The Murphy Theatre
History:
The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world series between 1906 and 1914, the opening of his theater seemed to give him more pleasure. He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.
The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).
There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.
Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."
And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.
The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.
The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.
Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.
The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.
Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.
An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. A less obvious fact is that the town needs the Murphy.
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"Resource/aarp2_master.footer.html");$viewFile = '/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/app/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp' $dataForView = array( 'content_for_layout' => '<div class="row twoColumnLayout"> <div class="col-md-8 left-rail"><div class="module clearfix"><div class="ar-basic-box"> <div class="module-spacer"> <header><h1 class="article-headline">The Murphy Theatre</h1></header> <div class="row"> <div class="col-sm-6 left module-spacer"> <p> <div> <div>50 West Main Street</div> <div> <span>Wilmington</span>, <span>OH</span> <span>45177</span> </div> </div> </p> <div> <i class="fa fa-external-link-square"></i> <a href="http://www.themurphytheatre.org/" target="_blank">The Murphy Theatre</a> </div> <div><i class="fa fa-phone-square"></i> 937-382-3643</div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 module-spacer"> <iframe width="100%" height="220" frameborder="0" style="border:0" src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed/v1/place?key=AIzaSyCU5aZylcrTOLke9e3U0F2mXovlZ4bL8yk&q=The+Murphy+Theatre%2C+50+West+Main+Street%2C+Wilmington%2C+OH+45177" allowfullscreen> </iframe> </div> </div> <div class="module-spacer clearfix"> <p>History:</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world series between 1906 and 1914, the opening of his theater seemed to give him more pleasure. He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).</p> <p>There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.</p> <p>Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."</p> <p>And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.</p> <p>The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.</p> <p>The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.</p> <p>Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.</p> <p>The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.</p> <p>Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.</p> <p>An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. A less obvious fact is that the town needs the Murphy. </p> </div> <div class="reportthis" style="margin-bottom: 20px;"> <form method="post" action="/wilmington-oh/report/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html"> <button type="submit" class="btn btnregister pull-right" style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Flag This Place</button> </form> </div> <div class="report_button_message">Please use "Flag This Place" to alert us about content that is inappropriate or needs immediate attention. 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}); </script> </div> </div> ', 'scripts_for_layout' => '<title>The Murphy Theatre - Wilmington, OH</title> <meta name="page_title" content="The Murphy Theatre - Wilmington, OH"/> <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"/> <meta content="History: The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world" name="description"/> <meta content="Murphy, Theatre, Wilmington, OH" name="keywords"/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.americantowns.com/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html" /> <meta property="og:url" content="https://vccstaging.local.aarp.org/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="The Murphy Theatre"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="History: The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://cdn-aarp.americantowns.com/img/template/thumbs/generic-icon.jpg"/> <meta property="og:type" content="place"/> <meta property="og:title" content="The Murphy Theatre"/> <meta property="og:description" content="History: The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://cdn-aarp.americantowns.com/img/template/thumbs/generic-icon.jpg"/> <meta property="place:location:latitude" content="39.445301"/> <meta property="place:location:longitude" content="-83.829498"/> ', 'title_for_layout' => 'Place Detail - AARP' ) $content_for_layout = '<div class="row twoColumnLayout"> <div class="col-md-8 left-rail"><div class="module clearfix"><div class="ar-basic-box"> <div class="module-spacer"> <header><h1 class="article-headline">The Murphy Theatre</h1></header> <div class="row"> <div class="col-sm-6 left module-spacer"> <p> <div> <div>50 West Main Street</div> <div> <span>Wilmington</span>, <span>OH</span> <span>45177</span> </div> </div> </p> <div> <i class="fa fa-external-link-square"></i> <a href="http://www.themurphytheatre.org/" target="_blank">The Murphy Theatre</a> </div> <div><i class="fa fa-phone-square"></i> 937-382-3643</div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 module-spacer"> <iframe width="100%" height="220" frameborder="0" style="border:0" src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed/v1/place?key=AIzaSyCU5aZylcrTOLke9e3U0F2mXovlZ4bL8yk&q=The+Murphy+Theatre%2C+50+West+Main+Street%2C+Wilmington%2C+OH+45177" allowfullscreen> </iframe> </div> </div> <div class="module-spacer clearfix"> <p>History:</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world series between 1906 and 1914, the opening of his theater seemed to give him more pleasure. He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).