Ed’s “Beaver Theater” of his Youth

Attached below is a newspaper advertisement for an in-door movie theater that was located about 12 miles from our home when I was growing up in West Virginia.  It was located in a little village called Beaver, West Virginia, but teenage boys would always laugh and snicker when someone said that they were going to the "Beaver Theater" on a weekend.    The retort was nearly always: "So you're taking a girl there, right?"

This ad is from 1947 and of course a year before I was born but even up until around 1965 or so, as the ad says, there was a "balcony for the colored."  I remember going there once as a senior in high school and while in the lobby watching a few "colored" kids get tickets and walk up stairs to the balcony.  They certainly knew their place!

After I went off to college my mother told me that the theater was near the end of its life and to make a profit had started to run "adult" movies.  Perhaps the name carried more meaning at that point!