Esquire Theatre

The Film Daily Yearbook;1950 edition gives the Esquire Theatre a seating capacity of 901.

Here is a photo of Amarillo's Esquire Theatre, from the Amarillo Public Library web site. There is information about the theatre on that page, too, but some of it it doesn't match the information on this CT page. The address is given as 1808 South Washington, and the seating capacity is listed as 763. The date of the grand opening is given as October 24, 1947.

The Equire was located at 19th and Washington, which is now the intersection of West Interstate 40 and Washington. It survived the construction of I-40 but was leveled to make way for an office building in the late 70s or early 80s. That building is now the Amarillo headquarters for HRH Insurance.

The only Esquire I knew in Amarillo was at 19th and Washington (by I-40). As a child in the 60s, my mother took me to see To Kill a Mockingbird and The Sound of Music there. In college in the 70s, it was the theater that had the Rocky Horror Picture Show every weekend so I continued to go there. Then in the 80s I lived close by and remember seeing that Ringo Starr caveman movie there, among others. The theater was just second run movies, but still a beauty with murals of cowboys herding cows in the Palo Duro Canyon on the walls. When it closed in the mid-80s, their last show was, once again, The Sound of Music and my mother and I went to see it to preserve those good memories of a beautiful theater. It is the only Amarillo theater that I remember before the multiplexes moved in.

This is an updated link for the Esquire Theater photo that Joe Vogel posted on Jul 16, 2006.

I worked at the Esquire in high school from 1968-1971 as an usher and Assistant Manager. We ran a lot of the major films during that time period. The Esquire, Paramount and State theatres were all part of the ABC Interstate Theatres chain. The manager at that time was James Arnold, and most of the employees attended Amarillo High or Tascosa. Joe V.

A movie ad from 1963 for the Esquire Theatre in Amarillo.

This opened on October 28th, 1947 ad at http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/PsFtBfJaA7GtLMdVwaBgWw?feat=directlink