John Cort (impresario) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

John Cort was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

Impresario

An impresario is a person who organizes and often finances concerts, plays or operas; analogous to a film producer in filmmaking, television production and an angel investor in business...

; his Cort Circuit was one of the first national theater circuits. Along with John Considine

John Considine (Seattle)

John Considine was an American impresario, a pioneer of vaudeville.-Youth and arrival on the scene: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...

and Alexander Pantages

Alexander Pantages

Alexander Pantages was an American vaudeville and early motion picture producer and impresario who created a large and powerful circuit of theatres across the western United States and Canada.-Early life:...

, Cort was one of the Seattle

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

-based entrepreneurs who parlayed their success in the years following the Klondike Gold Rush

Klondike Gold Rush

The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...

into an impact on America's national theater scene. While Considine and Pantages focused mainly on vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

, 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.