The 'finest' Fox
When it opened in 1931, downtown theater drew raves as Art-Deco fantasyland

Nov 11, 2007

Author: Jim Kershner

Position: Staff writer

Source: The Spokesman Review

On the day in September 1931 when the Fox Theater opened, a reporter for The Spokesman-Review lost all sense of restraint. He called it a "veritable fairyland" and a "historic milestone in the annals of Spokane's development."

"The casual passerby," he wrote, "catches his breath in surprise and wonder."

Why all of this breath-catching? After all, there were already about 300 Fox theaters in the U.S., including 28 in Washington alone some in places like Centralia and Hoquiam.

Yet Spokane hadn't merely landed a Fox Theater, it had landed a deluxe Fox Theater, comparable to the ones that had already caused a sensation in Atlanta, St. Louis, Detroit and Beverly Hills.

A deluxe Fox Theater was, in those days, considered the equivalent of a fantasy castle and grand baronial hall planted right smack downtown.

Spokane's theater lived up to the promise. Architect Robert Reamer, famous for designing Yellowstone National Park's Old Faithful Inn, had gone all out in designing an Art Deco fantasyland.

Reamer and designer Anthony Heinsbergen studded the building with brilliant architectural features: giant starburst fixtures on the ceilings, stars twinkling overhead and fanciful, Oz-like murals covering the wall from floor to ceiling.

When patrons stood at the base of the grand staircase they were enveloped in an underwater world; by the time they got to the balcony level, they were up with the castles and clouds.

Statistics in such a building are "largely bewildering," said the reporter: 3,578 light bulbs, seating for 2,350, a budget of $1 million.

It even had a fancy new ventilation system providing something called "washed air." Patrons were invited to inspect this marvel from the street on the First Avenue side.

"Patrons will be free to inspect it from the inside as well," said the paper.

It was actually an air-conditioning plant.

In short, the theater was the "finest, most modern and most artistic of some 300 on the circuit," according to Fox executives.

This was all part of a vast empire built through the 1920s by William Fox, who realized that there was money to be made three ways in the movie business: making movies, distributing them and owning the theaters.

By 1931, Fox had already been forced out of his own company, but his name lived on, through various mergers, as 20th Century Fox and today's Fox TV and news operations.

Naturally, this latest Fox palace required a giant opening celebration. So on Sept. 3, 1931, Fox brought in five "big shots of screenland" to take part in a downtown parade and to preside over the dedication.

They were: cowboy star George O'Brien; leading man Victor McLaglen; character actor El Brendel ("The Lovable Swede"); sexy starlet Anita Page; and child star Mitzi Green ("Little Mitzi, the screen's top moppet").

About 20,000 people jammed the streets for the parade. The mob nearly prevented the stars from making their way to the temporary outdoor stage.