Mike Pappas: Peterborough’s Cigar Merchant Turned Movie Man
Mehail Pappakeriazes (better known as “Mike Pappas”), in the middle, at the counter of his cigar store, 339½ George St., c.1907, with an unknown man. Along with a sleepy dog, a handy spitoon, and plentiful cigars, there is a poster for an upcoming vocal and instrumental recital. The hand-printing of the Pappakeriazes name and address at the bottom was superimposed on the photograph. National Archives of Canada, nd, B-004541.
The essence of propriety:
“Well, say, isn’t Pappas a lively business man? He makes you welcome any hour of the day or night. Have you seen the new tables in his pool room? The swellest of the swell. Everything first-class – no disorder – no swearing. Everybody must play fair. Only 5 cents a game. . . . Always somebody around. New cash register—new everything! Shoes shined while you wait. Join the crowd at Pappas’ if you want to be in the swim.” — “Pappas’ Welcome to Everybody,” Examiner, Feb. 1, 1906.
In the early years of film exhibition in Peterborough, by far the most long-lasting and colourful local “theatre man” was a Greek shoe-shining/cigar store merchant.
He went by the name of Mike Pappas.
In 1908 he established the Royal Theatre. Following on the heels of a couple of bare-bones storefront “nickelodeons” established a year earlier, it was Peterborough’s first space built especially for the purpose of screening motion pictures. Pappas would jump in and out of that business, and engage with a few other theatres as well, until 1925. In the end he became something of an enigma.
Just how well known and popular was he?
In October 1921 the Examiner published an imaginative article of a kind that has long since gone out of fashion – and it provides a clue to the Pappas prominence. He was returning to the movie exhibition business after a short leave, and the paper offered a hearty welcome back. Treating him like a long-lost friend, the article highlighted his “old time vim” and provided free promotion along with the news.
Examiner, Oct. 13, 1921, p.1.
“Good morning, Mr. Pappas – just heard you are going back into the movies again.”
“Yes – guess so – why? – that’s all right, Mr. Examiner.”
“The news seems to have got out on the street, Mr. Pappas, and we would like to know if the Examiner is at liberty to confirm it.”
“All right – go ahead! You can say that I have taken over the Regent motion picture theatre and expect to open the house under my management on Monday next, 17th. Be sure and come early and avoid the rush!”
Although this item appeared as a straight news article, it probably emerged from the mind if not the pen of Pappas himself. It has the taste of pure press-release promotion: “Be sure and come early and avoid the rush!”
Examiner, Oct. 13, 1921, p.1.
By that point — 1921 — Mike Pappas had been a man on the rush in Peterborough for about seventeen years. He had taken out leases on – or owned – several properties. He had managed shoe-shine parlours, shooting galleries, two cigar stores, billiards and pool rooms, a barber shop, and a motion picture theatre. He had brought in or encouraged other Greek men to live in the city. He had married a local (anglo) woman and settled down to raise a family. He owned or co-owned businesses in other cities. He dabbled in real estate. He was a big spender and self-promoter of the first rank and from time to time found himself immersed in various spots of trouble.
I am unable to say whether or not Mike Pappas started from nothing; he spent money freely from the time he arrived in Peterborough, and before that, according to his own account, he had been in business, with family or friends, in other cities in Canada. In any case he proceeded to amass a small fortune.
In the late 1920s he made a quick getaway from Peterborough, moving to Toronto with his family. In the following years he lost everything, including that family. In 1947 this once-popular man about town, back for a visit to Peterborough, was charged with vagrancy.
“Peterborough is becoming cosmopolitan in its merchants. . .” Morning Times, Feb. 13, 1905
His full name was Mehail (sometimes “Mahael” or “Makel” or other variations) Pappakeriazes, but immediately upon arrival in Peterborough he was known in the press and “by his many friends” around town as “Mike Pappas.”
Born in Greece in 1876 — perhaps in the village of Anavryto (in the mountains of Arcadia, south of Tripoli) — or perhaps, as he told reporters, in Athens – Mehail Pappakeriazes arrived in Canada around 1903. According to his own account, before settling in Peterborough in early 1905 he had travelled the world – spending a year in Paris and making his way to South Africa, Sydney, Chicago, and Montreal.
Examiner, Jan. 16, 1905, p.1.
His name first appeared in print locally on Jan. 16, 1905. On that day the Examiner announced that “important business changes” were about to transpire in the city’s downtown: “A Kingston firm of Greeks” — with fifteen branches in Montreal — was about to open a shop in Peterborough. Not only that: the firm also had shops “in all the large cities in Canada.”
This fascinating information was surely delivered to the papers by the newcomer himself (it appears that Pappas had no problem with the English language). His personal account upon arrival seems to have been highly embellished. “All the large cities in Canada”? “Fifteen branches” in Montreal? Perhaps a branch was a fellow with a shoe-shining stand planted somewhere on a busy sidewalk or in the lobby of an old hotel.
“Mr. Pappas has apparently a happy faculty of making money where others would lose,” the Examiner told readers later, on Feb. 10. “In most of his adventures he has coined money, and delights to tell how he has spent it just as fast, to make more.”
Separating fact from fiction would become a theme for anyone looking into the Mike Pappas story. If things were going so well in Montreal and all those other Canadian cities, why would he come to Peterborough, at least to stay?
In any case, it appears that he did indeed have his fingers in shoe-shining concerns in Kingston, Montreal, and Toronto (and possibly Belleville), often in conjunction with other family members. He clearly had a multitude of financial concerns, and in the following decades he would regularly experience issues related to cash transactions.
Following the initial January announcement, Pappas — now said to be from Montreal rather than Kingston — arrived in town in early February, “representing the firm which have secured two stores for opening up branches of their business in Peterborough.”
Pappas told the newspaper that he had been born in Athens, “where his father carries on the business of a wealthy cloth merchant.” A news report said that he was in business with his brother, who had interests in several Greek confectionary and fruit stores in Montreal; another family member, cousin Sam Pappas, had shops in Kingston and later Belleville.
Review, June 20, 1905, p.7. Originally called Olympian Candy Works (with its own candy maker), the shop specialized in ice cream and “bon bons of all kinds.” Its manager was yet another Greek newcomer, George Andreanopolis, with his name shortened to “Andros.” The store quickly became known just as “Demetre Bros.” The brothers apparently had similar establishments in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and Kingston. They did not stay long in Peterborough. F.G. Demetre at least went off to establish great business success elsewhere (including building a chain of theatres in Montreal).
Quite notably, Pappas also had a hand in bringing other Greeks into Peterborough business. He arrived with two young nephews in tow: the brothers Louis (b.1886) and George (b.1889) Yeotes; and an odd thing about them is that in a 1906 news items the Review gave the family name of these two relatives, Louis and George, as “Pourgeordia.” A 1945 Examiner article related that Mike Pappas and Louis and George Yeotes were the first Greeks to arrive in the city, though they were quickly followed by more, including the Demetre brothers (Peter and George).