</p> <p>There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.</p> <p>Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."</p> <p>And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.</p> <p>The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.</p> <p>The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.</p> <p>Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.</p> <p>The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.</p> <p>Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.</p> <p>An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. A less obvious fact is that the town needs the Murphy. </p> </div> <div class="reportthis" style="margin-bottom: 20px;"> <form method="post" action="/wilmington-oh/report/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html"> <button type="submit" class="btn btnregister pull-right" style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Flag This Place</button> </form> </div> <div class="report_button_message">Please use "Flag This Place" to alert us about content that is inappropriate or needs immediate attention. 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Warning (2): include() [<a href='http://php.net/function.include'>function.include</a>]: Failed opening '/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/app/Resource/aarp2_master.footer.html' for inclusion (include_path='/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/lib:.:/usr/share/pear:/usr/share/php') [APP/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp, line 242]Code Context<?php // if (!$nowrapper) (Globals::$language == 'es') ? include(APP . "/Resource/aarpe_footer_es.html") : include(APP . "/Resource/aarpe_footer.html"); ?><?php if (!$nowrapper): // MLW - Spanish wrappers TBDinclude (APP . "Resource/aarp2_master.footer.html");$viewFile = '/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/app/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp' $dataForView = array( 'content_for_layout' => '<div class="row twoColumnLayout"> <div class="col-md-8 left-rail"><div class="module clearfix"><div class="ar-basic-box"> <div class="module-spacer"> <header><h1 class="article-headline">The Murphy Theatre</h1></header> <div class="row"> <div class="col-sm-6 left module-spacer"> <p> <div> <div>50 West Main Street</div> <div> <span>Wilmington</span>, <span>OH</span> <span>45177</span> </div> </div> </p> <div> <i class="fa fa-external-link-square"></i> <a href="http://www.themurphytheatre.org/" target="_blank">The Murphy Theatre</a> </div> <div><i class="fa fa-phone-square"></i> 937-382-3643</div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 module-spacer"> <iframe width="100%" height="220" frameborder="0" style="border:0" src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed/v1/place?key=AIzaSyCU5aZylcrTOLke9e3U0F2mXovlZ4bL8yk&q=The+Murphy+Theatre%2C+50+West+Main+Street%2C+Wilmington%2C+OH+45177" allowfullscreen> </iframe> </div> </div> <div class="module-spacer clearfix"> <p>History:</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world series between 1906 and 1914, the opening of his theater seemed to give him more pleasure. He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).</p> <p>There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.</p> <p>Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."</p> <p>And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.</p> <p>The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.</p> <p>The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.</p> <p>Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.</p> <p>The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.</p> <p>Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.</p> <p>An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. A less obvious fact is that the town needs the Murphy. </p> </div> <div class="reportthis" style="margin-bottom: 20px;"> <form method="post" action="/wilmington-oh/report/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html"> <button type="submit" class="btn btnregister pull-right" style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Flag This Place</button> </form> </div> <div class="report_button_message">Please use "Flag This Place" to alert us about content that is inappropriate or needs immediate attention. 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He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).</p> <p>There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.</p> <p>Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."