In the early 1990s, if you wanted to see a movie at the Liberty Theatre in downtown Astoria on a chilly day, you needed to be prepared.
The Liberty, built in 1925 as a palace for movies and vaudeville-style entertainment, had fallen on tough times. The building’s owner at the time, a Los Angeles lawyer and accountant who liked to travel to Oregon for duck hunting, declined to heat the theatre, so it wasn’t unusual for moviegoers to bring blankets to screenings.
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