Royal Theatre, Part 2, 1921–25
The Royal Theatre, still there on George Street (looking north from Charlotte St.), August 1930. This was five years after it closed. A detail from a larger photo, Trent Valley Archives (TVA), F50 3.023.
As is generally known, the moving picture business is one of the largest and most important on the continent. This is a legitimate and popular industry, as it provides clean and interesting amusement for the public at small individual cost.
– Peterborough Examiner, Dec. 7, 1921, p.10, in a piece about the reopening of the Royal Theatre.
Examiner, Dec. 6, 1921, p.4. Pappas, and the Royal, return amidst much personal fanfare. Stressing a combination of “entertaining and educative value” for Peterborough folk who appreciate the silent drama.
On Monday, Dec. 5, 1921, the Examiner issued a surprising announcement: Mike Pappas was back, taking over what had been the Allen (1919—21) and turning it once again into the Royal (originally opened in December 1908).
Perhaps the Allens had given Pappas an offer he couldn’t refuse. With that company’s pending bankruptcy, the price was probably not exorbitant. The new Royal, once again under Pappas, reputed to be “Peterborough’s oldest and most experienced moving picture expert,” opened on the afternoon of Thursday, Dec. 8, 1921.
Pappas was abandoning a short managerial stint at the Regent. Now he was promising the local public that he was dedicating himself only to the Royal, disconnecting himself from “any other amusement proposition in the city.” He had, it was said, arranged once again to procure the best picture service available – “in every respect equal to that used in the largest high priced picture houses of Toronto.” In something of a break from the past, he would avoid “amateur or ‘fly-by-night’ cheap vaudeville.” That remained to be seen.
The Examiner gushed about this the latest move on the part of the Greek immigrant who had started out in Peterborough in 1905 as a cigar store/shoeshine/billiards room entrepreneur:
At yesterday’s re-opening of the Royal Theatre, that local veteran of the motion picture business, Mr. M. Pappas, demonstrated by his selection of films that he has his finger on the pulse of public opinion and knows what a Peterborough audience, one of the most critical, demands.
“Mr. Pappas,” the article said, “has learned what Peterborough likes in pictures and because he books independently through all the film exchanges, he is able to give this city the cream of feature pictures, serials and comedies featuring the best stars.”
Examiner, Dec. 29, 1921, p.10. On Christmas Day the Royal was “crowded to the doors” for both matinee and evening performances. Pappas gave the gift of free movies to children at a Saturday matinee on Christmas eve. “I made special efforts for Christmas week,” Pappas said on the 26th, “and I am sorry that hundreds were turned away yesterday.” He promised to show the same program the next two days so that no one would miss it. “It is the biggest treat of the year.”
We can only wonder how much of this glowing press copy came from Pappas himself. In any case, he had engaged a new orchestra, with Mrs. Eveline Foster (once again) as violinist and Miss [L.J.] Hurley at the piano. He held the exclusive franchise for First National Pictures. He was going to be “showing absolutely the best program in the city,” and at reasonable prices. In one of his first statements he announced rather grandly:
In addition to a programme that no other theatre in Canada produces at three times the price of admission, our readers should remember that the Royal is locally owned and operated and that the box office receipts remain here and are spent in Peterboro.
Just the day before that, issuing a similar statement, Pappas had told readers to remember that “we are not trying to unload any stock on the public” — an obvious reference to the strategies of the corporate giants, the Allens and Famous Players Canadian. Not only that, but “Owing to hard times we have reduced prices to a level that all can pay.”
It was the decade of the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, the flapper, with an early postwar economic downturn followed by sustained economic prosperity, at least for a while. It was a lively period – a time, as historian Robert Sklar says, that saw “the loosening of the bonds of the old cultural system,” as reflected in the motion pictures on view.
In 1923, above a notice signed “M. Pappas,” Pappas was once again promoting the likes of the spectacular Roman epic Nero (Fox Film Corp., September 1922) – with its “portrayal of the Circus Maximus, chariot races, martyrdom of the Christians, the burning of Rome, and the charge of the Roman legionnaires” – as representing “the great possibilities of the screen in reproducing historic events.”
Examiner, Jan. 13, 1923, p.9. “More people are in ‘Nero’ than have ever appeared in any motion pictures.”
