06/18/2026
On This Day in Grant County History
June 18, 1978 — The Indiana Theater
On this day, June 18, 1978, the Chronicle-Tribune looked back at one of Marion’s most remembered entertainment landmarks: The Indiana Theater.
The article marked the end of an era. After decades of movies, stage shows, music, graduations, pageants, plays, memories, and community gatherings, the Indiana Theater’s doors had closed following the Hollywood Premiere, a three-quarter century celebration. The building was set to be torn down to make room for the new Grant County office complex.
Below is the article as it appeared in the Chronicle-Tribune on June 18, 1978.
Full Transcription
Chronicle-Tribune
June 18, 1978
Hoosierland
THE INDIANA THEATER
1901–1978
Mrs. Norma Carmichael, Indiana Theater manager, in the theater auditorium. Mrs. Carmichael has been the theater’s manager for the last 12 years. For 24 years before that, she was the manager of the old Paramount Theater in downtown Marion.
An era ends today. When the Indiana Theater’s doors are closed after the Hollywood Premiere, three-quarters of a century of laughter, music, tears, and memories will be locked inside. Generations of area people have gone to the theater to see stage plays, musicals, pageants, graduations, and movies. Glen Allen, who writes A Touch of Nostalgia in the C-T Magazine, put together a short history of the theater that will be torn down to make room for the new Grant County office complex.
The lights have gone out. The camera is still. The action has stopped.
The show won’t go on anymore.
What was once one of Indiana’s show business showcases has taken its final bow. The large brick trouper in the 400 block of S. Adams Street will strip off the greasepaint after a run of almost 80 years.
The Indiana Theater will soon become a memory for Marion. The last movie was shown Thursday. Today, an amateur stage show will ring down the curtain on the Indiana stage for the last time.
Where all these memories came from — where once Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara he didn’t give a damn, and where once William S. Hart trod the boards, and where once young women were crowned Miss Marion — was once a swimming hole.
On the site of an old swimming hole, W.C. “Heavy” Smith and C.W. Halderman had the Indiana built in 1901 at a cost of $50,000. It was then one of the best-equipped playhouses in Indiana.
After the electrical wiring had been installed, two shifts of decorators were hired and arc lights were temporarily installed to permit night work inside the theater. The interior color scheme was dark red, green, and gold. The theater entrance was magnificent with marble flooring. The stairway to the balcony was also marble.
The opening of the Indiana Theater was the highlight of the season in Marion. Tickets for the event went for $10 each. Marion’s socialites vied with each another to see who could come attired in the most elaborate dresses.
Halderman and Smith had searched widely for a top-flight production to be presented at the grand opening. On October 31, theater manager Ed Kinneman said F.C. Whitney’s new musical extravaganza, Dolly Varden, starring Lulu Glaser, would open the theater. It cost the theater $1,800 to get the show to Marion.
The day after the Thanksgiving of 1901, the new playhouse was opened by Miss Glaser in Dolly Varden. She played to a packed house.
The new theater — first called the Indiana as the result of a contest, then the Orpheum and then the Indiana again — brought to Marion the attention of the show business world. It was also used as an auditorium.
The Indiana’s management always tried to feature top-flight entertainment — and to make the theater suitable for the acts. When the play Ben Hur came to Marion, a treadmill was built into the stage floor for the chariot scene. One of the players in the show was William S. Hart, who later became the first great movie cowboy.
When Dolly Varden opened, the stage was 66 feet deep and 45 feet deep. There were box seats and a gallery and the theater seated 1,400.
Throughout the last 76 years, the Indiana has had many highlights. Here are a few:
In the early 1900s, the Marion High School senior class always graduated from the stage of the Indiana Theater.
In 1905, the Indiana Theater advertised one-night stands of Chinese Honeymoon, Man From Mexico, and Primrose Minstrels.
The famed Private Dempsey, hero of Verdun and “No Man’s Land” and cited for bravery by the French government, appeared in person at the Indiana in the early 1920s.
Many traveling road companies came to Marion to put on shows, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Besides the actors and actresses, they also had six or eight bloodhounds. What made this event outstanding was not the show itself but, to promote the show, they had a parade around the Marion square every day along with the bloodhounds.
From 1901 until the advent of movies, the theater featured only stage shows. When movies became popular, the Indiana was forced to follow the trend. It would present both stage shows and movies.
In 1927, the movies learned to talk. The Indiana management heard and converted the theater to be a showcase for sound movies.
The Fourth Avenue Amusement Co. of Louisville, Ky., assumed control in 1928 of show business in Marion. The Indiana was completely dismantled within; nothing was left of it but the outside walls. The huge stage and box seats were no longer needed and they were torn out. It was remodeled from top to bottom. It became the first sound theater in Marion.
The furnishings were modern and were complemented by the interior decorations. The work was completed at an estimated cost of $150,000, three times the cost of the original theater.
The theater was reopened April 13, 1929, and On Trial, an all-talkie motion picture, was shown.
Billy Connors was manager of the Indiana in the 1930s. He did his best to bring the finest motion pictures to Marion. Some of the greatest of the new sound movies found their way to the Indiana’s silver screen.
Connors was a small man, not much taller than five feet. Because of his size, he had to have most of his clothes tailor-made, giving him a dapper look. He often wore a top hat cocked to one side and smoked a cigarette from a long holder.
One of Billy’s most flamboyant moments was when he organized the premiere of Gone With the Wind in 1939 at the Indiana. He drove up to the theater in his Cord automobile with his Great Dane, Cita, riding in its rear compartment. The film was the first movie with an intermission to appear in Marion, and Connors had soft drinks served in the lobby.
The Keith Sisters and their Singing Orchestra gave three shows a day in the 1930s. Such pictures as On With the Show, The Desert Song, Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, The Gold Diggers of Broadway, and Show of Shows, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the new Indiana’s leadership in progressive entertainment.
In January, 1965, the Indiana Theater, which was then the only downtown theater, closed for seven weeks for remodeling beginning. Alliance Amusement Co. said then the entrance lobby was to be accented in antique wall decor with wrought iron decorative columns framing both sides of the lobby and highlighting the poster frames. New seats were installed in the entire theater, spaced farther apart for more comfort. New stage backdrops and a whole set of stage curtains were made by a leading New York drapery house.
The grand old days of the Indiana Theater are gone.
There won’t be an encore.
