"Then we will not have to crawl through the window to change this sign during the middle of winter with snow and ice on the roof," Charlie Munday of the Rex Theater told the Sanders County Ledger last month. He was explaining why a new marquee is on the theater's wish list. The sign out front on Main Street can only be reached through two windows. According to the theater's own needs page, snow and ice in winter often make it too dangerous to update for events.
Anyone who has walked past the Rex in January and seen last week's title still up now knows why. The marquee is also a small window into how the place runs. The Rex has no owner who can write a check when something breaks. It runs on grants, on one big night a year when there is one, and on Friday, Saturday and Monday tickets the rest of the time. Each November ticket is part of how the building stays open.
Nobody owns the Rex, on purpose
The Rex opened its doors to its first audience at Christmas 1939. Construction wasn't finished until 1940, according to Montana Public Radio. It was built as a commercial movie house and has changed hands many times since. It has also gone dark more than once.
Its most recent dark stretch started in 2014, when the Rex was forced to go digital and stopped showing movies, KPAX reported.
The turn came in the summer of 2020. Doug and Karen Grimm, the owners at the time, decided to sell, and the theater looked likely to close for good. On July 15, 2020, the Thompson Falls Film and Theater Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, bought the building. The Ledger covered the sale and quoted Munday's reason for setting it up as a nonprofit. "There are no owners here, the community owns this theater," he said. "This theater will not survive unless the community gets behind it."
Bringing movies back took a few more years. KPAX reported that a grant from the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation paid for a digital projector. Deb and Eric Wilson, who led much of the restart, showed the theater's first digital film in 2023. Local students helped build the concession stand.
That ownership setup explains everything else in this story. Apart from grants like the one that paid for the projector, repairs and upgrades depend on the people who buy the tickets and show up for the fundraisers.
The marquee is only part of the list
The foundation posts its larger needs on its website, with rough price tags:
- Plumbing, electrical and insulation, about $42,000. The back of the building has years of water damage that needs attention.
- General facelift, about $20,000. The exterior was finished in stucco during the Rex's Art Deco era and has worn down over time.
- Marquee, about $20,000. This is the sign reached through two windows.
Those three items add up to about $82,000. Munday also told the Ledger about smaller goals. Volunteers want new, more comfortable seating with cup holders. They also want to turn the green room at the back of the theater into a short-term rental that brings in money. The rental idea stands out because it would give the building some income that doesn't depend on what's playing that weekend.
What one very good night raised
On Saturday, Oct. 17, the Rex Theater Project held its Spaghetti Western Fundraiser at the Clark Fork Valley Elks Lodge. The Ledger reported that 130 guests came and the evening raised nearly $15,000. The Mundays, both on the Rex board, cooked all day with volunteers Richard and Sheila Vincent. Youths from Mountain Meadow Youth Ranch and Rex youth employees Maddilyn and Jossilyn Ward helped serve.
The auction table was full of Thompson Falls names:
| Item | Donated by or tied to | What it brought |
|---|---|---|
| Caramel cheesecake | Sheila Vincent | $310 |
| 80- by 100-inch eagle quilt | Margaret Wakefield, the Rex's new grant coordinator | $1,100 |
| Flowers for a year | Farmhouse Blooms | Live auction |
| Tour and meat sampler | Harlow Ranch Bison Company | Live auction |
| "Diamond shots" | Top Shelf Liquor | Sold out by 6:20 p.m. |
| Movies for a year, two packages | Rex Theater | $350 each |
Volunteer Chelle Mitchell of Cherry Creek Myotherapy and her crew put together the auction items. Munday said the committee spent nine months planning, meeting monthly and then weekly for the last two months.
Compare the two figures. Nearly $15,000 is a big result for one evening in a small town, and it's still less than a fifth of the roughly $82,000 on the needs list. Munday told guests that earlier fundraisers helped with painting, window work and remodeling of the concession stand and bathrooms. He also said the event may not be held every year. "We're doing fine, but sometimes we need your help," he told the crowd.
That leaves the regular week to carry the load between fundraisers, and the regular week at the Rex is fairly simple.
How a week at the Rex works
The theater's Movies & Events page lists three showtimes a week:
- Fridays at 6 p.m.
- Saturdays at 2 p.m., with a Rex Theater T-shirt raffle or giveaway
- Mondays at 6 p.m., called Monday Madness, at $7 for everyone
On other nights, admission is $11 for adults and $8 for veterans, seniors, children and students. The $350 "movies for a year" package sold at the fundraiser covered tickets, drinks and popcorn for two for a full year. At the regular adult price, two tickets cost $22, so the package paid for itself in tickets alone around the sixteenth night out, before counting any popcorn.
Each film runs for one Friday-to-Monday stretch. Here is what the Rex has posted for November. The titles come from the posters on the theater's page, and the Rex notes that movies can change without notice:
| Dates | What's on |
|---|---|
| Fri. Nov. 6 to Mon. Nov. 9 | Drummer Boy |
| Fri. Nov. 13 to Mon. Nov. 16 | Sense and Sensibility |
| Sat. Nov. 14, 7:30 p.m. | Tanner Laws Band, live |
| Fri. Nov. 20 to Mon. Nov. 23 | The Cat in the Hat |
| Fri. Nov. 27 to Mon. Nov. 30 | Disney's Hexed |
The Nov. 14 concert is the one to plan ahead for. It's a Saturday evening show on top of that weekend's 2 p.m. matinee, and tickets are sold at the Rex or through the QR code on its events page. The last run of the month starts the day after Thanksgiving. Friday, Nov. 27, through Monday, Nov. 30, falls on a weekend when many households have guests in town.
To keep up with schedule changes, the theater posts on its Facebook page and on Instagram. Until the new marquee is paid for, those pages are more reliable than the sign out front once the roof ices over.
December was always the Rex's month
The Rex first opened to an audience at Christmas. It has kept a role in the season since then. In 2023, KPAX reported that the theater still hosts Christmas on Main Street in the same building. In 2024, the Ledger's holiday schedule listed a Rex Theater afterparty after the Saturday evening Christmas on Main Street parade, which was organized by Thompson Falls Main Street and the Sanders County Chamber of Commerce. Keep an eye on the Rex's pages and the Ledger for this year's plans.
A theater with $82,000 of listed needs, run by volunteers and a nonprofit board, stays open week by week. Every $7 Monday ticket in November goes into that, along with the next grant application and the next fundraiser, whenever it comes.
Deb has watched Main Street in Thompson Falls change hands for decades. If you have questions about a historic building downtown, or about what a property near the theater is really worth, Deborah Warren is glad to talk it through over coffee. Contact Deb for a local market consult.