Pappas immediately took over three properties on the west side of George Street north of Charlotte St. A couple of the locations, no.337 and 339, had been occupied by James Dolan, who among other things had a tobacco shop with billiards tables. Indeed, the area was known as “the Dolan block.” For about four years Dolan was also the proprietor of the City Hotel, which was roughly in the same set of buildings.
The third site was a shop on the northwest corner of George and Charlotte streets, no. 221 (formerly occupied by George Carton, a grocer). Pappas had a lease for it, and immediately began renovations. The newly arrived F.G. Demetre and his brother took over that space as a confectionary store with a restaurant attached.
For his part, Pappas opened his shoe shine parlour and shooting gallery just up the street at 339 George on March 15.
Examiner, March 15, 1905, p.8. Although Pappas advertised his new shop as located at 337 George, other evidence indicates that it was actually at 339, formerly the home of C. Wilhelmy, an electrical contractor.
One of the city’s three newspapers, impressed by the fancy setup of “handsome mirrors” in the remodelled shop, declared it to have “one of the most bright and attractive interiors in town.”
Customers could get their shoes blackened in the front; they could purchase from an array of cigars and tobacco displayed in a big case; and, if they so desired, enjoy the fun of a shooting gallery at the back. Said the Morning Times: “He had nine leather upholstered chairs for customers to sit in as the assistants shined their shoes.” The shop was promoted as the first enterprise of its kind in the city, fulfilling an otherwise unsatisfied city need
Dolan’s store at no.337, with a small pool and billiards room at the back, was considered “one of the best cigar stands in the city.” But by September Pappas had finalized his purchase of Dolan’s business, including the pool and billiards tables — thus giving himself two adjoining spaces.
Examiner, April 5, 1905, p.2. The 337 address.
Examiner, May 1, 1905, p.3. Here the address is 339 George. The “Pappakeriazes” name appears, along with another store address in Kingston.
Pappas himself took a room to live in above the shop and had his two nephews living there as well. In the beginning it was all quite splendid. “Another Nationality in Business,” headlined the Morning Times in the middle of February:
Morning Times, Sept. 12, 1905, np. Here Pappas is purchasing the Nolan store at 337 George, although that was the address given earlier in ads for his shoe-shine shop and shooting gallery.
“Peterborough is becoming cosmopolitan in its merchants. We have had French, English and German, now we have Greek. . . . Geo. Carton’s old stand, corner of George and Charlotte streets . . . [and] that formerly occupied by Mr. C. Wilhelmy . . . will be occupied by Mr. M. Pappas, a gentleman who calls the classic city of Athens, Greece, his birth-place. Mr, Pappas will engage in several branches of business, ranging from a shooting gallery, pool room, groceries to a shoe parlor.”
He advertised extensively, and his diversified shop became a popular spot for recreation and visiting. Men (and boys, doubtlessly) came in to gather, pass the time, chat, and spend a few cents here and there. A pack of Sweet Caporal or Old Gold cigarettes would set you back 25 cents; a shoe shine or a round at the shooting gallery, 5 cents each. “There is every reason,” the Examiner stated, “to believe that the firm will receive a liberal patronage” and the premises would “compare favourably with those in any establishment of the kind in Canada.”
Peterborough Directory, 1905—06, p.207. Now with two addresses, soon to add a third.
Modern and convenient, enterprising and progressive
Pedestrians stroll by the thriving Pappas enterprise at 337 George St., c.1905—6. Detail from a larger photo, TVA, Electric City Collection, F50 5.232 Streetcar Down George.
Customers were indeed plentiful, and Pappas went on to thrive in the city and to expand. He tore down the partition that had previously divided the adjoining establishments at 337 and 339, spending about $10,000 on renovations — and turning the two rooms “into one large hall.” He went off to Toronto to purchase new tables and goods and fixtures – and get the best cigars. He opened his new and enlarged “grand” tobacco store in what had been Dolan’s premises in late December 1905. He put in a “handsome arch” between the two old rooms.
Pappas was among the earliest to introduce “silent salesmen” to the city: packaging, displays, signs, or promotional products designed to increase sales and profits.
Examiner, Feb. 1, 1906, p.6. Pappas would be a relentless self-promoter, of both his business and himself.
“Such enterprise as this,” applauded the Morning Times, “is characteristic of Peterboro’s merchants.”
The new store promised “Everything the latest, smartest and best in Holiday Gifts to delight smokers.” Conscious of the already established trade, Pappas wisely kept Dolan working with him in the shop, at least for a while, “to welcome all his old customers.”
Pappas himself wooed his customers just before Christmas of that first year with a “Grand Turkey Competition” – “Try your luck for a Christmas turkey. Six shots for five cents. Lots of fun.”
“Mr. Pappas’ progressiveness,” the Examiner remarked in January 1906, “is much appreciated by his many patrons, who find his new premises very modern and convenient.”
Others had a more sceptical view of the value of his operations. In early April 1905 Pappas had appeared in court to face a charge of selling cigarettes to an underage boy. For this offence he paid a fine of $20, a hefty sum at the time. “His Worship the Judge” (David W. Dumble) commented that the Pappas business was like “a Bell” in luring boys to the shooting gallery. Judge Dumble “hinted to the effect that the place was not conducive towards fiscal morality on the part of boys patronising it.” It was the first of many Pappas encounters with the law over the years.
Examiner, Feb. 10, 1906, p.11.
In spring 1906 Pappas continued to spend money, purchasing eight more pool tables and two billiards tables. That summer he took out a ten-year lease on a property across the street. The site, at 342-344 George Street, a few doors north of the old Bradburn opera house, had formerly been occupied by the Palace Hotel and its restaurant.
There, in November, he opened yet another cigar store — this one reported to be “palatial” — complete with eight or ten billiards tables. Pappas had “spared nothing” in equipping it, so the newspaper said — and it was an impressive place with its large plate-glass windows and huge quantity of lights. “The electric fixtures,” said an article on the opening, “transform the interior into a fairyland picture at night.”
Review, Sept. 21, 1906, p.5. The two spaces on the west side of George St., with James Dolan still there as manager. Dolan was suffering from a serious illness, which no doubt led to him giving up his business interests. He kept coming to the store to help out, however. In September 1907 the Morning Times noted that customers visiting the cigar store were pleased to see the very popular “Jim” return to “his old familiar place behind the counter . . . assisting Mr. Pappas to hand out the cigars and tobacco and gather in the filthy ‘lucre.’” Dolan died just a couple of months later from Bright’s disease and complications at age sixty-five. He was acknowledged as “one of the best known residents” of the city, “highly esteemed . . . his friendly and pleasant manner will be greatly missed.”
