Blue Mouse Theatre
1032 SW Washington Street,
Portland,
OR
97205
1032 SW Washington Street,
Portland,
OR
97205
1 person
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Opened as the Globe Theatre on September 12, 1912, it was completely re-modelled and re-opened on 28th November 1921 as the Blue Mouse Theatre. In 1926 it presented the first sound film to be screened in Portland; John Barrymoore in “Don Juan”. It was closed down for several years between around 1936 and 1940, re-opening in October 1940.
In August 1958 when the owners of the Blue Mouse faced eviction, they took over the Capitol Theatre and re-named that the Blue Mouse, taking the sign from the front of the building and erecting it on the facade of the former Capitol Theatre. The original Blue Mouse Theatre was sold and the building demolished.
Contributed by
KenRoe
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Recent comments (view all 7 comments)
You can see a 1940 photo of the Blue Mouse (at it’s S.W. Tenth and Washington location) at View link
The three-story building that housed the theater is now gone, replaced by a modern twelve-story building.
The Blue Mouse was kitty-corner (to the southwest) from the present-day Pittock Building.
“In 1927 the Blue Mouse Theater at SW 10th & Washington Street, presented Portland’s first sound motion picture, Don Juan (1926) starring John Barrymore, a Warner Brothers/Vitaphone production featuring synchronized music and sound effects."
(see View link)
An Austin theater organ opus 408 size 2/9 was installed in the Globe Theater in 1912. Note: $4,150; With echo.
If the Blue Mouse was not demolished until 1958, it had gotten a three-year reprieve. Boxoffice Magazine published an announcement in its September 10, 1955, issue that the theater was being razed to make way for a parking garage.
An interior photo of the Globe and an exterior photo of the Blue Mouse are here.
The Blue Mouse was on Washington at 11th, not 10th. A parking deck for the office building at 10th and Washington now sits on its site.
PSTOS has a couple of photos on this web page, though it also gives the wrong location of 10th and Washington. In the exterior photo, the ornate facade on 11th next to the three-story theater entrance building was actually the auditorium’s back wall. The doors are the auditorium’s exits.
Gary Lacher and Steve Stone’s book Theatres of Portland gives the correct location of the Blue Mouse, and has several photographs (Google Books preview.) The book gives the original opening date of the Globe as September 12, 1912.
A 1919 issue of a retail clothing industry trade journal called The Boys' Outfitter published a photo of the Globe Theatre’s auditorium with an audience of children attending a movie as guests of a local retail store.
November 27th, 1921 ad uploaded here.