Tillmany Jack - Theatres of Oakland

The Dewey Theatre, called the Oakland Theatre when it opened in 1882 at 320 Twelfth Street between Harrison and Webster Streets, only half a block from the Dietz Opera House, was a popular venue in the late 19th century for stage acts and vaudeville. The Dewey also occasionally showed movies and illustrated songs where illustrated lyrics were projected onto the screen. The Dewey closed in 1906, just as motion pictures were getting a foothold. Over the next 30 years, the center of downtown entertainment shifted from the lower end of Broadway north toward Grand Avenue. This chapter covers that entire area with the exception of the Paramount, Fox Oakland, Grand Lake, and Orpheum theatres, which are highlighted in separate chapters. Also included in this first chapter are the theatres in West Oakland, a district whose principal east-west thoroughfare, Seventh Street, stretches from downtown west to Oakland Point. Readers should note that at many sites, theatre names came and went with rapidity, as was the case with the Pantages, known also as the Lurie, Hippodrome (one of two in Oakland), the Premier, Roosevelt, and Downtown.

In 1901, Oaklands first moving-picture theatre debuted at the northeast corner of Broadway and Thirteenth Street. Pecks Broadway was operated by Albert E. Peck, an experienced showman, and his wife, a high-grade vaudeville performer. They offered a refined, cozy little place of amusement that ladies and children can attend day or evening without escort. In 1903, Pecks (or Pex) relocated to San Pablo Avenue, and this location only offered kinetoscope exhibition. During the 1970s urban renewal, the buildings pictured here were razed. (Courtesy Oakland History Room.)

The Empire Theatre at 466 Twelfth Street was one of the few places in the East Bay where life was lost during the April 1906 earthquake when a wall collapsed on people sleeping next door. Here is a happier occasion in 1905 when a caged performer, billed as a wild man, rolled in to publicize his appearance at the Empire. During its short run (19041906), the theatre was called both Empire and Lyric, two names later used at other Oakland theatres.

Citizens offered $10,000 to persuade Joseph Macdonough to build a first-class theatre in Oakland. In 1892, he commissioned architects Cuthbertson and Mooser, later active in the post-1906 rebuilding of San Francisco, to design a theatre on the southeast corner of Fourteenth Street and Broadway. After a slow start, the Macdonough Theatre prospered, reflecting the social growth of Oakland. This photograph was translated by Britton and Rey Lithographers into a best-selling postcard. In 1956, the East Bays first glass-curtain skyscraper replaced the old theatre.

The Macdonough changed its name to State, a popular theatre name, and eventually dropped plays and vaudeville in favor of motion pictures. This interior view, taken in 1945, shows what remained from a 1923 remodel (one of several over the years) when it was Loews State. Exterior changes included moving the entrance from Fourteenth Street to 1320 Broadway and adding an electric roof sign. The theatre closed months after this photograph was taken due to problems meeting modern-day fire regulations.

The 1914 Macdonough program was an advertising vehicle for not only La France waists and corsets as pictured on its cover but for now-forgotten products such as Zam-Zam candy laxative, Keaton non-skid tires, Giersberger wines, and Clark-Gandion Trusses. Stage drama was the Macdonough forte, but it joined in on the movie craze to present short films or actualities of train wrecks, horse races, automobile collisions, and fox hunts. Admission prices ranged from 50 to $2.

Talking pictures arrive! Al Jolson, in The Jazz Singer , took New York City by storm in October 1927 and arrived in Oakland five months later in March 1928. Three months later, the State would be renamed the Vitaphone and remain so for two years, as Warner Brothers stream of Vitaphone features made the Oakland public talkie conscious. Thousands of vaudeville entertainers immortalized themselves on Vitaphone celluloid but, at the same time, hastened the ends of their careers as live performers.

When Arsenic and Old Lace was released in 1944, Oakland was supporting the war effort 24 hours a day in three shifts. War-industry workers and military personnel packed the downtown shows day and night. Service personnel in uniform got discounted admission to most theatres that competed with arcades, dance halls, and bowling alleys for the military dollar. Day or night, downtown was the place to be.