Review, Nov. 3, 1906, p.4. Now on the other side of the street too, with a barber shop. “Mr. Pappas’ enterprise has been very marked since he arrived in the city, and from this latest addition to his business one can easily recognize that he has spared nothing in the equipment of this bright, clear, and beautiful shop, which is opened to-day.”
Examiner, Nov. 3, 1906, p.12. Trivia contest, anyone? Pappas opened his new palatial cigar store on the same day that a very young Groucho Marx (then known as “Julius”) appeared live on the stage of the Grand Opera House in The Man of Her Choice. It was also the day of another historic moment: a penny arcade (complete with motion pictures) opened further up on George St. in a storefront and would eventually become the city’s first nickelodeon, or motion picture theatre: the Colloseum.
Pappas now had three locations: the shoe shining/shooting gallery/pool room and two cigar stores on opposite sides of the street. “He is certainly enterprising and aggressive,” noted the Review, “and nothing but the best satisfies him. He has built up a large and profitable business since coming to Peterborough nearly two years ago.” A front-page newspaper ad a couple of years later promised “104,000 cigars in stock . . . the largest in any Canadian retail store.”
In his everyday operations Mehail Pappakeriazes – as time passed he continued to use that name interchangeably with “Mike Pappas” – revealed a formidable combination of determination, sociability, and community spirit. He was something of a wide-eyed overly optimistic entrepreneur who never said never; impulsively dreaming and scheming not just ways of making money but finding ways of serving the interests of the public. His business initiative was front and foremost. Newspaper reports over the years give the impression that he was well liked.
In August 1906, claiming to be “the only licensed cigarette vendor in the city,” Pappas announced that he was going to purchase his tobaccos “direct from the factories.” The arrangement, he said, would bypass the “wholesale profit . . . and every brand of tobacco, including smoking and chewing, will be sold cheaper than heretofore in Peterborough.”
Uncle Mike and his nephews
Pappas was making his mark on the city, in more ways than one. Years later, Peterborough’s Dean Pappas would recall that his distant relative Mike Pappas (a first cousin of his grandfather) “brought other Greeks over the years, and sponsored other Greeks, and that’s how the Greek community [prospered] and took hold in this city.”
A hundred years later Dean Pappas became the first citizen of Greek heritage elected to city hall. His father, Bill, came to Canada in 1956 and to Peterborough in 1962. This Pappas family still owns and runs the twenty-first-century Pappas Billiards on George Street.
Mike Pappas’s sponsorship of his nephews would also prove to be of considerable benefit to the city over the years as the Yeotes family flourished in the city. In the beginning, though, it was not so easy. He set nephews Louis and George to work in his shop as “bootblacks,” shining shoes. He had apparently made an arrangement with their father in Greece: he would supply the boys with two suits of clothes a year, and food and board, until they were twenty-one, and send their wages back home. Occasionally he gave them five or ten cents, “with which to buy ice cream for themselves.”
Examiner, June 26, 1906, p.1. The names George and Louis “Pourgeordia” appear (as they did about a half-dozen times in articles in the Examiner and Review at that time), but it is clearly the Louis and George who soon became known as “Yeotes.” It is also difficult, given the newspaper copy, to know whether it is “Pourgeordia” or “Pourgeordis.”
The nephews were not all that happy with this arrangement, and one day in spring 1906 they just up and left. They had plans to start working for themselves. Pappas, clearly upset, immediately charged them with stealing from his shop. He said they had carried off boxes of polish, bottles of cleaning liquid, and some cloths (or “rags”). The two were apprehended and duly went to court, which for two and a half hours heard complicated and conflicting evidence from witnesses for both sides. The youth pleaded their innocence; Pappas argued his case. He said he did not know why “the boys” had left him. In the end the judge dismissed the charges, saying that the tricky evidence was not strong enough to send anyone to jail.
Sympathy in general appeared to be with the boys. Police Magistrate David Dumble reasoned from the evidence that the two of them had been harshly treated – they “probably had good reason for leaving.” He commented “rather severely on the action of Pappas in trying to send his nephews to jail for $2.” The boys’ life, he said, “was not a bed of roses.”
George and Louis Pourgeordia [or perhaps it was a newspaper error for “Pourgourides”] – which is how the newspaper reports referred to them – became known as the Yeotes brothers not long after that. They were not so much “boys” as young men (Louis later said he was eighteen when he arrived), and they soon turned up doing their own shoe-shining, one with a stand at the Oriental Hotel and the other at McDonough’s cigar and barber shop. They announced that “they will be pleased to meet old patrons.”
Union Publishing Company’s Peterborough Directory, 1910, p.344. The boys make good. Still “rooming” above the store. At this point Pappas was still selling cigars at no.399.
Yet things were really not that bad between Pappas and his nephews. In December 1906 he handed over his original shoe-shining parlour at 339 George to them. The Examiner surmised that his action would “thus put the quietus to the absurd rumor that he has not been according the boys fair treatment.” Pappas said he intended to devote his attention to his two cigar stores and billiards parlours. According to the report he was also already branching out, leasing premises in Oshawa for another billiards and pool room/cigar store. In June 1907 he helped the nephews set up a shooting gallery to add to the summer amusements at Jackson Park.
A few years later Pappas went even further with the nephews. In 1910 he granted the Yeotes brothers full control of his space at 337-39 George Street, where, still living upstairs, they now operated their own shoe-shine shop and hat cleaning service, with a shooting gallery on the second floor. In time they set up billiards parlours in Collingwood, Lindsay, and Montreal as well as maintaining the business in Peterborough. By that time Pappas was concentrating his energies on a motion picture theatre and his store just across the street, along with other matters.
Settling into Peterborough — and taking up a new twentieth-century business venture: motion pictures
On May 17, 1906, Mike Pappas married Maud Miller, a young local woman of Scots origin. She was born in Harwood, Ont., in 1884, and her family had moved to Peterborough when she was a young girl. Pappas might have met her while she was working at McCallum’s restaurant, not far from his shops. The newspaper made much of this local and “quiet little romance” and the “wooing” that took place, which must have seemed quite unusual in the mostly anglo city. The ceremony took place in a Greek church in Toronto because there was no branch of that church in Peterborough. They went on a honeymoon trip to Detroit “and other western cities.” The couple would quickly start a family (Christena, born in September 1907, and Maria, in December 1909).
A detail from a booklet, Peterborough, “The Electric City: Views of City and District,” p.6, of Roy Studio photos, issued in 1914. The view shows George St. on the west side just above Charlotte, and the Pappas name can be dimly seen on the left, above a cigar store sign. The Yeotes shop was next door to the north.
Pappas clearly had a gift for sussing out gaps in a growing town’s needs for pleasure and recreation. Touting himself as as the city’s “Leading Cigar Dealer,” early on he displayed his business acumen by joining eight other local “tobacconists” in a court challenge of a 1906 city bylaw requiring that stores or shops selling cigarettes or tobacco pay a license fee of $200.
