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Piccione is now a bakery shop at the corner of Skinker and Delmar, the creation of renowned St. Louis catering company, Butler’s Pantry, owned by Richard Nix and family. The name comes from their grandmother, Grace Piccione, a name linked to the history of the illustrious Apollo Art Theater on the DeBaliviere Strip and later to the Delmar Loop through the Varsity Theatre (now Vintage Vinyl), operated for many years by Grace’s son, Peter Piccione.
The Apollo Theater was located at 323-329 DeBaliviere Avenue. Built in the late 30’s on the site of a 5-story building torn down for its construction, the 600 seat theater was for about 20 years a “family” movie house, possibly operated by the Wehrenberg family of theaters. In 1955, it became the Apollo Art Theatre, quite likely the first in St. Louis to show foreign films like Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s, “Wild Strawberries,” and the Greek classic, “Never on Sunday”, which ran at the Apollo for 36 weeks. “This was a national trend, a bright spot in the turbulent postwar era. Theatre owners were relieved to discover an avid group of serious film fans who blithely ignored the homogenizing inroads of television on public taste. Switching to an art house policy kept many theatres from closing their doors.” (America Goes to the Movies, by Barbara Stones).
This was the heyday of the Apollo Art Theater, and Grace Piccione was definitely at the helm. Grace was born a Viviano, part of the Viviano family which, as Richard Nix says, “was the first to produce and distribute dry pasta and canned spaghetti sauce in the US.”
The family and their restaurant/bakery, Piccione, has commemorated “Nonna” with pictures and a website history. The family remembers that she, “grew up watching the development of Delmar thriving in its early days as a diverse ethnic neighborhood. When Grace married the young immigrant Paul Piccione in the early 20’s, it was University City and Delmar where they chose to raise their 4 children (Anita Nix, Nicolas Piccione, Jody Glenn, Peter Piccione) and stake their claim to the American dream. For more than a half century, Grace was a pioneer entrepreneur in the independent theater business. Her movie houses included the infamous Apollo on DeBaliviere and the world famous Varsity on Delmar. Grace and her youngest son Peter were incredible personalities and the Varsity was the bedrock in which the ‘late night Loop’ was fueled. Who will ever forget Peter’s idea to release the campy cult classic, ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ to record numbers of late-night movie goers?”
The Apollo Art Theater was known nationally and was featured in a movie trade magazine, Box Office Vault, which in 1963 published an article about the theater and its innovative “Flicks and Pub” gathering place, which displayed local artists creations, as well as Grace’s own “mini-museum” of classic movie posters, art and antiques. As she stated in the article, “at first, people called it an expensive hobby… I loved movies… there was a ‘real need for the European approach to movie going. When the customer comes out of the movie he knows he can find interesting discussions in progress right here about the film he has just seen.'” The article also highlighted the students from nearby universities who worked at the theater.
One former employee who remembers Grace Piccione was Rita Cohen. As a teenager, Rita worked as a ticket seller, and she also recalled babysitting for the Piccione family when they lived nearby at 5710 Waterman, an apartment building at the SW corner of Waterman and DeBaliviere. (Read Rita’s account of DeBaliviere, from the 20’s to the 50’s, in our August, 2014 TIMES.)
The Picciones lived through the tumultuous war years, when Italian immigrants were treated with suspicion. But Grace took charge and made her mark in the movie theater industry. Grace recalled to the Post-Dispatch (In 1987, when nearby Garavelli’s was being demolished) her efforts to keep the movie house going by showing foreign movies and art classics. For 15 years, Grace’s Apollo Art Theatre was truly a destination.
Piccione sold the theater in the late 60’s. The new owners gradually turned from the classic art films to the seamier side of film, and the theater finally closed down in 1970 after raids by police trying to clean up the Strip. The building was demolished in 1973. Out of Grace Piccione’s creative and energetic hands, the Apollo went by the wayside. Her son carried on the tradition in the Loop with the Varsity Theater. And her grandson remembers his grandmother at Piccione, with its traditional Italian bakery treats.
