The "Casino" name predates the existing Casino Theatre building and business, and goes back to a landmark dance hall built on the same spot in 1922.

The "Casino Theatre," complete with British spelling of "theater," was born.

Why "Casino"?

The Italian word casino first meant a cottage or country house. (In Italian, casa means "house," and casino means "little house.") Then the word came to mean a social gathering place — a room or building where people could dance or listen to music.

The word came into the English language in the mid 1800s, and for many years during the Victorian era, "casino" was simply a fancy, exotic-sounding name for a place for social amusements. Casinos were places where one might find billiards, bowling, concerts, dancing, dining, tea parties and theatricals.

"Casino" became popular as a proper name for these spots in the late 1800s. The first campus center at Princeton University was called the Casino Theatre. It opened in 1895, and contained tennis courts, a dance floor and a bowling alley, as well as a stage for theatrical productions. There was a Casino Theatre on Broadway in New York City, a stage for operettas from 1894 through the early part of the century.

"Casino" stuck as a popular name for movie houses when they came along, much like "Ritz" or "Rialto." There were once hundreds of theaters named Casino across the country. In fact, there is another "Casino Theatre" still operating across the state in Vandergrift, Pa., that was built in 1900. It was a vaudeville theater until the 1920s, when it was remodeled for movies.

And so, the "Casino Theatre" has been a landmark on the main street of Mount Pocono for generations.

That other casino ...

These days, of course, the word "casino" primarily means a place used for gambling. And the irony is that even though the Casino Theatre has a long and well-established history as a family entertainment spot, strangers to the Poconos are confusing the Casino Theatre Entertainment Center in Mount Pocono with the Mount Airy Casino Resort, which opened in the fall of 2007 only about three miles to our south.

(Mount Airy's mailing address is also Mount Pocono, although technically it is in Paradise Township.)

We get calls for "casino" business many times a week, whether it's people looking to make room reservations or vendors looking to deliver beverages.

Now, back to our history:

THE 1920s — The original 1922 Casino was a dance hall and night club.

We have an early poster advertising Whitey Kaufman and his orchestra to appear at the Mount Pocono Casino on June 29, 1927. Click on the poster to see larger image. Dancing was from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., and the "expense" was $1 per person.

Pretty pricey for the 1920s, but Kaufman was a big-name act, and had a hit phonograph recording called "Paddlin' Madeline Home." Click on the sound bar to hear the original 1925 Victor recording. This recording came out in 1925, just two years after "The Charleston," and is one of those songs associated with the Roaring 20s. (Remember that "records" had only been around for 25 years at the time this was made, and radio was just getting started!)

Marlin E. "Whitey" Kaufman was from Lebanon, Pa., and formed the Original Pennsylvania Serenaders while a student at Lebanon Valley College in the early 1920s. The 11-piece group went on to become Victor recording artists, and were booked throughout the country through the mid to late 1930s.

In 1927: Mount Pocono was incorporated as a borough this year. Calvin Coolidge is president, and the country is enjoying the "modernity" of the Roaring Twenties. Henry Ford sells his 15 millionth Model T, Charles Lindbergh makes the first transatlantic flight, and the "Lindy Hop" becomes the latest dance craze. The United States is halfway through the Prohibition years, Babe Ruth hits a record-making 60 home runs, and the first talking motion picture, "The Jazz Singer," is released. The very first Academy Awards would be presented next year, in 1928.

THE 1930s — By the early '30s, The Casino was a dance hall and movie theatre.

An advertisement published in "This Week in the Poconos" in July 1932 outlines a typical schedule for a summer week: Dancing Monday and Friday nights to recorded big band music, movies Tuesday and Thursday nights, and a live dance band Wednesday and Saturday nights. Click page at left to enlarge.

It cost 25 cents to be admitted to the Casino's dance nights, which feature "electric reproductions of world's greatest dance bands" and promise "volume equal to that of original band." Click on the sound bar to hear the 1932 recording of "The Scat Song" by Cab Calloway.

Calloway recorded his signature song "Minnie the Moocher" for a Betty Boop cartoon short of the same name, which also came out in 1932.