Unlike the other tobacco merchants, Pappas had indeed paid the demanded fee to the city. He told the judge that as “the owner of a tobacco shop and pool room,” he had no choice but to pay – because if his patrons couldn’t buy cigarettes at his tobacco shop they would not come next door to the pool room. But, he said, the problem with the fee was that “the profits from the sale of cigarettes in his store did not at any time amount to $200.”
Examiner, Dec. 8, 1908, p.4. Pappas and the other tobacconists vs. city hall.
A nice twist in his affidavit was the conclusion that “the result is that having obtained a license he now enjoys a monopoly of the cigarette trade in the city of Peterborough.” The court quashed the bylaw, reasoning that the fee was indeed too high, and prohibitive.
Pappas was a man with a striking business sense and entrepreneurial spirit – never quite ready just to let things be. He was continually remodelling his operations and investing in improvements, making the spaces “convenient of access, airy and well lighted,” purchasing new and better billiards tables, and adding other accessories. The players who came in, he said, would “appreciate the advantages of a quiet game in pleasant quarters where privacy is part of the enjoyment.” The cigar store itself was known for its “immense stock and good prices.” Men continued to come in and chew the fat as well as tobacco. Once it was a conversation about deer-hunting. Another time it was on the special subject of children’s school compositions, and whether the word “pants” was singular or plural. Pappas had Saturday evening shooting contests — once “two Hamburg cocks were left tethered by their legs in Yeotes’ Bros’ shooting gallery adjoining” as prizes — and one time he himself gave a sharp display of his prowess in billiards.
Within another three years, not content just with the grand tobacco store, this energetic newcomer decided to diversify his business interests – and he did this by venturing into somewhat more uncharted territory: motion picture theatre exhibition.
“Cheap Shows to Be Opened in Peterboro within a Short Time,” Morning Times, March 22, 1907
The pungent smell of polish, the clouds of drifting smoke, the clattering of balls on a felt-covered table: all of this was clearly not enough. Buoyed by his success, as early as March 1907 Pappas had begun contemplating shifting the public’s attention towards the stream of light flowing from a motion picture projector.
Review, Dec. 23, 1907, p.6. This visit was almost a full year before Pappas opened the Royal. Wonderland and the Crystal were already in place.
Perhaps the leap from cigars and billiards games and the carnival-like experience of a shooting gallery to flickering images on a screen was not so great. After all, lore has it that the giant Warners Bros. company also had its beginnings in a shooting gallery.
Pappas was already in the business of bringing people together — though it would have been almost entirely men and boys — to mingle, socialize, and be amused.
As he joined another facet of the amusement sector — this one emphasizing women and children as much as men — Pappas represented something of a shift in cultural control. Ontario’s opera houses tended to be set up, owned, and operated by local anglo business elites – in Peterborough, it was the Bradburns, for example, and later on the Turner family. Motion picture theatres across the continent had diverse origins, and more often than not were the initiative of recent immigrants. Pappas, with his particular background, was also not alone: by 1920, about 1,400 Greeks were engaged in theatre operation in the United States, making up, according to one historian, “the largest single racial representation in the industry.”
The time was also right. The city, like the rest of the country, was going through an economic depression in 1907–9. In a period of much-discussed “financial stringency,” the new motion picture business had an obvious appeal. “People are not in a position at the present time to patronize as freely as heretofore the higher priced places of entertainment,” said a December 1907 report in the Daily Evening Review. “A moving picture performance is one that provides good entertainment at an exceedingly low price, hence the patronage extended to enterprises of this character.” The years 1906–7 represented the height of the “nickelodeon” boom, with five-cent theatoriums springing up in makeshift fashion everywhere on the continent. “The motion picture business is appealing strongly to amusement promoters,” the Review noted, “and for obvious reasons.”
Promoters from far afield were arriving in town looking for suitable sites for “an animated picture show and illustrated song theatorium.” In March 1907 an agent said to be representing “one of the largest amusement firms in the United States, with headquarters in Philadelphia” – most likely the Sigmund Lubin company – came to town and had a long conversation with Pappas. The visitor wanted Pappas to take “the local agency for a ‘five-cent show,’” complete with music and the other necessary trappings; the only such house in the city at that point was George Scott’s short-lived Colloseum. All Pappas had to do was find a “suitable” spot downtown for the theatre – not an easy task in a city bursting at the seams, with every suitable space already taken up on the main street. Still, the Morning Times reported, “Mr. Pappas has got the capital and the energy to push this matter to a successful conclusion.”
More visitors came along to talk to Pappas and others and push similar schemes, including two men from New York in June and other “enterprising gentlemen” in December. Pappas apparently was not ready to join forces with them. Meanwhile, the promoters behind Wonderland and the Crystal did find suitable spots; even with the disappearance of the Colloseum, Peterborough already had two storefront nickel theatres in place.
Examiner, Oct. 15, 1908, p.7. Plans for the new theatorium take shape.
After considerable prodding and presumably much deliberation – and perhaps making some unknown deals – Pappas took the leap. In April 1908 he announced plans for a new “moving picture business” and took out a lease on a property at 348 George Street, next to his cigar store. It was a building that had previously been occupied by the Times printing office and bookstore. In October he got a building permit, estimating the cost of renovations at $3,250. He would be leasing the property for something like $800 a year from the Peterborough City Trust, which administered the city-owned holdings on the “Market Block.”
The theatre opened on Saturday the 19th of December. A week earlier a large Examiner ad had told readers that they could look forward to an abundance of “Amusement for the Festive Season.”
Examiner, Sept. 29, 1909, p.7. He got the “best Tonsorial Artists” too.
Claims galore followed. Announcing the “Brilliant Opening of the New Royal Theatre, Peterborough’s Best and Most Up-to-Date Moving Picture Showhouse,” the ad promised “Brilliant Illumination at every Performance, Day and Night . . . Gorgeous Scenic Equipment, with the Latest Machinery from New York . . . Films Imported Direct from Paris.”
Not only that: “These Films or Pictures will be seen by Peterborough people before any other audience in Canada. They show clearer and better pictures than the cheap hack pictures that pass from one theatre to another.”
Patrons would be “Seated with Luxurious Opera House Chairs.” The theatre would offer “Dramatic and Humorous Scenes” with “Captivating Singing and Music” and “Clean, Wholesome Vaudeville.” It would have in place a “Powerful Electric Piano” and “Orchestral Music” – and all for five cents. Pappas suggested also that the theatre could be rented on Sundays, “if sufficient notice is given ahead to make arrangements for its use.”
Pappas chose where possible to give employment to local citizens. Starting out, the Royal had eleven male employees in all, with seven of them born in Peterborough and four of them from Toronto.
