Are the Tickets All Sold?

From the archive... Eager Throngs See New Theater Opening

Source: Chicago Evening American, 19 August 1925, pg. 9.

They keep coming and coming and coming.

The crowds forming at the doors of the new Balaban & Katz Uptown Theatre today threatened to equal the thousands that were on hand for the grand opening yesterday.

The Broadway and Lawrence av. district looked like a circus yesterday. A veritable standing army gathered before the doors of the magnificent moving picture palace and waited in the hot sun for several hours.

They were women for the most part and their gay Summer dresses formed a colorful parade, three blocks long. Street vendors sold balloons and refreshments.

Within the theater workmen were putting the finishing touches to the carpets, rearranging the vases and pictures for the last time. When the doors were opened the excitement in the street grew more intense, but those who entered the stately lobby filled with flowers became silent and spoke in whispers.

Toward the end of the line, several blocks away, the fans became anxious.

"Are the tickets all sold?" they asked anxiously. Even when the house had been filled to its capacity, the crowds still mobbed the streets.