The UA Town East was a direct competition attack to the established General Cinema Corporation’s (GCC) Town East cinema. The UA Town East had a successful run from 1982 to 1998 though eventually failing to make it through its entire 20-year lease.
In the 1980s, Mesquite, Texas was growing fast with two malls — The Big Town Mall (1959) and the superior Town East Mall (1971). GCC controlled this zone cinemas adjacent to each mall. But the traffic was at Town East and shopping centers sprouted all around that mall in the 1970s and 1980s. Opening theatreless in 1974 was one example: the Driftwood Shopping Center. United Artists circuit felt the time was right to challenge in the Town East zone and announced a theatre to open within the Driftwood the summer of 1982. Unlike the twin-screen GCC Town East I&II, the UA would have the big number six for its competitive UA Town East 6 six-plex.
From an architectural point of view, this UA was not a destination theater like the UA 150 well before it or the UA Plaza after it. John Panzeca, vice president of United Artists Realty in charge of the company’s Plaza project said of theaters such as Town East, UA’s Bowen, and UA’s Northstar, “For years we built theaters that were little, rectangular boxes….I used to point with pride to how inexpensively I could get those projects to come in.” But the non-descript theater delivered for the circuit going online at just the right time opening June 4, 1982 sharing opening days with the also architecturally-benign AMC Irving 6 and GCC Redbird Mall V-X. The UA Town East’s opening films were “Star Trek II,” “Bambi, “Hanky Panky” on two screens and “On Golden Pond.” The UA Town East would compete with GCC’s Town East for big summer clearances getting in addition to “Star Trek II”, “Blade Runner,” and “Firefox,” the biggest prize of that summer.
The UA Town East 6 would be known as the multiplex built by “E.T.” as the 1982 smash hit almost paid for the theater single-handedly playing for 42 weeks. Concession sales were brisk. That same rookie year, “Officer and a Gentlemen” was another huge hit for the UA 6-plex. The theater’s salad days happened right out of the batter’s box and over the next two years. But choppier waters were just ahead.
The GCC Town East figured out how to divide its twin-screener into a five screener re-opening on December 17, 1982. A poor effort that UA would counter delivering a curved screen experience with a 70mm THX house in 1984 to present the megahit ”Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” A blow to GCC which had boasted superior presentation. As the Towne Crossing Center was being built opening across the highway from the Town East theaters soon delivering the AMC Towne Crossing Center 8, GCC closed the Town East 5 again to deliver a much better thought-out design for that cinema launching December 7, 1984 with one “A” screen to compete with the UA Town East’s 70mm THX house. And like a game of Risk, GCC decided to blunt the AMC Towne Crossing with six more screens adjacent to the newly-built flop-to-be Outlet Mall at Town East opening May 22, 1985. When the Towne Crossing 8 opened that same year, there were four multiplexes in the same vicinity – two “Town East 6’s”, one “Town East 5” and AMC’s 8-screener. Confusing but effective as Mesquite suddenly became the area’s third-most populous movie destination behind only the Central Zone and Prestonwood in which the three circuits would also battle it out.
The Mesquite battle was being won by GCC with its 11-screen to 8 for AMC to 6 for UA advantage. AMC’s Towne Crossing would descent to dollar house status but traffic would decrease throughout the 1990s to all four aging multiplexes. The game would end with some arrows and then the big bomb. A Cinemark 15-screener in Garland just to the North opened in 1992. UA would build a beautiful 9/10 screen destination theater near there opening in 1996. And AMC put all its Risk armies into a 30-screen megaplex just two exits to the south of the Town East opening in 1998. That megaplex spelled the end for all of the Town East multiplexes. Starplex Cinemas would add a 10-screen discount house in Mesquite and a 12-screen theater in Forney. A megaplex also came to Rockwall. And Terrell got a multiplex. But it was the AMC Mesquite 30 that doomed the circuit’s own Towne Crossing 8. Then the GCC Town East 6 went down as classes started up in August 1998. Then the UA Town East 6 on Halloween of 1998. Then the Town East 5 just a week prior to Christmas of 1998. Oddly enough, the Big Town Cinema would hang on the longest closing a month later as a Cinemark discount house.
The UA Town East 6 could have some solace as its property closure had company as all over the city in the Fall of 1998 multiplexes were closing as megaplex mania had taken over. UA’s Prestonwood Creek and South 8 and GCC’s Prestonwood Town Center, Collin Creek, Carrollton, Northpark III&IV, Redbird I-IV, Irving IV-VII, Northpark I&II all closed in a tight time frame that fall. Also closing were the theaters which opened on the same day as the UA Town East, the Redbird V-X and AMC Irving 6. The UA Town East 6 building would be repurposed for retail that included a grocery store that had the features of the theater and then super-gutted for an Aldi store that was still there in the mid-2010s. But the theater’s run with E.T. and its 70mm presentations including “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” will always be a fond memory for Mesquite moviegoers.
North Hills Mall was designed by RTKL Architects and opened September 12, 1979 to challenge the nearby Northeast mall that had opened eight years earlier. In 1984, General Cinema – which had a 20-year old theater just up the road at the aging Richland Plaza, announced a replacement for that property. It would launch a seven screen theater inside of North Hills Mall and one up the United Artists Northeast 6 which had opened in the Northeast Mall seven years earlier. Opening May 22, 1985, the theater added a missing dimension from the North Hills shopping complex. The 25,000 square foot theater had an easy access entrance and exit for late night Sunday shows when the rest of the mall was closed.
The North Hills VII allowed town meetings, had summer film camps for the kids, and tried to be a part of the North Richland Hills community. Early in 1990, a Cinemark Movies 8 moved in virtually across the street. But the newer North Hills Mall seemed to have the older one on the run especially in 1997 as the United Artists departed the aging Northeast Mall . But the Northeast folks used some trickery and a great business model to drastically revamp that property that year and wrested away some key tenants from North Hills.
At that same time, nationally, the General Cinema multiplex model was getting destroyed by the megaplex builders including Cinemark and AMC. Despite the fact that nobody was building a megaplex in the Mid-Cities, the North Hills Mall was heading downhill quickly and General Cinema wanted to get off of the sinking ship. GCC was able to exercise a performance clause to escape its lease from the North Hills property as the foot traffic and occupancy rate was below promised levels. The theater pulled out September 17, 1998 and the gates closed down over the property leaving both malls theater-less. This turned out to be a great move as North Hills quickly found itself in greyfield status and with ownership changes that couldn’t stem the tide.
Potentially great news for the North Hills occurred when new owners took over and announced that Cinemark would opens an 18-screen theater for North Hills Mall to open in 2001 with an ice skating rink. After delays – and another mall ownership change — it became a 16-screen concept to open in 2003/4. That also didn’t materialize. And in October of 2004, the mall shut down with the General Cinema property having not aged an iota from the time it had been closed in 1998. A month later, it was Northeast mall that got its modern megaplex with the opening of the Rave Northeast Mall 18.
The final owner of the North Hills Mall in 2005 staged a pre-demolition sale and vultures picked apart the entire mall decimating the former GCC North Hills VII theater along with every other store. The mall owner would walk away from the property without demolishing it. The city of North Richland Hills had no choice but to call the property what it was – a safety hazard with exposed everything inside following the unusual pre-demo sale – and finally ordered the mall and cinema’s demolition in early 2007.
Ridgmar Mall opened April 7, 1976. Its movie theater was in the adjacent Ridgmar Town Square built in 1986 and was opened by General Cinema on New Year’s Day 1987. Like many malls after its 20th anniversary, retailers bolted after their 20 year leases were up and the mall was leaning toward greyfield status, a term akin to a dead mall. So a major revamp was undertaken in 1997 to bring in new retailers and concepts. Among them was to be AMC Ridgmar which announced in 1998 that it planned to build a 20-screen megaplex theater. That 4,000-seat megaplex would have had stadium seating and a lobby overlooking an expanded food court under a vaulted glass skylight and was to be the centerpiece of the next 20-years of the mall. The $70 million stunning redevelopment took place without AMC as the mall had a Grand Reopening on July 21, 2000.
On October 5, 2000, all of the remaining General Cinema Tarrant County theaters were closed including the Ridgmar Town Square along with the Arlington Park Square and Bedford’s Central Park. AMC still planned to open a downsized 16-screen theater in the Fall of 2002 at Ridgmar. In the interim, the external movie theater was reopened by the Great Texas Movie Co. circuit rebranding the theater as the Ridgmar Movie Tavern. And Ridgmar finally got its theater but in the form of a Rave Theater.
The Rave Motion Pictures Ridgmar 13 opened at 12:01 a.m. December 17, 2003 with three sold out showings of “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” The $15 million, 62,000 square foot theater would be the first megaplex in western Fort Worth with stadium seating, digital sound, wall-to-wall screens and 4 feet of room between rows. At opening, the auditoriums were sized from 120 seats to 420 seats each. The Design International architected theater opened as DFW’s second Rave theater behind only its first theater, the Hickory Creek. The theater’s digital capabilities allowed for expanded Real-D 3D showings, live Metropolitan Opera simulcasts and a variety of Fathom concert events.
The Cinemark chain acquired all of Rave’s properties in 2013 and divested the flagship Rave in Hickory Creek which was forced to rebrand under Carmike operation. But the North East and Ridgmar Mall properties would continue under the Cinemark-owned Rave nameplate. It would add the Cinemark-branded Xtreme “Big Screen Experience”. Under new mall owner GK Development, the mall was in the throes of a mild descent that would be hastened by a new shopping mall opening in 2017 to the south which would take away the anchor Nieman Marcus so it was unclear how bright a future the popular theater would have heading into the 2020s.
