EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third in a series of Dennis Historical Society DHS Digital Digest articles revisiting the extraordinary history of The Cape Playhouse as the iconic institution approaches its 100th birthday on July 4, 2027. Earlier stories focused on the very first opening night in “Basil Rathbone and the Birth of the Cape Playhouse” and on founder Raymond Moore as he guided The Playhouse though the early years to its position, by 1939, as the most famous summer theatre in America.
After his early Playhouse success,
Raymond Moore set his sights
on a Dennis Village arts mecca
By Kevin N. Keegan
Member, Dennis Historical Society Board of Directors
Once Cape Playhouse founder Raymond Moore made it through the theatre’s wildly successful first summer season in 1927, he turned his attention to expanding the original 3.5-acre property in Dennis Village and creating an appealing campus that would become a destination for Cape residents, as well as for visitors from Boston, Providence, New York City… and from everywhere in between.
As Moore acquired 23+ additional abutting acres by 1930, his vision for what one writer called “The Cape Playground” began to materialize.
Moore’s first project was to build a 60-foot-by-30-foot scene shop (pictured nearby) directly behind The Playhouse—still there today and meeting its original mission—and to hire his own creatives to design, construct, and paint the sets for each of the plays beginning with the 1929 summer season.
And then came Moore’s tour de force: the construction of The Cape Cinema adjacent to The Playhouse, thus creating a mecca for those who loved both live theatre and serious Hollywood films.
With the financial backing of New York socialite and heiress Edna Tweedy—a summer Cape resident in Wianno and an early supporter of The Playhouse—Moore hired 30-year-old up-and-coming architect Alfred Easton Poor to envision the movie theatre project just as Poor was winning a national competition to design The Wright Brothers Memorial at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Taking his inspiration from the historic Congregational Church in Centerville—and committed to creating a movie house that celebrated the simplicity and picturesque roots of Cape architecture—Poor fashioned a Greek Revival building of perfect proportion and quiet beauty while also incorporating the latest technologies for acoustics, ventilation, and comfort.
But Moore and Tweedy weren’t done. They also hired world-renowned artist Rockwell Kent to design a gigantic mural—still seen today vaulting across the ceiling of The Cinema—and then the massive canvas was executed by noted scenic artist Jo Mielziner and a crew of stage set painters. The mural was actually created in New York City, transported by truck to Dennis in ten pieces, and then affixed to the ceiling—under Mielziner’s watchful eye and with Kent on site up in the scaffolding for three days in June 1930—with a mixture of molasses and white lead.
Both Kent and Mielziner added their signatures on opposite walls, and at 6400 square feet, the modernistic interpretation of the heavens became at that time the largest piece of interior artwork ever created, at twice the size of Tintoretto’s painting of Paradise in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. Kent and Mielziner also designed the sunburst on the original folding curtain—which opened and closed left to right electronically at the touch of a button, a marvel at the time—that protected the cinema screen when not in use.
The entire construction project—the building and all interior detail—came together in under four months at a final cost of $150,000, twice the original budget. As Moore wrote in The Cape Playhouse playbill for the week of June 30, 1930, “THE CAPE CINEMA, A Motion Picture Theatre De Luxe, will be devoted to the exhibition of the highest type Motion Pictures available. Each program will be intelligently chosen, with the sole object of entertaining the most discriminating audiences.”
On the following page, Moore noted that “The Cape Cinema, architecturally, is reminiscent of early Hellenic temples, and is built in the best Cape Cod tradition…. The interior of the theatre is modern in the extreme, and in complete contrast to the simple Cape Cod exterior.” After citing the dazzling ceiling artwork of Kent and Mielziner, Moore described the interior further: “The chairs are individual lounge chairs, each completely separate from the others. They are of black lacquer [with] tangerine summer leather, and were especially designed for The Cape Cinema by the Frankl Galleries of New York. The theatre seats three hundred and seventeen people. Wide aisles between the rows of chairs prevent crowding and stumbling…. The theatre is equipped with lounge rooms, a spacious lobby, and a kitchen. The most modern moving-picture and talking-picture machines” have been installed.
And in that same Playhouse playbill, Moore made this promise to his future movie theatre patrons: “The Cape Cinema will follow a policy of picture selection which includes only the best long and short feature pictures. We shall endeavor not to waste your time or insult your intelligence by offering mediocre films, and if films do not meet our standards in all respects, we shall say so in our preliminary advertising. No cheap or inane short subjects will be shown, and all films will be pre-viewed by our staff.”
