#5The JamesF. Dean Theater
133 S Main St
Listen to the Audio
The James F. Dean Theater
The Dean Theater is a brick theater which is on the site of an earlier entertainment center known as “The Arcade Theatre.” The Arcade was Summerville’s first movie theater built around 1925 when motion pictures were viewed without sound tracks. At that time, live piano and violin music in the theater added to the drama of the moment. Sydney Legendre, an entrepreneur from New Orleans, purchased and renovated the theater in 1935. The theater closed for a while, but reopened as the James F. Dean Theater for the Flowertown Players.
The James F. Dean Theater
• The Dean Theater is a brick theater which was is on the site of an earlier entertainment center known as “The Arcade Theatre.”
• The Arcade was Summerville’s first movie theater built around 1925 when motion pictures were viewed without sound tracks. At that time, live piano and violin music in the theater added to the drama of the moment.
• Sydney Legendre, an entrepreneur from New Orleans, purchased and renovated the theater in 1935. His wife was Gertrude Legendre of Aiken and New York. She was a world traveler and big-game hunter. The two had purchased and often resided at Medway Plantation in Berkeley County. The stuffed heads of Gertie’s safari trophies graced the walls of the theater as the talkies entertained the locals into the 1970s.