</p> <p>And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.</p> <p>The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.</p> <p>The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.</p> <p>Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.</p> <p>The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.</p> <p>Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.</p> <p>An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. 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Warning (2): include(/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/app/Resource/aarp2_master.bodyTargeting.html) [<a href='http://php.net/function.include'>function.include</a>]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory [APP/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp, line 243]Code Context<?php if (!$nowrapper): // MLW - Spanish wrappers TBDinclude (APP . "Resource/aarp2_master.footer.html");include (APP . "Resource/aarp2_master.bodyTargeting.html");$viewFile = '/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/app/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp' $dataForView = array( 'content_for_layout' => '<div class="row twoColumnLayout"> <div class="col-md-8 left-rail"><div class="module clearfix"><div class="ar-basic-box"> <div class="module-spacer"> <header><h1 class="article-headline">The Murphy Theatre</h1></header> <div class="row"> <div class="col-sm-6 left module-spacer"> <p> <div> <div>50 West Main Street</div> <div> <span>Wilmington</span>, <span>OH</span> <span>45177</span> </div> </div> </p> <div> <i class="fa fa-external-link-square"></i> <a href="http://www.themurphytheatre.org/" target="_blank">The Murphy Theatre</a> </div> <div><i class="fa fa-phone-square"></i> 937-382-3643</div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 module-spacer"> <iframe width="100%" height="220" frameborder="0" style="border:0" src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed/v1/place?key=AIzaSyCU5aZylcrTOLke9e3U0F2mXovlZ4bL8yk&q=The+Murphy+Theatre%2C+50+West+Main+Street%2C+Wilmington%2C+OH+45177" allowfullscreen> </iframe> </div> </div> <div class="module-spacer clearfix"> <p>History:</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world series between 1906 and 1914, the opening of his theater seemed to give him more pleasure. He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).</p> <p>There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.</p> <p>Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."</p> <p>And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.</p> <p>The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.</p> <p>The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.</p> <p>Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.</p> <p>The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.</p> <p>Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.</p> <p>An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. A less obvious fact is that the town needs the Murphy. </p> </div> <div class="reportthis" style="margin-bottom: 20px;"> <form method="post" action="/wilmington-oh/report/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html"> <button type="submit" class="btn btnregister pull-right" style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Flag This Place</button> </form> </div> <div class="report_button_message">Please use "Flag This Place" to alert us about content that is inappropriate or needs immediate attention. 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}); </script> </div> </div> ', 'scripts_for_layout' => '<title>The Murphy Theatre - Wilmington, OH</title> <meta name="page_title" content="The Murphy Theatre - Wilmington, OH"/> <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"/> <meta content="History: The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world" name="description"/> <meta content="Murphy, Theatre, Wilmington, OH" name="keywords"/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.americantowns.com/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html" /> <meta property="og:url" content="https://vccstaging.local.aarp.org/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="The Murphy Theatre"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="History: The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://cdn-aarp.americantowns.com/img/template/thumbs/generic-icon.jpg"/> <meta property="og:type" content="place"/> <meta property="og:title" content="The Murphy Theatre"/> <meta property="og:description" content="History: The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://cdn-aarp.americantowns.com/img/template/thumbs/generic-icon.jpg"/> <meta property="place:location:latitude" content="39.445301"/> <meta property="place:location:longitude" content="-83.829498"/> ', 'title_for_layout' => 'Place Detail - AARP' ) $content_for_layout = '<div class="row twoColumnLayout"> <div class="col-md-8 left-rail"><div class="module clearfix"><div class="ar-basic-box"> <div class="module-spacer"> <header><h1 class="article-headline">The Murphy Theatre</h1></header> <div class="row"> <div class="col-sm-6 left module-spacer"> <p> <div> <div>50 West Main Street</div> <div> <span>Wilmington</span>, <span>OH</span> <span>45177</span> </div> </div> </p> <div> <i