New Piasa Chautauqua · up the hill from the roque courts
7:30 in the evening · three sides open to the night
The way it was
Most nights we went to the semi-outdoor theater, where they had free popcorn, free movies, and a community sing. The theater was open on three sides, and the kids usually sat up in the front rows.
It was the non-denominational Sunday School too, and a place for plays and musicals — the one building that held the whole summer's evenings. You climbed the hill from the roque courts as the light went down, and the singing started before the reels did.
What the programs show
This wasn't a stray memory — it was printed. Season after season, the annual programs list “Community Sing and Movies” at 7:30, the community singing at 7:45, and motion pictures in the Auditorium. The titles below are pulled straight from those programs.
On the bill
A sampling of the pictures the programs actually named — the Hollywood of the late 1940s and early 1950s, carried up the Mississippi to a screen open to the night air.
Film titles transcribed from the New Piasa Chautauqua annual programs. Browse them all — every page — in the program archive.
ROQUE