While I was scouring the Historic Oregon Newspaper archive for an advertisement concerning the Alhambra Theater in Portland, a common subject continued to crop up: The Iron Claw. It appears that, at the time this ad was published in 1916, The Iron Claw was a serialized film program run by a proto-studio named Pathe. I say “proto-studio” because Pathe seems to operate more like an exchange in the nickelodeon-era than a true studio. Rather than advertising a wide release of any kind, Pathe instead opts to stagger their releases, showing new “episodes” in only three theaters. The other theaters that are playing The Iron Claw (of which there are several dozen) only have unspecified “previous episodes” listed as available for the public. This alone hints at several things, first being the price of literal film.
At this time, film is a real commodity. It probably would not have crossed their minds to make enough copies of an episode for most theaters to play them at the same time—an expensive waste of resources, especially for a serial. Better, with a 14-episode serial (at least), to make only a handful of prints per episode. This way, some theater is always playing your stuff (even if it is an episode released over a year ago), meaning that expensive reel of film is continuing to turn a profit rather than gather dust. Another thing this staggered kind of release suggests is that there is a hierarchy of theaters in Portland at this time.
The Pantages Theater seems to be the premier exhibition site for Pathe Pictures’ story-driven, mystery serial as it is the only one listed (with two locations) with the current episode. The Alhambra Theater is somewhere in a lower strata of theaters, at least as far as Pathe is concerned. This could be for several reasons: maybe it is more of a store-front theater than a true performance hall, maybe they are new and relatively unestablished, maybe they charge too much or have uncomfortable seats, or maybe whoever runs the Alhambra is simply on bad terms with Pathe? The answer is unclear, but what is likely, at the very least, is that the Alhambra Theater was a Nickelodeon style projection theater that specialized in moving pictures and participated in an early form of block-booking.
