Movie Theaters Dotted County In ’40s
Readers: The Aug. 30 column on early West Palm Beach theaters prompted this note from a former colleague, retired Palm Beach Post columnist and historian Bill McGoun, who’s writing a history of Lake Worth High School:
“When I came to Lake Worth in the 1940s there were four movie theaters in West Palm Beach, two in Lake Worth and one in Delray Beach.
“The Palms Theater then was the Florida; it was renamed the Palms when the new Florida opened in 1949. The Rialto was on Narcissus where the Greyhound bus station later stood. The Arcade was behind the Comeau Building. The Coral was on the north side of Clematis between Dixie and the FEC tracks (there was
no Quadrille then). In the late 1940s the Surf was built on the south side of Datura midway between Dixie and Olive.
“In Lake Worth the Lake Theatre had been built just before the war. It later became an Italian restaurant showing old movies, then a museum under three different names. It now is closed. The Oakley had been reopened as the Worth, showing second-run films. On weekends, kids could see a cowboy film, a second feature (often a Bowery Boys) and a serial for 9 cents. I’d go on Friday afternoons with a quarter. After buying a mug of root beer for a nickel (there was an A&W stand at various times across Lake Avenue or inside the theater building) and a candy bar for a nickel, I still had 6 cents left over.
“The Delray Theater was in downtown, but I don’t remember where.
“Other theaters built shortly after the war included the Boynton, on the east side of U.S. 1 north of Boynton Beach Boulevard, and two drive-ins: the Skydrome, on the west side of Dixie Highway just south of the canal in Lake Worth, and the Boulevard, at Southern Boulevard and Haverhill Road.
“The Carefree was the last theater of that era still in use for films. Like the Florida, the Worth became a playhouse. The others, aside from the Lake, all have been demolished.”
Note: The owners of the Carefree announced in late November that they will open “The Theatre” in a former church at the south end of West Palm Beach.
The Carefree site is expected to be bulldozed for development.
What do you mean the 40′s, most of those theaters and drive-ins still existed in the 50′s and early 60′s, great place to be raised, born and breed in West Palm Beach.