When I first began my research, I realized that it was a little harder than I expected. The theater I initially chose was not very big and did not last long, only being open for a year in a small town. This made it difficult to find any information about it, so I decided to switch to a different theater. I ended up on the Orpheum Theater located in Pendleton, Oregon, and open for seven years, from 1908 to 1915. The Orpheum was run by Dr. Harry A. Medernach, who had taken it over after the death of his father sometime in 1909 or after, and who eventually sold the theater in 1916.
Something that was made clear to me in my research was that the Orpheum was not just a movie theater; it had a variety of different entertainment. While films were of course offered, there were also things like vaudeville shows and live orchestra performances. These had cheaper prices for matinees and more expensive tickets in the evenings, as it could cost as much as 15 cents for a ticket to an evening show according to an ad from 1909. Perhaps to offset these higher prices the theater had promotions such as children under 12 being free of charge on Saturday afternoons.
One piece of information I was able to find was the Orpheum Theater’s target audience. As you can see in the attached article, the theater wanted more middle-class and upper-class audiences, as it claimed to have the “best machines of today” and “the music [was] in a class by itself”. It also tried to appeal to the whole family, as the article mentions it was an appropriate theater for ladies and children. It was a little more expensive than nickelodeons at the time as well, as the article from 1914 shows only children were able to get in for 5 cents, and adults had to pay 10 cents.
The Orpheum was certainly not the only theater in Pendleton at the time, but I am not sure how it compared to the rest of them. I have not yet found information about the size of it but based on how long it stayed open and the way it was portrayed in articles, it seems to have been one of the more popular theaters in Pendleton. I also need to find a more exact location for the theater, as when I initially looked at the Sanborn maps I found multiple possible locations without seeing one definitive location.
