Bijou Theatre

The theatre at 311 Pike Street was in operation by 1907 as the Odeon Theatre. It had been installed in a store building by the owners of the slightly earlier and very successful Bijou Theatre on Main Street. After making a deal with vaudeville impresario Gus Sun to present his circuit’s shows at the Odeon Theatre, the house was expanded, with a new stage added to the back of the building, and by 1912 it was one of Clarksburg’s most popular theatres.

For several years the Odeon Theatre presented the Sun circuit’s “popular priced” offerings, consisting of five acts of vaudeville plus three reels of silent movies, with a top price of ten cents. Unlike the pricer (and longer) Keith vaudeville shows at the Robinson Grand Theatre, which were presented twice a day, the Odeon Theatre usually offered three shows a day, each lasting about an hour.

By the late-1910’s, with the arrival of new competitors, the Odeon Theatre became a movie house, and was, along with the original Bijou Theatre, for a while under the control of the Gillis family, who later converted the Palace Theatre into the Gillis Theatre. By 1923 both the Odeon Theatre and the Bijou Theatre were controlled by Jack Marks. It was probably Marks who moved the name Bijou to the Odeon sometime after 1923.

The second Bijou Theatre continued to operate as a movie house through most of the 1920’s, but never made the transition to talking pictures. The name Bijou last appeared in the Film Daily’s Yearbook in 1929. The original Bijou Theatre, still under the control of Jack Marks, was eventually renamed the Orpheum Theatre and remained open until 1952. The original Bijou/second Orpheum building is still standing, but the Odeon/second Bijou building has been demolished.

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