At the Casino, the big attraction for the week is a live band. Donlin's Pennsylvanians, a group founded by Wilkes-Barre music teacher William J. Donlin, plays at the Casino twice a week, bringing a five-piece group on Wednesdays, when admission was 50 cents, and a seven-piece band on Saturday nights, when admission jumped to $1, tax included.

In 1932: Herbert Hoover is president, and the country is in the depths of the Great Depression. (Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Hoover in a landslide election in the fall.) Jack Benny's radio show airs for the first time. The Revenue Act of 1932 creates the first gas tax: 1 cent per gallon. Walt Disney's "Flowers and Trees" is the first animated cartoon in full Technicolor. Radio City Music Hall opens and New York City's Palace Theatre converts to a movie house, marking the end of vaudeville. The Academy Award for Best Picture went to "Grand Hotel."

The Casino was purchased by Mrs. Hyacinth C. Smith of Stroudsburg some time in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

THE 1950s — The Casino Theatre is now primarily a movie house.

Ads from August 1952 in "This Week in the Poconos" don't state a price for the movies, but they do indicate two shows every night, Monday through Saturday, and the features changing every other day.

Note the ad (click image at left) boasts "This Theatre Comfortably Cool." Air conditioning was just starting to boom as an industry. Chances are, the Casino didn't have it yet . . . otherwise the ad would say so! But the Casino needed to compete with other local movie houses such as The Sherman in Stroudsburg, which was bragging about its air conditioning.

Click on the soundbar to hear "Do Not Forsake Me," (the ballad from "High Noon"), sung by Tex Ritter. The song won the 1952 Academy Award for Best Original Song.

In 1952, most movies were still being filmed in black and white. "Francis Goes to West Point" (the third of seven movies made about a talking Army mule) , "Pat and Mike" and "Carbine Williams" are all black and white features. "The Story of Will Rogers" is notably indicated as being in Technicolor. The push for color films was soon to begin, provoked by the growing prevalence of television, which would remain primarily black and white for years to come. (Color TV did not take off until the mid 1960s.)

Note that the movie times are 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. "D.S.T." throughout the week. Daylight Savings Time was used across the country during World War II, but after the war its use varied among states and localities. It wasn't standarized in the U.S. until 1966 — that's why people used the "D.S.T." designation.

In 1952: Harry S Truman is president, but announces he won't seek reelection. (Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected in the fall.) Elizabeth II becomes queen of England at age 25 upon the death of her father, George VI. The United States is in the throes of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Prime Minister Winston Churchill announces that the United Kingdom has an atomic bomb; the U.S. detonates the first hydrogen bomb. The Academy Award for Best Picture of 1952 went to "The Greatest Show on Earth."

THE 1960s — A Casino poster from the summer of 1969 shows the featured attractions for a week and a half. Click on poster to enlarge it.

Note how there's still a new movie billed every other day, with two shows a night. Note that all the movies are advertised as being Technicolor.

The big change for movies came just months before, in November 1968, when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) instituted the movie ratings system. Before 1965, cities or states could have public rating boards which could determine if films were suitable for public display. A Supreme Court ruling that year said rating boards could only approve a film — they had no power to ban them. The MPAA system is voluntary — however, most theaters won't show unrated films, and the major studios have agreed to submit all titles for rating before they are released.

"Romeo and Juliet" wasn't an American film, so no rating when it came out in 1968. There is a bit of nudity in the original version; it was re-edited to earn a PG-13 rating in 1973.) Click on the sound bar to hear "What Is A Youth?," the lovers theme from "Romeo & Juliet."

Note on this poster that the Bob Hope/Jackie Gleason comedy "How To Commit Marriage" is rated "M." This rating, for mature audiences, was only used between 1969 and 1971. The MPAA found that the "M" rating was viewed by audiences as more adult than its intended meaning, which was to signify films inappropriate for some children. "M" was changed to "GP" in 1971, (for General audiences, Parental guidance suggested), before films were re-rated to the now familiar PG, PG-13 or R.