class="fa fa-external-link-square"></i> <a href="http://www.themurphytheatre.org/" target="_blank">The Murphy Theatre</a> </div> <div><i class="fa fa-phone-square"></i> 937-382-3643</div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 module-spacer"> <iframe width="100%" height="220" frameborder="0" style="border:0" src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed/v1/place?key=AIzaSyCU5aZylcrTOLke9e3U0F2mXovlZ4bL8yk&q=The+Murphy+Theatre%2C+50+West+Main+Street%2C+Wilmington%2C+OH+45177" allowfullscreen> </iframe> </div> </div> <div class="module-spacer clearfix"> <p>History:</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world series between 1906 and 1914, the opening of his theater seemed to give him more pleasure. He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).</p> <p>There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.</p> <p>Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."</p> <p>And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.</p> <p>The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.</p> <p>The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.</p> <p>Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.</p> <p>The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.</p> <p>Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.</p> <p>An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. A less obvious fact is that the town needs the Murphy. </p> </div> <div class="reportthis" style="margin-bottom: 20px;"> <form method="post" action="/wilmington-oh/report/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html"> <button type="submit" class="btn btnregister pull-right" style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Flag This Place</button> </form> </div> <div class="report_button_message">Please use "Flag This Place" to alert us about content that is inappropriate or needs immediate attention. 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<p class="time">Friday, Nov 22, 2024 at 1:00 p.m. ET</p> <p class="venue">Dublin Parks and Recreation Center (Room A & B)</p> <p class="loc">Dublin, OH</p> </li><li class="item" data-pageindex="1"> <h3 class="topic">Featured Event</h3> <h2 class="title"><a href="/aarp-event/six-pillars-of-brain-health-reynoldsburg-oh-11262024-100-pm-et-43nfsj3bpk3.html" data-formelementid="LOCAL-BTN-CLK-EVENTS-SIX-PILLARS-OF-BRAIN-HEALTH">Six Pillars of Brain Health</a></h2> <p class="time">Tuesday, Nov 26, 2024 at 1:00 p.m. ET</p> <p class="venue">Reynoldsburg Seniors Citizens Center (Meeting Room)</p> <p class="loc">Reynoldsburg, OH</p> </li> </ul> <p><a class="link-red" href="/wilmington-oh/aarp-events/" data-formelementid="LOCAL-BTN-CLK-SEEALL-EVENTS">View All AARP Events<i class="ml-1 fas fa-chevron-right"></i></a></p> </div> </div> </div> <div aria-hidden="true" class="aarpe-ad-wrapper"> <div class="aarpe-ad en clearfix" id="300x250_53475" data-adsize="300x250"> <script type="text/javascript"> 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Warning (2): include() [<a href='http://php.net/function.include'>function.include</a>]: Failed opening '/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/app/Resource/aarp2_master.bodyTargeting.html' for inclusion (include_path='/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/lib:.:/usr/share/pear:/usr/share/php') [APP/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp, line 243]Code Context<?php if (!$nowrapper): // MLW - Spanish wrappers TBDinclude (APP . "Resource/aarp2_master.footer.html");include (APP . "Resource/aarp2_master.bodyTargeting.html");$viewFile = '/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/app/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp' $dataForView = array( 'content_for_layout' => '<div class="row twoColumnLayout"> <div class="col-md-8 left-rail"><div class="module clearfix"><div class="ar-basic-box"> <div class="module-spacer"> <header><h1 class="article-headline">The Murphy Theatre</h1></header> <div class="row"> <div class="col-sm-6 left module-spacer"> <p> <div> <div>50 West Main Street</div> <div> <span>Wilmington</span>, <span>OH</span> <span>45177</span> </div> </div> </p> <div> <i class="fa fa-external-link-square"></i> <a href="http://www.themurphytheatre.org/" target="_blank">The Murphy Theatre</a> </div> <div><i class="fa fa-phone-square"></i> 937-382-3643</div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 module-spacer"> <iframe width="100%" height="220" frameborder="0" style="border:0" src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed/v1/place?key=AIzaSyCU5aZylcrTOLke9e3U0F2mXovlZ4bL8yk&q=The+Murphy+Theatre%2C+50+West+Main+Street%2C+Wilmington%2C+OH+45177" allowfullscreen> </iframe> </div> </div> <div class="module-spacer clearfix"> <p>History:</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world series between 1906 and 1914, the opening of his theater seemed to give him more pleasure. He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).</p> <p>There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.</p> <p>Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."</p> <p>And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.</p> <p>The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.</p> <p>The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.