In July of 1925, the Saenger company publicly announced the impending construction of its Mobile theatre, & construction began in 1926. The theatre's opening was repeatedly delayed. In September of 1926, a major hurricane struck Mobile during the Saenger Theatre's construction -- an odd repeat of the major hurricane which struck in 1906 while Mobile's Lyric Theatre was under construction across the street. Then, revisions were made to the blueprints during construction for major changes to incorporate the installation of Carrier Air Conditioning unit #005 (#003 is in the Jefferson Theatre, Beaumont TX; #001 is in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.).

Specifications of the theatre included full stage facilities to accommodate large road shows: stage & wardrobe traps, 4 floors of dressing rooms, musicians' & chorus rooms.

The building's exterior was clad with yellow face brick & ornamented with false-granite mouldings, finials, & panels. The false-granite finish was created by an outer layer of sand & coal dust placed in molds before filling them with concrete.

The longest sidewalk marquee in a very hot, rainy city was constructed for the comfort of arriving theatre goers .

Early drawings showed the theatre's main entrance on Joachim Street nearer Conti Street, in a direct line with the stage. By the time of construction, the architect had moved the entrance nearer to the center of the block. Emile Weil's relationship with Rapp & Rapp and other architects for the Publix organization had given him access to new approaches for the combined solution of traffic & noise problems in movie theatres. Typically, in earlier theatres up to this time, the front entrance doors were directly in a line with the street, auditorium & stage, often with no wall between street & stage at all -- the idea being to provide little impediment to traffic (& to conserve real estate). With larger & continuous turnover of audiences as the movies became established, management of the traffic and noise of arriving & departing patrons was resolved by adding separate "feeder lobbies" off the auditorium. Thus, noisy arrivals were given a chance to quiet down before being allowed through the lobby doors into the auditorium. In the Saenger Theatre in Mobile, two entrance lobbies at the sides of the back of the auditorium performed this function: one large lobby with access from Joachim Street & a smaller lobby connected to Conti Street.

An additional benefit of this design to reduce noise was evident shortly afterwards, with the arrival of talkies. Earlier-type theatres with no back wall in the auditorium had to construct one for acoustical isolation, but it was unnecessary at the Saenger Theatre in Mobile & other theatres where the auditorium had a back wall already.

The theatre's interior decoration was described in the press variously as "Spanish" or "the motif of a French palace of the Renaissance", & even "blue". These were taken from press releases for the opening recycled by the company & incompletely revised from descriptions for the opening of some of their previous theatres.

The decoration was in fact another clever Emile Weil twist on Adam-style decoration - this time inspired by Mobile's coastal location. Along with Adam-style classical interior plaster ornamentation such as Dionysus above the proscenium, Maenads encircling the chandelier in the lounge & Pan beneath the organ grilles, Poseidon is cast above the main entrance & various stylized seahorses, shells, & fish ornaments are found throughout the theatre. The color scheme of the interior was primarily sea-green walls with some drybrush modeling, maroon & gold trim, stencil decoration of the ceiling, & a sea-green grand curtain. The arcade's central lighting fixture is an abstraction of bubbles. Adjustable three-color lighting in the coves & chandeliers constantly modified the highlights, shadows, & appearance of the modeling of the ornamentation in the auditorium.

The organ console can be seen in the house left side of the orchestra pit in this photo from just before the theatre's opening.

With the arrival in the 1950s of VistaVision, Paramount's initial entry in the widescreen movie revolution, came a chain-wide removal of the opera boxes in the Saenger theatres to pre-empt any possible sightline problems resulting from the new, wider screen. The opera boxes, located beneath the organ grilles, were removed from the Saenger Theatre in Mobile as they were from the Saenger Theatre in Pensacola & the Strand Theatre in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Also around this time, the seats on the floor were replaced with more modern American Bodiform seats & re-spaced, reducing the theatre's seating capacity to about 2200.

In July of 1968, the pastor of St. Pius X Catholic church in Mobile arranged with ABC Mid-South Theatres to acquire the Robert Morton theatre organ in the Saenger Theatre in Mobile. The organ was removed by technician Tom Walton & Keith Hoover, refurbished, & installed in St. Pius church.

Following the opening of its new Capri Theatre in outside of downtown, ABC/Mid-South Theatres on August 5, 1970 closed the Saenger Theatre in Mobile. The best offers for the property were from developers planning to demolish the theatre & use the space for a parking lot.

Mobile Saenger Theatre, official web site

Saenger Theatre, A theater in Mobile, Alabama, interior photography of the Mobile Saenger Theatre, by Ed Jurich
American Seating, build your own Saenger Theatre, one seat at a time, with genuine Saenger seats from the historic styles of the original supplier