The Liberty Theater of Camas turns 90 years old on Wednesday.
That’s not hard to believe about an old-fashioned movie palace that helps anchor an old-fashioned downtown. But, after you purchase a 90th birthday screening ticket, you’re still encouraged to size up the place and its history and yell: “Inconceivable!”
That words keeps coming up in Wednesday’s main attraction, “The Princess Bride,” a super-clever modern classic that mashes up swashbuckling adventure and sarcastically snappy, highly quotable dialog by screenwriter William Goldman. “The Princess Bride,” which was released in 1987, is also marking an anniversary this year — its 30th — so the Liberty decided to make the celebration a double. (Writer Goldman, incidentally, was the same talented scribe who penned “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”; the director was Rob Reiner, who made “This is Spinal Tap” and “When Harry Met Sally.”)
On Wednesday, you can catch a $3 screening of “The Princess Bride” and even go home with a free Liberty Theater poster and some other special swag, if you’re one of the first 100 ticket buyers.
The much-ballyhooed theater was called The Granada when it opened its doors on June 14, 1927. A handful of local investors, lead by city councilman and key Camas “founding father” C.E. Farrell, raised the nearly inconceivable amount of money it took in those days to build an 800-seat theater with a Spanish flair and an art deco entryway: $75,000.
If You Go
• What: 90th anniversary of the Liberty Theater / 30th anniversary of “The Princess Bride”
• When: 5:30 p.m. screening of “The Princess Bride”
• Featuring: Free posters, swag for first 100 guests.
• Where: 315 N.E. Fourth Ave., Camas
• Admission: $3
• On the web: www.camasliberty.com
Dreamland
That sum seems laughable now, but 90 years ago the results sure did impress The Camas Post-Record, which four days before the theater’s opening previewed the place as “a dreamland of beauty” and declared: “The new structure has placed Camas in the foreground of many more pretentious cities in the theatrical world.”
The first film shown at The Granada was “Lost at the Front,” a brand-new blockbuster starring George Sidney and Charlie Murray; The Post-Record called it “the greatest war comedy ever told — a roar and riot of laughter throughout — and everyone will be going.”
(Everyone may have gone, roared and rioted in 1927, but “Lost at the Front” does not appear to have stood the test of time; there are no reviews or commentary about the film online beyond this vintage plot synopsis: “One was an Irish policeman — his friend was a German saloon keeper. They went ‘over there’ to fight for their country, but they had more fights getting to the front than they had when they got there. And the way those Russian women made love to them, made them wish they were in ‘No Woman’s Land.’ Positively the funniest war story ever screened. You’ll lose yourself in laughter when you see ‘Lost at the Front!'”)
The theater remained a downtown fixture for decades — until the Great Recession yanked the rug out from under it. The theater closed in 2009 and stayed dark for nearly two years, until Rand Thornsley, an Alaskan theater operator who was looking for a change, happened upon the place and “fell in love” with it and with Camas, he’s said.
Since then, Thornsley has made the Liberty back into an anchor for downtown Camas by keeping prices low and his schedule of second-run films busy and changing. He’s also renovated the place extensively, carving out a second, smaller theater (29 seats) alongside the main auditorium (now 300 seats) and upgrading to digital projection equipment; he also helped lobby the Washington Legislature to permit beer and wine sales in theaters.
Plus, he’s built an additional audience of high-culture vultures by screening live-on-stage theater, dance and opera productions from London and New York. Later on Wednesday, the small auditorium — it’s been dubbed the Granada Room — will screen an Italian extravaganza of great singing: “Il Volo with Pl?cido Domingo: A Tribute to The Three Tenors.”
According to June 10, 1927, Camas Post-Record, it took all of six months for this “beautiful show house” to go from idea to grand opening. That, too, seems inconceivable today.
“That vision has become a tangible reality,” the paper wrote, “and a substantial asset of which this city should and is going to be proud for decades to come.”
