Keith Albee:
A History

But the theatre's greatest challenge resulted from television's impact upon the motion picture business. As neighborhood theatres shut their doors, Hollywood filled larger motion picture theatres with wide screen musicals and epics. Where once the features changed every three days, studios demanded that features run for multiple weeks. One by one, the grandiose 3,000 to 5,000-seat theatres across the country closed. Many were torn down. Some were saved by people saw the wisdom of converting the former movie theatres into multi-use performing arts centers to assist in revitalizations of downtown areas.

During the 1970s, the Keith-Albee faced its own financial crisis. Although groups formed to "save the Keith," the Hyman family tastefully converted the theatre into a three-screen movie complex by forming smaller auditoriums from the east and west portions of the main auditorium. Later, a fourth screen was added in former retail space that faced 4rth Avenue.

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the theatre featured performances by 1930s crooner Rudy Vallee and a variety of other acts, simulating a vaudeville performance. Dustin Hoffman visited the theatre for a benefit performance of "Rain Man." Motion picture producer John Fiedler, a Marshall University graduate, hosted benefit premiers of "The Beast" and "Tune in Tomorrow." A restored version of the campy "Teenage Strangler," a movie shot in Huntington, had a belated "world premiere" at the Keith-Albee more than 20 years after its production.

Sol and Abe Hyman had much of their personality built into the Keith-Albee. Their heirs --- Jack Hyman and Derek Hyman --- have successfully maintained and tweaked the structure. Now, in the 21st century, the theatre remains a monument to their memory and an invaluable advertisement to Huntington.

(The writer relied in part on "Were You There When The Stars Came On" by the late Bill Belanger, fine arts editor of the Herald-Dispatch, "The Keith Albee Section" from the May 6, 1928, edition of The Herald-Advertiser, and David Naylor's "American Picture Palaces" and "Great American Movie Theatres" in composing this history.)

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