July 11, 1976

Muncie Star-Press

By Dave Stearns

LEWISVILLE – At the turn of the century, there were music halls in the east, saloons in the west and riverboats in the south.

In Indiana, there were opera houses.

At one time, there were sixteen in Henry County alone, but most of them are gone now. Some of them were turned into movie houses and some were turned into office buildings. Others were turned into parking lots, and even others went up in flames because their gaslights caught fire, resulting in a sort of self-destruct "Gotterdammerung."

BUT THE ODDS against provincial theaters seemed to somehow bypass the musical and strange Guyer Opera House, which roosts on the obscure second floor above the New Hope Church Sunday School room in Lewisville.

After the theater was closed down in 1942 because its pot belly stove was in violation of fire regulations, everybody just sort of forgot about the old gaslight theater, except when they needed a place to dry their onions or store an old Coke machine.

So the tulip-shaped, turquoise globes that covered the turned-off gaslights around the stage just gathered dirt, the paint around the gaslights stayed blistered and the plaster began to fall off the walls.

The stamped tin ceiling, rounded with an ornate design that made the acoustics in the opera house wonderfully clear, had no music to resonate and began to lose its shine.

The old wooden theater seats were borrowed by the Masonic Lodge (which later burned down) and then somebody took a few of the canvas scenery drops and used them to catch stray splatters while painting their barn.

EVERY SO OFTEN, perhaps a truck loader would go up there to get something and maybe he would come out with a funny look on his face, as if he had just seen Sarah Bernhardt’s ghost.

So the theater just sat up there until a drama teacher from Chrysler High School in News Castle, who jokes that he was born "50 years too late," heard about the place and became bent on restoring it.

Dick Willis is his name, and he has formed what is now the Raintree County Opera House Guild, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to renovating and eventually operating the Guyer Opera House.

"The great English actor John Gielgud once said the trouble with American Theater is there isn’t enough spit on the walls," Willis said. "Well, I think this theater has plenty of spit."

The Guyer Opera House also has plenty of history. Since its construction began in the late 1800s through the work of local physician, Dr. O.K. Guyer (for whom the theater was named), there was a long line of songs, dances, minstrel shows, productions of "uncle Tom’s Cabin" and even female impersonators that preceded its 1942 closing.

AT THAT TIME the term "opera house" didn’t mean "Aida" or even Gilbert and Sullivan. In the late 1800s, "theater" still had negative connotations in many religious circles and "opera house" sounded more respectable.

The only black mark in the theater’s history was in the 1920s when a young boy died in the middle of a show.

For the first time in 34 years, the Guyer Opera House will open to the public, 2-5 p.m. Sunday, July, 18, in a pre-restoration open house to raise money for the renovation and purchase of the building. For the occasion, Indianapolis artist K. P. Singh has made a print of the theater’s exterior, which will be exhibited along with several of his other works.

Provided that the public responds to this magical and strange theater, which seems to capture the imaginations of most anybody who visits it, Willis plans to establish a summer theater season by June 1977.

THROUGHOUT THE YEAR, he has planned film festivals, children’s theater and possible visits from the New Castle Civic Theater. He says the theater will also be open to clubs, civic groups and all sorts of things.

"I want it to be a family theater," Willis exclaimed. "I’m tired of theater being for the rich and elite. We want family entertainment at reasonable prices. I want the PEOPLE to come back to the theater. I want them to come in their shirtsleeves and blue jeans and just LOVE it. I want the theater to be heart and guts."

That’s pretty much what went on at the Guyer Opera House during its heyday. From talking to various Lewisville residents, Willis has determined that the theater opened in 1905 with a touring show from the Park Theater in Indianapolis.

"I’ve talked to a few people who saw the first show," he says, "but they can’t remember what it was about." But Caroline Peyton, who with her husband, Tony, now own the opera house, remembers a singer named Betty Smith, whose theme song was "Darkness on the Delta." She performed in black face and was billed the "Blue Eyed Pickaninny."

THERE WERE JOKES like "Mr. Bones, I want you to try and use the word ‘fascinate’ in a sentence."

"Well Mr. Tambo, how ‘bout, ‘I had nine buttons on my trousers but I could only fasten eight.’ "

That was a real knee-slapper, and so were the songs like "Does the Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight," and plays like "Old Maids Made Over."

Civil War regiments held their reunions in the Guyer Opera House, which was fitting for a town that claims to have originated Memorial Day in the 1800s.

There was also a community acting club in Lewisville, which was founded by Mrs. Peyton’s grandfather, A. R. Street. It was an organization only open to men, which meant that they had men playing female roles. Mrs. Peyton remembers how the audience laughed at the sight of such things as a burly filling station attendant dressed as a ballerina.

WILD WEST SHOWS were actually staged inside the small auditorium, and in the 1920s, the Guyer was the scene of a major tragedy. A master marksman’s gun accidentally fired, shooting an 8-year-old boy. The boy’s father owned the dry goods store downstairs. The sounded child was carried down there and died shortly after.

What else went on there? Willis asked that question of longtime Lewisville resident Carl Hollingsworth shortly before his recent death in a New Castle nursing home.

"Oh year," answered the elderly Hollingsworth. "I remember ‘Fannie Hill…’ "

"Fannie Hill!" Well, the then-scandalous story goes something like this. "To bolster rather poor attendance in a particular season," Willis relates, "the owner booked the show and displayed a poster of dancing girls in pink tights. The townfolks were shocked but poured in to see the show. Eyewitnesses said the girls were dressed ‘sparingly’ and finally the show was closed down."

"The actors supposedly then went across the street to stay in the hotel, but later on the hotel owner disappeared. He allegedly was found by his wife with one of the actresses sitting on his lap. She kicked the troupe out of the hotel, and nobody knows what happened to them after that."

WHAT IS LEFT of those days is imprinted on the walls of the Guyer Opera House with a graffiti network of signed names and dates that go back as far as 1912. Much of the stage machinery still works, including a large wooden crank used to raise and lower the scenery.

The structure is also sound, because the roof was built in a "scissor" construction, which is noted for its strength but seldom used anymore because of the large amount o lumber needed for the braces.

Willis says approximately $50,000 is needed to purchase the opera house from the Peytons and put it in operating condition. He thinks he can raise it, for just the formation of the board of directors showed him there is public interest in restoring the opera house.

"I think it would be the making of Lewisville," said Mrs. Peyton. "When Interstate 70 was built, so many of these towns on U.S. 40 just laid down and died. There’s a lot of pride here, and I think that it’s important for us to be able to look back at the things of beauty that just aren’t created anymore."

"There’s a certain magic about this place," Willis added. "I call it gaslight glamour."

Perhaps it’s what the novelist Ross Lockeridge meant when he wrote in his novel, "Raintree County." "To find Raintree County, look on a map of Indiana, on the Old National Road (U.S. 40), 40 miles from Indianapolis and 40 miles from the Ohio border. But if you do look, you won’t find it because Raintree County, where lurked musical and strange peoples and places was itself just a name, musical and strange. For Raintree County is not the county of perishable fact, but the county of enduring fiction."

Charter memberships to the Raintree County Opera House Guild, Inc., range from $25 to $500. Contributions may be made by sending a check to P.O. Box 117, Lewisville, 47352. For more information, call Willis at 987-7896