For nearly two decades a woman ran the Hardacre, through the Great Depression and into the age of sound.
In November 1928 Grover L. DeNune, an exhibitor from DeWitt, bought the Hardacre business. About a year later the theater got Vitaphone sound, and its first talkie was The Broadway Melody.
By 1932 Beulah I. DeNune was running the theater herself. Her programs called her "Prop. and Mgr.," yet trade journals only ever named her former husband.
She moved Bargain Night to Thursday so shopkeepers could come, and in 1932 built a runway through the house for a Fall Style Show with live models.
She added a "washed air" cooling system, the theater's first neon marquee and new American Body Form chairs, and even leased a second theater around the corner.
Each Christmas Eve she put on a free show for the children of the community, with a gift for each child. Local historian Don Stout said her theater "routinely ran at sell out, or nearly so."
She sold the business to Iowa United Theatres of Des Moines, which soon gave the Hardacre the 1948 marquee and interior it still has today.
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