Paramount Theatre sparkles on its 75th anniversary

"There are ghosts in this place something terrible," a Paramount Theatre stagehand told a Seattle Times reporter back in 1971.

It must have felt that way then, when the grandam of Seattle theaters was tattered and run-down, and operated only occasionally as a movie theater. A year later it became a rock hall, dubbed Paramount Northwest, the first in a series of renovations that has brought the architectural gem back to its original glory, and then some, in time for its 75th birthday.

Today it is recognized as one of the finest theaters in the country, not only for its beauty and grandeur, but for its state-of-the-art technology. Innovations and expansions have made the Paramount perfect for performances of all kinds, from rock shows to touring Broadway musicals. If ghosts still haunt the storied building, they must be of a happier sort now.

When it opened as The Seattle Theatre on March 1, 1928, it was one of the largest, grandest theaters in America. Built as a movie palace and vaudeville theater — modeled after New York's famed Paramount — it reflected the prosperity and opulence of the Roaring Twenties.

With gold leaf trim, crystal chandeliers, period furniture, heavy drapes and luxurious carpets, it cost more than $3 million (the principal investor was movie mogul Adolph Zukor). It had a $100,000 gilded Wurlitzer organ (still in place), a stage elevator capable of lifting a 60-piece orchestra, a backdrop projection system that could create the illusion of clouds, stars, rainbows, snow and other effects, 41 backstage dressing rooms, a green room for VIPs and a card room for stagehands.

But only three years after its opening, the Great Depression closed the Paramount (it had been renamed in 1930). It was shuttered from July 1931 to October 1932. When it reopened, it resumed a policy of presenting films and live performances until the late 1940s, making it one of the last vaudeville theaters in the world.

Movies kept the theater alive, although most of the fancy furnishings were put into storage and the balcony was closed (except for a few blockbusters, like "Psycho" in 1960). From 1956 to '58, it was a Cinerama theater, showing movies on a giant, curved screen.

Gordon Moody, 74, grew up less than four blocks from the theater, and has vivid memories of the daylong Saturday serial movies that played there during the late Depression and World War II. He'd always go with his two best friends, Hugo Scarsheim, a pilot who died in the Korean War, and Robert Joffrey, who founded the world-famous Joffrey Ballet.

"We'd sit in the first row; tried to put our feet up on the iron bar that was along the front row there; and of course your body's almost in a V shape. We were staring up there bug-eyed at the screen all day. We'd always get cricks in our necks and wonder why," Moody said.

Live shows played there occasionally, including a production of "John Brown's Body" in 1953, directed by Charles Laughton and starring Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter and Raymond Massey. Betty Hutton headlined a revue that same year. Danny Kaye appeared in 1952 and '55, Ella Fitzgerald sang there in 1958, and Mickey Rooney brought a comedy show in 1961.

The theater was closed for long periods in the 1960s. But live music was heard again in the 1970s and '80s, with rock shows presented on a regular basis. Among the many stars who made memorable appearances at Paramount Northwest were Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen and The Kinks.

Paramount myths

Like any longstanding, beloved institution, some myths have grown up around the Paramount. For instance, B. Marcus Priteca, a renowned Seattle architect who designed many of the grandest movie palaces in America in the 1920s and '30s, was a consultant on the Paramount project but had nothing to do with the theater (he worked on the building's apartments and office suites). The theater was designed and built by the Chicago firm of Rapp & Rapp. Alexander Pantages, the showman and theater builder who lived in Seattle, built several theaters here, but not the Paramount, which he is sometimes credited for.

A former manager of the theater used to drop the names Priteca and Pantages, and told grand tales to tour groups in the '70s detailing how the building was constructed on a bridge that had to be built over an underground stream discovered during the building's excavations, and that the elaborate decorations around the proscenium arch were created by Italian craftsmen who hand-sculpted them in wet clay.

But the building's original architectural drawings, stored at the University of Washington Library's Northwest Collection (along with those for the recent renovations), show no such bridge or underground stream. And no corroboration could be found for the wet-clay story. Given the grandiose promotion of the theater at its opening, such details would surely have been trumpeted.

A world-class theater

Seventy-five years later, much remains of the theater's opulent beginnings.

The renovations that have brought the theater to its present world-class status cost $37 million. More than $30 million came from the personal fortune of former Microsoft executive Ida Cole, who bought the theater in 1993 for $9.6 million and late last year turned it over to the nonprofit Seattle Theater Group.

The most magical innovation is a pneumatic system that allows the venue to be transformed into a ballroom, with the seats tucked underneath the floor. An addition to the rear of the structure added even more dressing and meeting rooms, and state-of-the-art stage systems, enabling the theater to present the most elaborate of productions.

Now the theater is home to a huge range of events, from kids shows like the Wiggles this weekend to modern dance like the Alvin Ailey company, rock concerts, traveling Broadway productions, silent films and even the most recent run of Pacific Northwest Ballet's "The Nutcracker."

The mighty Wurlizter organ has been restored (including an elevator to lift it from under the orchestra pit); a rare, gold and ivory Knabe Ampico grand piano has been restored and is back in its original place in the lounge area just above the foyer; and the two large chandeliers in the lobby, with 52,000 individual crystals each, have been cleaned and restored to their original brightness. Some of the original lobby furniture is in use in the Paramount's offices. The theater's collection of nine large, grand European paintings, in gilded frames, which originally hung in the lobby, were stolen in 1965 and never recovered.

And the place has the same resonance for some of the people who remember it in its original glory days.

"It hasn't changed much," said Moody. "They've put in some different carpets, and some different lighting, but it looks the same."

Patrick MacDonald: pmacdonald@seattletimes.com