The North East Mall by Simon Properties was built theater-less opening in 1971. When the competing North Hills Mall was announced just a mile away to open in 1979, expansion in 1977/8 brought two new anchors and the mall’s first theater with the United Artists Northeast 6. The UA theater fulfilled its 20-year lease and moved on in 1997. The loss of UA actually propelled the mall into another expansion which would bring Nordstrom’s and Saks Fifth Avenue into the mall and encourage Foley’s to vacate North Hills for Northeast. In 1998, General Cinemas closed its North Hills interior cinema leaving an opportunity for a new-build megaplex.
Cinemark was first to the table announcing an 18-screen theater for North Hills Mall to open in 2001 and after delays it became a 16-screen concept to open in 2003/4 – part of an elaborate plan to resuscitate the moribund North Hills property that never took place. When Montgomery Ward’s chain was liquidated in 2001, an opportunity arose at North East Mall. A failed May Co. plan to build a Lord & Taylor in the Ward’s store would finally lead to a new theater for the area. Rave Motion Pictures of Dallas would open its third DFW facility as part of a 100,000 addition that included three restaurants.
The Design International architected theater opened November 10, 2004 just as the entire North East Mall had finally closed. The Rave Northeast Mall 18 theater’s screens were elaborately placed in three levels allowing for an eye-popping lobby and concession area. Auditorium sizes ranged at opening from 114 to 456 seats, seating with four feet of legroom between rows and 18-inch risers in stadium seating rows. The theater featured digital projection and 3D, including the first ever NCAA men’s final basketball telecast in 3D as well as live opera simulcasts and related Fathom live events. Rave also launched its digital signage network pioneering it at the Rave North East in 2011. Its 66 locations would take advantage of the signage as Rave had climbed to the fifth position in the movie exhibition U.S. by the end of 2012. The design flair of the North East fit the high tech circuit’s business model perfectly and gave the mid-cities its first modern-era theater.
The Cinemark chain acquired all of Rave’s properties in 2013 and divested the flagship Rave in Hickory Creek which was forced to rebrand under Carmike operation. But the North East and Ridgmar Mall properties would continue under the Cinemark-owned Rave nameplate. It would add the Cinemark-branded Xtreme “Big Screen Experience” as well as Indian Bollywood offerings. With the closest competition being a 25-year old sub-run discount house operated by Cinemark a mile away, the Rave North East 18 was well-positioned in the mid-2010s for a bright future.
The Towne Crossing Center was a $200 million project to the northwest of the uber-successful Town East Mall in Mesquite. The Town East Mall had launched in 1971 and by the early 1980s had decimated the nearby Big Town Mall to the point that strip shopping centers were being built all around Town East to take advantage of the traffic. People were driving from Rockwall, east Dallas, Garland, Rowlett, Forney and even Terrell to shop and watch movies. General Cinema Corporation (GCC) had launched in Mesquite with its Big Town Cinema in February of 1964. Ten years later it opened at Town East Mall with a twin screener. The other circuits wanted in on the action. The UA Town East 6 was the first competition for GCC launching in June of 1982 and found GCC hastily changing its twin-screen Town East to a five-screen operation.
But AMC’s announcement of an 8-screen theater just across the highway to open in 1985 unnerved GCC. AMC and UA had already undermined GCC in the second-most commercial zone in Dallas by building superior theaters to its GCC Prestonwood Village IV with AMC’s Prestonwood 5 and UA’s Prestonwood Creek 5. Getting less than two years from its five-screen conversion, GCC temporarily closed the Town East V and gutted it to make an improved theater. It also built another six-screen theater to be launched just yards away from its original location. It would not submit to AMC’s announcement.
The AMC Towne Crossing 8 finally opened November 1, 1985. Because clearances were tight, AMC decided to reach an underserved audience. It launched a Bijou screen, a specialty screen showing art films and documentaries. It also opted for midnight shows which proved to be an early hit. Much as in Prestonwood, confusion for consumers was palpable as the four Mesquite theaters were close in both name and proximity.
And eventually General Cinema had weathered the storm as the AMC Towne Crossing would be relegated to sub-run discount status. Gone were midnight screenings and Bijou / Gourmet theater offerings. AMC had other ideas. It would drop the bomb on what had become DFW’s third-most popular commercial theatrical zone with Mesquite only behind the Central Zone and Prestonwood.
AMC delivered the knockout blow to the zone with its 30-screen megaplex, the AMC Mesquite 30, announced in September of 1996 and approved by the Mesquite City Council in December of that year. When it opened in March of 1998 just two exits from the Town East zone, that would end the AMC Towne Crossing. With the Starplex Cinemas adding a 10-screen discount house in Mesquite and a 12-screen theater in Forney and a Cinemark megaplex in Rockwall along with a Terrell multiplex, people weren’t driving to the dated Town East theaters any longer. General Cinema closed its Town East VI as classes went back into session in 1998 and almost as suddenly the Town East V left prior to Christmas of 1998. Within six months, the third busiest zone in DFW went from four theaters to zero.
The AMC Towne Crossing 8 would get one more chance to remain a cinema treasure. Star Cinemas had re-opened the GCC Town East V in December of 2001 but the theater struggled with code enforcement related to restrooms closing at the end of June of 2002. That theatre operation scooted across the highway renaming the AMC Towne Crossing and operating very quietly as the Lone Star Cinema until 2003 and drawing very few customers. Upon closing, the store would be repurposed for retail ventures including a waterbed store. Although the Towne Crossing is largely forgotten, its footprint into the Town East zone and eventual gravitation to the nearby Mesquite 30 changed Mesquite movie-going forever.
General Cinema Corporation (GCC) had a good run in Mesquite, TX. It had opened its Big Town Cinema in February of 1964. Ten years later, it was operating just outside of Mesquite’s second mall and the area’s first twin-level mall, Homart’s Town East Mall. Opening at Town East Mall Cinema I & II on June 28, 1974 were its grand opening features of The Parallax View and The Incredible Journey with Old Yeller. GCC would downgrade its Big Town theater to discount status. For Homart and GCC, being paired would be nothing new being just outside of its first mall, the Seminary South in Fort Worth, outside of the Six Flags Mall in Arlington, and opening inside of Homart’s Valley View in 1975 and in the 1980s outside of Homart’s Parks at Arlington mall. But unlike those locations – and ten years after its launch at Town East – competition would get cut-throat.
Strip shopping centers began surrounding the uber–popular Town East Mall which began to decimate nearby Big Town Mall’s customer base. Traffic was packed around the Town East area and retail complexes popped up overnight. United Artists would open its own Town East 6 on June 4, 1982 in the nearby Driftwood Shopping Center. The UA would compete with GCC for big summer clearances getting “Star Trek II”, “E.T.” and “Blade Runner” at the outset. Disheartening, true, but the GCC Town East would rabbit-punch back closing briefly to re-open on December 17, 1982. It transitioned from a two-screen to a five-screen operation to have more room for clearances. However, the hastily-created design left much to be desired and, worse yet, the Towne Crossing Center was being built opening across the highway from Town East. It would be delivering the AMC Towne Crossing Center 8.
GCC wouldn’t give up. In 1984, the Town East was closed and totally gutted becoming a prototype for many almost identical theaters which General Cinema would create or retrofit. Its main auditorium was arguably in the circuit’s top five screens in presentation short of General Cinema Northpark I. The five-screen prototype theater would launch December 7, 1984 and just yards away it was constructing another six-screen theater launching May 22, 1985. That theater actually launched three months ahead of the AMC eight-screen Town Crossing. Much as in Prestonwood, confusion for consumers was palpable as the theaters were close in both name and proximity. That said, business was brisk with business from Rockwall, east Dallas, Garland, Rowlett, Forney and even Terrell.
What changed in Mesquite? Garland would get two megaplexes to the North but AMC delivered the knockout blow with its 30-screen megaplex AMC Mesquite just two exits to the south in 1998. That would end the AMC Towne Crossing. Starplex Cinemas would add a 10-screen discount house in Mesquite and a 12-screen theater in Forney. Megaplexes also came to Rockwall and Terrell got a multiplex. The Town East salad days for movie exhibition were going quickly. General Cinema closed its Town East Six as classes went back into session in 1998 and almost as suddenly the Town East V left prior to Christmas of 1998. Somehow, the Big Town Cinema out-survived both of GCC’s Town East properties closing as a Cinemark discount cinema in January of 1999. But who could have foreseen the third busiest zone in DFW going from four theaters to zero so quickly?
Star Cinemas would change that re-opening the GCC Town East V in December of 2001 with Kate & Leopold and Blackhawk Down among the features. But the theater struggled with code enforcement related to restrooms closing at the end of June of 2002. That theatre operation would hop across the highway to the former AMC Towne Crossing operating quietly as the Lone Star Cinema until 2003. For the GCC Town East, it would just sit vacant year after year hoping to get demolished. Its attraction board along 635 is still in use though now featuring the name of Town East anchor stores.
The General Cinema Central Park 8 in Bedford was announced in December of 1983 as part of the 120-acre project architected by RTKL Associates launching in 1985. The Central Park was part of General Cinema’s expansion during the multiplex era to 71 DFW screens including the sequel to the Town East Cinema, the Arlington Park Square 8, the Collin Creek Mall 6, and two Fort Worth multiplexes with the Ridgmar and White Settlement.
The Central Park 8 seemed to be cruising toward completing its 20-year lease sitting between General Cinema’s North Hills cinema and the chain’s Irving Mall which had expanded to 14 screens in 1998. Closer competition came from the UA Bedford 10. But the chain and its multiplex business model was being decimated by more aggressive megaplex developers.