Examiner, June 14, 1923. The film had been released a year earlier, in spring 1922, and co-starred (the silent film) Harrison Ford. The ad suggests the film’s content in the figures of a fair damsel, a suitor, and, dangerously equated, an “Indian” character and caveman who seem to be offering advice. As it turned out, the picture was indeed a sexist tale with a racist twist in the form of an “Indian” character named Chief Big Tree (played by the actual Chief John Big Tree, of the Seneca Nation). (There was no mention in the plot outlines of a caveman.) The Primitive Lover was not a huge hit. The New York Times reviewer found it “an especially dull and pointless production.” Image thanks to Ken Brown.
Examiner, Jan. 26, 1923, p.1. Pappas exhibits one of the other modern communications technologies. Radio was just coming into its own in the 1920s.
During this period Pappas was assisted by Hyman Abramson (listed as manager in the 1924 city directory), Nelson D. Pogue (a doorman and for a while also manager), Michael Freeman (operator), Lenore Crary and Thomas Begley (cashiers and ticket sellers), and employee David McQuaig. In January 1923 he brought in one of those new-fangled radio machines and played some music. In July 1923 Pappas had a couple of men install and paint a new stage curtain – which included a lively scene of Venice – and called on local merchants to take up “advertising locations” on it.
Exhibitors Herald, October 1923, p.132.
But then halfway through 1923 Pappas abruptly once again “disposed” of the theatre, selling it to Dominion Films Ltd. of Toronto (an offshoot of the Allen family’s business, and primarily a film distributor or exchange). He received what was a staggering amount at the time, $70,000 ($1,051,522 in 2021), and turned his “unexpired contracts with leading film exchanges” over to the Regent Theatre. In a note he quite firmly told Examiner readers, “I will have no connection with the theatre after this date.”
Indeed, the ownership and business affairs of the venerable Royal Theatre were something of a tangled mess in the years 1923–25. When Dominion Films took over the Royal from Pappas in August 1923, the move was part of an attempt at a comeback by the beleaguered “Allen interests.”
As the U.S. entertainment magazine Variety reported, “This is the second time the Royal has been operated by the Allens, they having held it for two seasons up to a year ago, when the advent of the Famous Players into the local field forced them out.” The new ownership would screen first-run productions, “many of them showing here before appearing in the leading Toronto theatres” (a somewhat unlikely claim). Dominion Films had the rights to distribute independent and British pictures.
To manage the theatre, Dominion brought in an experienced “theatre man,” W.P. McGeachie, a newcomer from Northern Ontario. In 1915 McGeachie had managed the Opera House in Cobalt and in 1918 the Regent Theatre in Sudbury before moving to the Capitol Theatre in Welland. In late October 1923 at the Royal, McGeachie was typically promising for a particular evening’s show, “the best melodrama he has booked since taking charge of the Royal.”
That autumn under McGeachie saw some of the most striking Royal Theatre ads ever, with a rare accent, thanks to the Canadian-owned Dominion Films, on British films rather than the usual Hollywood fare.
Examiner, Sept. 1, 1923, p.11.
Examiner, Sept. 29, 1923, p.15.
Examiner, Oct. 27, 1923, p.15. Promising to help “save even a few people from groping in the dark after married happiness,” this U.K. film (released June 1923) would be something of a foil to the likes of The Primitive Lover. With its fictional storyline — “a fireman's fiancée, ejected by her father, becomes a maid and finds small families happier than large ones” — it was only loosely connected to Marie Stopes’s controversial book “of the same name.” Stopes (1880–1958), a British author and palaeobotanist, was a campaigner not only for eugenics but also for women’s rights and birth control (while opposing abortion, at least publicly).
Examiner, Nov. 19, 1923, p.11. A community effort.
Examiner, Dec. 22, 1923, p.11. IMDb indicates that this British film (June 1923) was never released in the United States, but it certainly played in Canada. The film, one commentator says, was “practically a tour of the city,” showing well-known landmarks (announced through inter-titles) such as Putney Bridge and Hyde Park Corner — and ends with an impressive speedboat chase. “Practically all” of the British features handled by Dominion, Motion Picture News reported July 7, 1923, “have enjoyed excellent business in the Dominion since their introduction last fall.”