A week after the opening, the staff “greatly surprised” the owner by throwing a little party at the cigar store and presenting him with an engraved silver plate in appreciation of his “thoughtful and courteous” treatment. Pappas, graciously thanking the staff, said his success was all due to their own hard work. His little speech that evening to the “boys” in his employ offers a glimpse of both his theatre-business credo and of the people he saw as his prime patrons in those days:
“Boys, I am going to see that ladies and children, who form a large proportion of our audiences, will never see a picture or hear a song that could be objected to by the most exacting, and I am sure from the experience of the past week or so since we opened that you are all backing up my desires splendidly. Remember boys, that children and ladies will always feel as comfortable as in their own homes. Again I thank you and wish you a happy new year.”
By the time Mike and Maud’s second daughter, Maria, was born in December 1909, Pappas was self-identifying not as cigar-store merchant but as “Proprietor Picture Show.”
A master film exhibiter/promoter
In the early years of motion picture theatres, as film scholars Kathryn Fuller-Seeley and Karen Ward Mahar point out, “Exhibitors not only selected what films to rent or purchase, but arranged the two-to-fifteen-minute films into programs. . . . The movies themselves were only one component of an exhibitor’s production of a sometimes quite elaborate and lengthy multimedia ‘show.’”
Fuller-Seeley and Mahar quote a May 1907 article from Moving Picture World: “If a piece grows dull at any point, the manager can take a pair of shears and cut out a few yards to liven it up.” In the early days of motion picture theatres, someone like Mike Pappas (and not the film producers) made daily choices on what music would accompany the films, on any sound effects to be provided off screen, and on the delivery of “illustrated songs” and other live entertainment, including vaudeville acts. Sometimes he would have a “lecturer” on spot to explain or interpret the film content.
Pappas regularly took the train to Toronto to select his theatre’s program, both filmic and live entertainment and accompanists. It was on one such trip to Toronto in summer 1910, for instance, that he spotted Eveline Fenwick (Foster) and her mother, Agnes, playing music to accompany the films at the downtown Crystal Palace motion picture theatre. Pappas brought the pair of them to Peterborough and they would never leave, making an important addition to the city’s musical and cultural history.
In those early years Pappas advertised daily on the front page of the Examiner and worked hard to bring out the crowds for what was a very young cultural phenomenon. Like most motion picture promoters then and for decades to follow, he would never be afraid of exaggerating or, indeed, misrepresenting his offerings. Everything was entirely thrilling, the greatest ever, or never before seen.
Examiner, Jan. 9, 1909, p.1. An early front-page ad for the Royal — with the Pappakeriazes name up front. Here the price was ten cents for the combination of films, an illustrated song, and vaudeville.
Examiner, Feb. 2, 1909, p.1. A month later the advertising switches to “Pappas.” The price goes back to five cents, even with vaudeville.
When “moving pictures” were the latest thing. A more unusual form of advertising: a marble table-top plaque, undated, but clearly before the Royal switched to the ten-cent price for evening tickets in July 1910. Thanks to Robin and Hermione Rivison, who found this and other discarded pieces of marble when they moved into what was once the Mattress Factory on Mark St. in East City. Photo courtesy of Ken Brown.
He lured audiences, for instance, by promising to keep them informed of special events. One evening he provided the “Returns of the Great New York Marathon Race,” especially featuring the indigenous runner Tom Longboat and “the Great Little Englishman” Alfie Shrubb, both of whom had come to Peterborough to race. The results would be relayed to the audience “as our specially arranged telegraphic messages arrive.” Another evening he broke into the program from time to time to announce the score of an important Peterborough-Lindsay hockey game.
As an account years later remarked, “Mr. Pappas believed in giving a lot for the money the patrons paid in and the result was that some fifteen reels of motion picture entertainment were offered at five cents a customer.” Throughout his career Pappas was decidedly kid-friendly: family members later recounted how he used to wait until halfway through a program of pictures and see if any space was available; if so, he would go outside and let kids into the theatre for free.
When rumours went around that Pappas was trying to sell the Royal, he told the paper they were not true – the Royal “is paying me too good a revenue to part with it.”
Examiner, March 24, 1909, p.12. Attempting to sell some of his businesses, including a Toronto restaurant, to concentrate on motion pictures, apparently without much success.
Expanding and varying a small empire
Over the following years Mike Pappas popped in and out of the exhibition business, several times giving up ownership and/or management and then returning. At one point he tried to sell all his other businesses – the tobacco store, pool rooms, a barber shop – because the motion picture venture was going so well he wanted to concentrate on that facet. The Royal soon became a ten-cent theatre (in the evenings) rather than strictly five-cent.
Examiner, Aug. 9, 1910, p.4. A quite enthusiastic letter to the editor, around the time Pappas had taken over the Princess Theatre.
Pappas also expanded his motion picture holdings. By August 1910 he had also taken over the newer Princess Theatre, and in September 1911, supposedly “acting for another party,” he purchased the older Crystal.
In December 1910, under a front-page headline “Peterborough Amusements,” the Examiner published a promotional article that surely came from the pen of Pappas himself (or someone writing for him) – extolling the combination of low price and quality offered at his theatres:
Examiner, Oct. 20, 1911, p.1. According to the hype, Pappas was making “arrangements with leading film firms of the world.” The Royal was now seating about six hundred, “and every seat these days is needed . . .”
“The patronage accorded by the public to the Royal and Princess theatres is an emphatic endorsation of the policy of the management in keeping the quality of the programme always up to the very highest standard and at the same time to maintain the price always the same, no matter how expensive the attraction may prove. This principle is followed out invariably at the Royal. Sometimes there are as many as six vaudeville artists engaged in the programme and the expense is much greater than usual, but Mr. Pappas keeps his price always at the same figure, 5¢ in the afternoon, and 10¢ at night. The result is that the people of Peterborough are being given high-class entertainment at the cheapest possible figure, the usual programme being worth much more than the small fee charged. The same is true with the Princess, which shows as fine a line and as many pictures as any photo-play house on the continent. The best films by the foremost manufacturers in America and Europe are shown at this popular theatre, and the films are changed daily. This feature with the singing of Mr. [Victor] Loftus is responsible for the splendid business right along. Peterborough is fortunate is having such places of amusement as the Royal and Princess theatres.”
Was this Pappas or the newspaper writing? Most certainly it was largely a representation of a Pappas press release, and perhaps the Examiner editor felt duty-bound to protect its advertising concerns by inserting the last sentence.
Pappas was always on the lookout for a new deal. He sold the Princess to E.J. King in November 1911, only a year and three months after he acquired it. Soon after that he briefly sold his interest in the Royal to a fellow Greek immigrant, “Gus. Boukydis,” who took possession on New Year’s Day 1912. Pappas, still with his cigar business located at 342½ George St., next to the Royal, said he intended to turn his “whole attention to his wholesale tobacco and retail trade.”
