“Last Time Tonight…Thos. H. Ince’s $1,000,000 Mammoth Cinema Spectacle,” reads an October 14, 1916 advertisement for the Page theater in the Medford Mail Tribune. This advertisement would have likely been quite successful in attracting a crowd for several reasons.

The Grand Theatre in Salem, Oregon, was renowned in its size and capability to show a variety of entertainment. Advertised as having a likeness to Portland and Seattle show houses, no other venue could surely compare.

In my research so far for the Oregon Theater Project, I have run into several struggles and triumphs. After we were introduced to the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, I found myself beginning an exhaustive, online scavenger hunt. The Sanborn Maps website itself presents numerous challenges in that the website is not very user friendly. For instance, the window in which the map is featured only presents the map in a small square box and provides and zoom-in feature that only zooms in so far that the feature seems almost useless.

The Morning Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, ran this news item in 1904 about the calming effects of the movies on people suffering from mental illness.

Underage Workers in Early Exhibition

Pathé Pictures was a production and distribution company that played films in theaters across Oregon between 1912 and 1917. Indeed, most of Pathé’s business revolved around circulating their reels from theater to theater and city to city via regional film exchanges.

Edwin F. James was a highly regarded businessman who moved from Seattle, Washington to Portland, Oregon to open the Majestic Theater on June 11, 1911. The theater sat 1,100 people and was the first palace in Portland to show silent feature films and was later the first to add live organ music to silent films viewings.

In order to attract audiences, theaters in Portland promoted that they not only had good shows, but amazing services and settings in addition to that.