Elstun Dodge and his mother, Rose Chambers Dodge, co-owned two theaters that bore their name in New Richmond. The first opened on the third floor of the Opera House in the late 1930s during Hollywood's Golden Age, where residents bought tickets to see films such as Gone With The Wind, Psycho, and many animated Disney classics. In the late 1940s, they built a replacement movie house of concrete block with stone trim and a marquee easily seen from the street. After his mother's death, Elstun Dodge hired Stella Sutton to work evenings and weekends, and she became the theater's manager and rule enforcer, quietly roaming the aisles to deal with troublemakers. Her approach in the darkened theater often restored order, and for repeat offenders she used a flashlight, sharp whispers of "quiet!" or "shh," and sometimes a folded newspaper. The theater's heyday lasted from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s, when Hollywood was making a conscious effort to appeal to children, and patrons could spend four or five hours enjoying two full-length features, a newsreel, and a cartoon for 15 or 20 cents, with popcorn and Milk Duds available for another 10 or 15 cents. Like many small-town movie theaters, it stopped showing films in the early 1970s.