Sunday, February 7, 2010
Lost Memphis Warner Theatre and Main Street at Night in 1961
Posted by Vance Lauderdale on Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 10:32 PM
- South Main Street - 1961
This nighttime view of South Main Street — taken by an unknown photographer and discovered in a box of Kodachrome slides tucked away in the Lauderdale Library — shows the Warner Theatre in 1961. I know the date because that's when the movie Parrish, promoted on the theatre's stunning marquee, was showing. The drama starred Troy Donahue, Connie Stevens, and Claudette Colbert, and lobby cards proclaimed that it depicted "More Than a Boy ... But Not Yet a Man!"
Oh, how many times that same phrase has been used to describe ME — usually by my team of psychiatrists. The pills they gave me just do no good at all.
There's wasn't much traffic on Main Street on this evening. Though the Warner is long gone, the old Lawrence Furniture building next door (originally constructed in the late 1800s as the Lemmon & Gale Building) is still standing on Main Street, as are many of the other structures dimly visible in the old photograph.
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Ah, the Warner. That was one of my favorite theaters downtown. As a boy back in the early '60s, I would take a bus downtown once a week in the summer. I'd go to 2 different theaters and watch movies, then catch a bus to go back home. I think the total ever spent for the entire experience was about $2.50. I remember going to see "Parish" at the Warner. "Hercules Unchained" was also a Warner memory.
Thanks for the grand slice of the past to muse over!
Vance, you just need better doctors.
And the Lawrence Furniture Store closed in April 1973 ... and last year the sign finally came down!!
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