Monday Main Street Marquee Medley

In the first few decades of Disneyland, the Main Street Marquee was changed as much as (if not more than) the Main Street Train Station population numbers. Before the Park opened, the marquee simply said, “Moving Pictures.” By Summer 1955, it heralded a Wm. S. Hart Western and the Keystone Kops:



Actress Gloria Swanson’s name on the left let guests know there was more than just one movie playing inside:



and Mabel Normand on the right:



1956, Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Banky:



The A-Frame at left shows an ad for “The Eagle,” which starred Banky and Valentino.



1957/58, with Mable (sp!) Normand and Fatty Arbuckle. On the right it advertises “The Heart of a Waif,” a 1915 silent film with Edith Peters and John Sturgeon.



From the same time period, Clare Booth’s name is on the left side of the marquee:



June 1958, we can just barely see Ronald Coleman in “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” a 1925 Ernst Lubitsch comedy/drama:



You can watch it here:



December 1959, D.W. Griffith’s “A Girl and her Trust” from 1912:



September 1960 had Lon Chaney in “Phantom of the Opera,” just in time for Halloween:



July 1961 had comedian Buster Keaton in “Allez Oop,” which was actually a talking picture from 1934:



October 1962 has “The Pride of Pikesville” (1927), starring Ben Turpin:



May 31, 1963 it’s back to Lon in “Phantom”:



From May 1964 you can just barely see that the Cinema is still showing a Lon Chaney thriller, “Phantom of the Opera” and a Will Rogers Western:



September 1964 proclaims “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” from MGM, which was not a silent film, but rather from 1941 with Spencer Tracy, Lana Turner, and Ingrid Bergman. The silent version from 1920 was released by Paramount and starred John Barrymore. Could be a marquee screwup. Another possibility is that back in the day, Blackhawk Films released 8mm and Super8mm BW silent versions of both silent AND talkie films; if they were the source company for prints for Disneyland this could account for why some of these “talkies” were being marketed as silent films.



March 1965, “Pathways of Life” with Lillian Gish, from 1916:



September 1965, “The Great Train Robbery” from 1903:



June 26, 1966, “Phantom of the Opera”:



1968, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” with no credit to Louis B. Mayer!



February 1971, “The Great Train Robbery” returns:



May 1974, “The Rounders,” a 1914 comedy with Fatty Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin:





And then my collection goes dark until February 2006, when I captured “Steamboat Willie” on the marquee with “Traffic Trouble” on the right. The film’s actual title was “Traffic Troubles.” Somebody was too lazy to add the “s” on the end to this 1931 sound short. The worst part of this photo is that bleeping stroller blocking the entrance to the theater.



July 2006 we see “Mickey’s Polo Team” on the right. Not only was this movie originally a sound cartoon, it was also shot in Technicolor. By this time, the “movies” were being shown on TV screens and typically featured black and white versions of Mickey Mouse cartoons that were not necessarily silent.



No changes in my collection from 2006 to March 2010:



In August 2010, the cinema was featuring “Opening Day at Disneyland,” with footage from July 17, 1955:



By October though, “Steamboat Willie” was back:



The last marquee shot I took was in June 2013:



I hope you enjoyed this chronological documentation of the diverse offerings that once made the Main Street Cinema a very lively place to visit!

See more Disneyland Main Street Cinema photos at my main website.