Digital Bob Archive

The golden age of movie theaters in Juneau, if there was such a thing, must have been the years 1914-1916. In that period operating movie houses included the Grand, the Orpheum, the Juneau which was renamed the Dream, plus movies shown at a skating rink and at least one saloon. And two new movie houses, the Coliseum and the Palace, were opened during that time.

The Juneau Theater, which became the Dream, then later was the Orpheum, was the last movie operation to occupy the old Juneau Opera House at Second and Seward. Max Endelman, who had managed live entertainment at the Opera House in the 1890s, and Thomas Ashby, a saloon keeper, leased the building in April 1914 and announced they would make it \"the handsomest amusement place in Juneau, finished in modified Moorish style.\" It would also, at that time, be the largest with 500 seats.

The theater opened on May 2, 1914, and three weeks after the opening it was announced that \"regular vaudeville is returning to Juneau after an absence of several years. For the first time since 1908 there will be regular vaudeville performances, coupled with moving pictures. Tonight the show will consist of three vaudeville acts and four reels.\"

It turned out that much of the \"vaudeville\" was local talent, including the high school band and a chorus consisting of Dorothy Hamilton, Myrtle Jorgenson, Dorothy Troy, Gladys McConaghy, Dorothy Haley and Daisy Lundstrom.

A traveling troupe of 14, known as the Royal Players, put on a number of plays including George M. Cohan's \"45 Minutes from Broadway,\" but after that, on June 15, the theater closed for a time and changed hands. The new operators were J.A. Crandall and T.J. McClannahan and they soon made a deal with Fred Purington of the Dream Theater in Ketchikan. The Juneau Theater would join the Dream film circuit and be renamed the Dream Theater. Purington, called in a news story \"the movie king of Alaska,\" moved to Juneau at the end of the year to manage the theater.

The Dream imported some vaudeville acts, but mainly it showed attractive films, including some of Mary Pickford's earliest, such as \"Little Pal\" and \"The Little American.\" After August, 1916, when W.D. Gross opened his big Coliseum Theater, however, some of the other theaters had hard going. Gross closed his Grand, Spickett closed the Orpheum and soon moved over to the new Palace, and the Dream closed its doors at the beginning of March, 1918.

Early in 1919 John T. Spickett, the oldtime showman who had had Orpheum Theaters in both Juneau and Douglas and was then running the Palace, announced that he would reopen the Dream. He did so on May 31, 1919, but revived the Orpheum name for it. That made three movie houses in Juneau which had, in the census of the following year a population of only 3,058, and they couldn't all make it go. The Orpheum struggled along until October 7. Then the theater doors at the old Juneau Opera House, which had opened for the Fourth of July, 1887, closed for the last time.