With Poor’s architectural design and Kent and Mielziner’s interior artistry in place, the theatre opened on Tuesday, July 1, 1930, under manager Ralph Westerman for a 7 pm showing of the documentary, With Byrd at the South Pole, the story of Rear Admiral Richard Byrd’s quest to reach the most remote and forbidding place on earth from his base at Little America, Antarctica.
Here is Cray Strider months later describing that first evening in an article in Screenland Magazine: “On the opening night, the little cinema… was overcrowded. Pretty debutantes, in filmy white net evening dresses topped by short ermine coats, had motored down the 80 miles from Boston to see the much-heralded spot. Plump dowagers had hurried through dinners at many points along the Cape to be driven swiftly in their foreign cars in order to be present at this opening night. Bankers, lawyers, doctors, actors, artists, poets, shopkeepers, fishermen—everybody who amounted to anything, and many who hoped to amount to something—… had motored or walked to see Raymond Moore’s new Cape Cinema.”
And as word spread about the stunning venue, The Cape Cinema before long became known throughout America as “The World’s Most Beautiful Picture Theatre.” In 1939, it hosted the premiere of The Wizard of Oz at the suggestion of Margaret Hamilton, who had launched her acting career on The Playhouse stage in Cape Cod Follies nine years before she portrayed the Wicked Witch of the West on screen.
But Moore didn’t stop there. His college background was in horticulture—he had studied botany at Johns Hopkins University and later at Stanford University before coming to Cape Cod—and he now turned his attention to beautifying both The Playhouse acreage and the late 17th century home he owned across the street at 57 Hope Lane so that patrons could enjoy meandering through the lush surroundings before and after attending live theatre or viewing important films.
He planted gardens throughout the campus—notably to the north of The Cape Cinema and later both surrounding The Playhouse itself and enveloping his own private residence—as he invited visitors to stroll the grounds and enjoy the carefully conceived landscapes. By the mid-1930s, 9000 petunias were in bloom on the campus, along with hundreds of rare irises, delphinia, roses, and other flowers—all overseen by a large staff of gardeners. Added attractions included a number of goldfish ponds, an aviary with exotic tropical birds, a rustic bridge, and a tea house.
The expansion of the campus was completed at the edge of the property along Hope Lane with the transformation of a bungalow-style cottage into the Cape Playhouse Restaurant, managed by Georgie Mason. The eatery was renamed in 1938 as The White Cockatoo in honor of the tropical bird—one of the rarest and most intelligent members of the parrot family—that served as the official greeter as patrons entered for lunch or dinner. The restaurant later reverted to its original name and after various iterations is today known as the privately-owned Encore Bistro and Bar.
Writing in The Boston Globe not long after The Cinema opened, John Barry wonderfully captured the essence of Raymond Moore’s vision: “Picture a farm… that embraces two playhouses, one for the best of the legitimate theatre, the other for the best of the talking screen; actors’ houses, scene shop, old-fashioned gardens and pools, trees and green grass, oil lamps along the driveway, and the warm Cape waters licking the sandy shore line. This is the Cape Playhouse and The Cape Cinema, a dream come true, that has attracted the attention of the theatrical and playgoing world as nothing else has since the Provincetown Players came off the Cape to bring Eugene O’Neill to fame and fortune. It is the dream of a young artist, Raymond Moore, who has transformed a wilderness off the beaten path into a thing of beauty, and at the same time has breathed into the legitimate theatre a new life and vigor.”
Indeed, “The Cape Playground” was a triumph: for Raymond Moore, for the town of Dennis, and for theatre-goers far and wide who loved the best of stage and screen. Moore lived to see his dream come true, of course, but he did not live much longer after that, unfortunately. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his apartment in New York City at age 44 on March 8, 1940.
The sketch below was created in 1930 or 1931 before the gardens were installed near The Playhouse. Hope Lane is between the Cape Cinema and Moore Cottage on the left, while Whig Street is the road at the top running in front of the Actors’ Cottage. The Cape Cod Museum of Art—an independent institution not affiliated with The Playhouse or The Cinema—opened at 60 Hope Lane in 1987.
