By Jack James
The Gem Movie Theater was located on the southwest corner of Main Street and Davis. It was quite an operation!
The long brick building was first owned by Charlie and Lou Moore. A general store operated by Mr. Moore and Jim Ingram ran in that building for several years. Then the store changed hands for many, many times until Mr. Lacey Berkley bought out the stock from its last renter, Vin Farmer. Berkley ran a grocery store there himself for several years. He rented the building for twelve dollars a month. After one year of operation, Berkley purchased the building.
In the 1930s, Berkley was approached by Clint Dunn who wanted to curtain off the back of the store and run a movie theater. Dunn used to show silent films on the side of the livery stables downtown. Feeling adventurous and spurred by the idea of talking moving pictures, the men moved the feed sacks and grocery goods to the back of the store and then they were in business. Customers sat on homemade benches and, many nights the building was so crowded that they had to sit on the wood planked floor. Business was so good that they moved the store to the building next door so they could use the entire building as a theater. They opened the doors two days a week on Saturdays and Tuesdays, showing a different film on each night. The admission price was ten cents.
Sometimes kids would sneak into the movies by hiding in the sacks and shelves of the store behind the curtain. The kids would quietly sneak from behind the curtain and sit in the floor in the front when the lights were dimmed and the movie began. Berkley was on constant guard. Several citizens of the area recalled that Berkley caught one of the boys one night who had stolen their way into the theater. Berkley gave him a spanking with an eighteen inch piece of boot strap leather in front of the entire movie crowd.
The theater was bought out eventually and to a man named Carl Dozier. The theater was IN business in Lavaca. The death toll for the Gem Theater, like many other area small town theaters, was the popularity of television in the 1950s. Someone once said, “People quit coming to the movies when the movies started coming to them.” Also, after World War II, the people gained in prosperity and were able to afford vehicles that could make the trip to Fort Smith without much problem. This began the decline of not only the Gem Theater but in local mom-and-pop grocery stores as well.
In the last four years of business, the building was used as a karate club, a fabric shop and a western store. Berkley sold the building to Leon Brown in 1972. Brown sold the place for $3000 to Roger Cook just a few months before he had the building torn down.
The property, along with others along Main Street on that block, is now the location of the beautiful Farmer’s Bank.
Joe Chronister recalled in a conversation about the theater that the admission fee was slowly raised to fifty-cents before the movie theater closed. That’s good money for a ticket in a small town in the mid-century. There were people telling stories of their times there and the movies they saw. Some told of their first date at their theater, about the nervousness they had. There were dates with future wives and husbands. The memories are good ones for everyone I have spoken to about it.