In the Dark in New Mexico
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One of Albuquerque's civic leaders, A.A. Grant, began showing motion pictures at his Grant's Opera House as amusements between the theatrical performances. These pioneer movies were only 30 seconds in length and featured such sundry entertainments as
Shooting the Chutes at Coney Island, Indian Ghost Dance, Parisian Dances (the can-can?) and
Surf at Long Beach in a Storm. Boxing promoters quickly caught on to the flickering screen's power, and a film of the Corbett-Courtney prizefight was a popular attraction in Albuquerque on October 21, 1897.
Besides ushering in the motion picture industry into the New Mexico Territory, 1898 also saw the waging of the Spanish-American War in Cuba. Territorial Gov. Miguel A. Otero's quick response to Col. Theodore Roosevelt's request for a "cowboy cavalry" meant that many New Mexicans became Rough Riders. On June 2-3, 1898, it all came back home to Albuquerque as The Colossal War Show, a two-hour epic showing scenes of the battered Maine battleship in New York harbor, drills of "Teddy's Terrors" and other patriotic displays. It was a perfect way to launch the motion picture business in New Mexico.
During the early experimental years of the cinema, movies were offered to audiences along with many other amusements including stereopticon displays, concerts by local and nationally known singers, speeches, skits, juggling and gymnastic performances, and just about anything else that would sell tickets. Community opera houses like the Duncan Opera House in Las Vegas and the Elks Opera House in Silver City were quickly equipped with film projectors to fulfill the public's fascination with movies.
The first decade of the 20th century unveiled the first true cinemas or "arcades" in New Mexico. At first, the movie houses were modest, no-frills auditoriums, still evolving toward the great theatres built between World War I and II. Silver City's first cinema, the Airdome of 1909, was an industrial warehouse-type structure. Before the Apollo Theatre was built in 1918 in the bustling oil-patch town of Artesia, movies were shown inside a large tent.
New Mexico's first cinemas also boasted unusual and exotic names, reflecting "gilded age" sensibilities, rather than Southwestern evocative monikers. Las Vegas fostered the Browne, Isis, Photoplay, Bijou and Mutual (later renamed the Kiva). Carlsbad developed the Lyric and People's theatres by 1912. Mesilla was home to the Fountain Theatre (originally built for lantern slide exhibitions), and Silver City also offered the Princess Cinema. Only the Fountain Theatre in Mesilla of about 1907 and the Mutual (Kiva) of 1912 are still operating today.
