Royal Theatre, Part 1, 1908–19
The Royal Theatre, 348 George St., a couple of months after it opened. No lavish display of posters; the notices for the films are simply printed out and loosely attached to the front windows — but the names — “Adventure of Mr. Trouble” and “Spanish Blood” — help us to date this photo to on or around Feb. 6, 1909. Photo courtesy of Peterborough Museum and Archives.
Examiner, Feb. 6, 1909, p.1. The program the day the above photo was taken.
The Royal Theatre had a long and constantly changing life (with one intermediate change of name) stretching from 1908 to 1925. Although much smaller in capacity than the Grand Opera House, it was the city’s first building project in a space reconstructed and designed as a motion picture (and vaudeville) theatre — as opposed, for instance, to a made-over storefront that previously housed electrical or plumbing supplies (the Colloseum) or a tailor (Wonderland). It was larger and more comfortable than the storefront Crystal, and the coolest (in the summer heat), with regular upgrades of projectors. Its lifetime falls into three periods:
1) 1908–19, its early years
2) 1919–21, when it became the chain-owned Allen Theatre, and
3) 1921–25, when it was revived under its original name, the Royal.
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In April 1908 a Greek tobacco merchant known as Mike Pappas took out a lease on a George Street property that had for a while been occupied by the Daily Times newspaper and printing shop. He announced that he was planning to establish a “moving picture business.”
Almost three-quarters of a year later, true to his word, Pappas opened the Royal Theatre, on Saturday, Dec. 19, 1908.
The east side of the George St. streetscape,above Charlotte St., before the Royal Theatre moved in. The Daily (or Morning) Times newspaper and printing company was at 348 George; beside it, to the north, was the long-lived R. Neill store, boots and shoes. In 1907 Mehail Pappakeriazes had tobacco shops (and much more) both next door at 344 George and across the street. For a while a barber, F.B. Patterson, was also at 344 George. These buildings are all gone, replaced in the mid-1970s by Peterborough Square.
A rare glimpse of the early Royal Theatre, peaking out on the right side of this drawing and next to the Neill Shoe Store. From a booklet, Peterborough, “The Electric City: Views of City and District,” issued in 1914.
Examiner, Dec. 20, 1909, p.7. Not great quality, but it is the only image of the stage of the Royal that I've seen.
If the Crystal was a small step up from the Colloseum and Wonderland, the Royal was a giant leap. It was not, like the three motion picture theatres that came before it, a storefront renovated into a small makeshift space. Rather, it was a large property purposefully reconstructed into something entirely new: a dedicated and long-lasting theatre, freshly built primarily for screening motion pictures but also with a wide stage that could be used for vaudeville performances and a decently sized pit for a small orchestra.
The new owner had completely torn out the ground floor interior of the old Times building, extending the rear of the premises back some 16 feet. Someone, perhaps the owner himself, stated that the renovations had the effect of replacing the former building with (not to put too fine a point on it) “one of the most artistic and modern places of amusement in the Dominion.”
Although it could not be counted among the “movie palaces” that would soon dot the North American landscape, the Royal Theatre served as Peterborough’s primary motion picture theatre for over a dozen years. It would be in place as a lively community gathering space until corporate shenanigans closed it down in 1925.
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Mike Pappas took out a building permit for a new “theatorium” at 348 George St. in October 1908, 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.”
Peterborough City Directory, 1905-6, p.207.
Mehail Pappakeriazes (his real name) had immigrated to Canada in 1903 and spent some time in Montreal and Kingston before arriving in Peterborough in early 1905. He was a distant relation of Peterborough city councillor Dean Pappas, owner of the Pappas Billiards Room; he was the first cousin of Dean’s grandfather. At some point Mike Pappas decided to add to his business enterprises by getting into the new motion picture exhibition business.
For months in 1908 the site at 348 George had been boarded up, hidden from public view, arousing considerable curiosity. It had been speculated that the appearance of the proposed theatre, with its “elaborate street entrance” and “all the modern effects,” would “enliven the whole block.” The theatre “promises to be according to the latest idea in that style of building.” Carpenters and electricians had been hard at work, led by contractors MacGregor and Held – with workers removing the old front façade of the building and ripping out the ground-floor interior.
