John Cort (Cort circuit)

John Cort
Portrait of John Cort, ca.1914
Background information
Born	ca. 1861 New York City, United States
Died	November 1929 (aged 67–68)
Occupation(s)	Impresario

John Cort (ca. 1861 – November 17, 1929) was an American impresario; his Cort Circuit was one of the first national theater circuits. Along with John Considine and Alexander Pantages, Cort was one of the Seattle-based entrepreneurs who parlayed their success in the years following the Klondike Gold Rush into an impact on America's national theater scene. While Considine and Pantages focused mainly on vaudeville, Cort focused on legitimate theater. At one time, he owned more legitimate theaters than anyone else in the United States, and he eventually became part of the New York theatrical establishment. As of 2016, his Cort Theatre remains a fixture of Broadway.

The New York City-born Cort started his career as a stage actor of little distinction and as part of a comedy duo, Cort and Murphy. He first became a theater manager in Cairo, Illinois, then headed west to take over the Standard Theater, a Seattle box house (a cross between a variety theater, a saloon, and—often—a brothel), which he turned into the city's leading such establishment. A pioneer of theater circuits—booking the same act successively into multiple cities to make it worth their while to tour to his remote part of the country—he was so successful that in 1888 he built a new 800-seat Standard Theater at the southeast corner of Occidental and Washington streets. This was Seattle's first theater with electric lighting, more modern than the gas-lit Frye's Opera House, the city's leading legitimate theater at the time.

The Great Seattle Fire (June 6, 1889) burned this new Standard and nearly all of Seattle's other places of entertainment. Cort reopened two weeks later in a tent, and by November he had erected a replacement for the Standard.

Like John Considine, Cort left Seattle during the depression (and anti-vice reaction) that followed the Panic of 1893, but returned after the Klondike Gold Rush to build the Grand Opera House (opened 1900) on Cherry Street. Geographically he had crossed north of "the Deadline", Yesler Way, out of the vice-ridden "restricted zone". Artistically, he had crossed from variety entertainment into legitimate theater.