The exact date of Acme Theater's opening is unknown. However, Polk's Portland City Directories points to the opening year being 1910, as Acme Theater does not appear in the 1910 city directory (1), but does appear in the 1911 city directory (2); Polk's Portland City Directories information, usually, pertains to the year prior, i.e. the 1910 city directory has the census data from 1909. Also, the earliest found newspaper advertisement, a help wanted ad found in The Morning Oregonian, is from January 29, 1910 (8), further pointing to the Acme Theater opening sometime in 1910, more than likely in January of 1910.
Acme Theater's exact closing date is, also, unknown. However, Acme Theater stops appearing in Polk's Portland City Directories 1916 edition (7) and Acme Theaters last found advertisement, an advertisement in The Morning Oregonian for the film serial The Exploits of Elaine, is from April 10, 1915 (9), which points to the Acme Theater closing sometime in 1915, after April 10th of that year. So, it can be assumed that Acme Theater operated from 1910-1915.
Acme Theater went through 3 different ownership's in its short amount of time being open. The first owners, according to the 1911 Polk's Portland City Directory edition, were O'hare and Curran (2), no first names were given. They only owned Acme Theater for a year, as the 1912 city directory shows Martin B. Donovan being the manager of the theater (3). Martin B. Donovan appeared to be a prolific theater owner, as he also owned, for a period of time, the Victoria Theater and the Portsmouth Theater (10, 11). Donovan owned Acme Theater for 3 years (3,4,5), he stopped appearing as the owner of Acme Theater in the 1915 city directory. In the 1915 city directory C. E. Minnick appears as the manager of the theater (6), his ownership is short-lived, as Acme theater does not appear in the 1916 city directory, meaning they went out of business under his ownership.
There doesn't seem to be many advertisements, in the newspapers, for Acme Theater. This could mean that they didn't spend much money on advertisements because they were a smaller theater, they could have used fliers instead to promote their theater, or the management just didn't think that they needed to promote the theater as it could have been in a highly-dense populated area. Acme Theater's sign also appear to be pretty small and not very flashy, which, along with the lack of advertisements, points to the theater possibly being a relatively small theater.
Acme Theater was, primarily, a motion picture theater. In The Morning Oregonian, Acme theater was part of a list of theaters that was showing the film serial The Exploits of Elaine (12); a film serial is an episodic film, telling the story in pieces weekly. Also, in Polk's Portland City Directories Acme theater is listed under the moving picture section, not under the vaudeville theater section (2-6). However, Acme Theater did appear to show at least some vaudeville acts, as the theater did have help wanted ads, from The Morning Oregonian in 1910, that were, specifically, looking for a vaudeville team (13). This makes sense as Acme Theater appears to be a smaller theater, which means that they would, more than likely, show both films and vaudeville acts to increase their audience base.
