History : On Tuesday evening, November 13, 1923, John Hamrick’s Blue Mouse Theatre had its Grand Opening on Proctor Street. It was named after a lounge in Paris, France, which showed the latest rage, ‘flicks’.
“A spectacular melodrama” called The Green Goddess was the first ‘picture show’ projected on the theatre’s ‘silent screen’. The headline in the Tacoma News Tribune called it the “Finest Suburban Theater in the Northwest”. The account in the newspaper the next day stated that “every one of the 420 seats was occupied and a good sized overflow greeted the management”.
The community theater prospered and in 1932 it was purchased by Will Conner and renamed the Proctor Theater. Forty years later, in 1972, he sold it and it was eventually renamed the Bijou in 1980.
