I mostly stuck to my plan when I set out to take photos of historic courthouses across Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Otherwise, who knows how long I’d have been out on the road! Still, I couldn’t resist snapping a quick shot of the Celina Cinema 5 in Ohio as I wandered around the town square. The theater stands right across Main Street from the stately Mercer County Courthouse.
One of my favorite childhood memories is seeing the sixth Star Wars movie with my dad at the Rosa, a small-town movie palace in Waupaca, Wisconsin. Everything was so different from the massive multiplexes I usually went to! I bet seeing a movie at the Celina Cinema 5 is a similar experience. Much like the Rosa I remember from my youth, the Celina Theatre opened in the late 1940s- a time marked by post-war optimism.
Construction on Chakeres-Dwyer’s 1,000-seat theater began on April 5, 19471, but the death of Leo Dwyer2 -a local civic leader and part-owner of the theater’s parent company3 stretched its opening back for more than two years. The Celina finally opened for business on January 28, 1949, with “Julia Misbehaves4.” Later that year, the cinema gave a showing of “Lawton Story,” a film depicting Lawton, Oklahoma’s Easter pageant, for a group of Mercer County clergymen, Sunday school teachers, and public officials5.
Unfortunately, historical details about the Celina Cinema 5 are surprisingly scarce. I’ve pieced together most of what I know from Cinema Treasures, a user-driven repository of movie theaters large and small that I’ve uploaded photos to in the past. According to its contributors, the theater’s large auditorium was split, or “twinned,” on December 23, 1982, when the operation was renamed Celina Cinemas 1 & 2. More screens were added to the north side of the building on November 23, 1988, which led to the theater’s rechristening as Celina Cinema 56.
I passed the theater in July 2018, months before United Entertainment Corporation of St. Cloud, Minnesota, purchased the Celina Cinema 5 and Springfield’s Chakeres Cinema 10 to welcome them as the chain’s fourth and fifth theaters in Ohio7. Still playing first-run films seven years later, the landmark Cinema 5 and its grand old marquee stand firm as touchstones of Celina’s downtown.
Sources Cited
1 Celina Cinema 5 (n.d.). Cinema Treasures. Web. Retrieved March 11, 2025.
2 Leo F. Dwyer (1947, March 23). The Dayton Daily News. p. 12.
4 (See footnote 1).
3 Springfield (1948, October 16). BoxOffice. Web. Retrieved March 11, 2025.
5 “Lawton Story” showing. The Dayton Journal-Herald. p. 13.
6 (See footnote 1).
7 United Entertainment Corp. Purchased Two Chakeres Theatres, Inc. Locations in Ohio (2018, September 27). UEC Theatres. Web. Retriebed March 11, 2025.
An aunt, uncle and older cousins lived in Celina and I actually saw a movie there, probably around 1968-69. A cousin took my sister and me to a Saturday matinee. I don’t remember what we saw, but do remember the old lady with the flashlight. She was an usher who patrolled the theater, shushing unruly kids and shining her light to check on any suspected hanky panky. She wouldn’t put up with any nonsense! Even then I thought that theater was a real throwback.
I remembered you mentioned that in a blog several years ago and always wondered if it was Celina’s!