Strand Theatre

The portrait of Jim Montgomery, the journalist who helped save the 1925 theater from demolition, keeps ending up on the floor of the Founder's Room. Executive Director Jenifer Hill says it 'jumped' from its place of honor.

Jim Montgomery's portrait keeps jumping off the wall at the Strand Theatre.

It's hung in the Founder's Room for nearly two decades, a tribute to the late Shreveport journalist and actor who co-founded the non-profit that saved the 1925 theatre from demolition. Executive Director Jenifer Hill walked in one day and found it in the middle of the floor. "I found that portrait in the middle of the floor," she told KTBS, "it had 'jumped' from its place of honor."

Hill has a theory, and it's affectionate rather than alarmed. Montgomery loved this building. He spent years fighting to keep the wrecking ball away from it, alongside co-founders Virginia Shehee and Judd Tooke, who together incorporated the Strand Theatre of Shreveport Corporation after ABC-Interstate Theatres donated the shuttered building in 1976. When the lights go dim for a long stretch, like they have during recent programming slowdowns, Hill thinks Montgomery gets restless. "Jim, we're doing everything we can to get your beloved theatre's lights back on again," she's said out loud, which is not a sentence you hear from most executive directors at historic venues.

The Strand opened on July 3, 1925 at 619 Louisiana Avenue, built by Julian and Abraham Saenger as the flagship of their chain, designed by New Orleans architect Emile Weil, and constructed by Stewart-McGehee on a budget of roughly $750,000. The Saengers billed it as "the greatest theatre of the South" and the "Million Dollar Theatre." A 939-pipe Robert Morton organ anchored the stage, and six murals titled "The Muses of The Strand" ran along the auditorium walls beneath a fourteen-foot main chandelier, with gilt-edged mirrors, ornate box seats, and colors of deep burgundy and rich gold doing the rest of the marketing. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 26, 1977, and the Louisiana Legislature designated it the Official State Theatre in 1984, the same year it reopened with the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra performing to a sold-out house after a seven-year restoration.

What it didn't have for most of its first century was a reputation for being haunted. The Strand isn't on the New Orleans-style ghost tour circuit, and the Saenger brothers aren't part of any Shreveport ghost lore. The Montgomery portrait stories started recently, and that's worth noting, because the one named specter here is a man who died in 2010. He knew this building the way a preservationist knows a building. Every scar on every cornice.

The staff's other reports are quieter. Doors that were locked are unlocked in the morning. Footsteps on the mezzanine when the house is dark and empty. The usual inventory of old-theater phenomena, what staff at any century-old venue will describe if you catch them on a slow Tuesday. The Strand is unusual because it has a name and a face. There's a portrait on the wall, and when it ends up on the floor, the joke from everyone who worked with Montgomery is that it's exactly the thing he would do.

The Strand is still an active venue, hosting Broadway tours and the Shreveport Symphony among other programming. John Wayne and William Holden once attended the 1959 premiere of "The Horse Soldiers" here. Crews set up, run shows, strike the set, lock up, and the next morning Hill occasionally finds Jim Montgomery's portrait on the floor of the Founder's Room, exactly where a man who fought to save this building for decades would want to land when the lights stay dark too long.