Villa Theatre owner eyes re-opening date

Since the spring of 1955, the Villa Theatre had been bringing Tinsel Town to the silver screen for Phillips County movie-goers, but since the middle of last June, the movie house has been shuttered because of problems with the movie projector,

Rejoice, movie fans, the owner of the Villa Theatre, along with the help of Malta's Greg and Jan Kirkwood, and Aaron and Christine Riggs, the silver screen in Malta is on course to once again bring Hollywood to the prairie with an eye on the end of September or early October to reopening the nearly 64-year-old movie house.

"We are working on getting the camera fully functional and we are also working on getting the entire appearance inside cleaned up," said Villa Theatre owner David Adams. "It is dated, and we will be working on that for the next month. The theatre has had a good life and we are looking to bring new life back to it."

The latest projector problems for the Villa come just a little over six years after Phillips County businesses and the community stepped-up to help raise nearly $30,000 for a new projector in 2013 and 2014. The problem then was movies were being switched from 35mm film to digital copies and the projector at the Villa in 2013 (the fifth projector since the theatre opened in 1955) was not able to accommodate to new digital versions of the films. a new projector was needed to keep the movie house open and on February 8, 2014, the Villa re-opened with a showing of the Disney movie Frozen on the new digital camera.

David Adams inherited the Villa Theatre when his father, Garry (a long-time Malta businessman, City Councilman, and former mayor) passed away in April of 2012. Garry Adams purchased the Villa Theatre in March of 1992 from Richard Pancake who had owned the business since 1977 when he purchased it from his sister, Irene Veseth. Carl Veseth was the original owner and operator of the Villa and first told the people of Phillips County about the building of the theatre in a story in the PCN in December of 1944. The story claimed, "The theater is being constricted of Hadite block and Roman brick" and was being built by the Robert Schellin contractors out of Chinook. The story stated the Villa was "Believed to be one of the very few movie houses being constructed in this era of television competition with the motion picture industry." The first movie to show at the Villa under the Adams family in 1992, was, as luck would have it, "The Adams Family."

Vikki and Jim Truelove took over managing the Villa Theatre in 2014 and led the charge to get the new digital camera in place to ensure the movie house would stay open in Malta.

"I'd like to give a big thank you to Jim and Vikki for taking over and keeping the theatre going over the last years," Adams said. "Thank you to them for keeping it going for so long."

David, who currently manages several ranches in the Dillon, Mont., area, said that he is reestablishing connections with movie booking houses such as MGM and Disney while the deep cleaning of the Villa is underway. He said that since the people of Phillips County did so much to raise funds for the new digital movie projector in 2013-14 that it is a part of the building and "I won't separate the two."

"If I sold the building, the new owner couldn't just sell the camera because it is very valuable," Adams said. "We will get the theatre cleaned up and functioning again."

Among some of the things being repaired, cleaned or replaced at the Villa include a deep-cleaning of the aged bathrooms, plumbing work, working on repairing or replacing some of the theatre seating (possibly reducing some seats) and getting the digital camera back up and running at optimal strength.

"We are open to any thoughts or ideas from the public about what they would like to see happening at the Villa," Adams said. "With all the hard work the people of the area have done there over the years, and all the money raised for the new camera, the Villa is a community theatre so we just need to be able to pay the people who work there and maintain the cost of running it. I have never profited off it nor do I ever see myself profiting off it, but it is a community asset that we want to keep running."