Low ticket sales just wouldn’t do in Ivan Ackery’s world.
The principal manager of the Orpheum back when it was a movie theatre, Ackery worried about a 1940s-era film about cattle rustling that wasn’t putting bums in seats.
Naturally, Ackery paraded a milk cow down Granville Street during the afternoon rush hour, complete with signs hanging off each side of the bovine that read, “There's a great show playing at the Orpheum and that's no bull!”
Ackery was fined $15 by the city but claimed he got $1,000 worth of free advertising out of it.
Having rubbed shoulders with Princess Margaret, Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra, Ackery firmly believed in the number-one rule of entertainment: the show must go on.
That mantra still rules the day at the Granville Street institution as the Orpheum celebrates 90 years in downtown with a Nov. 24 period-specific celebration. The evening-long birthday party will include silent films, vaudeville acts, live music and a performance by Vancouver Symphony Orchestra maestro Bramwell Tovey.
One month earlier, the same venue played host to American metal band Mastodon.
“You can come here and you can see the symphony… but then you can come a day later and Alice in Chains is here,” said Rob Haynes, chair of the Vancouver Civic Theatres Board. “That’s what we are. We present everything.”
The Orpheum has been a bit of everything since opening in 1927. At that time it was known as the “Picture Palace,” and hosted films and vaudeville acts until it operated almost exclusively as a Famous Players movie theatre after 1969. It faced demolition in 1973 and was purchased a year later by the city, along with money from the province and feds. It’s since been designated a National Heritage Site.
Renovations in the late 1970s moved the Orpheum into the area it primarily serves today — live music. The venue hosts about 150 performances per year, on top of TV, film and commercial work. MacGyver and The X Files have filmed there, along with a music video for crooner Michael Bublé. Given that diversity, controversy has come calling on more than a few occasions, though Haynes says no act has ever been banned from performing.
“There are definitely topics occasionally that are over the top,” he said. “But you can’t legislate that. You have to be very careful.”
The guts of the venue includes 2,672 theatre seats, along with 16 wheelchair accessible spaces and a Wurlitzer pipe organ that can re-create musical sounds and percussive elements. Purchased for $45,000 in the 1920s and now worth millions, the organ can even mimic cow sounds, bird calls and just about anything else.
Massive baffles were installed above the stage and along the roof in 1977 to ensure sound bounces in all directions: towards the crowd, the performers and the symphony conductor.
Speaking of the roof, the artwork along the cabled, dome ceiling isn’t what most perceive it to be. Far be it a biblical scene — the characters depicted are actually family members of architects, decorators and restoration experts tasked with breathing new life into the place in the late ’70s.
The venue’s namesake, Orpheus, a mythological Greek figure of profound musical skill, is also on the roof playing a lute-like instrument called a lyre.
“Orpheus had the power of music: he could move trees, he could move mountains, he could tame wild animals,” Haynes said. “The belief is that he was the god of music. And as long as Orpheus is in this building, we will always be able to attract people with the music.”
Orpheus isn’t the only otherworldly being said to inhabit the Orpheum. Depending on who you talk to — and who you believe — the Orpheum is home to somewhere between three and six ghosts. The most commonly reported apparition is an attendant in the downstairs men’s washroom. A floating ball of light has been seen near the stage, and is thought to the spirit of an acrobat who fell to his death in the venue’s early days. The dress circle is apparently home to a well-dressed woman who gives a standing ovation to a phantom performance and then disappears.
“Are they really real? One never knows,” Haynes said. “But I think there are one or two ghosts around here.”
The 90th birthday shindig runs from 6:30 to 10 p.m. on Fri., Nov. 24. Tickets cost $19.27 and are available online HERE.
Enter to win
The Courier is giving away two pairs of tickets for the Nov. 24 show at the Orpheum celebrating the iconic theatre’s 90th anniversary.
Besides two tickets to the show, the winners will receive a pair of commemorative pins depicting the Orpheum’s signs from 1927 and 2012.
To enter, be the 20th person to email [email protected] with “Orpheum Theatre” in the subject line.
The winner will be notified by email and must be able to pick the tickets up from the Courier’s office on West Fifth Avenue.
@JohnKurucz
