Click image to enlarge. It's a Wonderful Life, The Big Sleep, and The Best Years of Our Lives were among the top movies of 1946, the same year the Cricket Theater opened in Collinsville. It was also the year credited by film historians as the highwater mark for film-going, as more than eighty million people attended the movies every week—almost sixty percent of the total population. The sixty-thousand-dollar, eight-hundred-seat theater was built just as television was emerging in the decade following World War II. Boasting “the largest chairs, modern rest rooms, and year-round air conditioning,” the building is typical of the streamlined designs of the late movie palace era. Like most small-town movie houses, the Cricket eventually succumbed to the competition from television and closed its doors in October 1964. The theater later reopened for a time but has mostly been dark in recent decades. A portion of the roof recently collapsed, daunting the efforts of the Collinsville Historical Association, which recently purchased the property and is trying to raise ninety thousand dollars for the roof repairs alone. Only time will tell if the old Cricket marquee will once again blaze with lights and bring back some of its former excitement to Collinsville’s main street.
UPDATE: The Collinsville Historical Association purchased the building and has been working to restore it to working condition. Read more from the Times-Journal.
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