Photos: The Roxy though the years
The Roxy Theater finished work on the new Roxy Annex, a fourth screen next door to the main theater. The Roxy continues to bring in the community for films and other events despite the rise of online streaming services and restrictions made necessary by the COVID pandemic.
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Missoula city firefighters battle in vain to douse an arson fire that gutted the historic Roxy Theater in 1994.
Garfield, theater cat at The Roxy (copy)
Garfield was the beloved theater cat of the Roxy. He passed away in September 2020.
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Montana Gov. Steve Bullock photographs the marquee at Missoula's historic Roxy Theater welcoming him in 2017 to announce $167,605 in grants from the Montana Department of Commerce to help fund a restoration project that brought the facade of the building back to its original 1930s look.
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Lin Lundgren examines the newly installed seats before watching a movie in the Roxy Theater in 2019. Along with the new seats, which offer more leg room and recline slightly, the theater also installed new sound systems while they were closed for two weeks.
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Dressed in sock feet, sweat pants and blankets for the long ordeal, Clara Tallent, Lauren Dick, Annie Squires and Trey Mattson (left to right, front row) sit through the third of six consecutive showings of the movie, "Groundhog Day," in 2018 at the Roxy Theater. The theater challenged moviegoers who sat through all six showings of the movie without distractions — "looking at your phone, cracking a book, falling asleep, leaving the Roxy premises, losing your mind and hollering at the screen, etc." — to win a Cosmic Membership at the theater, good for a year's worth of movies and popcorn.
Roxy Theater ad from 1937
Advertisements welcoming the Roxy Theater from the Sept. 26, 1937, edition of the Sunday Missoulian.
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Jeff Stickney, front, plays the trumpet with the rest of the River City Swing Band for the Roxy's 80th anniversary party in 2017.
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Crews hoist a portion of the Roxy Theater's new neon sign into place in August 2017. The sign is one of the last pieces of the $250,000 restoration to the theater's original Art Deco style. The sign was designed and built by Sacramento, California-based Alpha Signs with local sign outfitter, QRS Signs, assisting on the installation.
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Street repairs in front of the Roxy Theater on South Higgins Avenue. Several workers and several pieces of road machinery, including an asphalt roller and possibly an asphalt spreader, can be seen. The Town Talk Cafe and the Safeway store on the west side of the street can be seen on the left side of the photo. The Roxy Theater marquee advertises the 1949 film, "My Dear Secretary," starring Kirk Douglas.
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A cyclist rides by the Roxy Theater as it remained closed in March 2020 due to the COVID pandemic.
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The Roxy Theater's kiosk displays a message encouraging Missoulians to wash their hands in March of 2020.
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The Roxy's front-of-house manager, John Howard, wipes the walls and posters in the lobby and hallways to clean ahead of the community theater's reopening in June of 2020.
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The pieces of a hand-sanitizing station await assembly in June 2020 as the Roxy's staff cleaned the theater ahead of their opening.
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Painted social distancing squares cover the outfield in Ogren-Allegiance Park ahead of the first outdoor movie screening in a partnership between the Missoula PaddleHeads and the Roxy Theater.
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The new Roxy Garden Outdoor Cinema, behind the Roxy Annex, opened in summer 2020.
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Mike Steinberg, right, and Aaron Roos set up part of the screen for the outdoor movie showings as they get ready to test the projection. The outdoor theater opened in August of 2020 with a showing of "Singin' in the Rain."
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Sthirādasa Allyn and Stella White watch Prince's "Purple Rain" from the outfield of Ogren-Allegiance Park in June of 2020, the first night of Centerfield Cinema, a collaboration between the Missoula PaddleHeads baseball team and the Roxy Theater.
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The "Centerfield Cinema" audience, sitting socially distanced in the stands and on the outfield at Ogren-Allegiance Park, watches previews ahead of "Purple Rain" in June.
As featured on
For seven years, Roxy Theater bucked the notion that people wanted to stay home and watch streaming services.
