The Casino Theatre was a live theatre, in

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, Canada. It was located at 87

Queen Street West Queen Street is a major east-west thoroughfare in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It extends from Roncesvalles Avenue and King Street in the west to Victoria Park Avenue in the east. Queen Street was the cartographic baseline for the original east-w ...

across the street from the current site of

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. The structure was designed by architects

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, who designed 21 other theatres in Toronto, and 48 elsewhere in Canada. The theatre opened in 1936 and demolished in 1960. It seated almost 1,200 patrons. The theatre hosted well-known performers, such as

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, Rose La Rose, Cup Cakes Cassidy,

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and

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. The

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s, and baudy comedians who performed at Casino made the Casino particularly subject to commentary and complaints. Doug Taylor, the author of ''Toronto Theaters and the Golden Age of the Silver Screen'' wrote that, "Other perhaps than the Victory Theatre on Spadina, there is no entertainment venue that elicited as much praise, raunchy stories, condemnation and press coverage as the infamous Casino Theatre." He described one high school principal staking out the theatre in order to catch students who were playing hookey to catch a show at the Casino. ''

Mike Filey Mike Filey (October 11, 1941 – July 30, 2022) was a Canadian historian, radio host, journalist and author. He was awarded the Jean Hibbert Memorial Award in 2009 for promoting the city of Toronto and its history. Early life Born in 1941 in ...

'', the ''

Toronto Sun The ''Toronto Sun'' is an English-language tabloid format, tabloid newspaper published daily in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The newspaper is one of several ''Sun'' tabloids published by Postmedia Network. The newspaper's offices is located at Pos ...

''s historical columnist, noted that the theatre opened at one minute after midnight, April 13, 1936, a Monday, because conservative laws required the closure of venues that catered to pleasure, on Sundays. Filey suggested public complaints about the morals of the establishment were routinely ignored, since it was right across the street from City Hall, and many city councilors were regular patrons. Filey wrote that the Casino ''"offered every type of performance allowed by law, and some that weren't."'' The three partners who founded the Casino were Jules Allen, and Jay Allen, and Murray Little, who already owned the

Broadway Theatre Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Th ...

, another Burlesque theatre at 75 Queen Street West.

References

{{Coord, 43.65185, N, 79.38338, W, display=title Burlesque theatres Theatres in Toronto