The scene in Tombstone at the Bird Cage Theater with drunken cowboys shooting into the air instead of applauding the performance is a little farfetched, but the reality of theaters in isolated western towns is not.
The Bird Cage opened in 1881, 13 years after Wyoming’s first opera house.
The Opera House at South Pass City began showing productions in 1868. It wasn’t easy to get headline acts to the booming mining town, but a stage ran from Bear River and then Green River over the route of the present South Pass Highway from the Union Pacific, and for a few years, the Opera House was filled at each performance.
Fremont County had a few more besides the one at South Pass.
Another Opera House opened in Lander in 1887. The one at South Pass closed down in 1870 as the boom ended. These both operated in the days before statehood when Wyoming was a territory.
Opera houses were big business in Lander. Coalter’s Opera House opened in 1889, Woodruff’s sometime in the mid-1890s, with Nickerson’s and Orchard’s Opera Houses opening just after the turn of the century. 
They existed in a narrow window of time, before movie theaters put them out of business.
The final one, McKenna’s Opera House, opened in Hudson in 1909.
Shoshoni boomed so quickly in 1906 and faded just as rapidly by 1908 that they never had an opera house, but they did have a dance hall called the Bijou Theater that sometimes held theatrical productions.
Riverton didn’t have an opera house either, but did have the first movie theater. Dubois was too small, and Pavillion was incorporated well after the opera house era had ended.
Shoshoni, Pavillion, Hudson, Riverton, and Lander all had movie theaters. Shoshoni had a drive-in movie theater, Lander did as well, and Riverton had two.
The Grand Theater in Lander and the Acme and Gem in Riverton still show first-run films. The Knight, West, and Diane Drive-Ins are only a memory.
The Acme is Wyoming’s oldest operating theater, showing Hollywood’s best for over a century.
This is the story of the theaters that didn’t last, the ones that fizzled soon after opening or closed when the inevitable bottom hit in Wyoming’s boom-and-bust economy. The Isis, the Star, the Dixie, the Caine, the Regent, the Rex, and the Cactus Drive-In.
Though the Knight, West, and Diane Drive-Ins are all gone, they each lasted half a century before the VHS tape put them out of business.
Lander has a lot of festivals and musical events, it’s not a modern phenomenon, but something that has always graced the Fremont County seat.
The preponderance of opera houses in Lander continued with movie theaters. The Isis, Dixie, and Grand all competed for viewers beginning in 1916.
Martha Queed was quite the sinner – h/t Lander Clipper
The Grand was a late arrival when William Blakesly built the theater in 1921 on the foundation of the Wyoming Hotel, which had burned down.
In the early days, minstrel shows, traveling theatrical groups, orchestra performances, political debates, rallies, and fundraisers filled the stage at the Isis and Dixie. School plays and graduations were popular events.
Once the Grand arrived with four times the seating of either of the older theaters, they became desperate, engaging in ticket price wars to entice customers.
The venue at the Star Theater in Hudson – h/t Hudson Miner
They could not compete. The Grand had first-run films arriving weekly on the Chicago North Western, and the two smaller theaters scrambled for material.
The Isis brought in headline films from 1922 to 1924, trying to compete with the Grand, but it didn’t work. Harold Llyod, a popular silent film star, was often featured at the Isis, but the Grand showed his films as well. With better seating, better projection equipment, and a better snack bar, the Grand won out.
The Dixie’s greatest feat was showing D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” just a few months after it was produced in 1915. The film, depicting the Ku Klux Klan as heroes and saviors of the nation, filled the Dixie for two shows daily on June 18, 19, and 20 in 1916.
On April 4, 1917, Nickerson and Company, managed by Edith Nickerson, took over the management of the Dixie Theater. They had recently closed the Dickerson Opera House but remained in the entertainment business, at least for a while.
“We will endeavor to give the public the very best possible service, and will show nothing but the best films made,” Nickerson said.
Shoshoni had a theater in its downtown district in the 1920s. The Bijou Theater seated approximately 200 and had a contract with Paramount Studios. It had early success, but attendance dropped off in the late 1920’s, then disappeared completely when talking pictures arrived at the Acme Theater. Shoshoni residents would have to wait another 20 years until the Regent Theater opened.
Silent film stars Clara Kimball and May Allison – h/t Pinterest
They opened their ownership by showing the film “The Challenge” and featured a couple of films starring Clara Kimball Young and May Allison.
Nickerson was ahead of her time in showing films on science and history written for children on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons.
The Isis closed in 1924, and the Dixie in 1925.
A short nine miles east, Hudson was booming as coal mines opened. The Star Theater, with a seating capacity of 230 people, opened on Main Street in 1916. It was a case of too little, too late. The demand for coal boomed during World War I but crashed soon after the Armistice was signed.
The Star showed mostly documentaries, second-run westerns, and offbeat films. It closed in the early 1920s.
The Rex opened in Pavillion in 1925. It was built by Lee and Belle Mote of Riverton, owners of the Acme Theater. Pavillion was booming with the construction of the Riverton Reclamation Project, which eventually became the Midvale Irrigation District.
Belle was a sharp businessperson. She saw the opportunity presented by the hundreds of construction workers living in the camps near Pavillion.
As the project closed, Belle sold the Rex to a man named Lloyd in 1929. It closed within six months. Belle had just installed sound equipment at the Acme to accommodate the new “talkies” (motion pictures with sound).
The buyer didn’t realize the silent film era was over, and his audiences were too small to invest in sound equipment. The Rex eventually became Herder’s Cash Store.
The Cain Theater in Riverton opened within months of Belle Mote’s Acme in 1916, going toe-to-toe with it in shows and performances, but Belle had bigger plans, and when news of her construction of a new Acme at its present location became known, it was curtains for the Cain.
The Cain showed similar films, but Belle began getting exclusive rights to films by Fox and Warner, along with other major Hollywood studios.
In the days of silent films before even phonograph records to accompany the show, local musicians were a key to success. A good piano player or small orchestra ensemble would make or break a theater.
“Miss Rudisill” arrived from Denver early in 1917 as a pianist. She performed in the Cain Theater and for dances held there. Specializing in ragtime and classical, she was able to read and play the sheet music that accompanied each film with ease.
It wasn’t enough. The Cain began holding religious revivals as a last resort, and it closed in 1917.
Shoshoni is a town that blooms with booms, but soon fades with the bust.
It once had a thriving, prosperous Main Street with a grocery store, a hotel, a hardware store, a restaurant, a bar, and a movie theater.
Harold Brown was responsible for many of these, but the story of Brown’s Grocery, the Regent Theater, and the Cactus Drive-In will get their own story.
Entertainment has always been big business in America. Since the days of the Great Awakening when religious ceremonies served as entertainment to the instant gratification of a bombardment of entertainment today, America has always been a place where people need exciting diversions.
For a while, nearly every town in Fremont County provided that.
Some still do.