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Published in The Seattle Times online on April 9, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on April 6, 2023

After 53 years, cozy movie house maintains its ‘Grand Illusion’

By Clay Eals

In a military war, the weapons are guns and bombs, the results often instant, destructive and unthinkable. But in an economic battle, the weapons are dollars, the results frequently incremental, insidious and no less calamitous to the societal soul.

Enter the tiny Grand Illusion Cinema in the U District. Or should we say exit?

Sharing the name of the famous 1937 anti-war film directed by Jean Renoir, the cozy 68-seat arthouse soon could face the wrecking ball. It’s nestled on the second floor of a funky 103-year-old conglomeration of low-rise retail buildings along hillside 50^th Street at its intersection with University Way,

The West Coast commercial real-estate firm Kidder Matthews is asking $2.8 million for the 4,120-square-foot site, zoned for a maximum six floors and destined for apartments. The Grand Illusion holds a two-year lease but could be bought out anytime. To survive, it could be forced to move, to whereabouts unknown.

Its footprint a former dental office, the theater took root in May 1970 as the vision of perennial University of Washington literature student Randy Finley, who wanted to show films based on great books. He called it The Movie House, he says, “because there was a little house there.”

Quickly it became the home of foreign and offbeat fare, classic and obscure, including festivals featuring Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and West Seattle-bred Frances Farmer. When attendance lagged, Finley repeatedly brought in the dependable “King of Hearts” (1966) and “A Thousand Clowns” (1965) to fill the till.

Each December starting in 1971, several years before “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) became a TV staple due to lapsed copyright, Finley screened the Christmas Eve-based classic. He publicly labeled it “the nicest film The Movie House could ever offer.” Routinely, audiences cheered when the film’s ecstatic George Bailey ran through Bedford Falls and shouted “Merry Christmas, movie house!” The annual tradition has lasted 52 years.

The brash Finley (“I know the value of being heard; I made a lot of noise”) eventually built an indie theater empire of 20 Northwest screens. He ceded The Movie House in January 1979 to milder-mannered Paul Doyle, who renamed it the Grand Illusion — not just for the Renoir film, he says, but also cannily for “the medium of movies itself and, some would say, the nature of life.”

After Doyle left in 1997, Northwest Film Forum became the owner, and the theater went non-profit. Today, the development clock is ticking. “We’re biding our time,” says Brian Alter, manager for the past 13 years. “Everybody doesn’t want to see it go away.”

Is that hope the grandest illusion of all?

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Eugenia Woo, Kji Kelly, Taelore Rhoden, Evan Bue, Jessica Albano, Tracey Gurd, Jennifer Ott, Andrew Weymouth, Amy Hagopian, Betty Udesen, Jake Renn, Amanda Cowan and especially Brian Alter, Paul Doyle, Maitland Finley, Patricia Clark-Finley and Randy Finley for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Jean Sherrard’s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below are 12 additional photos and, in chronological order, 41 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.