On October 5th, 2000, General Cinema shut theaters all over the country taking down all of Tarrant Country’s remaining locations including the Arlington Park Square, Fort Worth’s Ridgmar Square, and Bedford’s Central Park. In 2001, Entertainment Filmworks had a business plan to convert dead General Cinema locations into food/entertainment theaters. The company did a conversion while operating the EFW Cinema Central Park 8 opening and then closing in about a year’s time after a reported $400,000 refurbishing.
After more than a year of vacancy, Great Texas Movie Co. of Granbury became the location’s third operator in November of 2003. Great Texas had previously re-opened the former General Cinema Ridgmar as Ridmar Movie Tavern — and the former AMC Green Oaks as Movie Tavern Green Oaks. The circuit put in around $1 million to provide an improved lobby and spacious seating along with beer, wine and kitchen with expanded menu options reopening as Movie Tavern at Central Park. The chain would expand to 20 locations by the mid-2010s which included the Central Park location which had already surpassed 30 years of service as a multiplex.
Located in the former Sakowitz Village was the AMC Village on the Parkway architected by Dallas' firm Good Fulton & Farrell Architects (also known as GFF Architects). Though it was AMC’s 11th location in DFW, it had the distinction of being an original luxury concept theater coined as “The Marketplace” offering a different checkout process for concessions among its amenities. The theater contained a MacGuffins Bar & Lounge as well as the area’s first Prime theater with reverberating recliners. Moreover, the AMC VOTP represented was a throw-back to the days when Prestonwood was the second most popular zone for moviegoing in the Dallas-area back in the 1980s and into the 1990s and a throw-down when AMC battled for clearances against rivals for the exclusive right to show the best films.
True, Prestonwood Mall was long gone and Sakowitz was a distant memory when AMC got involved with the 30-acre, $40 million Village on the Parkway shopping center project. And though General Cinema and United Artists were long removed from the zone, a new kid on the block raised questions about the AMC location. The $20-million Look Cinema had opened in March 2013 in the former UA Prestonwood then Studio Movie Grill location less than a mile from Village on the Parkway. At that time, AMC was outside the territory about three miles away at the ailing Valley View Mall operating its low-cost, first-run 16-screener. No battles or clearance issues with the Look.
But AMC decided to hedge its bets by announcing its AMC Village on the Parkway, a 12-screen then reduced to 9-screen luxury cinema just yards away from the former General Cinema Prestonwood / Montfort theater. To Look, it seemed to be a way of siphoning product away from its screens. And it did almost from the outset, including the 2014 installment of the Hunger Games franchise that was booked at AMC and not Look. More bad news for the Look was when box office sensation American Sniper not only didn’t go to the Look but reaped additional revenue by playing in the more expensive Prime screen at the VOTP. It was the Dallas' area’s second such recent feud when Alamo Drafthouse came to Dallas and Studio Movie Grill moved in just an exit away to a former Loews theater. As of the mid-2010s, it was unclear which of the two high-end luxury theaters would come out on top or if a floated legal battle would take shape between the indy and corporate giant.
The John R. Thompson architected Belaire Theater project was just the second new build Interstate Theatre for the Dallas-Fort Worth area since the 1949 construction of Dallas’ Forest Theatre. The proposed 1,000 seat theater was arranged continental style with long rows instead of multiple aisles. The rows would become wider by the time it was built ending up with 860 total seats all on the main floor. The theater was housed in the Hurst-Belaire Shopping Center which, itself, opened theater-less on June 2, 1963 in Hurst, Texas by George P. Macatee III and Robert S. Folsom. The $350,000 theater had 70mm projection with 6-channel stereo sound and parking for mre than 700 cars. It was part of Interstate Theaters $4 million expansion with nine theaters including the Westwood in Richardson, South Fort Worth’s Wedgewood, the Westwood in Abilene, and Pasadena’s Parkview Theater.
The theater opened April 8, 1966 with “That Darn Cat” a day after an invitation-only screening of “The Trouble with Angels” the night before. It was quadplexed into four auditoriums and became a sub-run dollar house. The theater appears to have had a 20-year lease honored followed by, perhaps, a 15-year lease where it closed as a decrepit, seedy independent dollar house in a shopping center that had neither been updated nor had many retailers remaining when the theater closed in December of 2001. When the doors locked for the last time, few seemed to take notice. However, at least one group would come calling.
Empty for four years and with a very uncertain future, the Artisan Center operating in the faded North Hills Mall was looking for a new home. In 2005, the live theater group took over the Belaire knocking down the wall between screens three and four while using houses one and two for rehearsals and workshops. In 2013, the Artisan signed a five-year extension which would take the theater past its 50th anniversary. The theater was the Hurst-Belaire shopping center’s beacon of light salvaging the theater and proved that this location could provide decades of entertainment for the area.
The AMC Northwood Hills 4 was the second DFW AMC theater opening in 1970 with a 10-year lease at Coit and Spring Valley Road serving as a first-run theater and a renewed second 10-year lease in which the theater was a second-run dollar house. The theater was excised from the shopping center after shuttering at the start of 1990 and would be replaced by a new retail store.
In 1950, Richardson had doubled its growth post-War but to just 1,300 residents. The suburb just to the north of Dallas grew throughout the 1960s hitting 50,000 residents by year’s end. Interstate Circuit had predicted this trend building its single screen Westwood at Spring Valley and Coit Road opening in 1966. Downtown’s Ritz Theater would go out of business shortly thereafter and Interstate was sitting pretty. But upstart to the DFW area, AMC theaters had other exhibition ideas. Opening its hugely successful Northtown 6 about eight miles away in 1969, the AMC theater showed six first-run films while the suburban Westwood could show just one.
The theater chain decided to build three additional multiplexes in Dallas. The Northwood Hills neighborhood of Dallas would get one theater. N-H was created in the late 1950s bounded by Belt Line Rd. on the north, Coit Rd. on the east, Alpha Rd. on the south and White Rock Creek on the west. The Northwood Hills 4 would open in the backyard of the Westwood signing a lease at Coit and Spring Valley in January of 1970 less than a mile away from the Interstate operation.
Interstate countered by hastily creating a second auditorium called the Promenade reflecting the new name of the shopping center that housed the theater and the later name of that operation. Meanwhile, AMC had its four-screener NH-4 ready to go July 1, 1970 with its first auditorium of 350 seats opening with “Paint Your Wagon,” its second screen of 250 seats with “Which Way to the Front?” the third screen and fourth screen with 225 seats with “The Reivers” and “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.” For AMC, it was game on as the company expanded in the next calendar year to the Forum 303 Mall 6 in Grand Prairie, the Preston Center 2 in Dallas, and two disastrous entries into Oak Cliff with the short-lived Golden Triangle 4 and the open-then-closed Western Park Village Center 4.
The cinematic money was heading to the west about four miles away as in May of 1980 the AMC Prestonwood launched near the General Cinema Prestonwood and near the forthcoming UA Prestonwood that same year. With the Prestonwood area becoming Dallas' second most lucrative theatrical zone, in July of 1980, a pricing policy change downgraded the Northwood Hills 4 to a dollar house. The same occurred at the rival Promenade Twin. For the next ten years, the property would age quickly showing second-run fare as AMC grinded out what it could from the aging property. The theater closed as its 20 years of lease cycles concluded on January 1, 1990.
The final films were “Dead Poets’ Society,” “Parenthood,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” “Immediate Family,” and “Let It Ride.” Interstate now under Plitt operation decided to up the ante for the dollar house fare and turned its Westwood into a six-screen facility in 1984 that lasted for its final ten-year stretch. AMC’s plan proved to be the winner, however, vanquishing the Interstate/Plitt Circuit as Plitt just wasn’t aggressive in the multiplex era. Well played AMC and the Northwood Hills 4 played a role in moving Dallas to the multiplex era.
The fast-growing AMC Theater chain wanted to follow up its game- changing AMC Northtown 6 and its follow-up AMC Northwood Hills 4 on the border of Richardson with another 42 screens with 10,000 seats in Dallas during the 1971 calendar year. On the periphery of Dallas’ Preston Hollow neighborhood, the Preston Center 2 Theatres was built by contractor Koonce & Davis and in support of AMC’s architects was Albert R. Smith, a Dallas architect. The side-by-side theaters each had their own attraction sign and entrance at the Preston Center East Shopping Center but shared every other theater amenity. The 10,200 square foot theater had two 450 seat houses for a capacity of 900 patrons (technically 446x2 892 total). Opening on Nov. 10, 1971, the theater had a first-run film in “Joe Hill” and a return presentation of “Carnal Knowledge” which had played at the General Cinema NorthPark I & II. The opening was sandwiched between AMC’s grand opening of the AMC Golden Triangle 4 in Oak Cliff in July and the Nov. 17th opening of the ill-fated AMC Western Park 4.
The theater featured first-run fare and great midnight shows. While the theater had many up days, the challenges for the twin screener were that it was land-locked, had parking challenges at key points in the day, and with only two screens was AMC’s only area theater with fewer than four screens. By 1980, AMC demoted the theater to sub-run $1 movies for all shows, a mis-match for the Preston Hollow neighborhood. Meanwhile, a sleepy twin-screen theater in Farmers Branch, TX rebranded itself from dollar house to art theater. Brought in to the Showcase was Bob Berney who had managed AMC’s Greenway 3 which, itself, had transitioned from mainstream to successful art film policy. Suddenly, AMC had a notion! The Preston theater was rebranded as the Park Cities Theatres 2 and closed after a handful of dollar screenings to renovate the theater to show art films full-time. AMC hoped that the Greenway’s success in Houston would translate within Dallas.
