Lyric Theater Wall Sign Bisbee Arizona 1967

Title

Lyric Theater Wall Sign Bisbee Arizona 1967

Artist

David Lee Guss

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

The first Lyric Theater in Bisbee, Arizona was built-in around 1913 in Brewery Gulch. Four years later it moved into a building that had housed the OK Livery Stable and Feed Store.

"The Lyric was built by the Lyric Amusement Company as part of a chain of Southwestern Arizona theaters owned by John Diamos of Tucson. At one time he controlled movie palaces (as they were called) in Tucson, Bisbee, Douglas, Nogales and Tombstone. Bisbee's Lyric was the last original house in the chain."

Ted DeGrazia managed the Cine Plaza theater in Tucson in the mid 1930's and the Lyric in Bisbee for several years at the decade's end. Both theaters featured live performances as well as screening films.

Ted "designed Art Deco plaster reef plaques for the walls of the theater," but did not paint murals for the Lyric contrary to rumors.

In 1941 he traveled to Mexico and apprenticed under the extraordinary Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco.

This hand painted sign was destroyed when the building was torn down for the "inevitable" parking lot.

In early 1989 The Bisbee Realty bought the property and in March removed the familiar marquee, revealing the word "Lyric" etched in stone. The area in front was remodeled for offices but the stage and main auditorium were left as is.

In the course of the remodeling a long lost 35mm film Ted shot of a beauty contest held on the Lyric's stage was discovered. "1939 Beauty Contest" is comprised of "screen tests of local women used to promote" the Diamos chain of theaters mentioned above.

In March 1997 the self proclaimed Professor George Hall showed Ted's film and Thomas Edison's 1903 "The Great Train Robbery" using his "hand cranked 35mm Powers cameragraph projector" at the Savoy Opera House in Tucson.

The next day he screened Rudolph Valentino's final film "Son of The Sheik" (1926) which had been lensed in Yuma,

Hall had a mini museum of his vintage projectors in his parent's home in Prescott then moved the artifacts to the 1918 Liberty Theater in Jerome which houses a cinema museum and functioning theater where "movies can viewed in the same atmosphere they were in the 1920's."

Years ago Hall had his own personal web site on line which had information about Tom Mix's early films for Selig Polyscope shot in the Prescott area in the teens, none of which have survived intact.

On this site, which has since been taken down, he also had screen captures of a bare chested, dancing Ted DeGrazia lifted from one of Ted's films.

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December 23rd, 2013

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