T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY A new mural honoring the history of the Orpheum Theater was recently completed by MHS alum Andy Lashier. It is located on the back of the building at 220 E. Main St., now known as the B.A. Niblock MCSD Orpheum Welcome Center.

RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures built the Orpheum Theater in downtown Marshalltown. It opened on June 22, 1949 with Ruth Warrick and Gabby Hayes as featured guests and it harbored 915 original seats. In 1957, the theater hosted the American premiere of “Saint Joan” starring Jean Seberg.

The Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) bought the building in 2021 from the Iowa Valley Community College District (IVCCD) and has since converted the space to include a welcome center, student-led coffee shop, meeting/teaching areas and more. MCSD Superintendent Dr. Theron Schutte, wanting to honor the theater’s history, commissioned a new exterior mural, visible along State Street.

“Those are the actual logos from RKO Pictures that I had to get copyright permission and pay a licensing fee to use. It took me about a year to accomplish that, as I originally was told no, and was persistent that it was important to do given the Orpheum was the first RKO Theater built west of the Mississippi after WWII,” he said. “Things got further delayed when the company was sold this past year, but I eventually was given the green light. Persistence pays off, sometimes.”

Nancy Adams, who has worked to digitize many of the theater’s artifacts alongside MHS Teacher Colton Hanke and his students, said she is delighted the highly visible wall now serves to honor and advertise the theater.

“When we worked with the Arts + Culture Alliance to place a beautiful mural highlighting our community’s diversity on the east outside wall of the Orpheum, Nancy had mentioned to me that we had this wonderful pallet on the back of the building that would be perfect for something as well,” Schutte said. “I’m a history guy by nature and have loved what I’ve learned about the theater where I saw my first motion picture movies as a young child, so I came up with the idea of highlighting its history by placing a few of the logos on that back wall that is visible from State Street and/or the Waterworks parking lot.”

Schutte thought Andy Lashier, CFO, of Lashier Graphics & Signs based in Grimes, would be the ideal candidate to complete the project.

“I’ve lived in Des Moines since I graduated from Iowa State, but graduated from MHS in 1994,” Lashier said. “I’m a proud Bobcat alum and love coming back to my hometown to do work there.”

Lashier’s father Jack was a former business teacher at MHS prior to being the original curator of the Iowa Hall of Pride in Des Moines.

The theater’s exterior is a stucco plaster material. Lashier noted it was actually vinyl, and not paint, that was used to make the mural.

“So when we do public displays of art in vinyl, there’s a couple advantages. The first one is the amount of time is dramatically less,” he said. “So basically artists can design it either digitally or paint it in their shop, and then we can photograph it and turn it into a digital creation, print it and install it in a fraction of the time. Then the second thing would be that it is repairable. So if there is damage to one element of it, it can be easily reproduced, whereas a painted image is one of a kind.”

Schutte said it was important to him that three logos be incorporated into the design.

“The center logo is the one that would have been relevant at the time that the Orpheum was built,” he added. “But I thought there was enough uniqueness in the three of them that it’d be cool to present them all, and they’re all kind of that early era, too.”

Movie history buffs may recall that during the Studio Era, major film studios owned movie theaters as a means of controlling when and how their productions would be screened. United States vs. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948) ruled this practice unconstitutional due to antitrust laws. The ban was lifted in 2020 and ended in 2022. RKO released a string of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid- to late-1930s. It notably distributed iconic films including “It’s A Wonderful Life,” “King Kong” and “Citizen Kane.”

In the 1980s, the Orpheum was divided into two small theaters. The property’s owner, the Fridley theater chain, ultimately closed it down in 2001, but locals refused to see the curtain come down on the iconic building that was set for demolition. The following year, the Orpheum Centre, Inc. formed to purchase and renovate the facility.

The organization acquired the Orpheum from Fridley and began the long road to revamping the closed theater. In 2005, the Orpheum Centre, Inc. joined forces with the IVCCD to repurpose it. With $3.4 million poured into the historic building, the project was finished in July 2010, launching the IVCCD Orpheum Theater Center.

Locally, Lashier has done murals and signs at the Little League Park and the graphics at Franklin Field. There are plans in place for his company to do a project at MCC before the new year.

“We do this kind of work with school districts and other customers all over the state of Iowa and a little outside of Iowa. But it’s always good to come home,” Lashier said.