</p> <p>Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.</p> <p>The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.</p> <p>Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.</p> <p>An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. A less obvious fact is that the town needs the Murphy. </p> </div> <div class="reportthis" style="margin-bottom: 20px;"> <form method="post" action="/wilmington-oh/report/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html"> <button type="submit" class="btn btnregister pull-right" style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Flag This Place</button> </form> </div> <div class="report_button_message">Please use "Flag This Place" to alert us about content that is inappropriate or needs immediate attention. 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He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).</p> <p>There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.</p> <p>Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."</p> <p>And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.</p> <p>The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.</p> <p>The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.</p> <p>Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.</p> <p>The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.</p> <p>Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.</p> <p>An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. 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Warning (2): include(/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/app/Resource/aarp2_master.resource.footer.root.html) [<a href='http://php.net/function.include'>function.include</a>]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory [APP/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp, line 244]Code Contextinclude (APP . "Resource/aarp2_master.footer.html");include (APP . "Resource/aarp2_master.bodyTargeting.html");include (APP . "Resource/aarp2_master.resource.footer.root.html");$viewFile = '/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/app/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp' $dataForView = array( 'content_for_layout' => '<div class="row twoColumnLayout"> <div class="col-md-8 left-rail"><div class="module clearfix"><div class="ar-basic-box"> <div class="module-spacer"> <header><h1 class="article-headline">The Murphy Theatre</h1></header> <div class="row"> <div class="col-sm-6 left module-spacer"> <p> <div> <div>50 West Main Street</div> <div> <span>Wilmington</span>, <span>OH</span> <span>45177</span> </div> </div> </p> <div> <i class="fa fa-external-link-square"></i> <a href="http://www.themurphytheatre.org/" target="_blank">The Murphy Theatre</a> </div> <div><i class="fa fa-phone-square"></i> 937-382-3643</div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 module-spacer"> <iframe width="100%" height="220" frameborder="0" style="border:0" src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed/v1/place?key=AIzaSyCU5aZylcrTOLke9e3U0F2mXovlZ4bL8yk&q=The+Murphy+Theatre%2C+50+West+Main+Street%2C+Wilmington%2C+OH+45177" allowfullscreen> </iframe> </div> </div> <div class="module-spacer clearfix"> <p>History:</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world series between 1906 and 1914, the opening of his theater seemed to give him more pleasure. He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).</p> <p>There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.</p> <p>Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."</p> <p>And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.</p> <p>The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.</p> <p>The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.</p> <p>Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.</p> <p>The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.</p> <p>Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.</p> <p>An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. A less obvious fact is that the town needs the Murphy. </p> </div> <div class="reportthis" style="margin-bottom: 20px;"> <form method="post" action="/wilmington-oh/report/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html"> <button type="submit" class="btn btnregister pull-right" style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Flag This Place</button> </form> </div> <div class="report_button_message">Please use "Flag This Place" to alert us about content that is inappropriate or needs immediate attention. 