Qualla: Paramount Arts Center https://qualla.com/paramount-arts-center en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/4/paramount-arts-center-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Paramount Arts Center https://qualla.com/paramount-arts-center Paramount Arts Center: Introduction https://qualla.com/paramount-arts-center/ Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. Paramount Pictures had ambitions for Ashland, Kentucky. The studio planned the Paramount Theater here in 1931 as a model showcase for its talking pictures, hiring the legendary Chicago firm Rapp and Rapp - architects of New York's Paramount Building and dozens of the country's grandest movie palaces - to design it. The Great Depression had other plans. Paramount pulled out before the building was finished. An Ashland-based company took over, completed a scaled-back version with Paramount craftsmen still doing the interior fittings, and leased the result back to the Paramount Publix Corporation for operation. The theater opened on September 5, 1931. Ninety-five years later it is still going, with a Broadway calendar, a hometown community theater troupe, and a ghost whose poster cannot be removed from the box office without consequences.

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/4/paramount-arts-center-wp/dnv4-paramount-arts-center-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Paramount Arts Center: Built for Talking Pictures https://qualla.com/paramount-arts-center/ Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Paramount opened at the precise hinge point of cinema history, when silent films were being replaced by sound. The building was one of the first transitional theaters built specifically for talking pictures, with the acoustics and the projection equipment designed around the ...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/4/paramount-arts-center-wp/dnv4-paramount-arts-center-built-for-talking-pictures.mp3 0:06 2 full Paramount Arts Center: Forty Years and a Foundation https://qualla.com/paramount-arts-center/ Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. The theater closed in 1971 after forty years of continuous operation, a long run by any measure but particularly impressive given how many American movie palaces had already fallen to demolition or conversion by the early 1970s. Ashland could have lost it. Instead, the Greater As...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/4/paramount-arts-center-wp/dnv4-paramount-arts-center-forty-years-and-a-foundation.mp3 0:06 3 full Paramount Arts Center: Achy Breaky Heart https://qualla.com/paramount-arts-center/ Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1992, Billy Ray Cyrus filmed the music video for Achy Breaky Heart inside the Paramount. The song became one of the defining country hits of the early 1990s, the soundtrack to the line-dancing boom, and the launch pad for Cyrus's career. The Paramount handled the film shoot as...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/4/paramount-arts-center-wp/dnv4-paramount-arts-center-achy-breaky-heart.mp3 0:06 4 full Paramount Arts Center: Paramount Joe https://qualla.com/paramount-arts-center/ Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. Joe was a construction worker employed by the Boyd Theater Company of Cincinnati who, by local account, died inside the auditorium in the early 1940s. The story has him hanging from the curtain rigging when his three coworkers returned from lunch. The death was real. The haunting...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/4/paramount-arts-center-wp/dnv4-paramount-arts-center-paramount-joe.mp3 0:06 5 full Paramount Arts Center: Beauty Pageant, Steamer, Sprinklers https://qualla.com/paramount-arts-center/ Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. In November 2006, a beauty pageant contestant at the Paramount used a steamer to remove wrinkles from her dress. She hung the dress from what she took to be a hanging hook. It was a fire sprinkler head. Heat from the steam triggered the sprinkler system, which began pouring water...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/4/paramount-arts-center-wp/dnv4-paramount-arts-center-beauty-pageant-steamer-sprinklers.mp3 0:06 6 full