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The Canon Theatre began its life in 1920 as a combination vaudeville and motion picture theatre in the Pantages theatre circuit. With its original 3373 seats, it was the largest cinema in Canada and, with its lavish interior - designed by the great theatre architect Thomas Lamb - the most elegant.
The theatre was built by the Canadian motion picture distributor Nathan L. Nathanson, founder of Famous Players Canadian Corporation, the Canadian motion picture distributing arm of Adolph Zukor's Paramount Pictures. While Famous Players retained ownership, management and booking were turned over to the Pantages organisation, one of the largest vaudeville and motion picture theatre circuits in North America.
The Pantages circuit had its beginnings in Canada, in the Yukon. Pericles Alexander Pantages had been a sailor on a Greek merchant ship who left the sea in search of riches during the great 1897 Yukon gold rush. Although he found no gold, he became part owner of a small theatre in Dawson City - the Orpheum - that staged vaudeville and burlesque shows. From this beginning, he built an entertainment empire that would eventually include a Hollywood film studio, a powerful vaudeville booking agency and ownership or control of more than 120 theatres across Canada and the western U.S. - most of which were known as "The Pantages".
The Pantages empire - 30 years in the making - came to a sudden end in 1929 when Alexander Pantages was convicted of the rape of 17-year old chorus girl and sentenced to 50 years in prison. Although the conviction was overturned on appeal, the scandal and the legal costs ruined Pantages. To the public, he had "got away with it" thanks to a clever lawyer. In 1930, he was forced to sell his theatres - at pennies on the dollar - to his arch-rival, RKO Pictures. Pantages died, of heart failure, in 1936.
With the collapse of the Pantages circuit, the Pantages name came off the marquees of almost all the theatres. In 1930, the Toronto Pantages was renamed "The Imperial" and became exclusively a cinema - no more live vaudeville. Management and control were resumed by Famous Players, which retained ownership for more than 50 years.
In 1973, the Imperial was chopped up into six separate cinemas to become "The Imperial 6", one of the first "multiplex" motion picture theatres in Canada. It operated under that name until 1986, when Famous Players lost a vital lease on the Yonge Street entrance to the building to a rival, Cineplex Odeon. Cineplex was able to force Famous Players to sell the theatre, but the victory was a Pyrrhic one; in a bitter legal fight, Famous Players won an injunction forbidding Cineplex from ever again using the theatre for motion pictures.
Cineplex responded to the court order by gutting the Imperial 6 and rebuilding it as a live theatre, restoring the lobby areas to the original 1920 design and renaming the structure "The Pantages". The "new" Pantages reopened in 1989 with the first legitimate theatre production it had ever known, Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical The Phantom of the Opera.
The Pantages was operated by a division of Cineplex Odeon known as "Livent". After a battle for control of Cineplex between its founder, Garth Drabinsky, and its majority shareholder, MCA, Livent became an independent company, with no ties to the parent corporation. Livent continued to own and operate the Pantages until 1999, when the theatre was purchased - along with other Livent assets - by Clear Channel Communications.
Live Nation, a division of Clear Channel, is today the owner of the theatre, but has turned management of the facility over to Mirvish Productions, owner of the Princess of Wales and Royal Alexandra theatres. In July, 2001, Clear Channel announced a pledge of support for the theatre from Canon Canada, Inc. In recognition of this generous pledge, which guarantees the continued life and health of an important, historic and beautiful showplace, the theatre has been renamed The Canon Theatre.