In 1969: Richard M. Nixon is sworn in as president. The Vietnam War is raging, with anti-war protests continue around the country. The Beatles give their last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London, and John Lennon records "Give Peace a Chance." The Apollo space program lands the first man on the moon. (Four men will have stepped on the lunar surface by the year's end.) The Woodstock music festival is held in upstate New York. The Cold War continues. The Best Picture Oscar of 1969 goes to "Midnight Cowboy."

THE 1970s — The Casino Theatre building was purchased in 1975 by three local couples: George & Sheila Litz of Cresco, and two couples from Pocono Farms, Victor & Diane Genco and John & Ruth Hildebrand. The three families formed a business entity called LIGEND, Inc., from the letters of their last names, and incorporated it with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on March 12, 1975.

The families soon got busy fixing up and modernizing the vintage structure.

"It was a very old, grand building with a lot of character to it," George Litz recalls.

The old place reopened for new business on April 4, 1975, with the addition of an old-fashioned ice cream parlor called the Village Malt Shoppe, with 20 flavors of ice cream. The new decor featured paneling with an old-fashioned newspaper design, along with crisp white curtains and Tiffany-style lamps. The building was also home to two other LIGEND businesses: the Needles N' Things sewing and craft shop and the Early American Gift Shop.

The single 426-seat Casino movie theater reopened with a showing of the classic "Gone With the Wind."

Hot time at the old Casino

Less than a year after the grand reopening, disaster struck. On March 11, 1976, the renovated Casino Theatre and neighboring businesses burned to the ground. Operated as a summer business, the movie theater and malt shop were closed for the season at the time. The building had been broken into several times over the winter, fueling speculation about the cause of the fire.

The Casino had been scheduled to reopen for the season on April 26 with the movie musical "1776" in honor of the national bicentennial, and the local bicentennial committee had been planning to sell tickets to the show to raise money for a Fourth of July parade.

But it was not to be. Two hours after the first firefighters arrived at the scene, only the brick facade of the old wooden building remained.

A new building was quickly planned. "We rebuilt it the same year," George Litz said. "Of course, we made it much smaller. At that time, it was strictly a summer operation."

The all-new Casino

The new building opened just four months later — July 4, 1976 — with a new single-screen movie theater and new ice cream parlor. The first movie to be shown was the Neil Simon comedy "The Sunshine Boys," with George Burns and Walter Matthau. If there was any good news to be had after the disastrous blaze, it was that the new theater could be built with a slanted floor, allowing a modern movie-going experience instead of the neck-craning involved when watching a film from the flat floor of the old dance hall.

Within just a few years, the Litzes bought out their partners and began expanding the operation. Today, after more than 30 years, the business is still owned and operated by the Litz family, and the Casino is in its second generation of family management. (With the third generation often employed there.)

Over the years, the Litzes added a kitchen, miniature golf course and a game room targeted at pre-teens and younger, with prize redemptions. "What we wanted to do is make it a multiple entertainment center," George says. The size of the Village Malt Shoppe eventually doubled. The 1950s theme of the decor dates to 2004, when a gift shop featuring nostalgia and retro items was added.

Today at the Casino

For years, the Casino ran second-run movies or classics, permitting the theater to show a greater range of films by showing them for shorter periods of time, as makes sense for a business with a relatively small customer base. But as the population of the Poconos has grown, so has the Casino: In 2003, the theater was twinned, and started running first-run movies on two screens. Today's two modern theaters seat 165 and 132 filmgoers.

The business continues to grow. For years, the Casino was a seasonal business. From 1975 to 2007, it was open for weekends only from mid-March through Memorial Day, when it would open full time through the end of September, reverting to weekends only through Thanksgiving.

In March 2007, George Litz Sr., decided to give up the day-to-day management of The Casino to enjoy a well deserved retirement split between Pennsylvania and Florida, with a lot of golf in both states.

Today, a second generation is running the business, with Karen Litz Struckle serving as company president. Her husband, Donald Struckle Sr., took early retirement from his job of nearly 30 years to join Karen in running The Casino as a full-time, year-round operation. You can find them both there almost any time The Casino is open.

With a movie theater, malt shop, sandwich restaurant, children's arcade room, gift shop and miniature golf operation all under one roof, Karen and Don are busy recasting the business as the Casino Theatre Entertainment Center, a place for reasonably priced family fun.