Starting in Nov. 17, 1980, the Park Cities 2 showed “Practice Makes Perfect,” a French film, and “Rude Boy,” a British film. The concessions now included coffee and imported candy along with much classier carpeting. For 14 months, the Park Cities 2 tried every language of film imaginable but the losses mounted to a six figure loss. Dallas proved to be a much worse draw for art films than Houston in the early 1980s. At the end of the 10-year lease cycle and a short-term re-up, the writing was on the wall and AMC would pull up anchor. On the Park Cities 2 marquee the last night of its operation, the message read on the left attraction board for screen one, “Dallas One,” and on the right attraction board for screen two, “Art Zero.” In a classy move, the theater manager addressed the audiences for the last showings of the Park Cities 2 in January of 1982 telling audiences to go to the Inwood Theater, which would switch to an all-art film policy. Meanwhile, the Showcase Cinema in Farmers Branch would move to full-time X and XXX films. And the Park Cities 2 closed up shop and would be repurposed for other retail purposes. AMC would get back to the general area moving to the AMC Highland Park Village in the Park Cities five years later.
The Perkowitz + Ruth architected AMC Parks 18 megaplex was nothing short of a bombshell in South Arlington opening November 6, 2002. The 18-plex occupied 72,800 square feet with 3,360 seats—auditoriums ranging in size from 100 to 350 seats. Its announcement in 1999 as a 4,000 seat 24-screen multiplex had employees at aging Arlington multiplexes updating their resumes as the theater’s footprint would impact the AMC Green Oaks, General Cinema Arlington Square 8, UA Bowen. AMC Festival (former Forum), Loews Lincoln Square, and Loews Cinemas 20 & 287, all of which would close due in part to the Parks. The megaplex was in and multiplex was under pressure.
Sears’ Homart Development had the 112-acre site for the Arlington Park Mall since the 1970s but didn’t announce its anchors or plans until January of 1983 with a 1986 targeted opening date as the Arlington Park Mall. The initial theater was external to the mall as General Cinema theater opened December 12, 1986 with its Arlington Park Square 8 much as was the case with Homart’s Seminary Square and Town East malls which featured neighboring external General Cinema properties. But unlike those projects, the Arlington Park Mall was stalled, slowed by inability to get tenants signed on quickly and wasn’t even approved by the Arlington City Council until 1987 and finally opened in 1988.
In 1995, Homart was purchased by General Growth Properties and that same year the AMC Grand in Dallas revolutionized film going for the area. General Growth announced an AMC property inside its new Stonebriar Mall in Frisco, TX in 1998 and had already plotted how to renovate its aging Parks property even prior. In talks for several years with AMC regarding the Parks the announcement came in 1999 and the AMC Parks opened in 2002. There was no questioning the impact of the project to south Arlington. General Cinema would bail out of its neighboring Arlington Park Square 8 and all other Tarrant County locations on October 5th, 2000 even prior to the AMC Parks facelift finishing, leaving the mall area theaterless until 2002.
With aged malls dying all over the DFW area, the AMC Parks megaplex project was the heart of a big-risk 1.6 million-square-foot addition. An expanded food court, an ice skating rink, the replacement of the ghost town Sears-owned Great Indoors anchor, Arlington police stations, carousel and – possibly most important, two new adjacent parking deck structures remade the mall. The $70 million renovation plan with tax rebate incentives paid out big.
The AMC Parks 18’s overall theme was called Film City and upped AMC’s more benign Stonebriar 24 in Frisco with more design flair. Hallway walls had murals of movie stars and the terrazzo floor design had famous movie quotes, “Here’s lookin' at you, kid!” and “We’re not in Kansas anymore” among them. A similar design would be used at Dallas’ Valley View 16 and elsewhere across the country. Ample legroom, with each row 18 inches higher than the one in front along with AMC’s loveseats were there. The theater went all in for Sony Dynamic Digital Sound is in all auditoriums. The theater had a single large concession stand opting for vending machines near each auditorium rather than the multiple concession areas tried in other area AMC multiplexes.
Its November 6, 2002 opening would spell the end for the area’s multiplexes associated with the major chains. The Loews properties would be bulldozed. The General Cinema property became home to the Arlington school district. The former AMC Green Oaks and Festival became Movie Tavern and dollar house locations and the UA Bowen – which, itself, was ticketed for a megaplex makeover that never happened – became a storage facility. While competition came in the form of a nearby Studio Movie Grill in January of 2007, the AMC Parks continued to thrive into the 2010s.
In the realm of Dallas trivia, if someone were to ask which Dallas movie theater originally constructed as a movie theater was the first one able to survive 100 years, you’ve found your answer. The Crystal Theater building actually survived a century in demolition-happy Dallas, Texas. In the store-show era of movie exhibition, the Crystal was like the Candy, Princess, Dalton and many others housed in converted retail spaces. Dallas movie pioneer and capitalist W.D. Nevills had the most downtown theaters but George Jorgenson had one of the largest with the converted retail space known as the Crystal Theatre at 1608 Elm Street. Jorgenson had seven store shows in Galveston but knew bigger coin could be had in downtown Dallas.
Nevills decided the time was right to move past the “store-show” concept and project to more people simultaneously. He launched the Washington Theatre at 1615 Elm St. as the first movie palace built for photoplays in Dallas seating 600 people. It opened Thanksgiving Day 1912 and moviegoers lined up there. For Jorgenson peering across the street and seeing this, it must not have sat well. Meanwhile, a block away work was almost completed on an even more oppulent movie palace, I.A. Walker’s awesome Queen Theatre. For Jorgenson to survive, there were few options.
He was able to secure a bit more land – 25 feet to the east adjoining 1608 Elm and had his store-show theater razed. Using Queen architect Walker and $100,000, the new Crystal would one-up the Washington – both of which launched with short-term leases. Jorgenson and Walker also carved out space for retail and office space above the theater just to secure additional sources of revenue. On September 25, 1913, an audience filling each of the theater’s 600 seats saw the grand opening feature of “A Sister to Carmen.” Audiences were impressed with Walker’s Oriental design starting with its lobby with a fresco of a Japanese love story and oversized Japanese lantern at its center. As the theatergoer’s path continued complete with Japanese art, they would notice the Oriental light fixtures, elevated boxes, and main auditorium – a joss house temple creation. Gaudy but nice. At the $10,000 Wurlitzer pipe organ the first night was Carmenza Vendeless of Chicago who said that while there were bigger houses in Chicago, nothing could compare to Walker’s Queen and Crystal in downtown Dallas.
The Crystal became known as one Dallas’ “Big Four,” along with the Washington, Queen, and Hippodrome. The competition was pretty fierce. Jorgenson managed to wrestle the Universal Film Studio contract away from the Queen in the fall of 1913. The Queen siezed the General Film Company contract (Edison, Mélies, Biograph, Lubin, Pathé, et al) away from the smaller Washington. And the Hippodrome retained Mutual Films.
P.G. Cameron would take on the profitable Crystal for Southern Enterprises. But times were changing rapidly in downtown Dallas. The Big Four were under big pressure in the early 1920s with the creation of the Palace, the Majestic and others. Cameron would move on to greener pasture locations and W.G. Underwood would become the third operator of the Crystal. Across the street, the Washington was done after its 15-year lease cycle (a 5-year and 10-year) was up in 1927 and would be demolished not long after. Underwood would finish out the theater’s 15-year lease (one 10-year and one 5-year) and move to the Pantages renaming it the Ritz. The Crystal would be spared as a building, however, because of its multi-use construction and existing clients including Kushner Brothers Men’s Store. Walker’s Oriental designs were removed and theater gutted to create additional retail space. The Crystal became home to many clients with the lobby becoming a long-running Bakers Shoe store and, in the 2010s, the Donut Palace.
So while the Crystal didn’t go out as a movie palace after over 100 years in downtown Dallas, at least it was a palace for donuts. Sadly, the building was largely overlooked for its significance as the last remaining homes of Dallas' “Big Four” in early silent film exhibition.
The Golden Triangle is the area extending from Denton at the north point to the south with Dallas on the eastern point and Fort Worth on the western point. Developers launched the Golden Triangle Shopping Center in 1964 at the confluence of U.S. 67, S. Polk Street and W. Pentagon Parkway forming a triangular plot of land in south Dallas' Oak Cliff. The fast-growing AMC Theater chain wanted to follow up its uber successful AMC Northtown 6 and its follow-up AMC Northwood Hills on the border of Richardson with another 42 screens with 10,000 seats in the 1971 calendar year. Oak Cliff would receive two theaters during this growth spurt.
Both theaters would be almost identical to the Northwood Hills 4 and the Triangle 4 would be the first of the two Oak Cliff properties to launch. Opening July 1, 1971 with “Cold Turkey,” “Patton,” “The Owl and the Pussycat,” and “Song of Norway,” the theater was underway. Four months later and just 4.5 miles away, the theater’s cousin – the Western Park 4 launched, as well. But the population shifts were rapid and the Western Park 4 closed just seven months into what was a disastrous situation.
The Triangle 4 was AMC’s last theater standing in Oak Cliff. It wouldn’t last long, either. The theater failed miserably closing in February of 1974. The theater would get one last shot at finding its audience when the operators of the Canyon Creek took on the theater in the summer of 1976 running it as a sub-run dollar house. The neighborhood didn’t show up and the theater was a quick casualty. Both the Western Park 4 and the Triangle 4 would have two different operators and both failed to gain an audience. Their total running time was four years combined. AMC wouldn’t repeat the mistake by building any more theaters in Oak Cliff. The only theaters which would be added would be General Cinemas adding two multiplexes near Red Bird Mall and United Artists building an eight-screen ‘plex in the vacinity of Red Bird Mall.
