100th Anniversary Update - 1921 - 2021
The Ohio was originally operated by Ohio Theatres Inc who were lessees of Loew's Ohio Theatres Inc. Ohio Theatres Inc was operated by Robert McLaughlin who also operated several other legit houses, notably the Alhambra at 10403 Euclid Avenue and the Metropolitan at 5012 Euclid Avenue. Both were later operated as picture houses by Loew's Inc, albeit briefly. For several years McLaughlin also had a stock company for summertime shows at reduced prices in the Ohio. Generally the Ohio played Klaw & Erlanger attractions in it's early years. Abe Erlanger got his start in the biz, selling peanuts at the Euclid Avenue Opera House just a few blocks down the street.
Clara Scott, one of the stars of George White's Scandals, From The Plain Dealer, March 22, 1925.
The Ohio was turned into the Mayfair Casino in late 1935. opening with much fanfare on October 22. Basically the Mayfair was an art moderne shell constructed inside the theatre which was transformed into a high end supper club, boasting the longest bar in the state of Ohio in the lobby. One of the principles was Harry Propper who earlier ran the Carlton Terrace on the second floor of the Loew Building. At one point, around early 1924, Sophie Tucker invested $15,000 into the Carlton, which was then renamed Tucker's Terrace. It soon went bankrupt, forcing Miss Tucker to cancel a week at the Palace in October 1924 to avoid creditors and process servers. The second floor of the Loew Building would later house the Music Box nightclub, a Stage Door Canteen during the war and eventually an Arthur Murray dance studio.
From Variety, September 4, 1935. The opening of the Mayfair would spark a brief nightclub war with the nearby Alpine Village, which was Herman Pirchner's long running night spot at 1614 Euclid Avenue, directly across from the Palace. They both opened around the same time, with the Alpine lasting into the early 1960's. the nearby Alpine Village, which was Herman Pirchner's long running night spot at 1614 Euclid Avenue, directly across from the Palace. They both opened around the same time, with the Alpine lasting into the early 1960's.
From The Plain Dealer, October 20, 1935.
From The Plain Dealer, October 20, 1935.
From The Plain Dealer, October 23, 1935.
From The Plain Dealer, November 3, 1935.
From The Plain Dealer, December 16, 1935.
From Variety, February 5, 1936.
Mayfair chorus girls, from the Cleveland Memory Project.
From Variety, May 20, 1936.
From The Plain Dealer, May 22, 1936.
From Variety, May 27, 1936.
From The Plain Dealer, June 26, 1936.
From Variety, July 1, 1936.
From The Plain Dealer, July 5, 1936.
From Variety, July 1, 1936.
From Variety, December 23, 1936.
From The Plain Dealer, December 23, 1936.
From The Plain Dealer, December 23, 1936.
From The Plain Dealer, January 30, 1937.
From The Plain Dealer, January 30, 1937.
From The Plain Dealer, February 24, 1937.
From The Plain Dealer, July 2, 1937.
From The Plain Dealer, November 23, 1937.
The end came rather quickly, with the Mayfair abruptly closing in late November 1937.
From Motion Picture Daily, December 2, 1937.
From The Plain Dealer, December 5, 1937.
From The Plain Dealer, December 7, 1937.
From The Plain Dealer, December 8, 1937.
Glenn Pullen's column from The Plain Dealer, December 19, 1937.
Something of a footnote to the Mayfair era, Harry Propper obit, from Variety, November 15, 1939.
The Ohio would sit mostly dark for the next several years. The only event I'm aware of that took place during this period of darkness was the freak show in 1940. During the early years of the war the front lobby was used as a Coast Guard recruiting station until sometime in early 1943.
From Variety, February 7, 1940.
From Variety, October 30, 1940. Not much interest was shown in the Ohio, the few offers were dubious at best.
Blurb from Variety, September 10, 1941.
From Glenn Pullen's column, Plain Dealer, December 30, 1941.
From The Plain Dealer, October 15, 1942. For about a year, from late July 1942 to the summer of 1943 the Ohio was used as a Coast Guard Recruiting Station.
The once grand stairs, circa early 1943, Theatre Historical Society photo.
The box seats around the beginning of the 1943 renovation. Theatre Historical Society photo, from Marquee Magazine, Theatre Historical Society photo, from Marquee Magazine, Vol.6-No.4, Fourth Quarter, 1974.
With the war years downtown houses enjoyed a huge increase in business, people had money and not too many places to spend it. By the summer of 1943 word started leaking out that the Ohio would re-open. The reconstruction was overseen by Cecil Ryder who was in charge of Loew's buildings. One of his main problems was finding material during the war, especially copper wire.
