While I was in Cape, I picked up some cans of Shasta Black Cherry soda at Schnucks. The taste took me back to the soda dispenser at the Rialto Theater on Broadway.
Buddy Jim Stone, in town chasing a big magnet, reminisced about Carol Klarsfeld, whose mother owned the theater. Carol got to keep the money from the weight machine and the soda dispenser, he said.
Carol used to joke that the two profit centers in the lobby were the soda machine and the popcorn machine. “The most expensive parts of each were the containers they were sold in.”
The soda machine sat over on the left side of the lobby, near the popcorn popper (which produced oceans of fresh-popped corn, drowned in real butter). When you put in your dime, a thin cup would plop down with a satisfying “SMACK!” followed by a smattering of thinly crushed ice and your choice of flavored soda. I don’t remember the other flavors because I always picked Black Cherry.
Rialto and other theater stories
I’ve done a number of stories about Cape’s theaters. Here are some links in case you missed them.
- Baby the Rain Must Fall was a lousy movie, but I got a wife out of it
- Rialto theater interior photos before roof collapse
- Rialto’s roof collapses
- Rialto is torn down
- The Esquire: Cape’s Art Deco theater
- 1964 SEMO Homecoming parade passes in front of Rialto
- Good news: the Esquire theater is being renovated (except it wasn’t).
- Infrared photos of kids watching Beatles movie in 1965
- Blomeyer’s Montgomery Drive-in’s concrete screen still standing
- Jackson Drive-In shows up in the corner of this aerial
- Inside the Broadway Theater
- Backstage at the Broadway
I always wondered why they had a machine in the lobby and a soda fountain in the same lobby? Never did figure that out…was there a difference in price?
I too loved the old place…for five Green hooked things that held together quarts of Sunny Hill milk you could go to the show!
Wife Lila says they didn’t have a soda fountain. I thought they did, but the Girardot ad photo that shows her and two other students behind the counter didn’t show one.
I always bought the large sucker for a nickel or dime I believe. It would last all the way through the show.
Ken,
A friend of mine. Tommy Bond, his father worked at Sunny Hill Dairy, gave us the green handles, used to hold 2 quarts of milk, and used them to go to the Rialto. I believe they were only valid on Tuesday nights. Good memories.
Jim