In mid-November Pappas announced that he had chosen a name: Royal Theatre. He told the Examiner, “A very large number of lights will be used in the front and in the sign.”
Examiner, Dec. 12, 1908, np.
On Saturday Dec. 19 the boards were taken down and passersby saw revealed before their eyes “a vision of splendid architectural perfection and beautiful illumination.”
Over a high front arch the name – Royal Theatre – shone out brightly with the help of two hundred electric lamps. The sign was manufactured locally by the J.J. Turner Company. The entrance proper – with doors on both sides for entering and exiting – was “protected from the gales of winter by plate-glass front doors.” Inside, the walls of the lobby on either side of the ticket office had diamond-shaped plate-glass mirrors. The walls of the theatre itself were divided into framed panels “with hand-painted devices.” The theatre had something like 500 seats at first.
Examiner, Dec. 18, 1908, p.8.
In those early days of cinema exhibition, the prospects seemed to be magical. An Examiner article called attention to the “fairy-like appearance of the entrance.” Visitors would walk into the theatre “over a beautiful mosaic tile pavement.” On either side were “walls covered with artistically finished plate glass ovals surrounded by hand-cut ornamental glass in Persian design.” But more: “Over the seat of Caesar, or ticket office, is a handsome cut glass covered wall, the glass being mirrors made in a pleasing design, the outer having the words ‘Royal Theatre’ emblazoned thereon.”
The lights alone were dazzling, although the newspaper no doubt went a little too far in exclaiming: “Possibly no similar theatre on this continent is better illuminated by electric light.” The theatre frontage had over six hundred incandescent lamps, with one hundred and eighty of them being on the sign. The theatre had “two new pianos of latest make” – the New Scale Williams brand – and, at the theatre entrance, an “electronically played instrument especially imported from the United States.” The two pianos were said to have a cost of over $1,400. The theatre had three projecting machines imported from New York. They could “throw clearer and better pictures on the screen than ever seen before in Canada.” The auditorium had “electric light fixtures of expensive make and handsome design.” The seats were the “latest make of comfortable opera house chairs.” Moreover, “Every child and lady in Peterborough will be as safe in the Royal as in their respective homes.”
In direct contrast to the stuffy and sometimes unpleasant conditions at the smaller storefront theatres, Pappas made sure to install fans to ensure good ventilation – again, imported, this time from St. Louis. In the heat of July 1909 the theatre could advertise a “self cooled motor fan . . . the Royal Theatre is the coolest place to go.”
Examiner, Feb. 9, 1909, p.10. Recognizing area farmers as patrons.
As for the motion pictures, at least some of them would come from Paris, where the best films were being made. In the style of the times, the owner pulled no punches in his claims: “These films (or pictures) will be seen by Peterborough people before any other audience in Canada. The new films show clearer and better pictures than the cheaper films that pass from one theatre to another.” The ads promised that new films would be arriving every morning. In the beginning, Beveridge Miller, from Detroit (with his “fine tenor robusto voice”) was in charge of the musical program. C.H. Clemento [sic] (Charles H. Clementi was a city editor at the Times) had a dual job, as press agent and lecturer — the voice down front, by the screen, who was often necessary to explain the enigmatic silent pictures.
On Saturday the 19th of December 1908, large crowds gathered outside the theatorium for an open house. Farmers wandered over from the morning market held in the square behind the Bradburn Building and Market Hall. Anyone interested could go inside and look around and see a few moving pictures. The automatically operated electric piano just inside the front doors proved especially fascinating. “How does that work?” more than one visitor asked. “Why, look at those keys, pounding away without anyone at the piano!”
The crowds flowed in and out all day, reportedly uttering “exclamations of delight.” The sample pictures that day were said to be “the best ever seen in Peterborough” and “fully equal” to those shown in the best theatres in Toronto or Montreal and leading U.S. cities.
Examiner, Dec. 19, 1908, p.16.
For Monday evening, the 21st, Pappas brought in musicians from Detroit and Chicago, and the theatre was “filled to the doors” each evening of that first week.