As of the mid-2010s, both former AMC theaters were still standing. Both were converted into retail spaces. Both were in business as of this writing. The Western Park 4 was a Family Dollar franchise retail store. And the Triangle 4 was also a Family Dollar franchise retail store. An odd coincidence for two of the worst performing new-build theaters in the history of Dallas.
Western Park is a neighborhood in the Southwest-Redbird area of Oak Cliff established in the early 1960s. The fast-growing AMC Circuit had dropped a bombshell on Dallas called the Northtown 6 that was changing the very nature of film exhibition in the Dallas area as the decade of the 1960s concluded. Following up that theater with its AMC Northwood Hills on the border of fast-growing Richardson, AMC looked to keep the momentum going in the early 1970s. In a curious decision, the chain targeted Oak Cliff for two new nearly-identical four-screen multiplexes announced in January 1971 that would have the same design as the Northwood Hills 4. The goal in Dallas was to operate an additional 42 automated screens with 10,000 seats in 1971, alone.
The AMC Western Park launched at the corner of Illinois Ave. and Cockrell Hill in the Western Park Village shopping center on 17 November 1971. It showed “Murphy’s War,” “The Tender Warrior,” “The Organization,” and “McCabe and Mrs. Miller.” Population shifts were already underway in the ten-year old neighborhood. CEO Stanley Durwood noted the challenging economic climate that the theater faced. He suggested that twilite shows priced under $1 would be what the area needed and that the theater would be run with the efficiency of a military division. But unlike some military operations, Durwood and AMC almost immediately realized that they had hit a buzz saw by opening in Oak Cliff. And unlike some military operations, Durwood and AMC wouldn’t wait long before taking steps to bug out.
Just completing its seventh month in its new build Western Park 4, AMC hastily closed up shop just as the big summer films were coming in. They would put all of their Oak Cliff eggs in the remaining Triangle 4 which had also opened in 1971 just 4.5 miles away. A new operator was identified and ran the Western Park 4 as a sub-run, sub-dollar house. That run was even less successful lasting just two months and the Western Park 4 was closed again. For a new build theater, the Western Park 4 holds the record as the worst performing movie theater in the city’s history. Its cousin, the Triangle 4, didn’t fare much better failing to make it to its third anniversary. It also closed ignominiously in February of 1974. For AMC, these two Oak Cliff theaters were unusual missteps and the theaters were just a blip on its radar as it righted the ship and became a dominate player in Dallas.
As for the two theaters in the mid-2010s, both spaces were converted to retail spaces within their shopping centers. Still standing in 2015, the Triangle 4 at 3939 S. Polk was a Family Dollar franchise retail store. And the Western Park 4 at 4404 W. Illinois was, ironically, also a Family Dollar franchise retail store.
When Texas Automated Theaters was looking to establish low-cost automated theaters, many would be located adjacent to – or inside of – hotels or other high traffic areas and run with minimal personnel. But as was the case in Garland – with the Walnut Twin – the theaters were tucked behind other buildings and were low risk investments to utilize challenging retail spaces. For the Farmers Branch Showcase I & II in Farmers Branch, suite 400 at 2825 Valley View Lane was out of view from the road thanks to a strip shopping center that blocked the standalone twin-screen theater built in 1974. The attraction board on the street was the only hope for most patrons driving past to see the theater’s offerings. Another attraction board was featured in front of the theater, itself. The features on the boards for Friday, April 4, 1974 were its grand opening films of “The Way We Were” and “Billy Jack.” Thanks to the installed equipment, the theater had five to six showings each day of its feature films.
Showcase tried to eke out its existence playing first-run fare and then tried lower cost sub-runs but the audiences just didn’t come. The operators sold out in early 1980 prior to their sixth anniversary. Circuit owner Theaters West of Houston took on the struggling twin-screener and tried something totally different beginning April 26, 1980 switching to full time art house. The theater’s name was changed from the Farmers Branch Showcase I & II to the Showcase Cinema 1 & 2. The art house policy brought with it free publicity from the local Dallas Morning News whenever a significant art film opened.The first films were foreign language films “Till Marriage Do Us Part” and “Robert et Robert.” However, the audiences weren’t enough to keep the theater viable. This problem worsened when AMC renamed its Preston Center 2 as the Park Cities 2 playing art films
Exactly one year into its Showcase art run, Theaters West purchased Dallas' venerable Inwood Theater which had been closed for months due to a fire and converted a new upstairs theater to show art films hoping to find a boutique clientele in Dallas. It worked. So in June of 1981, Theaters West reversed course in Farmers Branch shelving art and turning Showcase Screen Two into a mainstream sub-run dollar house but adding an X-rated adult film to Showcase Screen One. The theater’s performance issues were behind it as the adult fare did brisk business.
Unfortunately for Theaters West, they were in court often as the city of Farmers Branch did anything and everything to close the theater down including citing the theaters 14 times and confiscating films. The $200 a day fines could add up quickly but Theaters West counter-sued citing harassment and seeking an injunction against the city in 1982. The city kept trying to close the theater saying it was “pollution of our minds and our youth.” As the city’s federal suit and theater’s counter-suit were still on the table all the way to 1988, Theaters West and the city of Farmers Branch finally said each side would drop their suits if the theater took all signage down for its attractions. Rather than changing the type of films back to unsuccessful sub-runs, first runs or art runs or possibly something new, the theater threw in the towel ending a litigious final seven years and 14 altogether for the Farmers Branch Showcase / Showcase Cinema 1 & 2.
The theater has been home to many non-profit houses of worship over the years. The 2015-era owner took down the attraction board in front of the cinema which still has its original box office, movie poster boxes, doors to cinemas one and two and interior attraction boards. But the fortunes for the hidden retail spot are rather subpar as the Dallas County Appraisal District lists the former showcase theater’s valuation at just $5,220. But the theater looks pretty similar to the way it did back in the day and audiences still come once or twice a week so that’s not too bad for the 40-plus year old facility.
The 862-acre Canyon Creek subdivision was given approval by the Richardson City Council in 1962 to include a golf course, shopping center, apartments and single-family housing. In 1974, it had its first theater named the Canyon Creek Family Theater 1 & 2 located within the Canyon Creek Square Shopping Center. The theater was at 911 Canyon Creek Square next door to the Bonanza Steak House. The theater was known for showing first-run family fare and featured midnight cult and cult-to-be films. The theater also had a world premiere at its location. Palmer Rockey’s “It Happened One Weekend” had a two-week engagement at the Canyon Creek beginning October 11, 1974 making $696.25. But soon after as the theater underachieved, it was switched to a dollar house. The theater limped to its end as an English-language cinema failing to find its core audience in November of 1982. The theater became the Victory Theater beginning in 1983 showing Asian films though not making it into the 1990s. The space was converted for other purposes and then was demolished.
Probably not much to add to the fine comments already here but the the theater’s grand opening was Sept. 17, 1999 with the largest auditoriums seating 475 in highback plush chairs with stadium seating and 56' wide screens with smaller auditoriums holding 125 to 225 patrons. UA installed an experimental concession stand bringing expanded products through high-tech devices. But the 80,000 square foot UA MacArthur Marketplace 16 was a megaflop as megaplex overbuild was a problem for many circuits. UA was among many exhibitors filing for bankruptcy protection.
Philip Anschutz took over controlling interest in United Artists and Regal, as well as Edwards Theaters in October of 2001 and the economy worsened. The Regal Circuit shuttered 30 theaters with 208 screens in 2003. Among them was the McArthur Marketplace shuttered very suddenly on June 30, 2003 just prior to some of the year’s biggest summer flicks. To punctuate that they weren’t coming back, they even took the seats all the way to Garland to place in their aged UA Northstar theater. Regal wanted no part of the MacArthur property ever again providing less than four years of service at the location.
Developers Diversified Reality which owned the space had to find another owner quickly. In a surprise move, Marquee Cinemas out of Beckley, W. Virginia announced within two week’s time that it would re-open the theater possibly within the month targeting July 25, 2003 as a possibility. Finding the theater stripped of so much, Marquee’s opening would be set back to February 13th, 2004 and an amazingly high price tag in the three million dollar range. Theater sizes dropped a bit to 100, 200 and 425 in stadium seating configuration. But it was all trick and no treat as Marquee fled the twice-bitten loser Marketplace on Halloween of 2005 not making it two full years.
Portland-based circuit Hollywood Theaters – which had properties including the Town Center Cinema in Fort Worth and South Freeway 14 in Burleson – reopened the theater as its third operator inside of seven years on June 23, 2006. The theater’s Bollywood / Hindi films drew audiences and the theater experienced an overall uptick in business.
On February 19, 2013, Regal purchased Hollywood Theaters circuit and almost unbelievably had returned one of its most notable liabilities back into its portfolio. Regal almost immediately announced the name change of the theater as the Regal MacArthur Marketplace Stadium 16. The Hollywood signage stayed longer on the attraction sign and facade although the logo was quickly dispensed with at the concession stands replaced by Regal cups and popcorn bags. The operation continued with the same first-run and Bollywood offerings.
The first films were Top Gun, Three Amigos, Name of the Rose and Stand By Me all released in 1986 and General Cinema didn’t announce its lease agreement on the property until March of 1986 so that pretty much leaves out the other two suggested opening dates. Grand opening ad of 12 December 1986 posted to clarify. But the date discrepancies are why I started provided information about theaters in my area so agree with the point. As for the closing of the theater as AMC v. GCC, the 5 October 2000 date is more than a year prior to the AMC buyout of GCC on 8 December 2001. Definitely a GCC property from open to close.
Many cities have their Lakewood Theater. It’s that suburban single screen theater that somehow was neither twinned nor demolished or gutted to the point of losing its original features. In Dallas, the Lakewood and Circle were two Interstate theaters fitting this category. But because the Lakewood was part of a well-identified neighborhood and part of a shopping center, it had a more successful history.
