What happens when you have a movie theater with no movies to show?

When the Esquire Theatre opened on Jan. 22, 1947, capacity crowds descended on Cape Girardeau's newest movie palace. Moviegoers wanted to experience the Art Deco edifice with its "full mile of neon lighting." Bing Crosby even sent a congratulatory telegram.

Thanks to the economic boom following the end of World War II, the Esquire Theatre was poised to thrive.

But the theater owners faced an immediate problem: securing the rights to show first-run movies. Within weeks, the Esquire was relegated to offering second-run movies, an experiment that didn't pay well. The management then had no choice but to close the theater for days or weeks at a time when they had nothing fresh to show.

In a large advertisement that ran in the Southeast Missourian on March 28, 1947, the Esquire Theatre attacked the "ruthless dictatorship which today rules the Motion Picture Monopoly." The ad explained that a federal court had ruled that several movie companies were in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. These studios and distributors were conspiring to shut out independent theaters like the Esquire.

A few days later, a rebuttal appeared from the Rialto Theater entitled "Let's Be Good Sports!" The management of the Rialto, also an independent exhibitor, stated that they had never had trouble obtaining first-run pictures. They claimed that the Esquire's advertisement was "unfair and un-sportsmanlike."

Nevertheless, the Esquire continued to struggle. In March of the following year, the Esquire's owners filed a lawsuit against a large swath of the movie industry, including five major studios. The lawsuit also targeted the Fox Midwest theater chain, which had an affiliation with the Broadway, Orpheum, and Park theaters in Cape.

According to the lawsuit, Fox Midwest had conspired with the studios to monopolize the first-run movies in this market. The Esquire had been forced to settle for scraps while paying "an inordinately high guarantee and high percentage" to obtain them. The Esquire asked for $330,000 in damages.

The outcome of this litigation is unclear, but the Esquire no doubt benefited from a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that came just a few weeks later on May 4, 1948. In United States v. Paramount Pictures, the court effectively put an end to many of Hollywood's anti-competitive practices.

In particular, the Supreme Court agreed with the lower court finding "that defendants had discriminated against small independent exhibitors and in favor of large affiliated and unaffiliated circuits through various kinds of contract provisions." The ruling added, "We concur in the conclusion that these discriminatory practices are included among the restraints of trade which the Sherman Act condemns."

Business at the Esquire seems to have picked up afterward. The original owners sold the theater in 1949 to Dubinsky Brothers Inc., a small Midwestern theater chain. Dubinsky continued to operate the Esquire into the 1980s, but the theater eventually succumbed to the same fate as all of the other downtown movie houses and went out of business.