Wednesday Ephemera: Arcadia Theater Schedule, 1975

Time was, youngsters, when Kerrville addresses would get a card like the one below in the mail most months.  Please note there was only one feature showing at a time -- and, at the time, I believe the Arcadia was the only indoor movie theater in Kerrville.  (There was a drive-in theater, the Bolero, about where Culvers and McDonalds are today, on Junction Highway; I think the Plaza theater, on Plaza Drive, also one screen, opened in 1976 or 1977.)

Click on image to enlarge

Arcadia Theater movie schedule, Kerrville, 1975

There have been other movie theaters here: the Dixie Theater, which was in the 800 block of Water Street, which featured bleachers and is remembered for the vermin that scurried beneath moviegoer's feet, and the Rialto Theater, which was in the 600 block of Water Street, next to our printing company, where our parking lot is today.  The Rialto later became the Casket, a popular dance club for teenagers.
In the early part of the last century, films were also shown at Pampell's, upstairs.  Anna Belle Council described Pampell's as "perhaps the most interesting building in town from an historical viewpoint. It was built for a hotel by my great uncle, Bill Gregory, in the 1880s. He sold it to Mr. Pampell who put in a confectionery on the first floor with an ice cream parlor at the back for the ladies, an opera house and dance floor upstairs, and in the basement he bottled soda water and made candy. His candy consisted of taffy and boxed chocolates. Access to the upstairs was by way of an outside staircase on teh Sidney Baker side. Here was where we had our first moving picture show. You bought your ticket on the sidewalk and then climbed the stairs. The seats were wooden folding chairs. Just when the heroine in the movie lay on the tracks with the train approaching, some youngster would become so excited and wiggly that the chair would slip out from under him with a terrible crash and many were the screams. Pampell's was originally a frame building, but in 1926 it was remodeled and bricked."

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