It’s the oldest theater in Fremont County, not in showing films but in construction. The Grand Theater began life long ago as the Wyoming Hotel.
In 1874 Ben Decora built a four-room motel and restaurant to serve the freighters working the Rawlins to Ft. Brown line. It evolved into the Wyoming Hotel and, eventually, the Grand Theater.
There were plenty of other theaters in Fremont County before the Grand opened, including its chief rival, the Acme, which opened in 1916 but came to life at its current location in 1920.
In Lander, the Isis and Dixie were popular silent film venues, the Bijou in Shoshoni showed films produced by Paramount, The Cain in Riverton was another, and even Hudson had a 220-seat theater.
Mr. O.P. Fish built the first Grand Theater on Main Street, across Main Street from the present location. Anticipation grew as construction continued through the spring of 1917.
In May, Mr. Fish hired John P. Buckley as manager and William R. Franey as assistant manager with instructions to hire staff, order supplies, and check all of the equipment before opening night at the end of the month.
On May 24, 1917, The Grand Theater opened with the film “The Spoilers” on Thursday the 24th and Friday the 25th. It was a three-part film with nine reels, a major production for its day. General admission was 25 cents, with premier seating at 35 cents. Prices dropped to 15 and 25 cents for a Saturday showing of a United States Forest Service film on logging, then dropped to just a dime and 15 cents on Monday for a comedy film.
On June 2nd, a live Minstrel Show filled the theater. Ticket prices for live performances were higher, with reserved seating at 75 cents and general admission set at 25 or 50.
It marked the beginning of a 108-year run that is still going strong.
The original Grand had office space on the ground floor used by local attorneys and accountants.
Tim McCoy was a local cowboy who transitioned into a cowboy movie star.
In 1923, the silent epic “The Covered Wagon” was filmed in Utah, but Native American actors were difficult to find. Tim McCoy asked his friend Goes In Lodge for help in filling the cast of the film, and 300 Arapaho men and women were eventually hired with an additional 200 Shoshone and Bannock actors.
McCoy bargained hard with producer Ed Lasky and guaranteed that Native American actors would be paid the same as the white actors in the film.
The Covered Wagon was a huge hit. McCoy brought the local Native American actors on stage at the Grand Theater at a showing in Lander and did the same at the Acme in Riverton.
Respected Arapaho leaders Red Pipe, Wolf Elk, Buffalo Lodge, Broken Horn, Painted Wolf, Goes In Lodge, and Yellow Calf all signed on, with the remaining company joining soon after. Legendary Shoshone Chief Washakie’s sons Dick and Charlie joined as well.
In the winter of 1923, George Blakeslee moved to Riverton, where he worked as an engineer on irrigation projects along the Wind River. Previously, he was an engineer on the construction of the Buffalo Bill Dam near Cody. As the three Fremont County irrigation projects that would become The Riverton, LeClair, and Midvale Irrigation Districts finished, Blakeslee was looking for another source of income.
He and his wife loved Fremont County and were drawn to Lander.
He saw an opportunity with the Grand Theater and purchased it from O.P. Fish in 1926. Never one to act impulsively, Blakeslee had mirrored Riverton’s Acme Theater owner Belle Mote for several months learning how to run a theater. His first act after purchasing the original Grand Theater was to close it for 10 days while he made extensive renovations. These renovations were short-term; Blakeslee had bigger designs just across Main Street.
The Wyoming Hotel across the street from his newly purchased theater had burned to the ground a few years before.
Blakeslee had the remnants of the hotel removed and ordered an ambitious construction project. He was going to build a first-class theater of cast concrete.
On July 27, 1928, the new Grand Theater was completed.
Observers described it as cave-like inside, cool and dark.
The original design served double duty as a movie theater, a community hall, and a theater for traditional plays and concerts.
It had an orchestra pit with a grand piano lowered into it. There were trap doors, dressing rooms, and make-up rooms on the wings and below the stage.
Blakeslee was an innovator, though it was cooled only in the summer months, the Grand Theater was air conditioned.
As of 2001, the original air conditioning unit, a swamp cooler the size of a minivan, was still in use.
The cold air was circulated through huge metal ducts, the type you see jewelry thieves crawling through in Hollywood films.
The ducts are filled with graffiti, mostly made by theatrical casts that delivered live performances at the Grand in the 1920s and 30s.
The oldest is dated 1929, with one clearly marked in 1934 by the “Texas Yodeling Cowboys.”
Blakeslee had an uninvited guest enter the theater soon after it opened. On August 22, 1928, during the showing of “Phantom Flier,” a sorrel mare ran past the box office, pushed aside the ticket taker, and entered the theater. Blakeslee spotted her and cut her off, but the aisle was too narrow for the mare to turn around. He hazed her to the orchestra pit, then chased her up the opposite aisle and back onto the street. After all, she didn’t have a ticket.
Fremont County Vocational High School, the forerunner of Lander Valley High School, performed their senior play at the Grand for decades.
The original screen at the Grand could be raised and lowered to open the vast stage area behind it. It had ample room for props, stage sets and full orchestras to perform.
The acoustics were incredible.
Former owner Robynn Gabel described them in a 2001 interview: “They acoustics in here are so good that a person can whisper in the orchestra pit and you’ll hear it from the back row of the balcony. We don’t need a new sound system, we have too much of one now.”
