Advertisement for the Strand Theatre from The Hampton County Guardian, May 9, 1934.

Varnville, SC
February 8, 2005

We arrived in Varnville at 11:00 a.m. and looked for a building that might have served as a movie theater. We went into a shop and met two women who told us that the old movie theater was gone.

One of the women said it had been directly across the street from their store. “It was a liquor store,” she said. “When the roof fell in, they decided to tear it down. An old gentleman told me to watch carefully when they pulled down the front of the building and we would see that it had been an old movie house. He said he remembered seeing silent films there long ago. Sure enough, when the front was gone, we could see where the big screen had been.”

At the Hampton County Library, we found advertisements in the May 9, 1934 issue of The Hampton County Guardian for the Strand Theatre in Varnville. In an issue dated October 15, 1941, we found an advertisement for the Varnville Theatre. We noticed that the 1934 admission price of eleven cents had risen in 1941, to twenty-two cents, including tax.

At this time, we have not determined if the Strand Theatre and Varnville Theatre were in the same location. We would be most grateful for any information, especially photographs, of the theatres of Varnville.