Opening of Big Loop House Only Week Away
Source: Chicago Evening American, 1 May 1926, pg. 13.
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The gala opening of a great, new and
magnificent theater seems to be the high light of next week's amusement
calendar.
The fact that it is the first new theater in the loop in quite a
few years—in fact, since the Chicago Theater opened, if you except the
rebuilt McVickers Theater— adds to the interest of the premiere.
Balaban & Katz in giving to Chicago's loop the capacious
Oriental at Randolph near State st. (in the Masonic Temple Building)
announce it as "the most unique theater in the world."
The Oriental is not the largest Balaban & Katz theater, but a
glimpse at it will convince every one it is the most colorful, the most
picturesque. In fact, some artists who have viewed the auditorium and
decorations declare it to be daring, artistically—almost barbaric in
its splendor of coloring and trappings.
Apparently the entertainment policy is to be as unique as the
theater itself. The Oriental will be the new home of Paul Ash, recrowned
"Rajah of Jazz," who moves over with his whole gang from the
McVickers. Incidentally, the extra 1,200 or 1,500 seats will probably
save the tired feet of many a Paul Ash fan who has been waiting
patiently in line for months to hear and see his or her idol at
McVickers. Ash will stage more elaborate syncopation productions on the
Oriental's much advertised "magic flying stage"—a new
invention that makes possible lightning changes of settings. On the
screen will be a motion picture policy specializing in big comedy
features, with a spectacular drama flashing in now and then.
Delayed arrival of Oriental draperies and other furnishings of the
theater has caused a change in the opening date from next Tuesday to
next Saturday. the Oriental will therefore be thrown open to the public
at 10:45 a.m. a week from today with paul Ash's gang doing a three scene
jazz production called appropriately "Insultin' the Sultan,"
an Oriental frolic with melody. Milton Watson, Foggy Bernier, and about
twenty new Ash personalities including "Paul's Harem-Scarem,"
a miniature chorus of twelve, will be in the cast. On the screen will be
Harry Langdon's first super-comedy, producted by First National
Pictures, and entitled "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp!"
The new Oriental already is arousing national comment among the
theater experts and artists as sounding a new note in theater
architecture and decoration. When it was decided to construct a play
palace that would charm away workaday worries and make it easy for
audiences to forget everything but the entertainment before them, the
Oriental idea was conceived. Inseat of copying the somber lines and
colorings of mosques and temples, with their Buddahs and grim reminders
of lost civilizations, the designers of the Oriental Theater drew their
inspiration from the Orient at its gayest. The Durbar, that festive
celebration in which rajahs from all the states of India gather and make
proud and gawdy display of their fabled wealth, became the pattern of
the theater.
No description of the new house can be kept matter of fact. It is
an exotic play palace that makes the "Arabian Nights" wonders
come true.
[End of news article]
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Page compiled: 8 August 1998
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