Examiner, Jan. 3, 1924, p.11. In The Knockout (May 1923),a boxer is knocked unconscious. After he comes to, he buys a race horse, is kidnapped, and his wife kills herself — but luckily it’s all a dream.
Examiner, Oct. 26, 1923, p.17. Creative advertising that lights a fire.
With four theatres (one of which was the huge Grand Opera House), the competition for paying customers was intense, and the Royal ads especially illustrate the theatre’s fever to win over the public’s attention. In one offbeat promotion the house announced, in a banner headline:
Manager Royal Theatre Gets Six Days, Pleads Guilty of Having Secured Elinor Glyn’s Romance of Two Continents ‘Six Days’ Now Playing 2:30 and 8 P.M.
The day after that the Royal took yet another promotional tack, calling on the local firemen to recommend the current feature, The Midnight Alarm (U.S., August 1923). The ad quoted Fire Chief George Gimblett: “It’s a good story all through, and the scenes are the real thing . . . but remember, don’t break any of the fire laws.” The manager assures him he won’t — and he wants “kiddies” to come to the Saturday matinee: “They’ll eat it up!”
Examiner, March 31, 1924, p.11. Pappas is back, though only briefly and serving up both quality and quantity. The Wanters (1923), which included Norma Shearer in the cast, was a love story of class differences, of snobs and snobbishness. Also on the program: a two-reel comedy, a two-reel Western drama, and a single-reel educational picture, and more.
Yet only a short while later Pappas suddenly reappeared – with Dominion apparently turning over the reins of the Royal to him. At the end of March 1924, “on a moment’s notice,” Pappas took over the theatre (for the third time), promising “Good Pictures All the Time – No Disappointments.” A notice a few days earlier – “Royal Theatre Under Changed Management” – had suggested a 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, though, Pappas was not the owner and only nominally in charge – and not for long. His name appeared prominently on the Royal ads beginning on 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. He departed with his family for Toronto in the late 1920s.
Examiner, April 15, 1924, p.15. The initially prominent Pappas name is already gone.
Examiner, June 7, 1924, p.2. Reflecting a lack of desire on the part of the new owners to run the Royal. These owners, however, held on for another year and a half.
Without any apparent announcement, ownership of the Royal devolved away from Dominion Films to the holders of the George Street property, the J.R. Stratton Estate. The local business/press triumvirate of Roland Glover, Robert L. Hall, and Gustavus (“Gus”) L. Hay, co-owners of the Grand Opera House, were to oversee the Royal’s affairs from the offices of the Examiner, in essence acting as owners.
Dominion was somehow still in the mix, though perhaps just on the basis of contracting to supply the motion pictures; the manager was the same W.P. McGeachie who had worked for Dominion and was now also managing the Grand Opera House.
At the beginning of June 1924 the Stratton Estate was trying to sell the theatre. It appears that they did not find a buyer, and so the Estate, the Examiner men, and McGeachie would continue to run things for the next year and a half. Many of the films of this period continued to come from Dominion Films, although by January 1925 the name of that firm had evolved into Canadian Independent Films, a new company also representing Jule and J.J. Allen of Toronto.
Letter from L. Rosenfeld, Dominion Films, to Gustavus Hay, Grand Opera House, Jan 15, 1925. Business affairs for the Royal Theatre were being run through the Grand Opera House. By around that same time Jule and J.J. Allen had formed a new film exchange, Independent Films, which would take over Dominion Films and the Canadian rights to Columbia and Preferred Pictures, among others. Columbia Pictures of Canada would later absorb Independent Films. W.P. McGeachie is the manager in charge. Dominion Films vs. Hay file, PMA, F450.
Contract, March 23, 1925. Independent Films uses the Dominion Films Limited Contract form, simply scratching out the name and adding its own stamp. Dominion Films vs. Hay file, PMA, F450.
In 1924–25 the Royal Theatre continued to boast of sell-outs, shouting out that it was “packed to the doors” and turning patrons away. And it had plenty of strategies for drawing crowds.
A front-page call for the local Irish community to come out and enjoy the show at the Royal; and, at top left, a “flapper” in competition at the Capitol. April Showers (October 1923) came from Preferred Pictures, a short-lived U.S. independent company distributed by Dominion. In the film an Irish-American lad in a slum neighbourhood goes astray in romance but finally boxes his way onto the police force. Here also at the height of the Roaring Twenties was the “jazz age” romantic comedy The Perfect Flapper (May 1924, First National Pictures), which also starred the popular Colleen Moore; she was appearing on two screens at once.