The H.F. Pettigrew architected theater constructed by George P. O’Rourke Construction was probably Eugene Gilboe of Franklin & Gilboe’s most flamboyant mural painting and interior decoration of his many Dallas/Fort Worth theater and hotel works. Gilboe’s full-mirrored ceiling and mural work using Dallas artists Perry Nichols, Harry Carnohan and Victor Lallier was what made the theater experience at Lakewood memorable. Dallas sculptor José Martin’s life-sized statutes adorned each side of the stage. Loveseat seating, a first in Dallas, only added to the ambience. And the exterior flourish that will likely live on as long as the building survives was its 100 foot tower by Texlite with 7,000 watt power to operate its colorful neon. Harold H. Wineburgh considered his firm’s Lakewood signage with porcelain enamel front, flashing tower and markee ceiling his best and most difficult sign. Pettigrew would be recognized by Architectural Record magazine with honorable mention for his architectural work on the Lakewood.
Opening October 27, 1938 with “Love Finds Andy Hardy,” the Lakewood was a hit for Interstate Theaters Circuit. Its success was found in connecting with its tight knit local community. Allowing the hosting of local church services, establishing low cost Kiddie Club Saturday screenings, hosting events including a WW2-era paper drive in which boy scouts brought over 18,000 pounds of paper, fielding a city-winning bowling league, and allowing all sorts of local live acts ranging from pets to Southern Methodist University (SMU) plays were all on the table for the community-minded suburban theater. But films were mostly where it was at as Interstate scaled back live stage shows and mostly ran second-run fare and lots of family films in the first ten years of the theater’s operation. But as Interstate opened theaters to the north in Dallas, the circuit changed with the age of its neighboring residents to art films post World War 2.
In 1956, the Lakewood was the first theater to install an automatic parking gate by Parking Service Company and patrons received a token for free parking to avoid the 25 cent fee. That same year, Lakewood also created a space for wheelchair accessibility and had hearing aids for the hearing impaired. Interstate ran the theater for 35 years – likely a 15 year initial lease and two 10-year re-ups and left at the end of the 35th year. Sam Chernoff of Theater Corporations took on the theater in September of 1973 put $25,000 into refurbishing the theater allowing SMU to run art films under its Cinematheque nameplate and showing mostly older and quality films. It ran Columbia Pictures’ 50th Anniversary Retrospective series in 1974. But that wasn’t the answer and the film was relegated to dollar house status, the first Dallas dollar house in 1974. It was a hit for K-Co Corp. as dollar mania hit Dallas as General Cinema’s Big Town Mall, Oak Cliff’s Aquarius, the nearby Granada, Oak Cliff’s Texas Theater, and the suburban north Park Forest Theater would all follow suit. Facing competition as a single-screener, the Lakewood switched to double-feature status and the theater’s biggest success was Rocky. When the 10-year lease was up, the now $1.50 Lakewood was without an operator and closed just prior to its 45th anniversary after a double feature of Cujo and The Man With Two Brains.
On Sept. 26, 1984, the theater came back under Burt Barr after a $500,000 renovation including Dolby sound, a 1927 theater organ, and new electrical system. As a nice touch, the first feature was “Love Finds Andy Hardy” with live musicians harkening back to the first day of the theater’s original operation. The Theater Organ Society played mini-concerts before the show. The theater’s first run policy faded over time and the theater went dark again on Halloween of 1993. After three years, the theater reopened in December of 1996 as a live performance and occasional film venue under manager Keith McKeague. A screening of Pearl Harbor was a huge success and live shows were often well attended.
The live booking space became even more crowded when the Granada switched from films to live events and many new places opened around the city. The theater operated all the way until January of 2015 when a comic heroine themed burlesque show was booked as the final event. The theater’s lack of historical designation provided many options for its owners and its interior faced an uncertain future. However, the owners vowed to keep the Texlite tower signage.
The movie palace era that launched theater row in downtown Dallas started on Thanksgiving Day, 1912 with the opening of the Washington Theater. But the Washington was soon overshadowed by the far superior 800-seat Queen Theater by architect I.A. Walker. The $47,000 project was on the books in 1911 with Earl H. (“E.H.”) Hulsey converting an existing retail building at Elm and Akard with a five-year lease beginning in August of 1912.
The Queen opened to the public on January 24, 1913 at Elm and Akard with an over-capacity crowd which had its high expectations more than delivered. Commenters of the pre-Yelp era were astonished by the improved definition of the Queen’s projection described as “flickerless” machines projecting bright, sharp pictures on the wall. Reviews said of the Queen that it was the “most completely equipped and elegantly finished photo playhouses in the country.” Life-sized sculptures of Queen of Carthage, Queen Dido of Carthage and Queen Isabel of Spain along with Cleopatra were nice touches. Assigned seating with ushers was another. And a cigar parlor for those watching in the boxes showed class and spotlighted the theater’s fireproof construction. A $20,000 pipe organ with many special effects, grand piano and a six-person orchestra of “first-class musicians” accompanied the program which was upped to 12-person orchestra. William T. Street was brought in from London to play the pipe organ. And the management pledged to assure the “moral protection” of all children. The Queen was a hit.
The Queen was also in touch with its Dallas populace. The Queen produced some local moving pictures shot by manager E.V. Richards Jr. on the streets of Dallas and his first film’s storyline conveniently ended at the Queen Theater. That film was shown for four days in 1913 which was considered a success back in that era. Richards soon left and would run 200 theaters as general manager of Saenger Amusement. Just three months into the Queen’s operation, Louis Bissinger (known as Uncle Lou) took over managing the theater and the showmanship continued with little drop-off. The theater would become home to first-run silent Paramount and Realart Pictures before more stringent on booking procedures. The Theater’s tagline was “crowned with public favor.” The name of Queen Theaters was so popular in Dallas and around the country that an Oak Cliff Queen theater was opened called the Cliff Queen in 1915. Hulsey renewed for another five-year lease in August 1917 but a major fire on Sept. 27, 1917 caused $22,000 in damages and led to renovations to the theater including new fixtures, paintings, roof, and ticket booth, as well as a lawsuit about the actual damages to the building resolved seven years later.
In its tenth year, Uncle Lou and Joe Bissinger subleased the theater from Hulsey and it finally adopted a general admission seating policy instead of assigned seating as the theater began to slip in stature. Larger, more modern theaters had surpassed the Queen as Dallas' theater row matured along Elm Street. By October of 1926, the theater became a second run house with discount ticket pricing. The theater finally received sound equipment in 1930 and played “The Cock-Eyed World” as its first talkie using the Western Electric sound on film technology. Uncle Lou acquired the lease from operator Earl Hulsey’s estate in 1931 after Hulsey’s death. Lou Bissinger was recognized by The Variety Club of Texas which celebrated his 30th year of operating the Queen.
In post-War Dallas, the Queen was becoming decrepit and programmatically had lost distinctiveness. As freshly-built suburban theaters were being opened that would siphon audiences away from second-run and badly-aging facilities like the Queen, something had to be done. Uncle Lou was gone and the Queen Theater marquee came down in September of 1948 when after 35 years, the theater was renamed the Leo Theater under the Joy Houck circuit that also operated the Strand in Dallas. The Cliff-Queen carried the Queen’s moniker a year and a half beyond the original Queen for the city of Dallas. The former Queen now Leo was completely remodeled, renovated and playing to desegregated audiences. Though trying to find its footing as a family second-run house at the outset, the Leo soon found the freedom to experiment under its new name, even playing exploitation and “adult” fare as the former Queen was no longer concerned about quality audiences / “public favor.” They just needed people to come through the turnstile.
The rebranding didn’t work. Much as the film industry was in retreat, the Leo was swept under as other theaters would convert to Cinemascope or VistaVision, the Leo was simply old school. In 1953, the Leo was flailing and turned to live 10-act vaudeville under the direction of Richard Crane perhaps to change its fading fortunes. Crane promised no burlesque at the Leo, just vaudeville for 60 cents. When that didn’t work, the Leo tried the combination of films and burlesque for two months thereafter. But nothing worked and the theater was shuttered on April 15th, 1953 after 40-plus years of total service though less than five as the post-regal Leo.
The Dallas Federal Savings and Loan Association (Dallas Fed) secured the site planning to bulldoze the Queen Theater in 1953. But that project was delayed at the last minute apparently left the city with what locals called an unfortunate eyesore for two years: a shocking turnaround for the former palace. Only the cigar store associated with the theater soldiered on until the bitter end of the building’s life. The Queen was finally abdicated on November 4, 1955 when the wrecking ball struck. Because all references to the Leo were removed from the building in 1953, the theater’s demolition coverage only referred to to it as the former Queen Theater. In some respect, that was a nice final touch recalling the theater’s glory days which had left such a lasting memory to Dallas' moviegoers and provided classy showmanship in silent film exhibition in the 1910s and 1920s. And onward to progress, the Fed’s modern 17-story skyrise was scheduled to be completed in 1957 in the Queen’s former spot.
The UA Town East was a direct competition attack to the established General Cinema Corporation’s (GCC) Town East cinema. The UA Town East had a successful run from 1982 to 1998 though eventually failing to make it through its entire 20-year lease.
In the 1980s, Mesquite, Texas was growing fast with two malls — The Big Town Mall (1959) and the superior Town East Mall (1971). GCC controlled this zone cinemas adjacent to each mall. But the traffic was at Town East and shopping centers sprouted all around that mall in the 1970s and 1980s. Opening theatreless in 1974 was one example: the Driftwood Shopping Center. United Artists circuit felt the time was right to challenge in the Town East zone and announced a theatre to open within the Driftwood the summer of 1982. Unlike the twin-screen GCC Town East I&II, the UA would have the big number six for its competitive UA Town East 6 six-plex.
