John Considine (impresario)

John Considine (September 29, 1868 – February 11, 1943) was an American impresario, a pioneer of vaudeville.

Born in Chicago, Considine grew up attending Roman Catholic parochial schools, and eventually briefly attended St. Mary's College, Kansas. Briefly a Chicago policeman, he was involved in the raid that led to the Haymarket Riot. He then became a traveling actor, and landed in Seattle, Washington in 1889. By 1891, he was manager of the People's Theater, a box house in the wide-open "restricted district" below Yesler Way in what is now Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood.

A friendly, outgoing, but resolutely sober man in a rowdy environment, he dealt cards but did not play, made money off the sale of liquor but did not drink, managed a business whose profits depended on its female performers hustling drinks (and, in Murray Morgan's words, "If the girls wished to peddle more personal wares, management did not object"), but was reputed to be a faithful family man.

Considine decided that he could out-compete the other box houses by raising the level of entertainment, hiring professional actresses for the stage and letting other girls work the floor and the dark booths. He prospered greatly for a while, until he was brought down by the Panic of 1893, the ensuing economic depression, and the 1894 election of an "anti-vice" administration in Seattle. He briefly attempted to run the People's as a proper theater; he ran a box house in Spokane, Washington before a similar anti-vice administration shut him down; and he returned to Seattle and lay relatively low until the Klondike Gold Rush (1897) brought back an "open town" administration. By February 1898 he had leased back the People's Theater, and was back in the business along with the rest of Seattle, "mining the miners."

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