There was a time when all kinds of area towns like Moville, Kingsley, Anthon and more had movie theaters, but most died out by the 1970s as bigger plexes in larger towns came to the fore.
The show is focused on a handful of single-screen theaters in towns with populations of 3,500 or less, some of which are community-run by a stable of volunteers.
Those that are community run with lots of donated labor are in Holstein, Ida Grove, Lake City, plus in Wayne, Nebraska, while other movie theaters in small towns are still family owned, such as in Sibley and The Max in Onawa.
The community-run organizations use much volunteer labor, because otherwise the theaters would not be financially viable.
We hear from Doug Clough of the King Theater in Ida Grove and Brady Meyer, with the State Theater in Holstein, which are about a dozen miles from each other. They praise the stable of about a combined 35 volunteers in the two towns.
Both Ida Grove and Holstein theaters have had fallow periods where they were approaching imminent closure. Both theaters converted to the community-run model with volunteers, and both also have had makeovers in the last decade.
State Theatre dates to the 1930's, while King first opened in 1914, as first called The Princess Theatre back when the fare was still silent movies.
Meyer and Clough discuss the challenges of keeping the theaters open amid a period of streaming content has impacted theater chains nationally.
Clough said a smaller town with a theater maintains "social equity" that binds people from that area together.
To complete the picture of movie theaters in Northwest Iowa, there are some family-owned in smaller towns, such as Iowa Theater in Onawa and the Pioneer in Milford in the Okoboji area, and The Max in Sibley, which has two screens and a new owner most recently in 2017.
For comparison, larger county seat type towns in Storm Lake, Spirit Lake and Spencer have movie plexes with three to five screens.
Also, Sioux City, which has a metro population of 100,000, has recently lost one of its two multi-plexes, with Promenade Cinema closing four months ago in late 2025, leaving AMC at Southern Hills Mall.
*The first community run-single screen theaters I personally attended was in Grundy Center, Iowa, which was a half hour drive from where attending college in Cedar Falls in the mid-1990s. The ticket price at the time was $2, cheaper than others in the WCF metro, so we made that drive to see films quite a bit.
This show on community theaters was a labor of love.
*Click on the audio link above to hear the entire show.
What's The Frequency, Episode 92.
