They wisely chose a convenient location. In the early days a skating rink, and later a Ford car agency, the building was owned by C.E. Friend, Lawrence's only contribution to the lieutenant governorship of Kansas. His Friend Lumber yard extended south for the rest of the block on both sides of the alley to Eleventh Street.

With the remodeling, including over nine hundred deep cushioned theatre chairs, it opened for business on September 7, 1934, the Granada with its big vertical neon sign and marquee covering the sidewalk, represented the most modern show house in Lawrence. It would, in less than a generation, replace the Jayhowker, nee Dickinson, nee Bowersock, as the premier motion picture theatre in Lawrence. The opening picture featured Robert Montgomery and Maureen O'Sullivan in "The Hideout." It was conceded that the one floor beat climbing to a balcony.

A few of the more daring invested five hundred dollars, but most were in the century category. So soon after the Market debacle of 1929, one hundred dollars was not considered small potatoes. Perhaps it was the free season passes for two that they also received that tended to mollify them.

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The large stockholder list was to prove a boon when Stan promoted a stage give-away stunt which proved to be quite often.

There were drawings for automobiles, both new and used, vacation trips, appliances, and for the most part they were staged to bolster summer attendance when large numbers of KU students left town. Then during the school year, there were popularity contests for coeds and even college couples, free trips to Hollywood and visits to the studios with sometimes a screen test.

For the youngsters hanging around the theater, there was usually a way to earn admission into the movie peddling handbills, changing advertising displays and the marquee letters or other mundane tasks. So a new crop of recruits always appeared magically when needed.

One of the regular Granada matinee patrons would arrive out front in her KU student chauffeured sixteen cylinder Cadillac. With her summer white shoes, white stockings and white dress, Mrs. J. B. Watkins, who was to become Lawrence’s outstanding benefactress, would alight gracefully, assisted by the liveried attendant, after he had purchased her ticket, then smiling to all present, make a regal entrance to the theater.

Almost a yearly highlight of interest at the Granada was the stage wedding. The Bridal Suite at the Eldridge Hotel was usually available in exchange for some advertising. Clothes for the bride and groom sometimes came from Weaver’s and Obers. Other gifts made the experience quite attractive to the couple as many firms participated. Understandably the necessary habiliments for a wedding trousseau then did not extend to a two or three hundred dollar wedding dress, with theater tickets at twenty-five to fifty cents.

Children’s dancing schools and their teachers could always promise at least one public recital per year at the Granada theater. The event served a double purpose. Usually it was the first and for most of the kiddies, the only time they would ever appear on the stage. As revenue for the theater, a packed house was assured with twenty to thirty doting mothers out selling tickets to all the relatives to come see their little “Shirley Temples” perform.

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After the demise of the Jayhawker and Patee theatres, the Granada and Varsity were to provide for Lawrence indoor theatre entertainment until October of 1968, when Commonwealth's triple theatre complex openend in the Hillcrest Shopping Center, followed in 1977 with a twin theatre by the same operators at 31st and Iowa Street. The Dark Command

A review of Lawrence’s occasion to host a real Hollywood World Premiere can be refreshing to those who witnessed the event.

W. R. Burnett, a screen writer and author, claimed that he got the idea of a fictional adaptation of Quantrell’s raid on Lawrence while on a train ride from Chicago to California, when a passenger who got on at Kansas City sparked his imagination. He said the fellow painted such a gruesome picture of the massacre as to stir up his own adrenalin.

This information excerpted from Emory Frank Scott's One Hundred Years of Lawrence Theatres, House of Usher, Lawrence, Kansas, 1979.