ipl-logo

Astra Theater Memory History

1282 Words6 Pages

With dank lights and cloudy windows, the Astra is carefully tucked into Jasper’s square. A once gloomy reminder of the past, is and will be graciously reborn. An Astra Theater ticket stub holds beautiful memories for old and young. An Astra ticket stub holds the memories of the wonderful history, grimm closing, and a new start. Already being a successful man, Bernie Gutzweiler owned the Tivoli, a furniture company, and worked at a butcher shop. For reasons unknown, he decided to build another theater. Construction, by local man Andy Berger, began to build the beautiful Astra Theater in October of 1935, right on the same downtown Jasper square where the Tivoli stood. Many memories such as the Mills Brothers ' performance and the act of Benny …show more content…

Bernie gave credit to people who could not pay during the Great Depression. Although racism was still showing through, he let anyone come into his theater. Even the Mills Brothers’, who had performed for the king and queen, were shunned when wanting to buy a room at ___ and ____. Graciously, Bernie brought them to his own home, where they stayed. (Gutzweiler 1) Buzzing with excitement, the theater hosted the first national screening of “A League of Their Own” on July 1, 1992 (Heeke 1). The Astra was one of the first to have air conditioning, to emphasize this, they put up penguin posters to bring people in. Some went, not to see the movies, but to feel the air conditioning.The cost being 12 to 10 cents, was a good deal to cool off and watch a movie, so the theater became a very popular place. Although the effects of the Great Depression seemed to have impacted other Indiana theaters, the Astra remained strong. Bernie used to say, “Now this is the business to be into; where everybody pays.” (Gutzweiler …show more content…

All the excitement starting when Jasper locals Heath Kluemper, Patrick Norris, and Kyle Rupert, approached a Lottery booth while attending a Colts game in Indianapolis. When asked what would be done if they had won, they said they would buy and restore the Astra theater. “We’ve always loved movies, and the Astra is such a staple in the community. It has a lot of history and it still resonates with people,” says Kluemper. Spokesman Al Larson and the staff running the lottery picked six for new commercials that they thought “stood out and captured the essence of what it means to be a Hoosier” in the “Imagine That” campaign. (Sondeen

Show More
Related

  • Kennedy Steel Dbq

    1593 Words  | 7 Pages

    During the early 1960’s America faced a “rolling recession”, a recession that is focused on a few specific industries, which had hit the automobile industry particularly hard. The US gross national product was falling and so was the US economy and many Americans had fallen on hard times. On April 10, 1962, to make matters worse, the United States steel corporation executives had simultaneously raised the price on all steel by 3.5 percent. The rise in cost would ignite severe backlash among many Americans who saw the rise in price as a crippling blow the general prosperity of the United States. As a result President John F. Kennedy decided to address the working class citizens in order for them support him in convincing the executives to lower

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Theodore Roosevelt's The New Nationalism

    861 Words  | 4 Pages

    On a clear Kansas day in August of 1910, Theodore Roosevelt planted a flag on the fissure that ran through the Republican Party. At the dedication of the John Brown Memorial Park in Osawatomie, the former Republican president — and soon-to-be Progressive Party presidential candidate — sought to blaze a new path through his old party in a speech entitled “The New Nationalism.” The speech is best known for laying out the progressive agenda and served as the cornerstone for Roosevelt’s 1912 presidential platform. However, it served a secondary purpose: to unify a still-divided nation under an empowered federal government. Roosevelt’s discussion of John Brown offers the clearest exemplar of this attempt to unify, as his patriotic language and euphemistic

    Read More

  • How Does Alexander Hamilton Influence American Culture

    768 Words  | 4 Pages

    When broadway playwright, composer, and performer Lin-Manuel Miranda went on a much needed vacation after his musical In The Heights finished its run on broadway, he picked up a biography that would change both his life and the face of theatre. When reading “Alexander Hamilton” by Ron Chernow, Miranda started formulating a musical about the “ten dollar founding father without a father,” which is now dominating Broadway almost five years later. The show focuses on often over-looked founding father Alexander Hamilton, the face on the $10 bill, who Miranda calls the “original immigrant.” Orphan Hamilton came to the United States after living a destitute life in the Caribbean, seeking an education and a way to survive.

    Read More

  • Great Depression Dbq Essay

    1472 Words  | 6 Pages

    The United States changed more during the great depression epoch than during the Second World War, though both were characterized by great human suffering and in addition to their resultant life-altering impacts, both positive and negative depending on ones’ perspectives and ones’ side on these defining eons. The Great Depression which ran from 1929 – 1935 was a period of protracted worldwide economic downturn characterized by depressed stock markets, very high unemployment, a shrinking tax base, and in the USA, response saw an expanded role in government’s participation in the lives of its citizens through the creation of the New Deal by the government of President Franklin Roosevelt. Under the New Deal gambit, such entities as the Securities

    Read More

  • The Glass Castle Homeless Quotes

    672 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jeannette Walls shows that homeless people are marginalized as uneducated in The Glass Castle. “Dad would get a job as an electrician or engineer in a gypsum or copper mine. Mom liked to say that Dad could talk a blue streak, spinning tales of jobs he’d never had and college degrees he’d never earned” (Walls 19). For the most part, Jeannette’s dad, Rex Walls, was the money maker of the house. Wherever they moved to, he would find a job to do, but he could never keep his jobs for long periods of time.

