The Cameo Theatre was recognized with proclamations from both Bristols to commemorate its 100th anniversary March 30, 2025. It was read by the mayors at the grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony.
During the Cameo’s 100 years of history, the venue has been important to the history of Bristol’s two-state community.
The Cameo Theatre was designed by architect Claude K. Howell and opened as a “realization of a dream” by C.A. Goebel, March 30, 1925, with the popular “Marcus Show” and community singing.
For this downtown Bristol theater, it was decreed that “... friends will meet friends here, families will meet families and together they will rub elbows and enjoy the shows, laugh and be revived ...”
Vaudeville shows as well as plays, movies and singing were part of an era of downtown theaters in Bristol, thriving from the bustle of the Bristol Train Station.
Over its many years, the Cameo primarily projected popular movies and Westerns featuring stars of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as music-based movies with country singers of the time and hosting the WSM’s Grand Ole Opry rival, WWVA’s Wheeling Jamboree.
During the 1950s, the facade was renovated and the Cameo hosted Tex Ritter, Western movie and music star, as well as Grand Ole Opry stars Johnnie & Jack along with the queen of country music, Kitty Wells.
During the late 1960s and 70s, the Cameo was well known for Walt Disney and family films and children flocked to see the premiere of classics like “The Little Mermaid” and “The Rescuers.”
In the 1980s, the Cameo was redesigned as an art deco style theater by Jane Crewey. Beginning in the 1990s it was used by the owner Appalachian Educational Communication Corporation for concerts, radio broadcasts, school events, movies, art camps and public forums.
Among noted performers at the Cameo Theatre in the 2000s were Bluegrass Hall of Fame inductees Larry Sparks and Doyle Lawson.
For its most significant renovation, the Cameo Theatre was purchased in 2017 and thoroughly transformed by Brent and Stanley Buchanan to reopen in 2021 to thousands of concert-going audiences.
Even as many theaters have closed down, the Cameo Theatre has continued and is one of the 15 oldest theaters in Virginia.
This year, Theatre Bristol acquired the Cameo Theatre to bring live performances of plays, musicals and theater education. The new Cameo was appropriately inaugurated this spring with performances of the “Land of Jesters” and “Rumpelstiltskin,” the first shows that were performed at the precursor of Theatre Bristol.
