 Buildings on Southwest Broadway in Portland during the 1973 energy crisis. | |
  Fox Theatre Location in Portland, Oregon | |
| Former names |
|
|---|---|
| Location | Portland, Oregon, U.S. |
| Coordinates | 45°31′06″N122°40′50″W / 45.51837°N 122.68043°W |
| Construction | |
| Opened | July 22, 1910 |
| Demolished | 1997 |
The Fox Theatre (formerly known as the Heilig, Rialto, and Mayfair) was a theatre building located at the intersection of Southwest Broadway and Taylor Street in Portland, Oregon, in the United States. [1]
The Heilig auditorium was designed by E. W. Houghton and opened on July 22, 1910. [2] The theatre was initially used as an opera house, and notably staged a production of Zandonai's Conchita starring soprano Tarquinia Tarquini in 1912. [3] The theatre was a frequent stop for the Lambardi Grand Opera Company; a touring opera company based out of California that was founded by impresario Mario Lambardi. The Boston Opera Company toured to the theatre in 1916; giving a performance of L'amore dei tre re starring soprano Maggie Teyte. [4] In 1929, the Paramount-Publix chain began leasing the theatre and showing double feature film and vaudeville shows. The company added a marquee and talking equipment, but only operated the venue for two years due to the Great Depression. Under the J. J. Parker chain, the theatre was renamed the Mayfair. It hosted double features and road show stage performances [5]
The Mayfair closed in October 1953 to undergo a nine-month restoration, becoming part of Fox West Coast Theatre's CinemaScope line of movie theaters. The local architectural firm Dougan and Heims oversaw the building's conversion. [6] To promote the theatre's reopening, 20th Century Fox chartered an airplane and brought celebrities to Portland, including Rex Allen, Edward Arnold, Van Heflin, Rita Moreno, Mary Murphy, Johnnie Ray, and Mamie Van Doren. City and state official, along with members of the public, greeted the celebrities at Portland International Airport. [7] The venue, billed as the "Million Dollar" Fox Theatre, opened on August 12, 1954. [8] It featured the second largest screen in the United States (two feet smaller than the screen at the Roxy Theatre in New York City). [9] The theatre opened to the public the following day (August 13), screening Broken Lance (1954). [10]
The Fox stopped screening films regularly in September 1990, then hosted occasional special events before the venue was demolished in 1997. The block is now occupied by the Fox Tower. [11]
The Uptown Theatre is one of the oldest surviving theaters in the Twin Cities area. It was in active use from 1916 to 2020. The theater reopened on June 10, 2023 as a music and event venue.
Walter Reade was the name of a father and son who had an extensive career in the United States motion picture industry.
The Mayfair Theatre is a cinema located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is Ottawa's oldest active movie theatre, operating since 1932. It operates as an independent repertory cinema. The theatre's programming includes independent, second-run and classic films. It is noted for its double features and for frequent screenings of cult films such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Room.
Keighley Picture House is a cinema located in Keighley, West Yorkshire, England.
The Mayfair Theatre, Dunedin, New Zealand, was opened on 8 December 1914 as the "King Edward Picture Theatre". It is owned by the Mayfair Theatre Charitable Trust and serves as a 400-seat venue for live performances for a number of local community groups and as the Dunedin venue for some touring agencies.
The Oriental Theatre was a movie theater located at 828 SE Grand Street in the East Portland commercial district of Portland, Oregon that was built in 1927. The Oriental was a 2,038-seat movie palace designed by Lee Arden Thomas and Albert Mercier. The building's exterior was in the Italian Renaissance style. The interior had an "almost surreal appearance" created by interior designer Adrien Voisin. It was built by George Warren Weatherly. Demolished in 1970, the theater was adjacent to the Weatherly Building, which remains standing.
Tarquinia Tarquini was an Italian dramatic soprano and the wife of composer Riccardo Zandonai.
Teatro Grattacielo is a professional opera company based in New York City specializing in concert performances of rarely heard verismo operas. The company's past performances have included the North American premieres of Mascagni's Il piccolo Marat and Riccardo Zandonai's I cavalieri di Ekebù and La farsa amorosa. Its name means "Skyscraper Theatre" in Italian, a reference not only to the New York skyline but also to the Teatro Grattacielo in Genoa, a cinema which was the city's temporary opera house while the Teatro Carlo Felice was rebuilt after extensive damage in World War II.
Gaetano Bavagnoli was an Italian conductor who was particularly known for his work within the field of opera. He was mainly active within Italy's major opera houses during the first third of the 20th century; although he did conduct at important international stages like the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and the Royal Opera House in London as well. He also worked as a voice teacher and was notably the instructor of opera singers Emanuel Kopecky, Lina Pagliughi, and Aureliano Pertile.
