By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

Hidden in the middle of downtown Joplin is one of the most opulent movie theaters of its day.

When the Fox Theatre opened at 415 S. Main St. in 1930, a night at the movies was more than just entertainment.

“People dressed up to go to the movies,” said Brad Belk, director of the Joplin Museum Complex. “The movies allowed people in Joplin to feel like they were part of the larger community in the U.S.”

Before the popular black-and-white movies started for the evening, the previews were newsreels on local outlaws Bonnie and Clyde and updates on World War II. It was information, good and bad, Belk said, before the motion pictures offered audiences the chance to forget their troubles of an economic depression and then a war.

“It was a release,” he said. “Everybody could go in there and park their troubles at the door.”

Several other movie theaters from that era still exist throughout the area today. Ongoing renovation projects at some of those have been undertaken to restore them to their former glory.

But in the 1930s, there was no place bigger or better in Joplin to go see a movie than the Fox Theatre.

It took 300 men working simultaneously and $500,000 to build the Fox in seven months, said Joplin Mayor Gary Shaw.

At one time, the theater had 35 employees and a full orchestra employed. It even boasted the largest neon sign in Missouri for a short time.

“It was the premier movie theater in Joplin,” Belk said. “It was so lavish.”

Some of its most prominent design elements include blind arcades, corkscrew columns, classical orders and recessed alcoves furnished with statues. It had seating for nearly 2,000 people.

The theater shut down in the early 1970s due to increased competition from modern theaters and rising operating costs, according to the building’s 1991 application to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1974, Central Assembly Church in Joplin bought the building because its congregation was growing too quickly to build a new structure. Shaw, executive administrator of what is now called Central Christian Center, said church leaders decided early on to restore the old theater instead of gutting it.