Nevertheless he took back control of the Royal later that same year. Over the next while he and Boukydis got into more than one dispute over money and ended up as adversaries in court a few times.
At times Pappas seemed quite ready to get out of the theatre business. In March 1913 he turned over management of the Royal once again, this time to newcomer Herbert Clayton, who was already running the Red Mill (a successor to the Crystal). In May that same year Pappas leased management of the Princess to Clayton as well.
Examiner, Nov. 13, 1914, p.13. Pappas has a new “scientific pool” room, with a special attraction — and in competition with his nephew, Louis Yeotes, who also cleans hats and shines shoes.
Pappas had other sidelines, dabbling especially in real estate and attempting various business ventures, including a restaurant in Toronto and a billiards, cigar, and barber shop in Belleville (operated, and perhaps co-owned, with his cousin Sam). In February 1909 he went to Lindsay and discussed opening either a picture show or restaurant there; and that April he contemplated setting up a ten-cent vaudeville house next door to the Royal; neither of those plans came to fruition. In November 1914, in partnership with a man named Snelgrove, Pappas opened a “Gentleman’s Pool Room” (with thirteen pool tables and one English billiards table), at 342½ George.
In 1913 or early 1914 Pappas and Clayton together made an attempt to open up yet another theatre, again in Lindsay. They applied to the Lindsay town council for a license to establish what would be that town’s third motion picture house. The council proved reluctant to accept the request because of the competition that would be created for the first two theatres, with some worry, too, about the money going “out of town.”
Pappas takes back the Royal and is not at all stymied by a fire
By early 1915 the Royal’s business under the management of Herbert Clayton had become something of a mess — with Clayton falling badly behind on the rent owed to Pappas. Towards the end of February 1915 a rumour began to spread that trouble was brewing regarding the ownership of the Royal and that Pappas was going to assume control.
Pappas took the trouble to drop into the Examiner office and tell the editor, in case people were wondering, that the “deal” had not yet been closed. He also felt it necessary to take out a small ad in the paper, stating that he had “not taken over the Royal Theatre – He will advise the Public at once of any change in the management.” People wandering around downtown and looking to see “what was on” at the Royal might well have sensed that something was amiss.
Examiner, March 8, 1915, p.9.
Within a week or two Pappas charged Clayton with violating the terms of the lease for the Royal. He took him to court on Saturday, March 6, with the aim of compelling him “to quit the premises.” By that point the theatre-men Clayton and Pappas were not on the best of terms. It also turned out, as the Review noted, that the case revolved around three women: Mrs. Maud Pappas, who was on paper as owning the Royal; Mrs. Florence Clayton, who held the Royal’s lease for her husband; and Mrs. (Susan) de Laplante, who had helped the Claytons out by paying $700 to the Pappas family to secure the lease. She was the wife of solicitor Ozias J. de Laplante, who had overseen the legalities of the sale of the Crystal to Clayton in 1912 and appears to have been in charge of Clayton’s business interests. By March 1915 Florence Clayton owed a large amount – $2,485 (about $57,000 in 2021) – to the Pappas family and $465 (over $10,000) to Susan de Laplante.
Examiner, March 9, 1915, p.9.
Judge E.C.S. Huycke heard the case in his chambers on a Saturday morning, and it was quickly settled that same afternoon in favour of Pappas, who assumed control of the Royal. Other details were not made known.
On Monday the 8th Pappas posted notice that he had taken back possession of the Royal. It had a “grand re-opening” two days later at one in the afternoon – “cleaned, heated, and ventilated” – with a program of vaudeville and motion pictures: a team of comedy entertainers and a six-reel mix of standard films. In his usual style Pappas said he was procuring pictures from the “largest and best” film exchange, with an admission price of ten cents, although children with parents could get in for five cents. He said he would “give his personal and exclusive attention to the Royal,” adding: “It is now up to the public to decide whether they get the best.”
Examiner, Aug. 7, 1917, p.9. The “coolest and pleasantest play spot” in town, with lots of Chaplin.
Towards the end of January 1918 a massive fire wiped out most of the block on the east side of George between Charlotte and Simcoe, including the Royal Theatre property (more damaged from water used against the fire than by the flames themselves). The Examiner reported:
Examiner, Feb. 8, 1918, p.7. After the fire, Pappas temporarily moved his films to the Grand Opera House.
“One thing that prevented the fire from going further south, in addition to the fire wall, was the Royal Theatre itself, which contained no stock of other inflammable material, and its ceilings were metallic, which prevented much conflagration inside. Mr. Pappas had spent over $18,000 in re-modelling and re-fixing the Royal Theatre, and had it in excellent condition from a fire prevention standpoint. In addition to the fire loss, his business loss will be a large one, as the Royal was enjoying very extensive patronage at the time of the fire.”
In reporting briefly on the fire, Motography, a trade journal out of Chicago, described the Royal as “the largest moving picture in the town” but added, “The theatre will be rebuilt as soon as possible.”
Indeed, Pappas was not about to allow that “conflagration” to stymie his motion picture business. By the end of February he had not only announced the plans to rebuild but also to transform the Royal into “the finest picture house between Toronto and Montreal.” In the meantime he moved his filmic program into the Grand Opera House.
Examiner, May 1, 1918, p.8. Pappas booking Cleopatra, with Theda Bara, at the Grand Opera House. The “first time” the film had been shown outside the larger cities, he said.
His newly reconstructed Royal Theatre opened with yet another flourish on Dec. 8, 1918.
Examiner, Dec. 24, 1918, p.5.
Hopping in and out and around — from local to corporate and back to local
In January 1919 Mike Pappas proudly told newspaper readers, “I have been in the moving picture business for thirteen years, and have always endeavoured to give the public of Peterborough the best pictures in Canada for price of admission charged.”
His “thirteen years” would have placed him back in 1906, although he had established the Royal in December 1908. Perhaps there was some unreported activity going on before then; perhaps it was just a matter of careless memory, of being a little loose with details, or habitual exaggeration. In any case, as it turned out, he was thinking about ways of boosting the business, or even getting rid of it.
Examiner, March 29, 1919, p.12. Pappas still promising personal attention as a “link” in the Paramount chain.
In March Pappas came to an agreement with Paramount Theatres, the distribution end of the U.S.-owned Famous Players—Lasky corporation, becoming, as he put it, a “link” in the Paramount chain, which presumed ownership. Around the same time he also signed a renewal lease for the Royal Theatre property with the Peterborough City Trust (approved in a city by-law) on March 21, paying $800 a year.
He once again landed in legal difficulties when he tried to avoid paying for a couple of films – The Wildcat of Paris (U.S., 1918) and For Husbands Only (U.S., 1918) – that he had formally arranged to take from the Universal Film Company in February but had never screened. In an affidavit Pappas admitted that he had indeed entered into a contract to show the two films, but the agreement was “subject to the provision that I was to exhibit such pictures at a day and time that would suit my own convenience.” A Toronto law firm, Ludwig and Ballantyne, begged to differ, taking the case to the County Court of the City of York in an attempt to get the $210 (plus costs) that remained owing. When Pappas told them he had sold the theatre to Paramount, they responded that the sale did not relieve him of liability.
