Orr Twin Cinema, which opened as the Orr Theatre in 1947, was the fourth business to show movies in Orrville. Built right after World War II, the new theater replaced the Grand Theater located on West Market Street.
The original concession stand is shown at the left, featuring popcorn, Lifesavers and candy bars. Soft drinks were sold only in bottles.
Advertised as "Ohio's finest," the new theater had all of the latest technologies in projection and sound. Additionally, the 700 seat capacity and large building were considered to be well above anything Orrville had experienced previously in movie theaters.
Pictured above is the marquee of the theater announcing the grand opening on January 30th, 1947. The first film shown was "Three Little Girls in Blue" to a crowd of nearly 2,000 people. The Orr was built by General Theatres Company of Cleveland, owned by Leonard Mishkind and Sam Gorrel for a cost of $150,000.
The theater is still owned by this company today, although it is managed locally by Anna and Russ Davidson. Anna's father, Howard Wade, managed the theater until 1980 when he became mayor of Orrville.
The original auditorium is pictured here as it appeared on opening night. Although a stage was built under the screen to accomodate acting theater, the building has always been used primarily for cinema.
In 1980, the single-screen Orr Theatre became the two-screen Orr Twin Cinema. During Anna Wade-Davidson's junior year at Akron University she took on a special project for her marketing class and conducted a community survey
regarding the issue of "To Twin or not to Twin" the Orr Theatre. Patrons were solicited for their opinions in written form for about 8 weeks in the spring of 1980. Many traditional movie buffs were not happy to see a grand old theatre give way to the demanding market of more choice within the same space. However, the deciding survey results indicated the majority favored twinning. Although this reduced the number of seats, it allowed two films to be shown at the same time while still having screens considerably larger than those found at other area theaters.