The Ohio wasn't actually dark for ten years, maybe it just seemed that way. From Showmen's Trade Review, July 17, 1943.
The newly refurbished lobby of Loew's Ohio, 1943, note the new carpet, Theatre Historical Society photo.
Grand lobby, looking towards the grand stairs. Théâtre Historical Society photo.
Mezzanine, looking towards the house left side (west) the curtains on the left led to the top of the grand stairs, the door in the middle to the Lady's Lounge, and the pair of doors on the right to the balcony, Theatre Historical Society photo.
New false boxes, 1943, from Marquee Magazine, Theatre Historical Society photo, from Marquee Magazine, Vol.6-No.4, Fourth Quarter, 1974.
Auditorium, 1943, Theatre Historical Society photo.
From The Plain Dealer, August 21, 1943.
From Showmen's Trade Review, August 28, 1943.
From Boxoffice, September 4, 1943.
From Motion Picture Herald, October 16, 1943.
From The Plain Dealer, September 23, 1943.
From Motion Picture Daily, September 29, 1943.
From Variety, October 6, 1943.
From Boxoffice, October 9, 1943.
From Boxoffice, November 13, 1943.
Mrs. Tracy had a great flair for publicity, from Motion Picture Herald, December 25, 1943.
From Motion Picture Herald, February 26, 1944.
From The Plain Dealer, February 3, 1944.
Flash front, from Motion Picture Herald, September 2, 1944.
Turret gun from a B-17, from Motion Picture Herald, November 11, 1944.
6th War Bond sale, December 1944. Note the usherettes dressed in costumes to promote the current feature Brazil. Photo from the Playhouse Square Archives.
From Motion Picture Herald, December 30, 1944.
From Boxoffice, October 13, 1945.
Corner of a flash front for God's Country, from Showmen's Trade Review, August 31, 1946.
New manager for Loew's Ohio, from Showmen's Trade Review, November 16, 1946. Mrs. Tracy would go on to manage theatres in Detroit before returning to Cleveland where she later managed the Knickerbocker and the Parma.
From The Plain Dealer, December 19, 1948.
From The Plain Dealer, September 4, 1953.
From The Plain Dealer, October 7, 1955.
From The Plain Dealer, December 25, 1955.
From Boxoffice, January 7, 1956.
From The Plain Dealer, June 12, 1956.
From Boxoffice, November 3, 1956.
From The Plain Dealer, November 30, 1956. The Ten Commandments was one of the earlier hard ticket attractions to play Loew's Ohio, and would run for 29 weeks.
From Boxoffice, December 15, 1956.
From Boxoffice, February 3, 1957.
From Boxoffice, May 18, 1957. Mike Todd had trouble convincing theatre owners to install his new Todd-AO process, especially following the disastrous 3-D flop of 1953, and the far more successful, but still somewhat expensive CinemaScope installation of a couple years earlier. So Todd four-walled the pic, making Loew's Ohio the first theatre in Cleveland to run 70mm pix.
From The Plain Dealer, June 14, 1957. 80 Days would run for 41 weeks.
From Boxoffice, June 22, 1957.
From Boxoffice, August 17, 1957.
From Boxoffice, September 7, 1957.
From The Plain Dealer, March 28, 1958. South Pacific ran for 46 weeks.
From Boxoffice, April 14, 1958.
DP-70s with Super Cinex lamps, from International Projectionist, July 1959. This was the gold standard in projection in the late 50's - early 60's. Loew's Ohio had a pair in the booth, as did the Allen and the Palace. Not sure what they ran in Loew's State, but it might have been these as well.
Sometime in the few weeks prior to the opening of Ben Hur, the Ohio was refurbished, some new seats were added and the capacity was cut from 1,295 to 1,024.
From Boxoffice, January 18, 1960.
From The Plain Dealer, January 31, 1960. (Ben Hur ran for 47 weeks)
From Boxoffice, February 1, 1960.
From The Plain Dealer, December 23, 1960. I recall Smitty found a faux oil painting that promoted this film, the stars were all depicted, wonder what happened to it.
From The Plain Dealer, March 15, 1961.
From The Plain Dealer, June 13, 1961. Frank Arena was one of two Loew Era employees I've met. In April 1976, Jed Ellis and I went to see Shea's Buffalo. The people there spoke highly of Mr. Arena, and it turned out he was managing Loew's Teck, just down the street. We must have talked to him for a couple hours that night. He was pleased when we told him of the restoration efforts in Cleveland.
