Orpheum Theater Phoenix

The opening night for the Orpheum was Saturday, January 5, 1929. Just before the stock market crash. It cost $750,000 to build. If they had waited another year, during the Depression, it could have been built for less than half as much. The first movie house in Phoenix, the Airdome, was nothing more than an little open air corrugated tin structure with wooden benches. What a leap to the magnificent Spanish Baroque Revival Orpheum. Replacement cost today would run about $75 million.

The Orpheum was designed for ‘one reel picture novelties’ and elaborate road productions pictures, talkies and stage shows. For the first time, Phoenix could book traveling shows regardless of size. Vaudeville was still in full swing. The Rialto Theater, built in 1921 had vaudeville two nights a week. This was moved to the Orpheum. There was an animal room under the theater for holding the animals used in vaudeville acts.

There was a unique disappearing organ also. Organ shows with a thematic orchestra was all the rage. Movietone and Vitaphone were now paving the way for sound in motion pictures, so big things were happening in Phoenix because of the Orpheum.

Inside, the lighting effects were designed by the same people who did the big theaters in California, the engineer was Claude Seaman. The walls of the auditorium were designed as a Spanish mission garden. With the lighting, it was transferred into an outdoor garden with glittering fountains in arbored alcoves. Overhead, there were stars against a pure blue sky with moving clouds. Over the mission wall, there were the huge painted murals showing mountains, canyons and Arizona plants. There were two huge switchboards controlling 2,000 lights, one behind the stage and the other in the basement. Outside the theater, across the upper front, is the Balcony of Dons, showing explorers, adventurers and missionaries that contributed to Arizona’s past.

Originally, there was a free standing highly ornamented gilded box office and matching marquee in front, the 1933 photo above shows Mae West promoting I'm No Angel ......... The original entrance has been moved but the rest is all original in the lobby except for the wrought iron chandeliers shown below that have no resemblance to the original Spanish lantern ‘electrolier’ shown at right. The lobby entrance is a vaulted, blue and gold fantasy. Note, I am mostly describing the original theater as it was built, not necessarily the restored theater you see below. The carpet had an Arabesque pattern. The lobby was made to look like a Spanish foyer. There were bronze metal doors with friezes of the zodiac. The lower part of the walls, called wainscoting, was tiled. The original furniture was leather covered throne chairs in wall niches, davenports and carved tables telling the story of a land far away.

Upstairs is the curved mezzanine. Again, this has been restored as original except for those wrought iron light fixtures again. The original light fixtures were stained glass pointed stars hanging from chains from the ceiling as shown. There were also matching wall and floor lamps. The Kissing Room at the north end of the mezzanine is a rotunda-shaped room with a brilliant blue and gold dome ceiling framed by several gold medallions of kissing couples on the wall.

The balcony had cloistered arches along the walls, two had fountains with running water. The seats have 'R' and 'N' on them for the builders of the Orpheum, Harry Nace and J. E. Rickards.

In the late 1930's the Orpheum had a kids' club, similar to the Fox Theater Club, called the Popeye Club. It cost 10 cents for admission. In addition to a movie and cartoons, each week there was a drawing on the stage for a boy's and girl's Schwinn bike. It was a huge success, kids would line up for a city block to get in. The Orpheum's name was changed to Paramount in 1949; however, the Orpheum always played Paramount films in the 30's.

The projectionist for many years was William Stanley Clark. He was also the president of the movie projectionist union for 50 years. Robert Clark was a later projectionist and still has the original cloud projection machine.