Vaudeville circuits were crucial to the origin of film exhibition because they helped provide the infrastructure and audience in order to present films to a large audience as well as have a chain to share the films. Many of these vaudeville circuits were part of large conglomerates that attempted to monopolize the industry and push out smaller exhibitors in order to consolidate their control over film exhibition. In this article, it describes how the Hippodrome circuit, run by Ackerman and Harris, is attempting to become the largest and most influential theater circuit in the Northwest. Part of their attempt to be the most successful chain in the Northwest involved buying out the smaller independent theater locations and folding them into their own circuit. In the case of Portland, they bought the Orpheum and transformed it into the Hippodrome and it joined the chain of Hippodrome’s traveling vaudeville acts. This case demonstrates the corporatization of film exhibition that occurred very early in the history of cinema and is still prevalent to this day as most theaters in the United States are owned by three conglomerates which are Regal, Cinemark, and AMC. While studying the history of film corporatization and exhibition one can see that not much has changed in regards to struggling small independent theaters and their constant battle to compete against the much larger more powerful corporatization. Even theaters such as the contemporary Bijou in Eugene, which specializes in presenting low budget and independent films, are a part of a large national chain and there are very few theaters that are locally owned and unaffiliated with a large organization. While people like to think that mass corporatization and consolidation is a new concept, it has been prevalent since the dawn of cinema and the lust for power and money has stayed the same.