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}); </script> </div> </div> ', 'scripts_for_layout' => '<title>The Murphy Theatre - Wilmington, OH</title> <meta name="page_title" content="The Murphy Theatre - Wilmington, OH"/> <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"/> <meta content="History: The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world" name="description"/> <meta content="Murphy, Theatre, Wilmington, OH" name="keywords"/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.americantowns.com/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html" /> <meta property="og:url" content="https://vccstaging.local.aarp.org/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="The Murphy Theatre"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="History: The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://cdn-aarp.americantowns.com/img/template/thumbs/generic-icon.jpg"/> <meta property="og:type" content="place"/> <meta property="og:title" content="The Murphy Theatre"/> <meta property="og:description" content="History: The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://cdn-aarp.americantowns.com/img/template/thumbs/generic-icon.jpg"/> <meta property="place:location:latitude" content="39.445301"/> <meta property="place:location:longitude" content="-83.829498"/> ', 'title_for_layout' => 'Place Detail - AARP' ) $content_for_layout = '<div class="row twoColumnLayout"> <div class="col-md-8 left-rail"><div class="module clearfix"><div class="ar-basic-box"> <div class="module-spacer"> <header><h1 class="article-headline">The Murphy Theatre</h1></header> <div class="row"> <div class="col-sm-6 left module-spacer"> <p> <div> <div>50 West Main Street</div> <div> <span>Wilmington</span>, <span>OH</span> <span>45177</span> </div> </div> </p> <div> <i class="fa fa-external-link-square"></i> <a href="http://www.themurphytheatre.org/" target="_blank">The Murphy Theatre</a> </div> <div><i class="fa fa-phone-square"></i> 937-382-3643</div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 module-spacer"> <iframe width="100%" height="220" frameborder="0" style="border:0" src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed/v1/place?key=AIzaSyCU5aZylcrTOLke9e3U0F2mXovlZ4bL8yk&q=The+Murphy+Theatre%2C+50+West+Main+Street%2C+Wilmington%2C+OH+45177" allowfullscreen> </iframe> </div> </div> <div class="module-spacer clearfix"> <p>History:</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world series between 1906 and 1914, the opening of his theater seemed to give him more pleasure. He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).</p> <p>There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.</p> <p>Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."</p> <p>And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.</p> <p>The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.</p> <p>The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.</p> <p>Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.</p> <p>The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.</p> <p>Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.</p> <p>An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. A less obvious fact is that the town needs the Murphy. </p> </div> <div class="reportthis" style="margin-bottom: 20px;"> <form method="post" action="/wilmington-oh/report/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html"> <button type="submit" class="btn btnregister pull-right" style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Flag This Place</button> </form> </div> <div class="report_button_message">Please use "Flag This Place" to alert us about content that is inappropriate or needs immediate attention. 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<p class="time">Friday, Nov 22, 2024 at 1:00 p.m. ET</p> <p class="venue">Dublin Parks and Recreation Center (Room A & B)</p> <p class="loc">Dublin, OH</p> </li><li class="item" data-pageindex="1"> <h3 class="topic">Featured Event</h3> <h2 class="title"><a href="/aarp-event/six-pillars-of-brain-health-reynoldsburg-oh-11262024-100-pm-et-43nfsj3bpk3.html" data-formelementid="LOCAL-BTN-CLK-EVENTS-SIX-PILLARS-OF-BRAIN-HEALTH">Six Pillars of Brain Health</a></h2> <p class="time">Tuesday, Nov 26, 2024 at 1:00 p.m. ET</p> <p class="venue">Reynoldsburg Seniors Citizens Center (Meeting Room)</p> <p class="loc">Reynoldsburg, OH</p> </li> </ul> <p><a class="link-red" href="/wilmington-oh/aarp-events/" data-formelementid="LOCAL-BTN-CLK-SEEALL-EVENTS">View All AARP Events<i class="ml-1 fas fa-chevron-right"></i></a></p> </div> </div> </div> <div aria-hidden="true" class="aarpe-ad-wrapper"> <div class="aarpe-ad en clearfix" id="300x250_53475" data-adsize="300x250"> <script type="text/javascript"> 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Warning (2): include() [<a href='http://php.net/function.include'>function.include</a>]: Failed opening '/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/app/Resource/aarp2_master.resource.footer.root.html' for inclusion (include_path='/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/lib:.:/usr/share/pear:/usr/share/php') [APP/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp, line 244]Code Contextinclude (APP . "Resource/aarp2_master.footer.html");include (APP . "Resource/aarp2_master.bodyTargeting.html");include (APP . "Resource/aarp2_master.resource.footer.root.html");$viewFile = '/var/www/vhosts/vcc_staging/app/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp' $dataForView = array( 'content_for_layout' => '<div class="row twoColumnLayout"> <div class="col-md-8 left-rail"><div class="module clearfix"><div class="ar-basic-box"> <div class="module-spacer"> <header><h1 class="article-headline">The Murphy Theatre</h1></header> <div class="row"> <div class="col-sm-6 left module-spacer"> <p> <div> <div>50 West Main Street</div> <div> <span>Wilmington</span>, <span>OH</span> <span>45177</span> </div> </div> </p> <div> <i class="fa fa-external-link-square"></i> <a href="http://www.themurphytheatre.org/" target="_blank">The Murphy Theatre</a> </div> <div><i class="fa fa-phone-square"></i> 937-382-3643</div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 module-spacer"> <iframe width="100%" height="220" frameborder="0" style="border:0" src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed/v1/place?key=AIzaSyCU5aZylcrTOLke9e3U0F2mXovlZ4bL8yk&q=The+Murphy+Theatre%2C+50+West+Main+Street%2C+Wilmington%2C+OH+45177" allowfullscreen> </iframe> </div> </div> <div class="module-spacer clearfix"> <p>History:</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world series between 1906 and 1914, the opening of his theater seemed to give him more pleasure. He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).