People are flocking to the Utah Theatre to catch the spirit of Christmas

Hunter and Scott Dunn help a customer at the concessions counter at the Utah Theatre on Thursday Dec. 1 2022.

LOGAN – Michael Ballam, the founding general director of the Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre, had a vision of the old movie house on 18 West Center Street in Logan as being a place for people of the valley to be entertained.

Emily Challis the operations manager stands at the entrance of the Utah Theatre on Wednesday Dec. 14 2022.

Showing classic movies when the building isn’t used for live stage productions is paying off, especially during the Christmas season.

Emily Challis, the operations manager for the theater, said the Christmas season is their busiest time of the year.

We kicked off the Christmas season on November 27 with hundreds of children coming to watch a movie,” she said. “December is definitely our busiest time of year.”

The Christmas Classics are a big draw and so is the $14 date night ticket price tag that includes a box of candy and a large popcorn on Fridays and Saturdays. There is also a family night package for $25 that includes five tickets, a large popcorn and two boxes of candy on Mondays.

“We’ve shown A Christmas Story, The Santa Claus, and Home Alone,” Challis said. “We still have the classics It’s a Wonderful life, The Grinch who Stole Christmas and the Christmas Carol still to show.”

The Utah Theatre located at 18 W. Center St. is a busy place during the Christmas holiday season.

A schedule of their movies and special performances are listed on their website utahtheatre.org. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays the theater generally shows the classic movies. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday mornings is used for booking private parties.

“This year we have a new Grinch Christmas Tree by the snack bar families like to take pictures by,” Challis said. “The theatre is also busy this year for people and organizations booking it for private parties.”

The theatre was built in 1924 and later opened as the Roxy Theatre in 1935 as a movie house with a projector room in the back of the balcony that showed 35 mm films.

“People just wander in and they don’t know it has been renovated,” she said. “It’s nostalgic for people that used to come here long ago and see what all the work that has been done here.”

The building was renamed Utah Theatre in 1956 and for the next 49 years screened first run movies. In 2005, the Utah Theatre was forced to cease showing first run movies and began use as a venue for live performances, with the occasional screening of a classic film.

The Utah Theatre shows a lot of Christmas movies between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The Utah Opera company bought it in 2008 and spent 12 million on the renovation, then reopened it in 2017.

The classic movie audiences are growing and people are finding one of the great treasures on Logan’s Center Street. The Utah Theatre is one of the many places in Logan to go and feel the spirit of Christmas.

 

 

 

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

I agree to these terms.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.