Examiner, Jan. 20, 1925, p.11. The theatres were always about more than motion pictures.
Examiner, April 23, 1925, p.11. The big amateur show: “To-night is the night that fifty patrons of the Royal go home after the show with a worth-while prize.”
The Royal under McGeachie had weekly amateur nights on Thursdays. In the wintertime, perhaps fearful that Peterborough men and boys would not want to go out to a motion picture show while a big game was on, a spokesperson (perhaps manager McGeachie) shouted out the latest hockey scores. The theatre had “Popular Song Nites” – “Hear the New Ones!” — and special evenings of “fine music” – like the “Incomparable Royal Six” for two cold evenings in January 1925 playing selections from the “Floradora musical comedy and many new popular numbers.”
On Mondays the theatre had a “Country Store Nite,” with “prizes and surprises galore!” for lucky audience members. And don’t forget “Gift Week at the Royal” — “Something worth while every night. Watch the screen, the newspaper, our window. It will pay you!” For instance, “Tuesday is Doll Night, when a number of the new plume dolls will be given away.” The theatre put the dolls on display in its window. You had to go that evening to have a chance to get a doll; but just maybe you’d want to go every night.
For three days in February 1925, along with the usual feature the Royal had “Two Clever Child Artists” – the Ferris Duo – who just happened to be on vacation in Peterborough, performing their “novelty of contortion, singing, and dancing.” In September management had an evening of “Western Vaudeville at the Royal,” with Alaska Jack and Princess Prairie Flower.
Examiner, Sept. 12, 1925, p.15. An early announcement for Country Store Nite (April 27, 1925) promised: “To-night is the night that fifty patrons of the Royal go home after the show with a worth-while prize. ‘Country Store Nite’ is presented in an original manner and also provides plenty of laughs.”
After school was out in June, to twist the children’s and parents’ arms and just maybe set them up for summer attendance, the Royal had a “Free! Kiddie Matinee” on Monday the 29th at 2:30 p.m., charging only the one cent war tax – the youngsters could come and see Felix, the Crazy Cat, “two selected comedies,” a segment of the Western serial The Riddle Rider (Universal Pictures, November 1924), and the melodrama The Top of the World (Famous Players–Lasky Corp., February 1925), with Anna Q. Nilsson and James Kirkwood.
McGeachey’s “popular community nights” or “Get To-gether Nights,” with “good” amateur performances, drew large audiences (according to reports). On one of those evenings in September 1925 a “crowded house” – estimated at 904 people – turned out not so much for the featured film (The Night Club, 1925) but to join in singing “old songs” such as “Banks of the Wabash” and “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here.” The tunes “made a hit because every body knew them and sang them.” The theatre had comedy slides between the songs, with McGeachie himself responsible for their “clever wording” – all of it putting everyone “in the proper community spirit.” As the Examiner report put it, it is an “easy matter to sing when you ‘feel at home.”
Examiner, Nov. 30, 1925, p.11. Betty Balfour was publicized as the English Mary Pickford.
In autumn 1925 the Royal had its steady stream of films and the usual extras. The theatre’s programming and promotion in no way implied a house that was suffering or about to go under. Yet in Peterborough both the Grand Opera House and the Royal Theatre would feel the choking effect of the giant corporate octopus.
An Examiner article at the end of November 1925 told the story: in a deal that would take effect on Dec. 1, both the Grand Opera House and the Royal Theatre were being “transferred” to a company called Theatrical Enterprises. Given that the Examiner was an insider to the deal, the story was probably more accurate than most accounts of such deals, yet its details did not mention that Theatrical Enterprises was a 100 per cent subsidiary of Famous Players — which had acquired the shares on March 13, 1925, in a deal with the Trustee of Trans-Canada Theatres Ltd. The news article failed to offer any identification of the company.
Theatrical Enterprises in turn leased both the Grand and the Royal “to Paramount Peterborough Theatres Limited, without profit to Theatrical Enterprises Limited.” The end result of the convoluted deals, as the government investigation inquiry of 1931 later put it, was “that all the theatres in that town should be operated for the benefit of Paramount Theatres Ltd.”