From Boxoffice, June 19, 1961.
From The Plain Dealer, November 16, 1961.
From The Plain Dealer, April 6, 1962.
From The Plain Dealer, August 10, 1962.
From The Plain Dealer, June 26, 1963, Cleopatra ran for 26 weeks.
From Boxoffice, July 22, 1963.
From The Plain Dealer, July 4, 1964. Early on the morning of Sunday, July 5, 1964, a fire erupted in the candy stand, the Grand Lobby was destroyed.
From The Plain Dealer, July 6, 1964.
From Boxoffice, July 13, 1964.
The lobby was subsequently gutted and rebuilt after much hand wringing. More on the disastrous fire can be found here.
From The Plain Dealer, July 15, 1964. I'm not sure how seriously this was debated. If the idea was to circumvent the destroyed lobby, it simply wouldn't work since the lobbies end up at two different elevations.
From The Plain Dealer, August 22, 1964. The October re-opening was overly optimistic.
From The Plain Dealer, December 20, 1964.
From The Plain Dealer, December 20, 1964. The Ohio re-opened on Christmas Day with Mary Poppins and a new modern lobby.
Blurb from Mary Hirschfeld column, The Plain Dealer, February 13, 1965.
From The Plain Dealer, March 24, 1965. The Sound of Music would run for 91 weeks and two days, a Cleveland long run record that still stands.
From Box Office, March 28, 1966. The pix mentioned in this article all ran at Loew's Ohio, with the exception of My Fair Lady, which ran at the Stanley Warner Colony, at Shaker Square.
Variety, April 26, 1966.
From Boxoffice, November 14, 1966.
From The Plain Dealer, December 23, 1966. I remember seeing this at Loew's Ohio when I was a kid, who would have thought a little over five years later I'd be working to help save this theatre.
From Boxoffice, January 29, 1968.
From The Plain Dealer, January 24, 1968. Some of these were big time flops in hard ticket first run houses, but did adequate in the suburban subruns.
From Boxoffice, May 13, 1968. One wonders if Mr. Marsh saw the same picture we did. It had some enjoyable moments, but was insufferably long and had too many new songs written especially for the film, and didn't seem to go anywhere.
From Boxoffice, October 7, 1968.
From The Plain Dealer, December 20, 1968.
Final notice, from The Plain Dealer, February 9, 1969. Both the Ohio and neighboring Loew's State closed on the same day.
From Box Office, February 17, 1969.
In the weeks following the closing, both Loew's Ohio and State would be stripped of furnishings. Loew's sold the theatres to Millcap Corporation and Halles. Each had a 50% share. Millcap owned the neighboring Buckley Building which housed the Allen. There was a rumor that Halles wanted to reopen the Ohio for films, I have no idea if this was true or not. There was also a story that floated around that for an extra $10,000 they could have had both theatres intact, no idea if that was true either. However both theatres would start to disintegrate over the next several years.
Loew's Ohio and State, circa 1972, Plain Dealer photo.
The future wasn't all that bright for the future of the two Loew houses in May 1972. From The Plain Dealer, May 25, 1972.
From The Cleveland Press, August 10, 1972.
Of the four theatres, the Ohio was in the worst shape. Like the neighboring State, it had been stripped of fixtures and most of the seats. The Ohio had several significant roof leaks, the largest was a giant hole where the roof above the house left organ loft had caved in. The other in the back corner of the auditorium, house left side. There were several other ones as well, but those were the two biggest ones. The first summer I worked there, 1972, Ralph Smith ("Smitty"), and I spent several weeks boxing in the hole and trying to patch up leaks in both Loew houses. While we could never totally stop the leakage on the 17-18 year old roofs, we were able to slow them down considerably. On August 9, 1972, after a rain storm, a section of the Ohio marquee soffit fell onto the sidewalk one afternoon. This incident made the Cleveland Press the following afternoon. This precipitated a call from Loew's district manager Herb Brown to Millcap Corp. asking why their name was still on those buildings. A few days afterwards Smitty and I were out there removing the word "Loew's" from each of the marquees, painting them over with the cheapest green paint we could find.