From an architectural point of view, this UA was not a destination theater like the UA 150 well before it or the UA Plaza after it. John Panzeca, vice president of United Artists Realty in charge of the company’s Plaza project said of theaters such as Town East, UA’s Bowen, and UA’s Northstar, “For years we built theaters that were little, rectangular boxes….I used to point with pride to how inexpensively I could get those projects to come in.” But the non-descript theater delivered for the circuit going online at just the right time opening June 4, 1982 sharing opening days with the also architecturally-benign AMC Irving 6 and GCC Redbird Mall V-X. The UA Town East’s opening films were “Star Trek II,” “Bambi, “Hanky Panky” on two screens and “On Golden Pond.” The UA Town East would compete with GCC’s Town East for big summer clearances getting in addition to “Star Trek II”, “Blade Runner,” and “Firefox,” the biggest prize of that summer.
The UA Town East 6 would be known as the multiplex built by “E.T.” as the 1982 smash hit almost paid for the theater single-handedly playing for 42 weeks. Concession sales were brisk. That same rookie year, “Officer and a Gentlemen” was another huge hit for the UA 6-plex. The theater’s salad days happened right out of the batter’s box and over the next two years. But choppier waters were just ahead.
The GCC Town East figured out how to divide its twin-screener into a five screener re-opening on December 17, 1982. A poor effort that UA would counter delivering a curved screen experience with a 70mm THX house in 1984 to present the megahit ”Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” A blow to GCC which had boasted superior presentation. As the Towne Crossing Center was being built opening across the highway from the Town East theaters soon delivering the AMC Towne Crossing Center 8, GCC closed the Town East 5 again to deliver a much better thought-out design for that cinema launching December 7, 1984 with one “A” screen to compete with the UA Town East’s 70mm THX house. And like a game of Risk, GCC decided to blunt the AMC Towne Crossing with six more screens adjacent to the newly-built flop-to-be Outlet Mall at Town East opening May 22, 1985. When the Towne Crossing 8 opened that same year, there were four multiplexes in the same vicinity – two “Town East 6’s”, one “Town East 5” and AMC’s 8-screener. Confusing but effective as Mesquite suddenly became the area’s third-most populous movie destination behind only the Central Zone and Prestonwood in which the three circuits would also battle it out.
The Mesquite battle was being won by GCC with its 11-screen to 8 for AMC to 6 for UA advantage. AMC’s Towne Crossing would descent to dollar house status but traffic would decrease throughout the 1990s to all four aging multiplexes. The game would end with some arrows and then the big bomb. A Cinemark 15-screener in Garland just to the North opened in 1992. UA would build a beautiful 9/10 screen destination theater near there opening in 1996. And AMC put all its Risk armies into a 30-screen megaplex just two exits to the south of the Town East opening in 1998. That megaplex spelled the end for all of the Town East multiplexes. Starplex Cinemas would add a 10-screen discount house in Mesquite and a 12-screen theater in Forney. A megaplex also came to Rockwall. And Terrell got a multiplex. But it was the AMC Mesquite 30 that doomed the circuit’s own Towne Crossing 8. Then the GCC Town East 6 went down as classes started up in August 1998. Then the UA Town East 6 on Halloween of 1998. Then the Town East 5 just a week prior to Christmas of 1998. Oddly enough, the Big Town Cinema would hang on the longest closing a month later as a Cinemark discount house.
The UA Town East 6 could have some solace as its property closure had company as all over the city in the Fall of 1998 multiplexes were closing as megaplex mania had taken over. UA’s Prestonwood Creek and South 8 and GCC’s Prestonwood Town Center, Collin Creek, Carrollton, Northpark III&IV, Redbird I-IV, Irving IV-VII, Northpark I&II all closed in a tight time frame that fall. Also closing were the theaters which opened on the same day as the UA Town East, the Redbird V-X and AMC Irving 6. The UA Town East 6 building would be repurposed for retail that included a grocery store that had the features of the theater and then super-gutted for an Aldi store that was still there in the mid-2010s. But the theater’s run with E.T. and its 70mm presentations including “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” will always be a fond memory for Mesquite moviegoers.
North Hills Mall was designed by RTKL Architects and opened September 12, 1979 to challenge the nearby Northeast mall that had opened eight years earlier. In 1984, General Cinema – which had a 20-year old theater just up the road at the aging Richland Plaza, announced a replacement for that property. It would launch a seven screen theater inside of North Hills Mall and one up the United Artists Northeast 6 which had opened in the Northeast Mall seven years earlier. Opening May 22, 1985, the theater added a missing dimension from the North Hills shopping complex. The 25,000 square foot theater had an easy access entrance and exit for late night Sunday shows when the rest of the mall was closed.
The North Hills VII allowed town meetings, had summer film camps for the kids, and tried to be a part of the North Richland Hills community. Early in 1990, a Cinemark Movies 8 moved in virtually across the street. But the newer North Hills Mall seemed to have the older one on the run especially in 1997 as the United Artists departed the aging Northeast Mall . But the Northeast folks used some trickery and a great business model to drastically revamp that property that year and wrested away some key tenants from North Hills.
At that same time, nationally, the General Cinema multiplex model was getting destroyed by the megaplex builders including Cinemark and AMC. Despite the fact that nobody was building a megaplex in the Mid-Cities, the North Hills Mall was heading downhill quickly and General Cinema wanted to get off of the sinking ship. GCC was able to exercise a performance clause to escape its lease from the North Hills property as the foot traffic and occupancy rate was below promised levels. The theater pulled out September 17, 1998 and the gates closed down over the property leaving both malls theater-less. This turned out to be a great move as North Hills quickly found itself in greyfield status and with ownership changes that couldn’t stem the tide.
Potentially great news for the North Hills occurred when new owners took over and announced that Cinemark would opens an 18-screen theater for North Hills Mall to open in 2001 with an ice skating rink. After delays – and another mall ownership change — it became a 16-screen concept to open in 2003/4. That also didn’t materialize. And in October of 2004, the mall shut down with the General Cinema property having not aged an iota from the time it had been closed in 1998. A month later, it was Northeast mall that got its modern megaplex with the opening of the Rave Northeast Mall 18.
The final owner of the North Hills Mall in 2005 staged a pre-demolition sale and vultures picked apart the entire mall decimating the former GCC North Hills VII theater along with every other store. The mall owner would walk away from the property without demolishing it. The city of North Richland Hills had no choice but to call the property what it was – a safety hazard with exposed everything inside following the unusual pre-demo sale – and finally ordered the mall and cinema’s demolition in early 2007.
Ridgmar Mall opened April 7, 1976. Its movie theater was in the adjacent Ridgmar Town Square built in 1986 and was opened by General Cinema on New Year’s Day 1987. Like many malls after its 20th anniversary, retailers bolted after their 20 year leases were up and the mall was leaning toward greyfield status, a term akin to a dead mall. So a major revamp was undertaken in 1997 to bring in new retailers and concepts. Among them was to be AMC Ridgmar which announced in 1998 that it planned to build a 20-screen megaplex theater. That 4,000-seat megaplex would have had stadium seating and a lobby overlooking an expanded food court under a vaulted glass skylight and was to be the centerpiece of the next 20-years of the mall. The $70 million stunning redevelopment took place without AMC as the mall had a Grand Reopening on July 21, 2000.
On October 5, 2000, all of the remaining General Cinema Tarrant County theaters were closed including the Ridgmar Town Square along with the Arlington Park Square and Bedford’s Central Park. AMC still planned to open a downsized 16-screen theater in the Fall of 2002 at Ridgmar. In the interim, the external movie theater was reopened by the Great Texas Movie Co. circuit rebranding the theater as the Ridgmar Movie Tavern. And Ridgmar finally got its theater but in the form of a Rave Theater.
The Rave Motion Pictures Ridgmar 13 opened at 12:01 a.m. December 17, 2003 with three sold out showings of “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” The $15 million, 62,000 square foot theater would be the first megaplex in western Fort Worth with stadium seating, digital sound, wall-to-wall screens and 4 feet of room between rows. At opening, the auditoriums were sized from 120 seats to 420 seats each. The Design International architected theater opened as DFW’s second Rave theater behind only its first theater, the Hickory Creek. The theater’s digital capabilities allowed for expanded Real-D 3D showings, live Metropolitan Opera simulcasts and a variety of Fathom concert events.
The Cinemark chain acquired all of Rave’s properties in 2013 and divested the flagship Rave in Hickory Creek which was forced to rebrand under Carmike operation. But the North East and Ridgmar Mall properties would continue under the Cinemark-owned Rave nameplate. It would add the Cinemark-branded Xtreme “Big Screen Experience”. Under new mall owner GK Development, the mall was in the throes of a mild descent that would be hastened by a new shopping mall opening in 2017 to the south which would take away the anchor Nieman Marcus so it was unclear how bright a future the popular theater would have heading into the 2020s.
The North East Mall by Simon Properties was built theater-less opening in 1971. When the competing North Hills Mall was announced just a mile away to open in 1979, expansion in 1977/8 brought two new anchors and the mall’s first theater with the United Artists Northeast 6. The UA theater fulfilled its 20-year lease and moved on in 1997. The loss of UA actually propelled the mall into another expansion which would bring Nordstrom’s and Saks Fifth Avenue into the mall and encourage Foley’s to vacate North Hills for Northeast. In 1998, General Cinemas closed its North Hills interior cinema leaving an opportunity for a new-build megaplex.
