Does anyone remember Flash Gordon and Gene Autry and their cliff-hanging adventures during the movie serials on Saturday afternoons at The Classic Theatre on Ontario Street?  That would have been the 1940s and the cost of admission was just one thin dime. However, the movie excitement existed long before that. The photo gbelow shows The Classic Theatre  about 1923. 

Below is the only view of the Classic Theatre that we have found.  It comes from Cinema Treasures and is thought to be circa 1923 when John V. Ward was theatre manager. The man in the photo gives us a sense of the size of the posters and the standee. 

Many people will know of the Vogue Theatre on the same side of the street and a block further east and, of course, the Avon Theatre on Downie which had an earlier life as Theatre Albert but some may not know of the Classic Theatre that was in business for more than 35 years from 1914 to 1950. 

The Classic Theatre was located at 145-147 Ontario Street. It was operating by 1914, the year WW1 began, and played a role in the lives of Stratford people both young and old right through WW1 and both The Great Depression and WW2 until 1950.

The Classic Theatre was not listed in Vernon’s Stratford Directory in 1912 but it was there by 1914.  It disappeared from Vernon’s Directories in 1922 but was included again in 1924.  Then it is  listed from 1927 on right through the depression years in the 1930s and through the 1940s during WW2 and the immediate post-war years until 1950. It is not listed in 1951.  

Beginning in 1951, the location was vacant for a few years. The first listing in Vernon's Directory after that is 1957 for Metropolitan Life Insurance at 145-147 Ontario

Wesley Kemp Sr. was the manager of the Classic Theatre in its early years with John Ward taking over in the 1920s. Later, Walter F. Helm who was also associated with the Avon Theatre was the manager.

But what was it like to attend those Saturday afternoon serial adventures? Here is a short memory by Brian Reis who grew up in Stratford and attended shows at the Classic Theatre in the 1940s. 

"Can't say that I've seen anyone talk about the Saturday afternoon serial movies at the Classic Theatre. They were usually Red Ryder, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Charles Starrett [The Durango Kid] or even Batman. There'd be at least four or five episodes of each, and of course, each episode ended with the hero in some sort of dire predicament, so you just had to get back the next Saturday to see if he got out of it or not. Admission was 10 cents (at some point it went up to 15), and we'd usually start lining up about half and hour ahead of the box office opening. The line-ups got to be pretty long, so you wanted to be there early. My worst punishment at home, if I strayed off the straight and narrow (an easy accomplishment for me) was to be banned from going to a Saturday serial. Source: If you grew up in Stratford...FB.

The Classic Theatre's location on the right just before the Queen's Hotel can be seen in this early view of Ontario Street in 1914. There is a show advertisement on the side of the building. We are looking east. Knox Church is on the left. The Knox fire was just a year before in 1913. (see article above). The Perth-Mutual Insurance building can be seen on the northwest corner of Waterloo and Ontario Streets. The history of that business and the building is also detailed in an article above. Photo: Vince Gratton Collection.    Compiled by Gord Conroy