Plains Theatre

Here is another view of the museum:
http://tinyurl.com/qeyzab

I remember repairing the Plains Theater sign many times. My grandfather built quite a few of Theater Enterprises signs from 1947 to around 1955. He owned Tesco Neon in Roswell. Theater Enterprises was a Dallas Texas based theater company. If I remember correctly, they had an operating company called Frontier Theaters that took care of the West Texas and New Mexico part of their business. Of those that Tesco neon built were the Plains and Yucca in Roswell. The Yucca was demolished. The Cavern in Calsbad, NM which is closed but still standing. The Lea in Lovington, NM which is still in operation. The Frontier in Hobbs, NM which is gone now, and the State Theater in Pecos, Texas. All of these signs were built utilizing porcelan enamel panels. The attraction panel section was made out of opal glass behind an Bevelite Adler frame to support clip on letter fonts. These signs are all around 60 years old and the ones that are still standing look as good as the day they were manufactured because of the porcelan enameling process. I am sure there were others, but these I remember having to
work on. Would love to have a photo of the Yucca.

Does anyone know when the Plains theater showed it’s last film, excluding the Spanish films? Thanks.

From 1957 a photo postcard view of Main Street along with the Plains Theatre in Roswell.

I was ticket-taker/usher/popcorn boy at four of Roswell, New Mexico’s five Main Street movie theatres in 1954-55. Well, the Yucca was just off of Main Street. The Yucca, the Plains, the Pecos, and the Chief were under one management. We ushers were shifted from one to the other when needed. I principally worked the Yucca. Its lobby was small but rather glorious, with Art Deco carpeting and indirect neon lighting. The most popular movie we had was “Magnificent Obsession,” the only movie we ran for a full week. Other than that, the most popular movies were the big westerns in color, which were treated almost as civic events. They mostly showed at the Plains. People who lined up after church to catch the first Sunday showings of these westerns on cold days were served coffee from a chuck-wagon, and local “old-west” survivors entertained them and pan-handled them. The Yucca and the Plains showed the “major” first-run movies. The Chief showed “B” movies of the classier kind (which mostly meant that they were in color, most often in some color process other than Technicolor) and now and then a “hold-over” movie, that is, a hit which moved from the Yucca or Plains for a second run. I believe the Chief’s admission price was cheaper. The Pecos mostly showed double bills for kids, that is, westerns and silly comedies which packed the brats in on weekends. It also showed the occasional “adult” movie, something with a sexy angle, a nudist “health” movie or something with a title like, “Child Bride.” An “Adults Only” sign meant only that kids who wanted to see these basically rather prudish “sex” movies had to pay adult fare. During the week and at night, the Pecos was largely considered to be, if I may use the language of the day, “for Mexicans,” who were not made to feel very welcome in the other theatres. This meant that we ushers weren’t expected to keep it very clean (Mexicans were considered to have lower standards, you see), and that we were to ignore drunkenness and sex in the back rows on the part of Latino customers (being poor migrant workers, they often had no other place to drink or date). Also, although there was no smoking section in the Pecos, we ignored back-row marijuana smoke. Only if violence broke out, which it not infrequently did, were we to intervene and/or call the cops. I don’t think blacks were allowed in the movie theatres at all, but I may be wrong. They may have just been made to feel so unwelcome on the Main Street that they just didn’t come. I know that we had no orders to turn them away. When the black-cast “Carmen Jones” showed at the Plains, a special two-or-three row section was roped off at the very rear of the auditorium to allow blacks to see it. The most interesting movie theatre in town was the El Capitan (named for a nearby mountain peak), across the street from the Pecos. Independently-owned by a very stern-looking matron, it was obviously an un-remodeled silent theatre, with speakers hanging on each side of the screen rather than behind it. Also, the owner had never bothered to spruce up the front or add a marquee. Movies were advertised with posters in standup frames such as one sees in photos of silent movie houses. This theatre survived by showing, for instance, the Disney movies, whose high rental the main chain refused to pay, and questionable movies like “The Outlaw” with Jane Russell and “Stromboli” with Ingrid Bergman, which the main chain wouldn’t show because Ingrid Bergman had gotten pregnant out of wedlock. Although ticket-selling was definitely considered “women’s work,” The El Capitan owner hired moonlighting young men from the local Air Force base as ticket-sellers, and had no ushers and sold no popcorn or candy. These deviations from the norm made the place vaguely “suspect” and “weird” in the 1950s, when ANY deviation from the norm freaked people out. But El Capitan also showed the few re-runs which the studios released back then, a blessing for young movie-buffs like me. None of my friends would attend it with me. However, it prospered. All five of these theatres, within a four-block radius, played two bills of movies a week (the Pecos, Chief and Capitan double-bills), at least twice a day. The Plains also had a “Midnight Preview” at 12 pm on Saturday night of the feature it was to open the next day, hopefully to keep the teenagers and Air Base boys off of the streets and out of trouble, although ti actually served as a good place for gay guys to meet and for “nice girls” who were supposedly at slumber parties to meet airmen and cowboys. All these performances prospered, believe me. I’m amazed when I realize how many people must have seen all or most of the sixteen feature films thus offered per week (and that’s before the local drive-ins opened!). The movies really were at least as pervasive a cultural force as church and schools!