Saturday, February 18, 2006

Palace Ad, 1919

The Palace was located about where the Ruan Center now stands, at 607-609 Locust, and had a reasonably long run from 1913 to 1931.

This ad, from the defunct newspaper The Des Moines Capital ("Every Inch A Newspaper"), is a wonderful time capsule in itself--has anybody ever heard of "The Heart of Humanity", the movie that "will live forever"? Somehow, the raves quoted here aren't especially encouraging--the Secretary of War weighs in his two cents, and the Chicago American dubs it "the peer of 'Birth of a Nation'". Uh oh. And tickets prices are upped to a whopping 50 cents for this run--when typical admissions at this time were 5 to 10 cents--which still beats the big city fares of two dollars.

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