At least one customer was not impressed. A curious Cathleen McCarthy, at age nineteen, turned up a week after the opening with her mother and sister: “Mama and Mamie and I went down to the new Royal picture moving show, to-night. It isn’t much good though.” She was a regular patron of the Crystal, which she considered quite “cozy,” and may have felt some loyalty. But that initial impression did not keep her from going again and again. At the end of December and through the first week of January 1909, for instance, when “the Great Selvin,” an illusionist (“one of the cleverest in this line”) made a week-long appearance with his company and various specialties, the attraction lured Cathleen McCarthy back for her second visit, accompanied by her sister and a boyfriend. By spring 1909, she was noting of the Royal, “It is dandy.”
Examiner, Jan. 2, 1909, p.1.
Like the Crystal, the Royal was open that first year “morning, afternoon and evening,” even for the Christmas holiday. Unlike the Crystal, from very early on Pappas was astutely placing his ads prominently on the Examiner’s front page, formalizing the theatre’s place in the community, providing its motion pictures with a new legitimacy and the enterprise with a sense of worthiness. The Royal was a place that had something for everyone: working people, country folk, and even the more well-to-do.
While the Crystal remained a small store-front upstart (though it was certainly popular enough), the Royal, Pappas seemed to say, was here to stay. And in that he was correct. He was so sure of its place that he even had an ad engraved in a marble table top so that people going out to dine (probably at the Oriental Hotel) couldn’t help but be impressed.
To give just one example of the emphasis on the local: when Peterborough was “invaded” by soldiers in May 1909 – some 800 soldiers from Brantford and St. Catherines over two days, the “biggest military demonstration” in the city’s history – Pappas took care to have his specially engaged performer, Miss Phyllis Clarke, on stage dancing the Sailor’s Horn Pipe in a sailor’s costume; and his illustrated song vocalist, Howard Loftus, delivered a song especially for the visiting soldiers. Pappas clearly expected many of the soldiers to turn up for the motion pictures during their stay in town.
From the very start the Royal offered the usual mix of motion pictures, music, and (at least until 1915) vaudeville performances. For a while Pappas kept the price of admission at five cents (with vaudeville presentations occasionally costing a dime).
Starting out, the Royal had eleven male employees in all, with seven of them born in Peterborough and four in Toronto. The singers he brought in, besides Beveridge Miller, included Albert Victor Loftus, “a fair-haired young Irish lad with a silvery tenor voice,” and, in March 1910, Miss Clarice Burgess, “Lately of the Bennet Circuit formerly engaged in some of the best theatres in New York City.” Herbert Birchall, a pianist, would become chief operator (or projectionist) at the Royal by September 1909. For a few weeks in January-February 1915 the Royal advertised a “Lady Orchestra.”
The pianists had to be talented, alert, and adept. In the early years they most often made up the music as they went along, suiting the various moods of a given film. Comments on the music are few and far between, but one day (when the film Serpentine Dance [France, Pathé Frères, 1909] was the prime attraction) the Examiner noted of Birchall that he
gave a clear exhibition of improvising music to-day in connection with a picture that was displayed showing many different kinds of dances. There was no musical score accompanying the picture, but Mr. Birchall succeeded in improvising an accompaniment in perfect time.
Examiner, Feb. 26, 1909, p.1. Music, marathon races, and some education about tambourines.
Examiner, May 22, 1909, p.21. The Pappas/Royal ad makes sure to draw in visiting soldiers.
Examiner, March 23, 1909, p.1.
In May 1909 the owner engaged for a week, for “special songs and dances,” a certain “Miss Phyllis Clarke, of Toronto, the pretty little girl lately of the McPhee Stock Co.” A week later it was a “Peterborough boy,” violinist “Master Frank Halpanny,” playing a number of evenings. On Monday May 31, 1909, a Royal Theatre ad served notice that it would have “a full orchestra” in attendance during the evening show, “and lovers of good music should not miss being present.” The orchestra, with its four instruments playing, put it a step above the earlier nickel theatoriums and their single piano player.
In June 1909, fighting the summer heat that might keep customers away, the Royal took trouble to install a “self cool motor fan . . . the first of its kind in the city.” The fan “works like a charm,” the paper said, “exhausting all the warm air in the building in a few seconds.”
