The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.

Raritan Opera House 100 Years Old

This year marks the 100th Birthday of the Raritan Opera House in Raritan. Several people have met and are preparing some special events for this anniversary occasion.

August 24th - Birthday Party

September 27th - "If These Walls Could Talk"

October 5th - Banjos from Morton

We appreciate those who responded to our request in this paper to send us some memories of yours about the Opera House.

Remembering the Raritan Opera House

We would like to share some of these with you:

In my early years most of the uses of the Opera House were for entertainment. There were plays, talent shows, movies and benefits.

I recall there were benefits for the street lights which was $4 a month. Most of the productions were performed by local talent and were mostly comedies and humorous in nature.

There would be traveling and medicine shows. The Opera House was the main source of entertainment for the community.

The first motion picture shows I remember shown at the Opera House were silent moviesÑincluding Uncle Tom's Cabin about slaves and the underground railroad; anotherÑTen Nights in a Bar Room supporting prohibition which lasted from 1921-1933.

Talking movies were shown after that by Edgar Churchill on Saturday nights. Mostly were Westerns

Loren (Cork) and Audrey Van Doren, Jennie Melvin and Edgar Churchill promoted plays and other events.

An orchestra of sorts entertained at eventsÑ the Chicken House Orchestra. It got its name from paying at the produce house and often played after shopping hours on Saturday night.

The first play I remember being involved in was "A Womanless Wedding". All participants were male. To add more humor to this through the efforts of Jennie Melvin at the piano I sang:

Here comes the bride big fat and wide

See how she waddles from side to side

Her comes the groom all full of gloom

Smells like a bottle of five cent perfume.

I was probably five or six years old.

These are some of my memories from the mid 1920's through the depression years of the 1930's to the beginning of World War II.

Kenneth Corzatt