    Read More

  • Argument Against Racial Profiling Legally

    1596 Words  | 7 Pages

    Davidson and Lytle, “Sacco and Vanzetti” in After the Fact, I use Sacco and Vanzetti to show how in the early 1900 in America, prejudice against immigrants of undesirable ethic background. NewsHourFinal, Black Man Vs White Man Carrying AR15 Legally, I used YouTube video to show the disparity of police officers act when dealing with a white person vs with a black person. Brave New Films, Why Charleston Shooter Isn 't Being Called a Terrorist: White Riots vs Black Protests, YouTube video is used to show how

    Read More

  • Rex Theatre For The Colored People Summary

    140 Words  | 1 Pages

    Something noticeable, that wasn’t expected is the weird way the theater was built. If it is a theatre, why is it so small? And why are there windows? It looks more like a convenience store turned into a theater. This is most likely because of the fact that it was a theater for blacks only.

    Read More

  • Meaning Of July Fourth For The Negro, By Frederick Douglass

    650 Words  | 3 Pages

    This shows that the blacks were treated very unfair as compared to the whites who had more advantages. The audience on the other hand would not be

    Read More

  • What Is Coates Argument In The Case For Reparations

    615 Words  | 3 Pages

    He speaks about the story of Clyde Ross, a black man who fled horrible conditions in Mississippi to find work in Chicago. Like many Americans Ross dreamed of owning a home. However, the only way for a black person to buy a home in Chicago in the mid-twentieth century was to buy from predatory “contract” sellers who charged unbillable rates with few legal protections for buyers. Clyde said “To keep up with his payments and keep his heat on, I took a second job at the post office and then a third job delivering pizza.” Like many blacks in Chicago at the time he got two jobs just to keep up with the payments of the house, overall being kept away from his

    Read More

  • A Fierce Discontent Summary

    693 Words  | 3 Pages

    With more widespread access to magazines, news, movies, and other “luxuries”, the containment of individuality and shared opinions of those not in the upper status became increasingly hard. In short, the political leaders of this time tried too hard to control population, cultural assimilation, and force of growth of industry. He uses the historical facts about important public figures of the time such as Theodore Roosevelt, W.E.B Du Bois, and the Rockefellers while explaining and aligning the movements themes and events in relation to the rebels and the Progressives during the particular period of the era he was outlining. He uses these characters of time

    Read More

  • American Dream During The Gilded Age

    1671 Words  | 7 Pages

    Even though the optimal American Dream doesn’t promise that all citizens will achieve personal success, it offers equality and fortunes for them to pursue dreams through hard work. However, during the Industrial Age, American Dream didn’t apply to lower-class proletariat. Most immigrants from southern and eastern Europe arrived in the United States to escape religious persecution and poverty in their home countries and also seek new opportunities because of advertisements of the American Dream. But, they did realize that fantasy differed from reality after their arrival. As unskilled foreigners who suffered poverty and lacked experience and English skills, immigrants lived in nasty tenements located in city ghettos, earned little wages that

    Read More

  • Prejudice And Racism Exposed In Ralph Ellison's Battle Royal

    1342 Words  | 6 Pages

    “It was a triumph for the whole community” (Ellison 2). But when he arrived at the ballroom where the “smoker” was being held he was herded into an elevator with nine other black boys like him. “I didn't care too much for the other fellows who were to take part” (Ellison 2). He resented them, considering himself superior to them, after all he had been invited there to read his graduation speech, besides he “suspected that fighting a battle royal might detract from the dignity of [his] speech” (Ellison 2). They resented him too, since one of their own had lost the money he would have earned for that night’s event because the narrator had replaced him.

    Read More

  • Salt Of The Earth Film Analysis

    1193 Words  | 5 Pages

    I chose this film because it showed how hard the union workers and families worked in fighting racial injustices, and because it inspired myself to move forward with strong ideologies and pride. 2. Stereotyping in mass media was an important concern of Chicana/o media activists because it imprinted a demeaning label by only casting Chicana/o actors with "minor roles: villains, sidekicks, temptresses, where their main function is to provide the protagonists, typically a handsome white

    Read More

  • Jumping The Broom: Movie Analysis

    297 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to Price, Price, and McKenry (2010) the intragroup diversity among African Americans is growing, in that there are more African Americans among the middle and upper class now than ever before in United States history. This change in socioeconomic status has had a major impact for many African Americans, in which the increasing diversity has created significant social and economic tensions within their ethnic community (Price et al., 2010). Jumping the Broom has illustrated this recent phenomenon by showing viewers just how much the changing socioeconomic status can impact family relationships and the family system. The stressors associated with division of class between the Taylor and Watson families are particularly salient throughout the duration of the film. Viewers are shown many of these correlated stressors, and how they can cause major ramifications in the lives of today’s

    Read More

  • Evolution Of American Theatre

    1236 Words  | 5 Pages

    From Colonial Williamsburg Theatre to Broadway, theatre is ever-changing. The differences in each era of theatre are vast; the costumes, staging, acting techniques, and audiences all vary drastically from each other. The major eras and genres of American theatre include the colonial era, the Post-Revolution era, the Civil War era, Broadway, and Post-Modern—all with unique and varying aspects to them. Although the first permanent English settlement occurred at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, according to Richard Hornby’s article The Crisis in the American History, the entire 17th century passed with no mention of theatrical productions or performances in the Colonies (Hornby).

    Read More

More about Astra Theater Memory History

Open Document