More about Zinsmaster...

Paul Lundgren of Perfect Duluth Day has done some good sleuthing to lend some interesting information about the Zinsmaster Bakery in Duluth. The Peerless Autobody business that tragically burned on Monday was housed in the old Zinsmaster Bakery building (see earlier post). The Zinsmaster Bakery was a prominent Duluth business and the founding family well known in Duluth's past. Check out Perfect Duluth Day to learn more HERE. Word has it that yet more information about this historic building and the people behind the business will appear in Wednesday's Duluth News Tribune for all of you who have interest in Duluth's history.

Looking back: When opera was a "gas" in Duluth...

Great spotting by Paul Lundgren and Susie LeGarde Menz in Perfect Duluth Day Blog (link HERE) of a 1965 ad for the opera performance of (I think) La Traviata, held in the Duluth Denfeld Auditorium. This artistic rendering (below)–including the architectural beauty of the Denfeld auditorium–was featured in a Time Magazine advertisement for Northern Natural Gas Co., now Enbridge. They featured the (then) Duluth Symphony Orchestra performances in their advertising campaign. This ad made quite a hit in Duluth when it came out, with national focus on our local community arts. I discovered that you can purchase this lovely art poster for $9.95 through E-Bay natural gas collectables (HERE).

Northern Natural Gas Company ad in Time Magazine circa 1965

The text in small print in the ad reads as follows: "There is music in Duluth. Good music. There is the majestic, the tragic and the comic music of grand opera … sung by the world’s greatest artists … supported by Duluth’s own wealth of talent. There is the symphony. The full and glorious sounds of Beethoven … the powerful and challenging sounds of Wagner … the beautiful sounds of all the world’s good music … performed by the Duluth Symphony Orchestra which continues to build its fame as it starts its thirty-third season. Duluth offers you music. It offers all that a great city should. As one of America’s busiest ports, it’s a thriving market with productive labor and outstanding transportation facilities. And it has abundant natural gas, piped in by the Northern Natural Gas Company and distributed by the City of Duluth Gas Department. For information about plant location opportunities, write to Area Development Department, Northern Natural Gas Company, Omaha, Nebraska."

This scene depicts one of many grand operas presented at Denfeld by the Duluth (before it became Duluth-Superior) Symphony association and before the DECC Auditorium opened in 1966, after which the operas were presented there until around the mid-70s, then discontinued. The operas featured the Duluth orchestra, local soloists in minor roles, and leads sung by prominent opera singers of the day, mostly from New York. 

NorShor Theatre remembered...

The NorShor Theatre picture (above) is one of the pictures given to me in the 70's by George Brown, then manager of the theatre. This picture and others in my collection have been widely circulated. Note the marquis for the first movie shown in the theatre after the remodeling of the Orpheum (original entry and facade on the avenue) was transformed into the NorShor: Hold Back the Dawn with Charles Boyer and Paulette Goddard. 

Paul Lundgren contributed a short history of Duluth's NorShor Theatre in the Perfect Duluth Day blog. The Orpheum building (former Orpheum Theatre) that houses the NorShor turns 100 this year and that inspired Paul to write about it. Check out the PDD site HERE for more from Paul about that history.

Tony Dierckins, local publisher and historian, commented on PDD about the vintage pictures of the NorShor I shared with him and also with Laura Ness who compiled a NorShor history piece for the Zeppa Foundation a few years ago. Tony hopes to publish some of those pictures on his web site soon so stay tuned at his site, http://www.x-communication.org, to see those pictures.

Here are my comments on PDD reflecting more on the old NorShor...
Yes, Tony D. has my cache of interior and exterior pictures taken at the time of the grand reopening when the Orpheum became the NorShor; also interior and exterior shots of the Orpheum before it was remodeled. The photos were given to me by the late George Brown, long-time NorShor manager at the time of his retirement in the 1970s. A couple of the shots are of the premiere at the Norshor in the late 1940s of a movie set in old Duluth called “Woman of the North Country.” Filmed in Hollywood with matte-drawing backdrops of old wooden ore docks, It starred Rod Cameron and Ruth Hussey, and the photo shows Cameron alighting from the airplane in Duluth, not Charles Boyer or either Paulette Goddard or Olivia DeHavilland. They didn’t come to Duluth for the opening of the Norshor, but Boyer and Goddard were stars of the first movie shown in the newly remodeled theater, “Hold Back the Dawn.” Tony D. might want to correct that. One star of the Boyer, Goddard, DeHavilland magnitude did appear in person at the Norshor: Ingrid Bergman. She came here to sell war bonds during WW II and gave a sales pitch from the NorShor stage before motoring to the Riverside shipyards to speak to workers. As Paul Lundgren points out, it’s all in those old Duluth News Tribunes on microfilm at the library. Also Duluth Herald. Remember that?”

Here's an anecdote going back to the building's Orpheum days (1911-1940): I once came across a Duluth newspaper review of a popular stage play of the early 1930s, "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," playing at the Orpheum, that listed Orson Welles among cast members in the role of a juvenile. Welles was born in 1915 (thank you Google), so he must have been 16 or 17 when he toured with the play, including its stop in Duluth.

Note: In my book, Cooler Near the Lake, I include a column about the NorShor–a memory piece about what it was like to see a movie at that theatre in its heyday.