A sleek, modernist building with sharp angles stands on Lindbergh Boulevard, one door south of Gravois Road, with a prominent glass front and distinctive limestone walls. It stares down a Ford dealer across the street, flanked by an office building on one side and a vacant lot that used to be a gas station on the other, looking a bit out of place. It begs you to ask, what was this thing? Today, 4532 S Lindbergh is a union hall, as the sign says. But in its previous life, it was the Mark Twain Cinema. A 1960s movie theater.
The Mark Twain Cinema
The Mark Twain was a single-screen theater at 4532 S Lindbergh in Sunset Hills, just southeast of Gravois Road. If there was a big show playing, it could seat 984. And it was a theater built for one big show, with a high-end screen, high-end sound, and high-end projection equipment. Star Wars played there almost five months in 1977.
It was built by National General Corporation, the successor to the Fox chain, at a cost of $650,000. The architects were Ernest W. LeDuc and William H. Farwell, members of the firm of Harold W. Levitt & Associates, and its distinctive white limestone made the building stand out both then and now. The Mark Twain opened August 28, 1968, showing Gone With the Wind. It was National General’s first theater in the St Louis area, and they would follow the next year with the Cypress Village theater on St. Charles Rock Road in St. Ann. They also planned a theater in Richmond Heights that never materialized. National General is not to be confused with the similarly named General Cinema Theaters chain, who operated the nearby Sunset Hills Cinema 4 and South County Cinema.
The Mark Twain was able to compete with the larger General Cinema theaters in close proximity because it had better sound and projection equipment, and, arguably, better maintenance. But because of its association with Fox, National General was not permitted to gain a dominant position in any theater market. As strange as it might sound, the Mark Twain was a theater designed to finish second.
Trouble on the horizon
Mann Theatres purchased the Mark Twain, along with the rest of National General’s theaters, in July 1973. It operated the Mark Twain and the Cypress until 1982. Wehrenberg, a local St. Louis theater chain, bought Mann’s two St. Louis-area theaters in July 1982, in a rare case of a local chain overtaking national chains. Wehrenberg sold out to the Marcus chain in 2017, but was the dominant St. Louis-area theater chain for a good four decades. Rival General Cinema withdrew from the St. Louis market in October 1989, also selling its St. Louis-area screens to Wehrenberg. What remained of General Cinema went bankrupt in 2001 and sold out to Kansas City-based AMC in 2002.
With all that selling out and bankruptcy going on, you might guess the Mark Twain’s days were numbered. And you would be correct. Changing tastes and consumer habits and the rise of the VHS tape made for tough times for theaters.
Why the Mark Twain cinema closed
Wehrenberg had operated its flagship drive-in theater barely a mile and a half away on Lindbergh since 1948. But in 1983, the drive-in came down and gave way to an 8-screen cinema. A high-end single screen cinema splitting the difference, distance-wise, between a four-screen cinema and a single-screen drive-in made sense in 1968, especially with three different companies operating each. In 1983, with it straddling a four-screen cinema and an eight-screen cinema, it made less sense. Wehrenberg’s smaller 275-seat auditoriums down the street offered more flexibility than dedicating 984 seats to a single film.
The Mark Twain theater’s last day of operation was Sunday, September 21, 1986. Its final show was Nothing in Common, a comedy starring Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason in Gleason’s final film role.
Rebirth as an event hall
The venue reopened as an event hall in 1991 and operated as Two Hearts Banquet Center until 2012, a longer run than it had as a movie theater. In 2013, Laborers International Union of North America Local 110, a union for construction workers, purchased the property. They operate it as LiUNA Event Center.
As for the other nearby theaters, the four-screen theater closed in 1989 and was demolished in 1997 to make way for a shopping center. The 8-screen theater survived until 1998, when Wehrenberg built a 3,288-seat 20-screen multiplex next to it and then demolished the old facility for parking. The other theaters were less distinctive than the Mark Twain, so it’s nice that the former Mark Twain theater took on a second and now a third career, especially in a metro area that loves to demolish anything and everything to make way for a convenience store or a pharmacy.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
As a single guy in my early 20’s I made the rounds to all the movie theaters during the 1980s with my friends including at the Mark Twain Cinema. The theater was big and similar to the Esquire’s main theatre at the time. I fondly recall seeing Ghostbusters there unaware of what to expect. Also there, I saw Dune with a friend. As we waited for the doors to open we were given a sheet of paper, which was the glossary of the terms used in the book. It took three times for that movie restarting before the sound was finally working. The Mark Twain Cinema was truly a memorable place. A few decades later in the guise of the LiUNA Event Center I played drums with a music group for a fundraiser thank-you event. It is still a special building, but no longer holds the excitement of going through the entrance and waiting for the doors to open to the large screen. However, I am glad the building still exists.
I attended at least two wedding receptions there when it was Two Hearts. By the time I was making the rounds to movie theaters the only non-Wehrenberg, non-AMC theater left in the area was the Kirkwood Cinema. I’ll bet Ghostbusters at the Mark Twain was an experience. I can remember going there when it was a theater but whatever I saw must have been unremarkable. I remember seeing Crocodile Dundee II at the Des Peres 4 in 1988, so it was something more forgettable than that.