The Eidson

The Eidson theater first opened up in September of 1908 on in Pendleton Oregon. Lindsay and Deweese are the only two proprietors listed. Like many other theaters in Oregon, it had opened up on Main Street. Every week there would be a few advertisements in the Eastern Oregonian containing information about times that the theater was open, admission prices, and that they were using the new “Underwriters” machine. It also advertised how they showed both imported and domestic films at this theater. The only location that these advertisements would provide is that the Eidson was “Next to the French Restaurant”. Unlike most theaters they did not offer many incentives to attract more audience members. One incentive that they did advertise was the fact that they had a very special vocalist coming to the theater. Most of the other theaters at this time would have live performances of music by bands or an orchestra, but it was not very common for them to have a vocalist perform. Another thing that was advertised was them using a “mile” of film for one weekend, which at this time was around four films all at once. This was an extremely large amount of film being used for just two days and was not very common for theaters to do so. One bit of controversy that the theater had faced was with the company who provided the theater with their cameragraphs. The manager of the Pyles Cameragraph company had “evaded” the police after getting warned not to continue being a spieler. He was warned by the police that he was not allowed to do this, and he “evaded” the police by buying his own phonograph. The Eidson did not last very long, and eventually was replaced by the Pastime theater in December of that same year. It was common for these smaller theaters to close down or change names very quickly.