PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — A Portland landmark, the Hollywood Theatre on Northeast Sandy Boulevard, celebrated its 100th birthday on Thursday!
The movie theater has been celebrating all week with the “Hollywood 100 Festival,” featuring classic films, rare archival screenings, and special events. | Tickets & showtimes
One of those events was a screening of the first film ever shown at the Hollywood in 1926, ‘More Pay, Less Work’, accompanied by a live pipe organ performance from Dean Lemire.
“The whole audience got to hear this beautiful piece of music that he had written for his family. So we’re still keeping that tradition alive,” said Christen Zatz-Gilman, the Deputy Director of the Hollywood Theatre.
Portland is home to a vibrant independent cinema scene, and the Hollywood is one of the many that continues to shine as other national movie theater chains face challenges.
Zatz-Gilman said the theater was able to stay competitive and relevant through the last century of cinema in part because of a major renovation in the 1960s.
“When we first opened we were one auditorium, so there was the main auditorium and then there were the balconies upstairs and at a certain point the movie industry was going in the direction of multiplexes where you can show more than one film at a time,” Zatz-Gilman said. “The theaters that could adapt and could show more than one movie at a time, those were the ones that really survived, because they were able to offer more films to their audience on any given night.”
PAST COVERAGE | Hollywood Theatre close to keeping Movie Madness alive
The theater says it will celebrate the 100 years by looking to the future. They’re working on turning the neighborhood into the Hollywood Film District and make it an international destination for film lovers.
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