Conchita is an opera in four acts and six scenes by composer Riccardo Zandonai. The work uses an Italian language libretto by Maurizio Vaucaire and Carlo Zangarini which is based on Pierre Louÿs's 1898 novel La Femme et le pantin. The work premièred in Milan at the Teatro dal Verme on 14 October 1911 with soprano Tarquinia Tarquini, who later married Zandonai in 1917, in the title role. Her portrayal was lauded by critics and she went on to perform Conchita at the Royal Opera, London (1912), the Cort Theatre in San Francisco (1912), the Philharmonic Auditorium in Hollywood (1912), the Heilig Theatre in Portland (1912), the Metropolitan Opera House in Philadelphia (1912), the Chicago Grand Opera Company (1913), and the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples (1913). The opera was published by G. Ricordi & Co in 1912.
The Star Theater, formerly known as Princess Theatre and several other names, is a historic former silent film theater in Portland, Oregon, United States. The theater currently operates as a live music and performance space; in the past, it has operated as a film theater as well as a burlesque theater and an adult movie theater.
Avalon Theatre, established as the Sunnyside Theatre in 1912, is the oldest operating movie theater in Portland, Oregon, and is believed to be the state's oldest theater and the first with more than one screen.
Aladdin Theater is a theater in the Brooklyn neighborhood of southeast Portland, Oregon. It originally opened as a vaudeville house called Geller's Theatre on December 25, 1927. Its name was changed to Aladdin in 1934. Later the venue operated as a pornographic cinema for more than 30 years, screening the film Deep Throat for fourteen of them. It was revived as a classic movie and live music venue with a capacity of 620 in 1991.
The Clinton Street Theater is a theater located in southeast Portland, Oregon. It is believed to be the second oldest operating movie house in the city and one of the oldest continually operating cinemas in the United States. The theater was designed by Charles A. Duke in 1913, built in 1914, and opened as The Clinton in 1915. It became known as the 26th Avenue Theatre in 1945 and the Encore in 1969, before reverting to a resemblance of its original name in 1976. The Clinton often screens grindhouse, cult and experimental films, and has become known for hosting regular screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Repo! The Genetic Opera. The venue also hosts the annual Filmed by Bike festival, the Faux Film Festival and the Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival.
Moreland Theater is a single-screen movie theater located in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Oregon in the United States.
The Oregon Theatre, or Oregon Theater, was an adult movie theater in the Richmond neighborhood of southeast Portland, Oregon, United States. The theater was completed in 1925 and originally housed a Wurlitzer pipe organ and vaudeville stage. It would later screen Hollywood, art-house, and Spanish-language films. The building was acquired by the Maizels family in 1967 and became an adult cinema in the 1970s. It continued to operate as the city's longest running pornographic cinema and remained owned by a member of the Maizels family until 13 February 2020, when it went into foreclosure. It closed in early March 2020.
Playhouse Theatre, formerly known as Baker Theatre, Dufwin, Alcazar, Music Box, and El Capitan, was a theatre in Portland, Oregon, in the United States.
United Artists Theatre, originally known as the Majestic Theatre, was a movie palace in Portland, Oregon, United States. It was Portland's first theater exclusively for movie screening.
At the advent of the 20th century, the city of Portland, Oregon, was among the first on the United States West Coast to embrace the advent of the silent and feature film. The city's first movie palace, the Majestic Theatre, opened in 1911. By 1916, Portland had "the finest array" of movie houses on the West Coast relative to its population, pioneering venues dedicated exclusively to screening films. The popularization of the sound film in the early 1920s resulted in another boom of new cinemas being constructed, including the Laurelhurst, the Hollywood Theatre, and the Bagdad Theatre, the latter of which was financed by Universal Pictures in 1926.
June Winters was an American actress and singer who was actively performing from the mid-1930s into the 1960s. She first came to prominence starring in the Broadway musical Hellzapoppin at the Winter Garden Theatre from 1938 through 1941. A versatile performer, her career spanned a wide array of genres from vaudeville to musicals to opera and popular music. Married to trumpeter and songwriter Hugo Peretti, she achieved her greatest success creating content for children as the "Lady in Blue" in partnership with her husband; releasing dozens of albums with sung and spoken material from 1947 into the early 1960s. The character Lady in Blue also had her own comic strip and Saturday morning radio program on NBC Radio. The couple also co-founded the Mayfair Records company.