Coming Full Circle: A History of Theatres in Johnson County
Dateline: 1915 Strang Aviation Park.
Overland Park, Kansas.
William Strang, businessman from back East, premieres silent moving pictures this evening at 8 p.m. Admission is 5 cents.
William Strang arrived in Johnson County some years earlier with a vision of creating, on some acreage he had purchased, a town he would name Overland Park. However, there was a problem with his plan. These parcels of land were considered to be quite some distance from major commerce, work and recreation areas of Kansas City. Since most of the heads of families moving to Strang’s new development would likely secure employment in Kansas City, the isolation from both work and recreational facilities would be a roadblock to selling his suburban concept. That Overland Park was considered too far out in the country challenged Strang to find a way to overcome this objection. After much rumination, he devised his two-fold plan.
Strang’s Two-fold Plan
First, he would make it easy to travel the distances to and from his new development and Kansas City; and secondly, he would create excellent recreational facilities to entertain the families who purchased this real estate. So with these objectives in mind, he began to implement his plan.
Strang was correct that transportation would be the most financially straining of these objectives. Although it was with great expense and technological know-how, after a couple of years he accomplished his transportation goal. Strang laid railroad track from present-day Olathe through Overland Park, and into the industrial hubs of Kansas City. This, the Strang Line, made it convenient and affordable to move easily from town to town. However, Strang saw many of his new residents travel back into the big city for their entertainment. There were not the golf courses, swimming pools and convenient shopping we associate with today’s Johnson County. So, once the transportation roadblocks had been overcome and people began to flock to his new development anticipating a better quality of life, how would he retain their community loyalty and discretionary spending money? It was time to take a serious look into the second part of his grand design.
Moving Pictures! Ta Da!!!
To that end, Strang brought the newest and most innovative state of the art entertainment to his citizens – MOVING PICTURES! Ta Da!!! At a time when moving pictures were the new arts and entertainment medium, Strang not only introduced many folks to motion pictures, he saturated their weekends with the latest products from Hollywood. He brought reel after reel into Johnson County to entertain and amuse his new residents. He was not going to have his residents going into the big city for their fun. Every weekend, he had Overland Park’s premiere of the hottest moving picture going. Imagine how it must have been. On Sunday evening strolling down to the green lawns of Aviation Park (Strang also displayed barn-storming and aerial acrobatic shows at Aviation Park.) and viewing such stars as Clara Bow, Douglas Fairbanks and America’s sweetheart Mary Pickford smack on the west wall of Strang’s barn. That’s right…barn. The patrons’ walk through Aviation Park led them to a group of chairs facing the airplane hangar, which was the largest, vertical flat surface around. Strang thought that there would be no better “screen” for showing the moving pictures that the broad side of his barn, and he was right.
Night after night customers came in droves, took their wooden seats, and whooped and hollered as Buster Keaton extracted himself out of one bad predicament to the next right there on the broadside of a barn. While this might seem rather primitive, moving pictures were still somewhat an oddity, and any chance to see your favorite movie star would have been a thrill even if you had to ignore the Burpee Seed sign behind Gloria Swanson’s brow. Strang’s citizens were now happy, and life was good out in the new suburbs. William Strang realized his goals and many families moved into the area and experienced the first and only outdoor movie house in Johnson County. However, in time, audiences began to expect more than a film shown outdoors on the side of a barn for their five cents.
A New Beginning in Cinema
The small rumblings of discontent became larger growls that would lead to change. Now-savvy movie audiences’ complaints about their outdated and outdoor venue were heard all the way to downtown Kansas City, Mo., where new-and-improved movie houses were being built. Overland Park patrons heard the whispers that the big city really gave them something over Strang’s simple barn theatre concept. Not surprisingly, soon many of the loyal but curious Aviation Park patrons began to trek into the city to see what the fuss was about, and who could blame them? They discovered the big fuss was well deserved. Once in the city, the Johnson County consumer discovered a whole new world to choose from in movie theatre venues, and they did not mind at all spending their discretionary dollars in these movie palaces. The Midland, Orpheum, Regent, Tower and Roxy began to appear on the cityscape and movie and the theatres in which we view them were never to be the same. The opulent movie palace was born and coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
The Neighborhood Theatre
As Kansas City was beginning to develop its neighborhood movie theatres, a couple of Johnson County businessmen realized there was still a theatre market in Overland Park. True, the outdoor venue that pioneer Strang had created was sorely outdated, but W.W. Weldon and C.E. Ogan figured that a nice and aesthetically pleasing indoor movie theatre in Johnson County would be a success. So in 1925, the 308-seat silent theatre movie house Overland was opened around 80th and Santa Fe and, as they had hoped, it was an instant success. Finally, Johnson County had its first real neighborhood theatre, and the Overland Park residents no longer had to migrate into the city to be entertained INDOORS.
Weldon and Ogan understood that a local theatre serviced by local people would come to have a comfortable and personalized feel to it. Certainly, in these early days, each neighborhood theatre had its own personality, and with this concept, the profits soared (for a while). For a brief shining moment, this was where most of the township’s 1,000 residents came to see movies and be seen by their neighbors. What fun it must have been to relax among your family and friends as an adventure or comedy unfolded before your eyes.
