Star Theater (Portland, Oregon)
| The Clinton (1915–1945), 26th Avenue Theatre (1945–1969), Encore (1969–1975) | |
The venue's front entrance, 2013
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 Star Theater
Location in Central Portland
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| Address | 13 Northwest 6th Ave Portland, Oregon United States |
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| Coordinates | 45°31′25″N 122°40′35″W / 45.52361°N 122.67639°W |
| Opened | 1911 |
The Star Theater, formerly known as Princess Theatre and several other names, is a historic former silent film theater in Portland, Oregon, United States. The address was originally 9 Northwest Sixth Avenue, but since 2001 has been 13 Northwest Sixth Avenue. The theater operated as a film theater as well as a burlesque theater and an adult movie theater.
It opened in May 1911 as the Princess Theatre at Sixth and Burnside Street with 300 seats. It was one of many "semi-fireproof picture show[s]" that opened that year in Portland and the first in Downtown Portland to comply with the new fire codes. It was being run by the Sax Amusement Company circa 1923; it became the Star Theater in 1939, but was also known as the Star Burlesk, 4 Star Theater or New Star Theater at various times.
In the 1940s it became a live burlesque theater. Featured dancers included Tempest Storm, Betty Roth as Candy Renee, and Arabella Andre. It closed briefly during Dorothy McCullough Lee's mayorship, but reopened in 1953.Jim Purcell, Portland's Chief of Police, was a regular at the Star Theater and was especially interested in Candy Renee.
In the late 1960s, the Star Theater became an adult theater which showed erotic movies and also had strippers on stage. In the 1970s the Star Theater experimented with presenting everything from underground and classic comedy films to controversial "live sex shows". Eventually the Star Theater went back to the somewhat less controversial adult movies and live strippers. In the period of 1979–1983 one of the strippers at the Star Theater was a teenage Courtney Love. The Star Theater was closed in 1985.
The Star Theater was the business in question in the landmark City of Portland v. Tidyman Oregon Supreme Court ruling handed down by Oregon Supreme Court Justice Hans A. Linde in 1988 (long after the incident(s) in question happened in 1979), which helped establish the State of Oregon's strong free speech protections, possibly the strongest free speech protections in the U.S. This ruling eventually led to an abundance of strip clubs and live nude entertainment in and around the city of Portland, now known around the country as having "the most strip clubs per capita" of any city in the U.S.
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