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| The Rialto Theatre circa 1925 |
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| Balcony View of Original Stage |
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| 1920 postcard of Downtown |
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| Our Screen Talks! |
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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. continue the story...
The first Rialto On the cusp of the Bear/Schoonover era...
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