Examiner, Oct. 16, 1909, p.1. Everything new at the Royal.
That autumn, less than a year after it opened, the thriving theatre increased its capacity to 600 seats. Pappas took over the space of a barber shop, which had been situated in a corner of the building, placing one hundred extra seats in it – “of mahogany,” with “comfortable rounded backs.” According to the report, “Every seat is needed at that popular place of amusement.” Over the following years, from time to time the owners announced ambitious plans to increase the space even more, complete with a gallery — up to a thousand or more seats — but that seems to have never happened. One source gives the number of seats in the theatre’s prime as 751.
In July 1910 the Royal doubled its price for evenings to ten cents a ticket (keeping afternoons at five cents). The “bumper crowds” he was getting, Pappas argued, “realize that they are getting a twenty-five cent show for ten cents.” In June 1912 the price for afternoon shows was bumped up to ten cents as well; children’s tickets remained at five cents.
The owners erected a new sign out front, stretching up almost the entire height of the building, in May 1911. Manufactured by Holman Electric Installation Co., Rochester, N.Y., it was said to be the “largest electric sign to be erected in Peterborough.”
Examiner, April 10, 1911, p.6. New signs galore in Peterborough, with the “popular Royal” leading the lot.
In general the city’s two theatoriums continued to thrive, and the local response was largely positive. By June 1909, according to one report, the Crystal and Royal were “enjoying a wide measure of patronage, being the principal source of amusement for a large proportion of the city’s population.” They were “conveniently situated, well looked after, and so conducted that they are places of thorough enjoyment.” The moving pictures shown were “clean, entertaining and instructive.” They offered “Nothing that would offend the most fastidious mind,” and their high quality meant they could be “patronized very largely by the ladies of the city.” Indeed: “The moving picture theatre has solved a great problem in providing cheap and beneficial entertainment for the great mass of citizens.”
Examiner, Sept. 18, 1914, p.13. And you could learn how to do the latest society dances.
Morning Times, Dec. 17, 1914, p.5. No need to name the pictures; just come out.
Pappas handed operation of the Royal over to Herbert Clayton in March 1913, but took back control two years later. Now touting itself as “the People’s Theatre,” the unionized Royal promised the “Nicholls Orchestra” and advertised its “2 Operating Machines. 2 Operators. No Stops” and, typically, “3 Dramas 2 Westerns 2 Comedies,” all in one session’s entertainment. In autumn 1915 Pappas was stating on the front page of the newspaper: “The Royal is open to judgement of the public as to results of goods given for your money. We know that here is your opportunity to get amusement for small money.” A year later he was declaring, “Good values in war times.” In 1917 he was offering school children a special price of five cents for the Saturday matinees.
Examiner, Feb. 14, 1917, p.7.
By that year the theatre’s façade — compared to the early photo (above) was scarcely recognizable — covered, as it was, by a wild barrage of film posters. (See “Newsboys Outside the Royal Theatre, 1917.”) Still, the Royal was not just the “best show in Peterborough” but, as the usual over the top hype put it, “the best show in Canada for the money” (besides which, in the depths of winter, it was “well heated and ventilated”). Pappas, always the “enterprising manager,” added two new Powers (projecting) Machines, “the best and latest made,” and signed contracts with two major distributors based in New York: “Mr. Pappas wants Peterborough theatre goers to enjoy the benefit of the best plays and pictures the bigger cities can put on the canvas.” He trusted that the local audience would respond appropriately. Meanwhile, the paper suggested, “War May Easily Extend Over Another Winter,” which turned out to be true. In July 1918 Pappas made an additional investment, buying “a gold fibre screen” and “two new Simplex projection machines.”
In local memories of later years the Royal was “known for its mechanical piano” and for playing serials such as The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913). In 1947 (on the occasion of opening of the Odeon), an Examiner reporter recalled that the Royal “was a noisy place on Saturday afternoon. Vague memories bring back a serial featuring Singaree and Howie, but we never had a chance to see the end of that celluloid masterpiece because the theatre was burned along with the Neill Shoe Store and the Dominion Bank, one cold winter night.”
