John Cort (impresario)
Overview
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
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.
Quotations

"There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion." -- Lord Byron

"The chief fuddling they make in the island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, and this is made of sugar canes distilled, a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor". -- 17th Century account

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" -- Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

"Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash." -- Attributed to, and denied by, Winston Churchill

"Where I go, I hope there's rum" - Jimmy Buffett

"But why's the rum gone?" - Johnny Depp as "Captain Jack Sparrow", The Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

"Hide the rum." - Johnny Depp as "Captain Jack Sparrow", The Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest

"I prefer rum. Rum is good." - Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean:At World's End

 
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