“Let’s go to the movies” was a sentiment I expressed a lot as a teenager. Most amusement was beyond my budget or above my tender years but going to the movies always held the potential for adventure. A night out with friends or that special someone with movie theater popcorn and the latest Hollywood flick always promised a great night’s entertainment.
I saw more movies in the theater as a kid than I do now because that was almost the only way you could see a movie then. When I was a lad there were really only three ways to see a movie. One was in the theater upon a film’s initial release; another was on television if that movie happened to be broadcast. However, when a film was on TV it was all chopped up by commercials, shortened for time and all scrunched up into a little box (remember a 25 inch television was considered huge back then, a 13 inch screen was standard). So if you were going to see an epic like Ben Hur, Gone With The Wind, Lawrence of Arabia or Dr. Zhivago then the theater was the only place to be. I saw all of those pictures on the big screen, most in rerelease. That was a third way you could see a movie, sometimes the studios sent them back to theaters for another go round. That doesn’t happen much anymore, unless it is Turner Classic Movies showing old films on occasion in theaters for a retrospective simulcast. That’s what’s happening with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It will be back in theaters on September 4th, 5th, 6th, 2022 in honor of its 40th anniversary.
As an adult I think about movies and theaters differently. I think about them as commercial enterprises and engines of economic growth. If you’re in a large city like Sioux Falls perhaps your own residents are enough to sustain commerce and provide prosperity. In Mitchell’s case, our success depends upon our trade area. That’s why it is vital that the smaller towns and rural areas around us be vibrant. It’s in our own economic self-interest that these neighboring communities thrive.
Mitchell has things that draw people to town like the Corn Palace, grocery stores, restaurants, specialty businesses of various kinds and the movie theater. A version of Logan Luxury Theaters has been in Mitchell since 1933. That’s when the original Roxy Theater was built on the present location. Of course it has gone through changes and remodels over the years, the most extensive of which occurred after the fire in 2001. It was a gamble when Jeff Logan’s father, during the height of the Great Depression, built the Roxy. At that time, the big studios in Hollywood made the films and then distributed the pictures to be shown in movie theaters that the studios themselves owned. In 1933, the Paramount Corporation owned the State Theater (which burned down in 2004) and the Lyric Theater that was located by the Navin Apartments on a portion of the parking lot between the apartments and The Depot. In 1938 when the Lyric Theater closed the Time Theater opened, approximately where Dr. Lucky’s is today. The tickets to the first show at the Roxy cost fifteen cents.
To promote the Roxy, Nelson Logan bought Duke. Duke was a male lion rumored to have been one of Frank Buck’s rescue lions. Frank Buck was the Marlon Perkins, Jack Hannah or Steve Irwin of his day. The lion made his appearance at the Roxy in the mid-1930’s. At one point in the decade Frank Buck was out on tour with a stop in Sioux Falls so he came to Mitchell in order to see the lion he supposedly rescued. He proclaimed he may in fact have rescued it and had absolutely no objection to the use of his name in connection with Duke. Buck’s friendship with the elder Logan was cemented when Buck gave him a baby kangaroo as a present. Duke lasted until World War II when food rationing came into play. First Duke was fed with small game hunted from the land but eventually reality had to be recognized, there was no rationed food for privately owned lions when even zoos had difficulty feeding their animals. WWII gas rationing could have hurt the movie business in Mitchell because out-of-town folks didn’t have the fuel to waste for frivolous things. Blackout regulations, to thwart enemy bombing, also made traveling at night somewhat problematic for people who had to drive home after a late show.
In 1972, Jeff Logan took over the business from his aging and ailing father. This year marks his fiftieth anniversary in the trade as the owner-operator of the enterprise. It was in 1972 that he bought the State Theater and the business was further expanded in 1976 with the addition of the Star-lite drive-in. Mr. Logan was in the video rental industry for a while with Show Biz Video. He has been creative and competitive throughout the pandemic especially in the face of no new product to speak of out of Hollywood, straight to streaming releases and the general public’s uneasiness in sitting in close quarters with other folks who may be infected with a disease that, for some, may be a death sentence.
Jeff Logan has adapted and innovated. He has cleaned and disinfected. Now the pandemic seems to be easing. Vaccinations are widely available. New movies came out including blockbusters like the James Bond film No Time To Die and Spiderman: No Way Home. Mr. Logan has been resilient and imaginative so the Roxy has stayed open.
That’s important for many reasons. Obviously for the Logan family and their employees’ livelihoods, remaining in operation has been a positive thing. Being able to escape the grind of reality with recreation in a state of the art theater is another reason to applaud the survival of the movie business in our community. The City of Mitchell should be grateful to Mr. Logan as well. The ticket tax produces revenue for the City, as does the sales tax the theater also generates. Approximately one third of the business the theater does come from folks who don’t live in Mitchell. Many of them come to town and eat a meal, buy some gas and perhaps peruse the shops before taking in a show. Logan Luxury Theaters is a vital economic development tool and a creator of income for the City of Mitchell, an amenity for residents, a recruiting device for employers and a respite from the harsh realities of life for a few hours.
When I was interviewing Mr. Logan for this column he showed me pictures of the lines of people around the block to see Jaws when it was first released in June of 1975. There were 13,000 people who saw the movie in the first two weeks it was shown in Mitchell, more people than the entire population of Mitchell at that time. Today about 150,000 people (many of whom are repeat patrons obviously) take in a movie annually at the Roxy.
The town has been hit hard by bankruptcies, business closures and retirements. Empty retail spaces on Main Street and in the strip malls are testament to Mitchell’s decline. We need to fight hard to promote all local businesses, especially those that draw people to town.
When is the last time you went to the movies?