More than one U.S. trade magazine reported the news of the transaction: “The Grand and Royal theatres at Peterborough, Ontario, have been acquired by Famous Players Canadian Corp., Toronto,” said Motion Picture News. “Famous Players already have the Capitol Theatre at Peterborough, the manager of which being A.G. Crowe, one of the best known theatre men in the Province.”
Examiner, Dec. 12, 1925, p.15. The final “spasms” (and roars of laughter) at the Royal.
The Examiner article also promised that the Grand Opera House and, particularly, the Royal, were being delivered into excellent hands that had “safeguarded the Theatre Interests of Citizens.” The Royal would continue to offer quality programs and “take care of patrons in the very best possible manner.” It would guarantee the “high class entertainment” that was always “so necessary in a city the size of Peterboro, which is the centre of so many activities in sport and entertainment in this district.”
Something supposedly “so necessary” lasted just for another fourteen days.
Yet for those two weeks, under its new management all seemed well at the Royal. To begin the month the theatre offered three days’ work for the best of the local amateurs who had appeared on Thursdays. On Thursday the 10th came, as usual, a “successful” amateur night – “Sammie Harris officiated in his usual capable manner” – along with the “side-splitting” feature I’ll Show You the Town (1925), with Reginald Denny, “. . . a comedy bubbling with fresh and novel situations,” plus the shorts: Too Much Mother-in-Law (1925) and an episode of The Great Circus Mystery serial.
Examiner, Dec. 12, 1925, p.15. The Royal’s last hurrah. “. . . Closes Temporary for Improvements.”
On Saturday, Dec. 12, with its ad for I’ll Show You the Town, the Royal took the trouble to declare, in its usual fashion: “Without Fear of Contradiction the Best Entertainment in Town To-night . . . At Least, That’s What Our Patrons Tell Us” – along with a small and (as it turned out) misleading note about a “temporary” closure “for improvements.”
The word “temporary” would prove to be somewhat misleading. Packed houses or not, the theatre’s doors were locked tight following that last Saturday program – and would remain closed to the public for years. No improvements were forthcoming. The magical stage curtain with the scene from Venice and local advertisements would swing open and closed no more. The Country Store Nites were gone for good. By February 1926 manager McGeachie was running the Algoma Theatre in Sudbury, where he would stay for a good long time.
As it turned out, the long-lived and iconic Royal Theatre was one of thirty movie theatres across the country that Famous Players took over through ownership or leases — only to close them down to prevent competition with what it considered to be its prime theatre in the locale (the Capitol). The takeover and concentration of ownership meant a thorough limiting of choice and perspective. For the most part moviegoers would have to be content with Hollywood fare.
Only ten years previously, the city had five motion picture theatres (counting the Grand Opera House), all more or less locally owned. For the next fourteen years — until 1939 — with a few thousand people more added its population, Peterborough had only two motion picture theatres: one (the Capitol) foreign-controlled, and the other (the Regent) also subject to foreign influence although appearing to be independent.
In March 1926, when Jas. D. Fletcher succeeded A.G. Crowe as manager of the Capitol, he also became manager of the defunct Royal and the Grand Opera House. The Grand Opera House screened its last film in June 1928.
In the following years the introductory page of the directories for Peterborough, with its population of 23,000, continued to boast of the city’s array of “Amusements.” Even in 1928, although the Royal had finally been dropped from the theatre listings, the Directory’s opening page, as if pining for the old days, still touted the city’s bounty of an “Opera House, and three moving picture theatres.”
Left hanging in the balance: a list of outstanding contracts accompanying a letter dated Feb. 15, 1926; these were films under contract that had gone unplayed. Dominion Films vs. Hay file, PMA, F450.
The lonely Royal Theatre, 344–46 George Street, October 1927, some two years after it closed — and the doors have posters advertising an event at the Grand Opera House. In 1939 its space would be converted into the Centre Theatre. A detail from a larger photo, PMA, Balsillie Collection of Roy Studio Images.
Meanwhile, in 1929, in an Examiner survey of Peterborough’s “amusements” past, Cathleen McCarthy (“Jeanette”) wrote that the Royal theatre space at 344—346 George St. “remains dark and unused . . .” It would stay that way for another ten years.