Another theatre opened about this time in Overland Park called the Star. It was much smaller than the Overland, but operated under the same premise: service your customers with the highest regard and show great films. While the concept of the neighborhood theatre was born, unfortunately, like so many other businesses at this time, the beginning of the Great Depression was to bring the Overland and the Star to their ends. A few other notable theatres popped up around Johnson County during this same time. Most notable were the Trail in Olathe, the Bank in Lenexa, and the Aztec in Shawnee, but it wasn’t until Dickinson entered the picture that things really got going.
From Neighborhood to Chain
By the time Glen Wood Dickinson came to town, he had already amassed nearly 40 indoor movie theatres in and around Kansas City. So it was no surprise when he moved his entire operation from Lawrence to downtown Kansas City in 1936. A large movie theatre chain needed to be in the center of things, and 3525 Broadway was about as central as one could be to the industry (movie and otherwise) in Kansas City, but it hadn’t always been big for Glen Wood Dickinson.
Dickinson had done stints in the U.S. Forestry service, sold automobiles and run a gas station before the theatre bug got into his system. Once in his blood, he rapidly ascended from single screen owner of the neighborhood theatre the Marshall in Manhattan, Kan., to one of the first chain theatre companies in the Midwest. Before he sold his theatre chain to Griffith Theatres out of Oklahoma for a reported one and a half million dollars in 1937, he was operating a mini empire of 37 movie houses. By standards outside the region, this may have been a small operation, but here at home, Glen Dickinson paved the way for what was to come in the movie theatre industry — the chain concept. No longer were movie theatres solely identified by their own personality and neighborhood, but they were known by the identifying components and uniformity of that particular chain. Without question, the family Dickinson single-handedly changed the Midwestern landscape of how movie houses looked and how the public perceived them. Later Glen Wood Dickinson and his son, Glen Dickinson Jr., created an even larger system of theatres that spanned a four-state area and boasted almost 50 theatres. The time for chain theatres had come. So long mom and pops; hello big business!
Though Dickinson may have been the pioneer in bringing big-business movie houses to this area of the Midwest, many other corporations saw the opportunity to capitalize on our movie-going population. Thus, the new concept of the chain megaplex was born. This latest innovation from the chain proprietors was a collection of screens all housed under a single roof. The idea was to give the movie consumer a wider variety from which to choose in a convenient one-stop family center that provided for each member’s cinematic tastes.
Beginning in the 1970s, AMC Theatres, in particular, built many megaplex theatres in the Kansas City area including Ward Parkway Theatres, which at its latest boasted 30 screens. Later they added the Town Center 20 and Studio 30 in southern Johnson County. Cinemark, another national corporation, began the move to the area by opening Movies 10 at 119th and Metcalf, which was echoed across the street by Dickinson’s SouthGlen 12. By the 1980s, Johnson County was inundated with several large chain multiscreen megaplexes, but problems arose. Many theatres were forced to close due to non-attendance in the late 1990s. It seemed that with the advent of DVD and video, fewer people were attending the megaplexes possibly because too many choices and too many screens had over saturated the Johnson County market. Cinemark countered by opening the Palace on the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City. The Palace features a VIP room with leather recliners and your own waiter or waitress to serve you dinner and alcoholic beverages throughout the movie. Seemingly attention to service in smaller venues was once again becoming en vogue. Enter the Fine Arts Theatre Group.
The Renaissance of the Neighborhood Theatre
Quietly and methodically, the Fine Arts Theatre Group of Kansas City has begun to respond to this desire for the smaller venue and has been at work over the past 15 years reconstructing several smaller neighborhood theatres back into the glory of their heydays. With one purpose in mind, this group, (including Brian and Ben Mossman and Wade Williams) purchased many single screen theatre venues in and around Johnson County to make new again what had been forgotten and old. With the revitalization of theatres such as the Rio (formerly the Dickinson’s Overland theatre) in Overland Park, the Aztec Theatre in Shawnee (formerly the Mission theatre), and the classic 50-foot screen Englewood in Independence, Mo., they have filled a niche in this once again sought after market. Brian Mossman, partner in the group, said about the revitalization process, “When everyone seems to be ready and willing to go in different directions concerning what they want and expect from their entertainment value, we came in and offered an alternative choice.
“There seems to be a renaissance occurring in the film and theatre industry, and we recognized this. The shift has moved away from the large and assembly-line look of the 1980s theatre venue, and is moving back again to the smaller and more personalized look of the movie houses of days gone by. I believe from that bigger isn’t always better, and that everyone who steps into one of our retrofitted theatres also appreciates the uniqueness of small venue design and the emphasis placed on quality product and outstanding and personalized customer service. Before embarking on any of our projects, we firmly believe in a singular premise: If we restore it, they will come, and most certainly they have,” Mossman said.
From the days of William Strang and his aviation barn concept, to the wonderful and unique neighborhood theatres of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and through the megaplex chain theatre boom of the 1980s, Johnson Countains have proven time and again that we love these moving pictures as much as those guys in the big cities do, and perhaps, we love our theatres even more.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation recently listed historical movie theatres nationwide on their most endangered historical sites list.
From a Kansas City Star article, June 26, 2001