House left/stage right corner of the main floor, 1975, photo by William Gesten/Foto Arts Inc. One night in late January 1973, I was sitting in the box office eating a Royal Castle hamburg when two policemen came in. They asked about what was going on and I told them about the project and what we were trying to do here. They asked if they could take a look around and I said "sure, go ahead." A few minutes later they returned and said "you should do something about that leak." I was like "what leak?" They left and I went to investigate. The pipe in that cabinet (to the right of the exit door, behind the pillar) had frozen and split, water was shooting from there across the auditorium. Neither Smitty nor Ray was around that night. We had just moved our offices from the Allen to 810 Keith Building, so I ran down the street and was able to get Ceil Hartman. After much running back and forth, Ceil called the fire department and explained the situation, they sent a bunch of trucks, causing a great commotion. Ceil had to sign a release, and they shut off the water, but by then more damage had occurred, note the buckled floor and the loss of more plasterwork.
The other main thing we did in the Ohio during that time, January-February, 1973, was the conversion of the mezzanine offices into an apartment for Smitty, which probably took two to three weeks. We also removed the picture screen, which was bolted to the stage floor, and had a giant hole cut in it on the house right side. By early March our efforts shifted to the State, then to the production of Brel in the lobby of the State. For the rest of the 1970's the Ohio sat vacant, used mostly for storage, we would battle roof leaks in here constantly. The Ohio was never heated during this time, because of the huge expense, the roof drains would freeze, causing flooding issues during the spring thaw. To combat this we would take turns going up onto the roof with a sump pump, draining the water off into the alley below. The pump had to be constantly monitored, lest it get clogged with ice chunks. During those brutal winters of the late 70's we would all be up there, Todd Reeves, Jed Ellis, Paul Clement, Bob Tilly and myself, all taking turns, standing in ankle deep ice water, watching the pump.
There were a couple minor things that happened in the Ohio during this time, one was a local rock group, either Circus or Rainbow Canyon, used the lobby to rehearse for around a week. That was either in the summer of 1973 or '74, not sure which. During the spring of 1974 famed local attorney Ken Seminatore used the outer lobby as a campaign headquarters. I forget which office he was running for at the time. In late 1975 a large hole was cut in the lobby floor. It allowed excavation of what became Kennedy's back room in the basement of the State, the former Mr. Ryder's Shop/usherettes dressing room area. Other than these few instances, not much else happened, the Ohio sat dark and silent, with the occasional sounds of footsteps.
Grand stairs, circa 1980, photo from the Playhouse Square Archives. This is the remains of the red 1964 lobby that replaced the original lobby that was destroyed in the July 5, 1964 fire. The formally white marble stairs were blackened in the fire. Those steps, and a few fragments of plaster was all that was left. Sometimes when it rained, a soggy ceiling tile would splat onto the floor.
But better days were ahead.
Ohio lobby construction, 1982, photo from the Playhouse Square Archives.
Quite the transformation in the auditorium, photo from a 1984 Ohio Ballet program.
The 1982 grand stairs, designed by Peter van Dijk of Dalton, van Dijk, Johnson & Partners. Photo from the Playhouse Square Archives.
In 1982, the Ohio was transformed into the new home of the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival. The Ohio Ballet would also use the Ohio as well.
From The Plain Dealer, February 2, 1982.
Program cover, 1982.
Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival ticket brochure, 1982.
Ohio Ballet Program, 1984-85.
As remarkable as the 1982 comeback was, even greater things were in store.
The 1964 red lobby was always a sore point with us. Loew's Inc. did what they had to do in the aftermath of the fire to get back in business asap. Back in the 70's we always talked about how it would be great if... the lobby could be restored to it's 1921 appearance, especially if the Sampriotti murals could be replicated. The once unimaginable has happened!!!
Workers from EverGreene Architectural Arts attaching plaster details to the new main lobby ceiling. Photo from Playhouse Square.
Workers from EverGreene Architectural Arts working on the New Grand Lobby ceiling, photo from Playhouse Square.
What's old is new again. The new lobby should looks pretty similar to the original in 1921.
The lobby recreation was completed in June 2016. Below: Photos from our last few visits.
Special thanks to Ruth Flannery, Tom Einhouse, Cindi Szymanski, and Tom Rathburn at Playhouse Square for their invaluable help with this post, and for keeping the theatres running.
And to the Media History Digital Library where most of the archival material is from.
A special shout out to Ray Shepardson, Ceil Hartman, Ralph Smith - Smitty, Dennis Wilde (sp?), Nick Spontelli, Russ Richards, Rick Trela, Todd Reeves, Todd Bemis, Chuck Sudetic, Jed Ellis, Tom Kalish, Paul Clement, Bob Tilly, Chuck Fleming, Bill Grulich, Tom Bindernagel, Bob Bindernagel, and the others I worked with back in the 1970's, helping to keep these theatres standing, may God bless them, wherever they may be.
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