MANNINGTON – Did you go on your first date at the Mannington Movie Theater?
Or maybe you popped in later, after the place had been reinvented as a bar and restaurant, and town legend Susan “Weegie” Starkey starred in the kitchen, turning out offerings worthy of a culinary Oscar.
Either way, the building that’s been a fixture in the business district of this northern Marion County town for nearly 90 years – is getting ready for its close-up all over again.
Mannington Main Street last week announced its intention to revitalize the structure that has sat vacant in recent years.
The booster organization, members of the Starkey family and others will make that official, in a ceremony at 11 a.m. Friday (Oct. 24) in front of the building at 115 Market St.
A stage and theater-style seating for dance recitals and community forums are part of the tentative design, the organization said, with the idea of also incorporating a multiuse space for a business incubator.
When the place opened its doors in 1936, it only had one business in mind: the screening of Hollywood hits of the day for an audience roiled by the Great Depression just looking for some escapist fun for an evening or weekend matinee.
According to the 1930s trade publication, Film Daily, Dr. C.P. Church, who had owned and operated Burt’s Theater in downtown Mannington for a number of years, was looking to build a new movie house.
The doctor knew just who to call: Pittsburgh architect Victor Rigaumont.
Rigaumont understood that movie houses of the day were still transitioning from vaudeville to silent movies to talkies. He knew audiences had standards for their entertainment.
That’s why the interior trappings were still ornate, especially in the old vaudeville halls.
Orchestra pits abounded in such houses.
And if your theater of choice or necessity didn’t have a bowl for musicians, you could at least count on a single sacred space, at the lower corner of the screen, for a multi-rank, triple-keyboard organ to accompany it all – until the actors began emoting out loud in 1927.
Rigaumont was known for his movie theaters across the Steel City and elsewhere. He specialized in them.
Every one he designed carried an Art Deco signature, making them buildings for their time – and structural stars in their own architectural movie.
That’s what he did on a smaller scale for the Mannington Movie Theater.
Over the course of its 50-year run as a movie house, most people in town just referred to it as “the old show building.”
The Starkey family kept a lot of the Art Deco during the reconfiguration to Starkey’s Bar and Grill, and wasn’t adverse to reawakening celluloid echoes.
Management loved showing off the original projection room – projector and reels included – upstairs.
Just like an epic movie, drama and heartache also ensued within its structural confines, Mannington Main Street’s executive director Becky Williams said.
The old show building was substantially damaged by floodwaters when Buffalo Creek jumped its banks in 2016.
And Weegie Starkey’s death from COVID complications three years ago knocked everyone out of focus for a long while, the executive director said.
“She was the magic in the kitchen.”
