[2][3] According to vaudeville historian Joe Laurie Jr., Proctor broke into show business when a performer known as "Levantine" noticed him working out at the YMCA and recruited him as a partner in his act, which involved juggling barrels with his feet.

From 1880 to 1889 he and his partner H. Jacob opened and operated theaters in Albany, Schenectady, Rochester, Utica, Buffalo, Syracuse, Brooklyn, Troy, New Haven, Bridgeport, Hartford, Lancaster, Lynn, Wilmington and Worcester.

Very little has been reported about the operation of the upstairs theatre, which was apparently seldom used until the early 1960s, when it was renovated for the presentation of "foreign" films as the Penthouse Cinema.

The theatre eventually fell victim to the urban decline of Newark and to RKO's merger with Stanley-Warner, which operated the nearby and larger Branford.

The new management decided to close Proctor's, and it has been standing more or less derelict ever since.Proctor opened his first theater in Schenectady, New York in 1912, near the Erie Canal.

[citation needed] Frederick F. Proctor died in 1929 at his home in Larchmont, New York, aged 78 years; death was due to congestion of his lungs.