The corporate transactions were far from over. Soon after that the Royal Theatre became “The Allen,” and Pappas was no longer either owner or manager.
For a short time Pappas concentrated on his other business interests in Peterborough and elsewhere (including real estate), but not for long. In October 1921 he was back in the “movie business,” taking over management of the Regent Theatre. The Schneider-Rishor owners had apparently persuaded him to return. Praising the “enterprise and resourcefulness” of this man who had become “so well and favourably known” locally over the years, the Examiner applauded his comeback: “The public pretty well know what to expect of him as a motion picture manager.”
Examiner, Dec. 2, 1921, p.19. This was the final Regent ad bearing the Pappas name before he jumped back to the Royal.
As someone who “had proved so successful in pulling bumper houses,” he now intended to screen “high-class picture shows, including western plays, serials, dramas and comedies” and “will not be tied down to any one big corporation.” That remark took aim at both Paramount and his new competition, the Capitol Theatre, established earlier that year and controlled by Famous Players Canadian Corporation. As a supposedly independent manager, Pappas “will personally select such features as, in his judgement, will be most popular in this community.” Putting “his old time vim into the business . . . with careful management and first run films, Mr. Pappas is out to win back a renewal of the generous patronage which he enjoyed in former years.”
His strategy was at least partly to return to former pre-war prices, of 10 and 15 cents admission. Highlighting the Pappas name as its manager, the Regent ad was stating: “In any other theatre this programme would be worth 25¢, 30¢, or 50¢. You can see this programme in the afternoon at the Regent for 10¢ and in the evening for 25¢.”
He scarcely had time to put his plans into operation before once again turning his attention elsewhere. The Allen theatre empire had crumbled, and by December Pappas had left the Regent to take back control of his old motion picture house.
Examiner, Dec. 6, 1921, p.14.
Examiner, Dec. 21, 1921, p.14. Pappas back as both owner and manager. “For fifteen years”: that would put it back to 1906 — but the Royal opened in December 1908.
Examiner, Dec. 27, 1921, p.14.
The new but old Royal takes its final bow
Under Pappas, “Peterborough’s oldest and most experienced moving picture expert,” the new Royal opened on the afternoon of Thursday, Dec. 8, 1921. “Mr. Pappas’ many friends in Peterboro,” said a news report, “will be glad to see him back in the business again.”
Under Paramount and then the Allens, Pappas said, the theatre had suffered heavy losses. But now things would be better. He “had his finger on the pulse of public opinion” and would serve up what the theatre-going audience wanted. He was going to cut out all amateur or fly-by-night cheap vaudeville acts. He made trips to Toronto and personally selected films (in obvious contrast to the corporate programming of the Capitol). That Christmas he offered free gifts for children.
Examiner, Jan. 26, 1923, p.1.
In January 1923 Pappas lowered prices – claiming that the Allen had been charging 25 to 50 cents admission and he was cutting back to about half that. He had one of those new-fangled technologies, a radio, installed. He had learned, he told newspaper readers, “from his eighteen years’ experience in catering to the film lovers of Peterborough,” how to properly run a motion picture theatre, and he “was putting the Royal on the soundest basis of any amusement enterprise in the City.” The “eighteen years” would have put him back to 1905.
Examiner, April 2, 1923, p.9. Renting the Grand (once again) to show films: an idea that did not work out. He had screened Nero at the Royal in January, which may have accounted for the poor turnout.
In spring 1923 he attempted yet another associated venture. He decided to lease the Grand Opera House from the Trans-Canada Company, which was on its last legs. He planned to use the opera house and its 1,500 seats for most of April and May: he would screen movies for a whole week from Tuesday, April 3rd to the 7th, skip a week (because of the Grand’s previous bookings), and after that use it for the last three days of each week until the end of May. He would be responsible for all costs connected to the entertainment on those days.
After only one night’s program he abandoned the plan, and probably lost some money. Not enough seats were filled in the vast auditorium of the Grand. In the pages of the Examiner the very next day, the theatre owner made a surprising announcement that he would not show any more pictures at the Grand during his tenure. Instead he offered the Grand, at “reasonable rates,” for rental dates until the end of May. “Apply, M. Pappas, Royal Theatre.” He had 21 available dates and already had it booked for a couple of Saturday evenings to the Collegiate Institute and the Y.W.C.A. respectively.
Examiner, April 4, 1923, p.11.
Despite promoting the Royal as a locally owned business, a place where the money spent by patrons stayed in the city, by August 1923 he was once again selling the Royal, this time to Dominion Films Ltd. of Toronto for a staggering amount, $70,000 (over $1,000,000 in 2021). He stated that he would no longer have any connection with the theatre.
But to the contrary, less than a year later he bounced back once again.
At the end of March 1924, “on a moment’s notice,” Pappas took over the Royal (for the third time), promising “Good Pictures All the Time – No Disappointments.” Seemingly in the blink of an eye, he made yet another comeback. It would turn out to be a very short — and final — stint as master of the Royal realm.
Examiner, April 16, 1924, p.11. The final sighting of Pappas as theatre manager.
A notice a few days earlier – “Royal Theatre Under Changed Management” – had suggested a lofty change in program sensibility as well: “There is a strong belief that the theatres and pictures are returning to honest and virile melodrama, and leaving their ‘sob stuff’ and sex stories behind.” Pappas was said to be busy negotiating rights to movies for the coming months, making “contracts for some of the very best productions on the market.”
This time Pappas was not the owner and only nominally in charge, working for Dominion. His name appeared prominently on the Royal ads beginning March 31; but that lasted only until around the middle of April.
What happened is unknown, but it appears either that things did not work out with the new ownership or that Pappas himself had lost interest in the movie exhibition business; or perhaps personal and/or financial issues led him astray. Without any apparent announcement, ownership devolved away from Dominion Films to the local owners of the George Street property, the J.R. Stratton Estate. Pappas was now out of the movie exhibition business for good.
Mike Pappas leaves Peterborough — and his family
Examiner, July 3, 1924, p.5.
Pappas continued with his business deals – for instance, purchasing the Burleigh Falls Hotel in June 1924, where he had yet another court case, involving the payment of wages to an employee. But by 1927—28 he had departed Peterborough, leaving town under a small cloud of financial disorder.
On January 4, 1927, he had gone to local lawyer R.R. Hall to cash a cheque in another man’s name for $150. Hall gave him the money, admitting later, “I did not pay very much attention to the matter at the time but I assumed that the cheque was genuine.” The cheque, returned by the bank as unpaid, turned out to be forged. Hall notified the police chief, suggesting that Pappas be “held responsible for his conduct.”
