Mount Union borough

The Luna Theatre

In its issue of August 2, 1913, the trade paper The Billboard carried one line about this town: T. C. Peduzzi would erect a one-story motion picture house in Mount Union. The item did not name the house. T. C. Peduzzi was the name of the Mount Union confectioner in Charles Howard Welch's 1909 history.

The American Motion Picture Directory for 1914 and 1915 lists a Luna Theatre at Mount Union. Reports in the fall of 1914 say the Luna changed hands. The Moving Picture World of October 10 said it had been taken over by H. S. Chambers. Motion Picture News of November 7 called Chambers the proprietor and said vaudeville and motion pictures would be run in the theater as in the past.

The Billboard's theater lists give the seating of the house. The list of December 19, 1914, has Chambers as manager and seating for 500. The list of February 26, 1916, has Vought and White as managers, with seating still at 500.

By May 1917 the manager was Harry V. Wike. The Harrisburg Telegraph of May 31, 1917, under the headline "Old Band Reorganized," reported that he had been elected to manage the new organization. The same paper's report of a special meeting of the borough council on July 27, 1917, mentions the alley by the Luna Theater, between Jefferson Street and Division Street.

Mount Union already had a picture house before the first of these notices. Welch's 1909 history names the Star Moving Picture Theatre on Shirley Street, owned and run by the firm of Hoover and Bollinger. His sketch of T. Frank Bollinger says that "last July," with Norris E. Hoover, he bought the nickelodeon, and that the two had run the business at the Star ever since. He adds that on December 1, 1909, they bought a similar place in Williamsburg, and that Mr. Bollinger took charge there.

The 1994 National Register nomination for the Mount Union Historic District says the town had several movie halls in the 1910s, and it calls the Shapiro the last survivor. Its building inventory lists a one-story brick building at 16 South Division Street, dated 1911, with the comment "contained movie theater 1911," and gives the theater no name.

Checked against the record. We read each of these on the page: The Billboard of August 2, 1913, December 19, 1914, and February 26, 1916; the American Motion Picture Directory; The Moving Picture World; Motion Picture News; two Harrisburg Telegraph pages in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive; pages 444 and 445 of Welch's history; and the nomination's building inventory. The 1916 Billboard list is headed as a list of vaudeville theaters that booked independently, and it asks managers to send in information about their houses, so its seating figure may have come from the theater itself. Its key reads s. c. for seating capacity. Still open: the 1913 item does not name the house, and nothing we read says Mr. Peduzzi built or owned the Luna, so any link between them is unproved. Welch gives the Star no opening date and prints no year for that "last July," and we have not found when the Star closed. The inventory does not name the theater on South Division Street, and nothing we read ties that theater or the Star to the Luna. We have not seen the Mount Union Times or the Huntingdon Daily News for these years, so this page gives the Luna no opening night, owner list or closing date. A 1934 film yearbook lists only the Shapiro at Mount Union, but a yearbook can leave a house out, so that does not show when the Luna closed.

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