That writer proved to have an excellent memory (or perhaps had done his research). On Friday, Jan. 25, 1918, movie-goers who had ventured out into the cold had indeed been able to see the last episode of the immensely popular The Further Adventures of Stingaree (1917), the story of a gentleman who, falsely accused of murder in England, flees to Australia to live an outlaw’s life (Howie was his sidekick). The audience also saw a sensational First World War drama of love and deceit, The Dark Road (1917), a tragic affair starring unscrupulous vamp Dorothy Dalton. Not only that, but it also screened the popular Western star William A. Hart in The Square Deal Man (1917) — plus a Keystone comedy and the “Latest Triangle comedy.”
Those would be the last films shown at the Royal for quite some time. The following morning, at 5:30 a.m., a huge fire broke out next door in the Robert Neill Boots and Shoes store, rapidly spreading north to the Matthews-Blackwell produce store and then to the Dominion Bank on the corner of George and Simcoe. It also moved south to the Royal Theatre. A boiler had exploded in the basement of the Neill store. For the ground floors of the Dominion Bank, Matthews-Blackwell, and Royal it was not so much fire but water damage that did the harm. Water had been poured incessantly into the properties for about twelve hours.
The Dominion Bank was “badly gutted,” and the other properties were “pretty badly wrecked.” The fire was under control by about ten in the morning as firefighters managed to save the adjacent buildings, including the Assembly/Victoria Hall and the Market Hall; but by then, as a headline put it, “Half of George St. Block Is Ruined.” At the time it was acknowledged as the worst fire that had ever been experienced in the business section.
The January 1918 fire, showing the southeast corner of Simcoe and Charlotte: the Dominion Bank on the corner, the Neill store, and the Royal Theatre. The perpendicular “Royal” sign is the one erected in 1911. Photo from Roy Studio postcard views, Peterborough Museum and Archives. Thanks to Ken Brown.
Edward Parks, “an elderly employee of the Royal,” had a room over the theatre and narrowly escaped from the blaze. As historian Elwood Jones described it, “He was awakened by the smoke, and escaped in his night clothes, half suffocated.” The Examiner reported:
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. Only a few days after the fire, the owner announced that he had reached an agreement with the Grand Opera House: the Royal was taking over “the Exclusive Right for the Presentation of Moving Pictures” at the opera house on “open nights.” Pappas was planning a trip to Toronto to select films to show. He promised that he tickets for admission would be the “same old Royal prices” of ten and five cents, and not the Grand’s higher prices, but as it turned out the prices could be higher, depending on the seat.
Examiner, May 2, 1918, p.11. Cleopatra and Quaker Oats, side by side, with the Royal showing its films at the Grand Opera House. This show, though, did have higher prices, with Pappas making his huge claims: “the greatest film ever shown” and the “first time” for the film outside the larger cities.
Examiner, May 1, 1918, p.8. Pappas books Cleopatra for the Grand Opera House.
Examiner, May 20, 1918, p.11.
The first Royal movies were shown at the opera house on Feb. 11, with The Christian (1914, re-released in 1917), based on a play by Hall Caine, and Chaplin in The Rink (1916). By the end of February Pappas was making plans to renovate his old fire-battered space. He was contemplating a “pit” with 600 seats and a balcony with 400. By July 1918 he had made an additional investment, buying “a gold fibre screen” and “two new Simplex projection machines.” Originally he hoped that the theatre would be ready by August. But it was much later, around Christmas Day 1918, when the doors of the “New Royal” were finally opened.
Examiner, March 29, 1919, p.12.
Another big change came in March 1919. Pappas reached an agreement with Paramount Theatres, becoming, as he put it, a “link” in the Paramount chain, a franchise that had been held in Canada since 1914 by the showmen-brothers Jule and Jay J. Allen (though not for much longer). As Moving Picture World announced in April, “Paramount Theatres, Ltd., of Toronto, a subsidiary of Regal Theatres, Ltd., has added to its chain of theatres in Eastern Canada by the acquisition of the Royal Theatre, Peterboro, Ont. Manager Pappas will remain in charge of the house.”
The sale to Paramount did assure the Royal, and Pappas, of the best, first-run films available. 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.
The story of the Royal continues in Part 2: 1921—25.