to the town’s two local movie houses - the Wahoo Theatre (formerly the Rex Theatre) and the Chief Theatre which opened in 1947. The Opera House fell into disuse and disrepair. Its seating and balcony were removed in the early-1950’s. The building finally caved in with the second and third floors collapsing during a July 1966 rain event. The building was razed shortly thereafter.
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dallasmovietheaters
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