OTTAWA, Kan. (AP) - Years before Hollywood started making movies, the Plaza Cinema started showing them.
The movie theater sits along Main Street in Ottawa, Kansas, a town of around 12,000 people.
“Being small, we don’t always get the selection we want all the time,” said Rita “Peach” Madl, the theater’s owner.
When Madl took over the theater, she knew it was older, but she discovered its real age by accident.
Someone donated a box of undeveloped photos to the historical society. Inside were dozens of pictures showing the theater from more than 100 years earlier.
The half owner, half curator combed through newsprint and microfilm trying to learn more. Prohibitionist papers provided clues along with old ads for ’new and novel entertainment: talking motion pictures.”
It’s worn many names: The Bijou, The Yale, The Crystal Theater and then the Plaza Cinema.
As of two weeks ago, it has a new title: World’s Oldest Movie Theater.
KMBC-TV reports that it’s been certified by Guinness.
“Then we just had a ball and we started telling everybody,” Madl said.
Started on May 20, 1907, it wasn’t the first theater, but it is the only one of its era still open.
The secret to the movie theater’s early success was the city’s rail line. Back in the early 1900s, it connected the town with the world.
“There were a couple brothers that produced a lot of movies in France,” Madl said. “Since it was silent movies, you didn’t have to worry about language.”
Since then, they’ve tried everything from a Chippendales show to building a film museum to stay open.
“I have one piece of hair from Elvis I bought from his barber,” Madl said, walking through the homage to old films.
She almost went broke going digital.
“We couldn’t get a bank to cover it, so it was personal funds,” she said.
For more than a century, movies have taken people to other worlds.
“I love the escapism of them,” Madl said.
But in Ottawa, the theater provides the ticket to past.
“Who was here first, well they were pioneers and people who did new things.”
The theater started its application to Guinness in July of 2017. It beat out a theater in Denmark by two days.
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Information from: KMBC-TV, http://www.kmbc.com
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