This postcard from around 1950 shows the Sunland Theatre on Main Street, along with other buildings such as G. Wilson, Notary Public, a coffee shop and Osoyoos Furniture and Body Shop. (Osoyoos and District Museum and Archives)
During the 1950s and into the 1960s, movie theatres were still in their heyday and just about every small town had one.
As television became popular in the 1950s and 1960s, it cut into the audience of movie theatres. When home video recorders proliferated in the early 1980s, many of the remaining theatres closed.
In 1947, the Sunland Theatre was born on Main Street in Osoyoos in the building that is now Rudy’s Flooring and Coyotes Sports Simulation.
About a half a dozen Osoyoos citizens sitting in the office of Eric Lohlein decided the town needed a theatre and got the ball rolling, according to historian George J. Fraser in his book, The Story of Osoyoos.
Its cost was about $45,000.
The Feb. 25, 1947 Osoyoos Times ran an ad for the new theatre with the opening date of March 1, 1947.
Its first film was “A Song to Remember” staring Cornel Wilde, Paul Muni and Merle Oberon in Technicolor. Admission was 50 cents.
The 1945 film was a fictionalized story of Polish pianist and composer Frederic Chopin.
Children were not allowed at the opening evening show.
Ads in the same issue of the Osoyoos Times congratulated the Osoyoos Theatre Company on the Sunland Theatre’s opening.
“Another example of the initiative and enterprise which will make Osoyoos into one of B.C.’s major towns,” said the ad from George J. Fraser and Thomas J. Wilson, general insurance, notary public and real estate.
At the time, the Sunland was a true movie theatre with a sloping floor. It seated 357.
The grandson of George J. Fraser, also named George Fraser, couldn’t recall exactly when the Sunland Theatre closed when we spoke to him a few years ago.
In the early 1970s, however, the building was a Macleods store.
In 1987, the building returned to movies when Barb and Vern Stephens opened Yore Movie Store to rent videos. Barb ran the business until 2015, when it closed, once again the result of changing entertainment technology.
She recalled at the time how a former customer said he would prefer to pay $1.50 more for pay-per-view over renting a DVD because he could pour himself a glass of wine and not leave the house.
Your memories:
Over the last two weeks, The Way We Were has featured photos of the 1948 flood and our website has also included a few from the 1972 flood.
Lyla Kallenberger (nee Grindler) wrote to us to point out that a photo in the May 23 Osoyoos Times showed the house she grew up in. It became the Bella Villa Motel.
“My dad Kurt Grindler built the house in 1946 and we lived there till 1954,” she wrote. “I remember the flood even though I was a child at the time. We had to move out for about a month as the basement was full of water.”
Other than the flood of 1948, it was a wonderful place to grow up, she said, and the photo brought back good memories of her house on the lake.
Iris Tweedy phoned in with her own memories of the 1948 flood.
That flood, she said, wiped out the old wooden bridge that connected East Osoyoos with the rest of the community.
There were no stores or other services such as gasoline on the east side, she said, recalling that people living on the east side had to take boats across for groceries.
The old bridge was subsequently replaced and the road was built up higher so that when the flood of 1972 came, the east side wasn’t cut off.
Do you have memories of the Sunland Theatre? Perhaps there’s an older couple in town that had their first date there? Maybe you remember a film so frightening that it gave you nightmares years later?
To share your memories of Osoyoos history, please comment on OsoyoosTimes.com or contact Editor Richard McGuire by email at [email protected] or by phone at 250-495-7225.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
By the 1970s, the Sunland Theatre was gone and the building was a Macleods store. This photo is from sometime between 1970 and 1975. (Osoyoos and District Museum and Archives)