The Grand lived up to its name when it came to ornamentation.
Huge, sound-dampening drapes hung along the sides of the main floor of the theater. Behind those drapes, hand-painted frescoes of flowers lined the walls.
The ceiling had a little extra pizzazz, with leaded glass light fixtures in geometric designs of red and blue.
The frescoes survived into the 21st century.
“They were painted by a Native American artist a long time ago,” Robynn said. “We’d love to know who it was. Those frescoes are the reason we’d never repaint the ceiling.”
Perhaps the most impressive feature is the theater’s balcony.
By Wyoming movie theater standards, the balcony is huge, with 125 seats.
During the heyday of films from the 1930s to the 1970s, crowds of youngsters filled the balcony, with many teenagers grabbing the back row for other activities besides watching the film.
The balcony seats are smaller than the main floor, with less legroom. The front-row seats in the balcony were prized because of the extra legroom.
They were also often the area most patrolled by theater personnel since early teenagers often tossed candy, popcorn, and sometimes drinks on top of the audience below.
Behind the balcony, sits the concrete vault of the projection room. It is built of foot-thick concrete walls, with a heavy steel entrance door and a heavy steel shutter above the projector.
In the days of highly flammable celluloid film, especially in the 1930s and 40s, fire in the projection booth was a possibility. If this happened, the projectionist was supposed to close the steel shutter, leave the room and close the steel door behind him and let the fire burn out.
There is no record of that ever happening at the Grand, but there were many nights when the film stuck, and the theater audience watched as the soundtrack mumbled, the action stopped, and the film turned yellow, then brown as it melted in front of the arc light projector.
Behind the projection booth was one of the premier apartments in pre-World War II Lander. Fitted with cherry woodwork, heavy, thick carpet and chipped Formica countertops, it was a prize living space in downtown Lander that was accessed by a steep, wrought iron staircase.
The Grand has had four principal owners.
Anna Mae Goodrich accompanied silent films on the piano when the Blakeslees owned it. She and her husband Merval purchased it from Blakeslee.
Anna Mae lost her position as an accompanying piano player in 1929. In July, the Blakeslees drove to Denver to purchase sound equipment for the new “talkies,” which quickly replaced silent films.
Meryl and Anna Mae ran the theater for decades, expanding their business in 1948 with the construction of the Diane Drive-In.
Anna Mae continued to play the piano before the children’s matinees to entertain the boisterous youngsters. Once the film started, she traded her keyboard for a willow switch and regulated a bit of frontier justice to misbehaving youngsters, especially in the balcony.
The matinees were originally a nickel but had risen to a quarter by the mid-1970s when Meryl and Anna Mae canceled them.
Meryl and Anna sold both theaters to Theater Operations Inc., (TOI)
Theater Operators Inc., (TOI) operated the theater until 1986 when Darrell and Robynn purchased it and the Diane Drive-In.
Darrell and Robynn met in Flagstaff, Arizona, where Darrell worked for TOI and Robynn worked at the concession stand at night.
“I had lived in Riverton and moved to Flagstaff after a divorce,” Robynn said.
Darrell was from Billings originally and was six years older than Robynn.
“He proposed five times, once a year,” Robynn said. “Until I said yes.”
Things moved quickly after they were married.
“Darrell wanted to own his own theater. He had stock options from TOI. They used the Grand to pay Darrell’s options,” Robynn said. “We just got married. He rented a U-Haul and opened the Grand.”
Darrell worked for two years at the Grand. TOI wanted out and approached him about purchasing both the Diane and the Grand. He approached Anna May Goodrich.
“What if I buy it?” Darrell asked.
“I’d love to sell it to you,” came Anna May’s reply.
The Goodrich’s operated the Grand and Diane simultaneously.
In 1988, Commonwealth Theaters, owners of the Gem and Acme, and the Knight Drive-In in Riverton, closed the Knight. Two years later they wanted out of Riverton entirely.
“They sold them to Darrell,” Robynn said.
Darrell improved all three walk-in theaters with new projectors and enhanced sound.
“The utility companies had trouble keeping up,” Robynn said.
A highlight for the Gabel’s came in the world premiere of “Bambi” translated into Arapaho at the Grand Theater.
Robynn and Darrell continued to operate the Grand, Gem, and Acme until 2012.
None of their children were interested in taking over the business, but a young man, Robynn considers a son, Adam Barry was.
“Adam worked in the concession stand at the Drive-In for us,” Robynn said.
Adam worked at both the Grand and Diane as a high school student and continued in college.
“One day I asked him, what do you really want to do?” Robynn said.
“I want to run a theater,” Adam answered.
Adam lived in an apartment above the Acme for a while and began buying Gabel Theaters in 2012, with the name changing to Barry Cinema.
Darrell passed away in 1995.
“Adam was like a son to us, he leased the Grand for a year,” Robynn said. “If you can make it work, we’ll owner-finance it for you.”
The Grand is considered to be the longest active theater in Wyoming, since the Acme moved from it’s original 1916 location to the new spot on the north side of Main Street in 1920.
The Grand in Lander, the Hyart in Lovell, the Rialto in Casper and the Acme are considered the best theaters in Wyoming, and are easily the oldest still operating.
You can’t beat a feature film at the Grand Theater.