Dianna Borsi O'Brien, journalist

Pick up a copy at Skylark Bookshop, Yellow Dog Bookshop and Bluestem on Ninth Street, the Boone County History & Culture Center on Ponderosa Drive and the State Historical Society of Missouri’s gift shop at 605 Elm St.)

Or email me at dobrien387@gmail.com for a signed copy.

Explore the History of the Theaters That Made

From converted saloons and warehouses to movie palaces and multiplexes, for more than one hundred years, Columbia’s movie theaters have reflected the changes around them. In 1928, the Hall Theatre showed its first talkie, the third debut of talkies in Missouri. America fell in love with cars, and Columbia’s three drive-ins featured pony rides, monkeys and playgrounds. In response to segregation, which forced Black patrons to sit in the balcony, in 1949 two Black entrepreneurs built the Tiger Theatre, a double-duty movie theater and nightclub. Today, Columbia features a cinema in a repurposed soda bottling plant and holds the international documentary festival True/False Film Fest.

Author Dianna Borsi O’Brien recounts the history of all twenty-eight of Columbia’s movie theaters.

Buy a signed copy of “From Melon Fields to Moon Rocks”
here by contacting me at dobrien387@gmail.com. The book is also available through  amazon.com and Barnes & Nobel.

Have it shipped to you directly for $15, plus shipping.

This book covers the life of Charles W. Gehrke, a man who grew up having to walk to school and sell vegetables to help his mother support their family. Through the help of his older brother, Charles went to Ohio State University and later joined the University of Missouri. Out of his work as a biochemist there, he and two of his colleagues founded ABC Labs which is now known as Eurofins, an international firm. The Columbia location of the firm employs roughly 300 people, making it one of the city’s larger employers.

During the 1960s, his work searching for amino acids, the building blocks of life, drew the attention of NASA and Charles was tapped to investigate the lunar samples for signs of life. Spoiler alert: He didn’t find any — but a transcript the author uncovered of a radio program from that time shows that he thought he would.

The book is a rags-to-riches story that highlights the adventurous life of Charles W. Gehrke, a biochemist, entrepreneur and family man.