The Star Of A Circuit

IN 1937 John Danz was 50 years old and already in his 21st year of running the Star Theatre on Occidental Avenue a half block south of Yesler Way. Danz emigrated from Russia with his parents. Later he also migrated from his Sterling Men's Wear on Second Avenue South to building the largest independent theater circuit in the Northwest. And he kept the name Sterling, ultimately calling it the Sterling Recreation Organization, or SRO for short.

It was with his purchase of the Star in 1916 that Danz made the switch from running — with his brothers — a haberdashery to building the chain of theaters. Since Danz was an independent, he did not get first-run films at first, but drew his customers with low admission prices and double features.

Here, the Star is open during the Great Depression in 1937, and a small crowd of men is reading the theater's broadsides at the sidewalk. Behind them, the cheap 10-cent admission is advertised in a big sign extending from the second floor over the sidewalk. Another sign of the Depression-era times is posted one door south of the Star (to the left), where S. Miyato, proprietor of the Interurban Hotel, is renting rooms for 25 cents a night.

A year earlier, in 1936, Danz purchased the Pantages Theatre at Third Avenue and University Street. Renamed the Palomar, the terra-cotta landmark was a longtime home for his operations. By the 1950s SRO owned 25 theaters in or near Seattle.

A 1922 Seattle Times nostalgia piece on "old" buildings reported that in 1897 the theater also hosted a dance hall where "gaily dressed girls danced with their partners, earning besides their salary, a share of each drink purchased by their partner." In that Star, a dime might have got you a dance.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.