Steve Clem, operations director at Public Radio Tulsa for 11 years, retired last week from his post and is planning two books about defunct theaters and Route 66 motels in that city.
During a Q&A session with his now-former employer, Clem revealed about projects he has in the hopper:
PRT: You’ve written the book, Tulsa’s KAKC Radio: The Big 97, and have produced an audio special about that late, great station. Got any more books you want to write?
SC: I am starting two book projects: The first is Tulsa Movie Theaters. We got short-changed! All of Tulsa’s beautiful downtown and neighborhood movie theaters are gone! It’s a subject I’ve always been interested in. If you’d like to share your Tulsa movie memories with me, I’ll have my TU email for a while longer: steve-clem@utulsa.edu. I’m also working on Tulsa Route 66 Motels. This is a harder subject because there were upwards of 50 motels along 11thStreet and Southwest Blvd during Tulsa’s Route 66 heyday. If you have a personal link to any of that history, email me: steve-clem@utulsa.edu.
I asked Clem in an email to elaborate about his future books. Here’s his answer about the Tulsa theaters project:
I have been approved by Arcadia to do a second book, “Tulsa Movie Theaters.” I can’t think of another city that has lost as much of its cinema heritage as Tulsa. Once the home of beautiful movie palaces built with oil money, including the Orpheum, the Ritz and the Rialto, not one remains. It’s nearly the same story with the neighborhood theaters, including the streamline art deco Will Rogers Theater on Route 66 (11th Street), The Brook & The Delman, another art deco gem, where us Tulsa area baby boomers saw Disney and 007 films growing up. “The Sound Of Music” played at the Brook for a solid year. All are gone.
I will also include the drive-in theaters that dotted the landscape in every direction just outside the Tulsa City limits as well as the suburban movie theaters, like the Criterion, one-half block off 66 in Sapulpa. Sharing movie memories is a favorite topic on social media. A definitive book will be a catalyst for preserving those wonderful experiences and the locales where that magic happened. I’m currently working on the publication timetable with Arcadia.
Here’s what he had to say about his Route 66 motels project in Tulsa:
“Tulsa Route 66 Motels” is a project I have been researching for a while. My retirement from Public Radio Tulsa will allow me to finally bring this labor of love to fruition. Photographing old motels and motel signs is a hobby. So a book on the original motels on the different alignments of 66 in Tulsa seemed like a natural. Sadly, you can drive all day now without seeing an original neon sign.
Tulsa enthusiastically embraces Route 66 now, but 90% of the vintage motels that were along Admiral, 11th Street and Southwest Boulevard are gone.
I have poured through old City Directories and made Excel spreadsheets with details of each motel and have visited each site to document what is there now. My goal is to have historical information on each property beyond what has been readily available. In terms of images, Joe Sonderman has been an invaluable and gracious resource.
The most interesting one so far is the Pierce-Pennant Hotel and Terminal, built east of Tulsa on 66 in 1929. In an era when roadside lodging was camping in city parks or crude cabins with communal facilities, each Pierce-Pennant terminal included a multi-story hotel that resembled a college dormitory, a gas station, cafe and a nurse’s station. Built to offer travelers “the ultimate in comfort and service,” the Pierce-Pennant Oil Company planned a chain of such facilities every 125 miles along major highways. Tulsa’s terminal was one of few actually built, as the company didn’t survive the depression. Others were in Springfield, Rolla, and Columbia, Missouri. Columbia’s is the only building that has survived.
Ironically, in the 1930s, Tulsa’s Pierce-Pennant became the Bates Hotel, a full thirty years before Alfred Hitchcock made that name synonymous with “I don’t need a shower after all, let’s get out of here!”
Clem says he doesn’t have a publisher yet for his motels book.
If you want to keep up-to-date on Clem’s books, you can subscribe to his author page on Amazon.
(Postcard image of Pierce Pennant Terminal in Tulsa courtesy of 66postcards.com)
I already want one.