Overview

The 750-seat Music Box Theatre, located in the Lakeview district of Chicago, was built by the Blaine Building corporation and was originally to have been called the New Blaine Theater.

Construction commenced in October 1928 and the theatre opened in mid-August 1929 with Mother’s Boy (1929)  starring Morton Downey, with added attraction Eleanor Wagner, “Miss Chicago of 1929”.

At its opening the theatre was under the operation of Jacob Lasker & Son, who also operated other neighborhood theatres in the Chicago area.

The single screen movie theatre was intended to be a smaller neighborhood version of the ornate movie palaces in downtown Chicago. Built at the start of the “talkies” era, an orchestra pit and space for a theatre organ were included in case the talkies were a passing fad.

The auditorium is a mix of Spanish and Italian styles and evokes the courtyard of a palatial Mediterranean home. Chicago Tribune architectural critic Paul Gapp wrote, in Arts and Books of 31st July 1983, “The architectural style is an eclectic mélange of Italian, Spanish and Pardon-My-Fantasy put together with passion”. The overall effect is to make the patron feel that they are watching a film in an open-air palazzo.

The theatre closed as a regular movie theatre in 1978, and between then and 1983 the Music Box was used sporadically for Spanish language films, pornographic films, and Arabic language films.

In 1983, Robert Chaney, Christopher Carlo, and Stan Hightower formed the Music Box Theatre Corporation and restored and reopened the theatre in early August 1983 with a format of double feature revival and repertory films.

Since 2003, the theatre has been independently owned and operated by the Southport Music Box Corporation.