If you had no other plans for New Year’s Eve in 1926, you could attend one of three showings of “The Unknown Soldier”, a love story about a young mill worker who left his home and his sweetheart to fight in the Great War (WW1). The couple met and lose each other several times in the film and the romance blossoms until the grand climax at the end of the film. The Ridgeway Journal printed a synopsis of the story in the paper, though it is a bit blurry.
The Rex Theatre showed the movie three times and all proceeds were donated to the Ridgeway Legion. In the large ad they placed in the Journal, they proclaimed that the film had an all-star cast which included Charles Emmett Mack, Marguerite De La Motte, Henry B. Walthall and Claire McDowell, per the entry for “The Unknown Soldier” in imdb.com. The last showing of the film in Ridgeway was at midnight on New Year’s Eve, “with a Frolic and Good Time”.
If you wanted a bite to eat before the show, the Ridgeway M.F.A. Farm Club served an oyster supper of both fried and stewed oysters in the City Hall. They were “expecting everyone within a radius of twenty miles of Ridgeway to be in Ridgeway on TO SEE THE “UNKNOWN SOLDIER”. They also wrote “Remember the soldier boys won the war and this show is put on by them. We owe the Legion boys good attendance, they made victory possible for us.”
I don’t have any follow-up of how much the Rex Theater raised for the Legion — the Journal issue is missing for the next week, but I am sure they did well.