</p> <p>There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.</p> <p>Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."</p> <p>And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.</p> <p>The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.</p> <p>The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.</p> <p>Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.</p> <p>The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.</p> <p>Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.</p> <p>An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. A less obvious fact is that the town needs the Murphy. </p> </div> <div class="reportthis" style="margin-bottom: 20px;"> <form method="post" action="/wilmington-oh/report/place/the-murphy-theatre-wilmington-oh.html"> <button type="submit" class="btn btnregister pull-right" style="margin-bottom: 10px;">Flag This Place</button> </form> </div> <div class="report_button_message">Please use "Flag This Place" to alert us about content that is inappropriate or needs immediate attention. 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He owned the Cubs, of course, and at the time it was said he was the best-known baseball man in the world. But when he built the Murphy he owned his hometown.Box Seats.</p> <p>The Murphy Theatre was built out of all perspective for where it was. It had a thousand seats in a town of barley 5,000, and yet during the three performances of opening night, 3,000 people bought tickets, and nearly that many more were turned away. (Charlie sneaked some of his friends in through the basement).</p> <p>There were 175 railroad cars of material used in the construction, and Italian craftsmen came to Wilmington and worked for weeks on the interior. An English stonemason died of heart failure while working on the second-story stucco. The top decorator of the Mandel Brothers, the Chicago interior design firm, came to Wilmington on the train, convinced he'd been put off at the wrong place. "Surely there can't be a theatre in this town big enough to have the Mandel Brothers do the decorating?" he said. Then he saw the new courthouse under construction -- another splendid building going up a block away -- and he thought that perhaps he was in the right place, although he didn't understand it.</p> <p>Each Saturday during construction, the country folk came to town to watch. Charlie Murphy had his name painted on the theatre's high, rear wall in letters so big they could be read from the railroad tracks. When it was finished, two years and $250,000.00 later, Dan Foland, the druggist for whom Charlie had worked as a boy, looked it over and said, "Charlie, that's a bad investment. It won't pay two per cent." And Charlie replied, "Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument."</p> <p>And it was, disregarding the other statements, more public and therefore more judicious, that it was for Wilmington, or that it was for his mother. It was, in truth, for them all. It was grand enough for everyone.</p> <p>The theatre soon became the actual, as well as the symbolic, heart of the downtown. Everything went on there - plays, vaudeville, lectures, minstrel shows, movies. The high school graduations were held there, and band concerts. Most of the town, and the surrounding countryside as well, was intimately connected to it, in one way or another. There were churches for salvation, banks for business, the college for education, and the courthouse for justice, at least upon occasion, but the Murphy was the one institution that performed all those functions, and did so effortlessly.</p> <p>The Murphy also took Wilmington off the "Kerosene Circuit," and soon the biggest road companies were coming to town. John Phillips Sousa gave a concert in the Murphy and asked schoolgirl Pat Ballentine to button the clasps of his white gloves. The great Yiddish actress, Bertha Kulish, came to town and took her meals at the Carnahan Boarding House, greeted at the door by Mrs. Carnahan, a local star herself, in the midst of pie-making. Clare Kimball Young, the silent star and the Garbo of her day, got off the Sunday afternoon train in a floor-length navy suit, wearing a large, black picture hat with wide brim, and carrying a shepherdess's crook. Sarah Bernhardt's leading man, Lew Telleger, came to town early and spent the afternoon fishing in Todd's Fork with Doc Hale. And a road company of the Passion Play came through and asked to use Wilmington College students as extras. Big Jake Jacoby, the center on the college basketball team, played a Centurian who was to carry Barabbas to his fate, picked up Jesus by mistake, and a scuffle broke out on the stage.