Festival en El Barrio Viejo with Calexico & Friends
A Bridge to the 14th Century
After World War I, Tucson's economy began to transform away from a natural resources and agriculture base and toward the service economy it is today. The reason? The burgeoning tourism industry. For the first time, the city began to trade on its favorable climate. And what better era in which to do so than the Roaring Twenties? Like the Hotel Congress, its sister structure across Congress Street, the Rialto was built by the California-based firm William Curlett and Son.
Like all Rialtos (and there are many extant worldwide) the name hearkens to a medieval covered bridge in Venice around which novelty shops were built, providing a de facto "entertainment district" when no such thing existed. "Rialtos" were plazas where the common man could go for fun, as "Theatres" and "Operas" were reserved for the nobility and the wealthy. It's worth noting that providing entertainment for the common man has been the ethos of the (Tucson) Rialto since its construction.
The conventional wisdom in 1919 was that the two East Congress Street projects were foolhardy. It was pie-in-the-sky fantasy that Tucsonans would venture that far east, said no less an authority than the editorial board of the Tucson Citizen. But that assessment was proved incorrect in short order. Kevin Costner's Field of Dreams sentiment "if you build it, they will come" must have been preminisced by the Curlett firm. In 1920, when the Rialto opened, motion pictures or "photoplays" didn't predominate the theater business as they would a decade later with the arrival of "talkies" (The Rialto itself sported a lighted mini-marquee in 1930 that read "Our Screen Talks!").
The fare in most theaters at the time was vaudeville - dance, comedy, and singing - interspersed with newsreels, cartoons, and short-subject silent films, as well as the occasional feature. The first full-length film to play on the Rialto's screen was The Toll Gate, on August 29th, 1920. Written by and starring William Hart, the film was a precursor to the type of Westerns that were frequently filmed in Tucson (although it had been shot in Sonora, California). You could say that Hart was the silent era's Clint Eastwood, and you wouldn't be stretching the truth that much. At the time, the Theatre possessed a majestic Kilgen pipe organ that cost $7500 (nearly $80,000 in 2004 dollars) which was later shipped to the Yuma Theater (also a Harry Nace property; see below for more) as part of the Paramount revamp.
The organ's music would accompany silent films. The lacunae left by the removal of the organ and its pipes are somewhat sad reminders of the Theatre's earliest era. Further accompaniment and the overture that began every show came from musicians in the smallish orchestra pit that sat in front of the stage. In the beginning, city father Emanuel Drachman owned the majority interest in the Rialto. His son Royers ("Roy") handled management duties at the Theatre for years when his father fell ill, leaving to work at another property in 1933. The Rialto had vaudeville shows every Wednesday that consisted of five different acts for the same price ("One Price House!" proclaimed some early advertisments, although that policy was later altered to put a premium on better seats).
The fourth act on the bill was considered to be the star attraction and thus got the dressing room with the star on the door. This policy was somewhat altered by none other than Ginger Rogers, who was Charleston-ing her way to fame in 1925. The immensely popular dance had its roots in African-American styles and is named after the South Carolina city in which it was appropriated by whites. It was eventually supplanted by a dance called the "Black Bottom." It is the dance from which the appellation "flapper" was derived, because practitioners appeared to be flapping their "wings."
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