Blue Mouse Theater
1131-1133 Broadway,
Tacoma,
WA
98402
1131-1133 Broadway,
Tacoma,
WA
98402
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The Blue Mouse Theater opened in 1914 as the Apollo Theater. Eight years later, it re-opened as the Blue Mouse Theater, operated by theater chain founder John Hamrick. The Blue Mouse was the first theater in Tacoma to show “talkies” running “The Jazz Singer” in January, 1928.
Its sister theater, the Blue Mouse “Junior” opened on Proctor Street in 1923. In 1960, the Blue Mouse Theater was demolished to make way for a new street escalator.
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Lost Memory
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Recent comments (view all 9 comments)
The escalator that this theater was demolished to make room for, was Tacoma’s experiment with “moving sidewalk” escalators.
There is a photo of this Blue Mouse Theater here:
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This theater was also known as the Paramount in the 1920s.
The link above no longer works. This is an updated link to a 1922 photo of the Blue Mouse Theater.
A Wurlitzer theater organ opus 427 style 170 was installed in the Apollo Theater on 6/25/1921. Status: sold.
The Blue Mouse got an Art Moderne makeover in the mid 1930s, according to an item in Boxoffice Magazine’s issue of March 9, 1935. A photo shows the new facade, featuring a building-wide marquee that sported the name “John Hamrick’s BLUE MOUSE Theatre” with Blue Mouse in block letters and the rest in cursive script, all set with neon. The article says that the entire project was handled by a theatrical outfitting company from Seattle called B.F. Shearer Company.
This is circa 1940s, I think:
http://tinyurl.com/knhlpn
Around 1946.
Here is a 1927 ad for “The Jazz Singer”.
History on the organ from PSTOS.
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