</p> <p>Theatre people said the Murphy could hang any show in the country, meaning that it was large enough to accommodate scenery and sets. The Music Box Review of 1938, for instance, polished its performance at the Murphy before opening on Broadway.</p> <p>The high time of that kind of entertainment has passed, of course, as have many of the theatres, victims to trend, economics and neglect. The Murphy is no longer the heart of the town's activities -- the downtown itself, indeed has followed the old theatre's fortunes -- but it is still the symbolic heart.</p> <p>Its grand, old-fashioned marquee still throws light over the center of town, welcoming both travelers and the homeward-bound. The absence of it would render Wilmington as lifeless in appearance as those other small, undistinguished, forgettable towns across Ohio that grow dark and turn inward at nightfall.</p> <p>An obvious fact is that the Murphy needs the town. 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content="place"/> <meta property="og:title" content="The Murphy Theatre"/> <meta property="og:description" content="History: The Murphy Theatre opened on a warm evening late in July of 1918, and although Charles Webb Murphy's Chicago Cubs had won four pennants and two world"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://cdn-aarp.americantowns.com/img/template/thumbs/generic-icon.jpg"/> <meta property="place:location:latitude" content="39.445301"/> <meta property="place:location:longitude" content="-83.829498"/> ' $title_for_layout = 'Place Detail - AARP' $asset_version = '230831' $min = true $nowrapper = false $css = '' $highlighting = '' $location = '<a href="/wilmington-oh/?intcmp=CSN-LOCAL-NAV-HOME">Wilmington, OH</a>' $no_header = false $header_title = '<a href="/wilmington-oh/things-to-do/">Places</a>' $header_subtitle = '' $isPR = false $navbar = '<nav class="section" role="button" aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="collapse"> <div class="section-toggle">Sections <i class="fas 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href="/wilmington-oh/home-and-community/?intcmp=CSN-LOCAL-NAV-HC" data-formelementid="LOCAL-LNK-CLK-HC">Home & Community</a> </li> <li role="presentation" class=""><a role="menuitem" class="menuitem" href="/wilmington-oh/movies/?intcmp=CSN-LOCAL-NAV-MFG" data-formelementid="LOCAL-LNK-CLK-MOVIESFORGROWNUPS">Movies for Grownups</a> </li> <li role="presentation" class="more nosep " id="submenu-more"> <span role="menuitem" class="menuitem" data-formelementid="LOCAL-LNK-CLK-MORE">More<i class="fas fa-chevron-down"></i></span> <ul class="secondary-submenu animate slide-in" id="secondary-submenu"> <li role="presentation"><a role="menuitem" class="menuitem " href="/wilmington-oh/discounts/?intcmp=CSN-LOCAL-NAV-LO" data-formelementid="LOCAL-LNK-CLK-OFFERS">Local Offers</a></li> <li role="presentation"><a role="menuitem" class="menuitem " href="/wilmington-oh/local-resources/?intcmp=CSN-LOCAL-NAV-LR" data-formelementid="LOCAL-LNK-CLK-LOCALRESOURCES">Local Resources</a> </li> <li role="presentation"><a role="menuitem" class="menuitem " href="/wilmington-oh/jobs/?intcmp=CSN-LOCAL-NAV-WJ" data-formelementid="LOCAL-LNK-CLK-WORK&JOBS">Work & Jobs</a></li> <li role="presentation"><a role="menuitem" class="menuitem " href="/wilmington-oh/events/?intcmp=CSN-LOCAL-NAV-CC" data-formelementid="LOCAL-LNK-CLK-EVENTS">Community Calendar</a></li> <!-- <li role="presentation"><a role="menuitem" class="menuitem " href="/wilmington-oh/healthy-living/?intcmp=CSN-LOCAL-NAV-HEALTHY_LIVING" data-formelementid="LOCAL-LNK-CLK-HEALTHY_LIVING">Healthy Living</a></li> <li role="presentation"><a role="menuitem" class="menuitem " href="/wilmington-oh/arts-entertainment/?intcmp=CSN-LOCAL-NAV-ARTS_ENT" data-formelementid="LOCAL-LNK-CLK-ARTS_ENT">Arts & Entertainment</a></li> <li role="presentation"><a role="menuitem" class="menuitem " href="/wilmington-oh/museums/?intcmp=CSN-LOCAL-NAV-MUSEUMS" data-formelementid="LOCAL-LNK-CLK-MUSEUMS">Museums</a></li> --> </ul> </li> </ul> </nav>' $header_custom = '' $breadcrumbs = array( (int) 0 => array( 'title' => 'Things to Do', 'slug' => 'things-to-do' ) ) $row = array( 'title' => 'Back to Things to Do', 'slug' => 'things-to-do' ) $i = (int) 0include - APP/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp, line 244 include - APP/View/Layouts/aarp_2023.ctp, line 244 View::_evaluate() - CORE/Cake/View/View.php, line 971 View::_render() - CORE/Cake/View/View.php, line 933 View::renderLayout() - CORE/Cake/View/View.php, line 546 View::render() - CORE/Cake/View/View.php, line 481 Controller::render() - CORE/Cake/Controller/Controller.php, line 963 AppController::renderPage() - APP/Controller/AppController.php, line 136 PlacesController::display() - APP/Controller/PlacesController.php, line 501 ReflectionMethod::invokeArgs() - [internal], line ?? Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/Cake/Controller/Controller.php, line 491 Dispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/Cake/Routing/Dispatcher.php, line 193 Dispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/Cake/Routing/Dispatcher.php, line 167 [main] - APP/webroot/index.php, line 118