Whether anything came of this or not is unknown. In Toronto Pappas had a short-lived billiards room on Yonge St. near College (in an area soon to be replaced by the new Eaton’s store) and re-established himself as a “real estate agent,” living with his wife Maud and two daughters, Christina and Maria. The rest of his life then becomes something of a mystery.
The Toronto city directory shows the family of four living at 59 Oakwood Ave. in 1931, but the “Pappas Michl real est ag” entry disappears from the listings in 1932. His wife and daughters are still in the city, now residing at 100 Vaughan St., apparently without him.
In the 1935 Toronto directory entry Maud is listed as “wid Mich.” In other words, sometime (probably in the second half of 1934), Mrs. Maud Pappas (or one of her daughters, who lived with her still) chose to tell a canvasser who came to the door — now at 85 Laing Ave. — that she was a widow.
Globe, Aug. 11, 1927, p.16. In the right-hand column, assuming this is our Mike Pappas (which seems likely): possibly yet another court action and a spot of trouble, an order of foreclosure; result unknown.
A researcher might understandably conclude that her husband had died sometime in the previous year or two, but that would be a mistake, for Mike Pappas would quite surprisingly show up in Peterborough later on. For one reason or another, he had split off from the life of his family.
One biographer writing of a similarly split family (that of Toronto-born movie star Mary Pickford) suggests that in Victorian times it “was considered more respectable to be widowed than abandoned” — and perhaps that cultural practice lingered on in the Toronto of the 1930s and 1940s. In any case, a severe rupture had occurred, perhaps something shameful and private, perhaps something involving money given the many earlier occasions in which the rather loose handling of financial affairs had led to problems. (As the 1915 case involving Herbert Clayton revealed, Maud Pappas was intimately involved in the financial transactions of her husband.)
Toronto city directory, 1935, p.978. “Maud (wid Mich)” and her two daughters, Christine and Marie, living at 85 Laing Ave.
After identifying herself as as “widow” in the 1936 and 1937 Toronto directories, Maud went back to simply “Mrs.” Pappas in the 1938–45 editions, but it was “widow” once again in 1946.
After Maud died on Wednesday, March 13, 1946, obituaries in the Globe and Examiner did not mention, in the standard fashion, either that she was predeceased by her husband or that he “survived” her. A short Examiner news piece noted that “Her husband was formerly identified with the old Royal theatre, now the Centre, and at one time owned Park Hotel at Burleigh Falls,” but made no mention of his whereabouts. Most tellingly — or perhaps misleadingly — her death certificate of March 15, 1946, cited her as “widow.”
Examiner, March 15, 1947, p.9.
But she was not a widow. Almost exactly a year later, in the middle of March 1947, Mike Pappas turned up again in Peterborough — at age seventy, alive and perhaps not so well.
This once fabulously wealthy man – remember, for instance, the $70,000 he got from selling the Royal to Dominion – was in a Peterborough police station cell, locked up for vagrancy.
Picked up on a Sunday morning with no place to go and no visible means of support, he spent a full day in the jail before being released after a court hearing Monday morning. He told the judge that he did indeed have a place to stay, at a boarding house, and that he had been picked up without any reason. He was said to have wistfully looked out the police station window to see the back of the theatre he had built many years earlier. He was released to go his own way after the hearing.
That occasion turned out to be a rare and dismal sighting of the pioneering opportunist of modernism – a man who had gone from shoe-shining and cigar selling to exhibiting motion picture shows and presenting delightful vaudeville attractions – a master promoter, a man of property, someone seemingly fast and loose with his money for both good and ill — but nevertheless, “Everything First Class!” – “The swellest of the swell.” As a theatre owner he had once made customers welcome any time of the day or night. He had been kind to children. In his declining years, separated from his immediate family, without money of his own, he apparently became dependent on the assistance of friends and relatives. He died in Belleville, Ont., on Monday, Dec. 10, 1951.
A detail from the larger photo of Mike Pappas and another man at the counter of his cigar shop, 339½ George St., c.1907. National Archives of Canada, nd, B-004541.
The man standing behind the newsboys in the door of the Royal Theatre, February 1917, is most likely Mike Pappas, owner and manager at the time. This is a detail from a larger photo, Balsillie Collection of Roy Studio Images, 2000-012-002915-1 (Newsboys at Royal - Feb 1917), courtesy Peterborough Museum and Archives.
Examiner, Dec. 12, 1951, p.5. Pappas in fact had dabbled with the Crystal Theatre as well, making it three theatres under his command for at least a short time. He also ran films briefly at the Grand Opera House.
Mike Pappas was not completely forgotten. A reminiscence of Peterborough’s historic amusement enterprises in July 1950 remembered how Pappas and his mechanical piano had provided music for motion picture lovers in the early days of cinema – and his presentation of the city’s “first serial picture,” The Adventures of Kathlyn. In 1951 the Examiner did take care to make of his death. Also, oddly enough, the paper had made mention of him just several days earlier: the paper’s daily “How Times Flies” column of Dec. 4, 1951, offered up this note out of the blue: “1921 M. Pappas takes over management of the Royal Theatre after two years of operation by the Allen interests.” In January 1952 a U.S. magazine, the trade publication Exhibitor, out of Philadelphia, reported vaguely on the death of this “pioneer theatreman, Peterborough, Ont.,” with no further details. Otherwise, with slight exceptions the details of the post-Peterborough years in the life of this ground-breaking dynamo remain in the near-dark, adrift in a ghostly theatre with doors closed, lights off, and, as of yet, no projector casting its revealing if flickering light forward to the screen.
Selected Sources
Peterborough newspapers: Examiner, Daily Evening Review, Morning Times.
“The Nickelodeon,” The Moving Picture World, May 4, 1907, p.140.
Kathryn Fuller-Seeley and Karen Ward Mahar, "Exhibiting Women: Gender, Showmanship, and the Professionalization of Film Exhibition in the United States, 1900–1930," in Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, eds., Women Film Pioneers Project (New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2013); https://wfpp.columbia.edu/essay/exhibiting-women-gender-showmanship-and-the-professionalization-of-film-exhibition-in-the-united-states-1900-ndash-1930/.
“Dean Pappas Tells His Canadian Story, Including Origin of Pappas Billiards – Canadian Stories: Dean Pappas,” PTBOCanada website; http://www.ptbocanada.com/journal/2013/3/5/; a video with Dean Pappas.
Terry Ramsaye, “The Motion Picture,” in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: The Motion Picture in Its Economic and Social Aspects, ed. Clyde L. King and Frank A. Tichenor, Concord, N.H. and Philadelphia, November 1926, p.15.
Peggy Dymond Leavey, Mary Pickford: Canada’s Silent Siren, America’s Sweetheart (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2011).