Cinemark was first to the table announcing an 18-screen theater for North Hills Mall to open in 2001 and after delays it became a 16-screen concept to open in 2003/4 – part of an elaborate plan to resuscitate the moribund North Hills property that never took place. When Montgomery Ward’s chain was liquidated in 2001, an opportunity arose at North East Mall. A failed May Co. plan to build a Lord & Taylor in the Ward’s store would finally lead to a new theater for the area. Rave Motion Pictures of Dallas would open its third DFW facility as part of a 100,000 addition that included three restaurants.
The Design International architected theater opened November 10, 2004 just as the entire North East Mall had finally closed. The Rave Northeast Mall 18 theater’s screens were elaborately placed in three levels allowing for an eye-popping lobby and concession area. Auditorium sizes ranged at opening from 114 to 456 seats, seating with four feet of legroom between rows and 18-inch risers in stadium seating rows. The theater featured digital projection and 3D, including the first ever NCAA men’s final basketball telecast in 3D as well as live opera simulcasts and related Fathom live events. Rave also launched its digital signage network pioneering it at the Rave North East in 2011. Its 66 locations would take advantage of the signage as Rave had climbed to the fifth position in the movie exhibition U.S. by the end of 2012. The design flair of the North East fit the high tech circuit’s business model perfectly and gave the mid-cities its first modern-era theater.
The Cinemark chain acquired all of Rave’s properties in 2013 and divested the flagship Rave in Hickory Creek which was forced to rebrand under Carmike operation. But the North East and Ridgmar Mall properties would continue under the Cinemark-owned Rave nameplate. It would add the Cinemark-branded Xtreme “Big Screen Experience” as well as Indian Bollywood offerings. With the closest competition being a 25-year old sub-run discount house operated by Cinemark a mile away, the Rave North East 18 was well-positioned in the mid-2010s for a bright future.
The Towne Crossing Center was a $200 million project to the northwest of the uber-successful Town East Mall in Mesquite. The Town East Mall had launched in 1971 and by the early 1980s had decimated the nearby Big Town Mall to the point that strip shopping centers were being built all around Town East to take advantage of the traffic. People were driving from Rockwall, east Dallas, Garland, Rowlett, Forney and even Terrell to shop and watch movies. General Cinema Corporation (GCC) had launched in Mesquite with its Big Town Cinema in February of 1964. Ten years later it opened at Town East Mall with a twin screener. The other circuits wanted in on the action. The UA Town East 6 was the first competition for GCC launching in June of 1982 and found GCC hastily changing its twin-screen Town East to a five-screen operation.
But AMC’s announcement of an 8-screen theater just across the highway to open in 1985 unnerved GCC. AMC and UA had already undermined GCC in the second-most commercial zone in Dallas by building superior theaters to its GCC Prestonwood Village IV with AMC’s Prestonwood 5 and UA’s Prestonwood Creek 5. Getting less than two years from its five-screen conversion, GCC temporarily closed the Town East V and gutted it to make an improved theater. It also built another six-screen theater to be launched just yards away from its original location. It would not submit to AMC’s announcement.
The AMC Towne Crossing 8 finally opened November 1, 1985. Because clearances were tight, AMC decided to reach an underserved audience. It launched a Bijou screen, a specialty screen showing art films and documentaries. It also opted for midnight shows which proved to be an early hit. Much as in Prestonwood, confusion for consumers was palpable as the four Mesquite theaters were close in both name and proximity.
And eventually General Cinema had weathered the storm as the AMC Towne Crossing would be relegated to sub-run discount status. Gone were midnight screenings and Bijou / Gourmet theater offerings. AMC had other ideas. It would drop the bomb on what had become DFW’s third-most popular commercial theatrical zone with Mesquite only behind the Central Zone and Prestonwood.
AMC delivered the knockout blow to the zone with its 30-screen megaplex, the AMC Mesquite 30, announced in September of 1996 and approved by the Mesquite City Council in December of that year. When it opened in March of 1998 just two exits from the Town East zone, that would end the AMC Towne Crossing. With the Starplex Cinemas adding a 10-screen discount house in Mesquite and a 12-screen theater in Forney and a Cinemark megaplex in Rockwall along with a Terrell multiplex, people weren’t driving to the dated Town East theaters any longer. General Cinema closed its Town East VI as classes went back into session in 1998 and almost as suddenly the Town East V left prior to Christmas of 1998. Within six months, the third busiest zone in DFW went from four theaters to zero.
The AMC Towne Crossing 8 would get one more chance to remain a cinema treasure. Star Cinemas had re-opened the GCC Town East V in December of 2001 but the theater struggled with code enforcement related to restrooms closing at the end of June of 2002. That theatre operation scooted across the highway renaming the AMC Towne Crossing and operating very quietly as the Lone Star Cinema until 2003 and drawing very few customers. Upon closing, the store would be repurposed for retail ventures including a waterbed store. Although the Towne Crossing is largely forgotten, its footprint into the Town East zone and eventual gravitation to the nearby Mesquite 30 changed Mesquite movie-going forever.
General Cinema Corporation (GCC) had a good run in Mesquite, TX. It had opened its Big Town Cinema in February of 1964. Ten years later, it was operating just outside of Mesquite’s second mall and the area’s first twin-level mall, Homart’s Town East Mall. Opening at Town East Mall Cinema I & II on June 28, 1974 were its grand opening features of The Parallax View and The Incredible Journey with Old Yeller. GCC would downgrade its Big Town theater to discount status. For Homart and GCC, being paired would be nothing new being just outside of its first mall, the Seminary South in Fort Worth, outside of the Six Flags Mall in Arlington, and opening inside of Homart’s Valley View in 1975 and in the 1980s outside of Homart’s Parks at Arlington mall. But unlike those locations – and ten years after its launch at Town East – competition would get cut-throat.
Strip shopping centers began surrounding the uber–popular Town East Mall which began to decimate nearby Big Town Mall’s customer base. Traffic was packed around the Town East area and retail complexes popped up overnight. United Artists would open its own Town East 6 on June 4, 1982 in the nearby Driftwood Shopping Center. The UA would compete with GCC for big summer clearances getting “Star Trek II”, “E.T.” and “Blade Runner” at the outset. Disheartening, true, but the GCC Town East would rabbit-punch back closing briefly to re-open on December 17, 1982. It transitioned from a two-screen to a five-screen operation to have more room for clearances. However, the hastily-created design left much to be desired and, worse yet, the Towne Crossing Center was being built opening across the highway from Town East. It would be delivering the AMC Towne Crossing Center 8.
GCC wouldn’t give up. In 1984, the Town East was closed and totally gutted becoming a prototype for many almost identical theaters which General Cinema would create or retrofit. Its main auditorium was arguably in the circuit’s top five screens in presentation short of General Cinema Northpark I. The five-screen prototype theater would launch December 7, 1984 and just yards away it was constructing another six-screen theater launching May 22, 1985. That theater actually launched three months ahead of the AMC eight-screen Town Crossing. Much as in Prestonwood, confusion for consumers was palpable as the theaters were close in both name and proximity. That said, business was brisk with business from Rockwall, east Dallas, Garland, Rowlett, Forney and even Terrell.
What changed in Mesquite? Garland would get two megaplexes to the North but AMC delivered the knockout blow with its 30-screen megaplex AMC Mesquite just two exits to the south in 1998. That would end the AMC Towne Crossing. Starplex Cinemas would add a 10-screen discount house in Mesquite and a 12-screen theater in Forney. Megaplexes also came to Rockwall and Terrell got a multiplex. The Town East salad days for movie exhibition were going quickly. General Cinema closed its Town East Six as classes went back into session in 1998 and almost as suddenly the Town East V left prior to Christmas of 1998. Somehow, the Big Town Cinema out-survived both of GCC’s Town East properties closing as a Cinemark discount cinema in January of 1999. But who could have foreseen the third busiest zone in DFW going from four theaters to zero so quickly?
Star Cinemas would change that re-opening the GCC Town East V in December of 2001 with Kate & Leopold and Blackhawk Down among the features. But the theater struggled with code enforcement related to restrooms closing at the end of June of 2002. That theatre operation would hop across the highway to the former AMC Towne Crossing operating quietly as the Lone Star Cinema until 2003. For the GCC Town East, it would just sit vacant year after year hoping to get demolished. Its attraction board along 635 is still in use though now featuring the name of Town East anchor stores.
The General Cinema Central Park 8 in Bedford was announced in December of 1983 as part of the 120-acre project architected by RTKL Associates launching in 1985. The Central Park was part of General Cinema’s expansion during the multiplex era to 71 DFW screens including the sequel to the Town East Cinema, the Arlington Park Square 8, the Collin Creek Mall 6, and two Fort Worth multiplexes with the Ridgmar and White Settlement.
The Central Park 8 seemed to be cruising toward completing its 20-year lease sitting between General Cinema’s North Hills cinema and the chain’s Irving Mall which had expanded to 14 screens in 1998. Closer competition came from the UA Bedford 10. But the chain and its multiplex business model was being decimated by more aggressive megaplex developers.
On October 5th, 2000, General Cinema shut theaters all over the country taking down all of Tarrant Country’s remaining locations including the Arlington Park Square, Fort Worth’s Ridgmar Square, and Bedford’s Central Park. In 2001, Entertainment Filmworks had a business plan to convert dead General Cinema locations into food/entertainment theaters. The company did a conversion while operating the EFW Cinema Central Park 8 opening and then closing in about a year’s time after a reported $400,000 refurbishing.
After more than a year of vacancy, Great Texas Movie Co. of Granbury became the location’s third operator in November of 2003. Great Texas had previously re-opened the former General Cinema Ridgmar as Ridmar Movie Tavern — and the former AMC Green Oaks as Movie Tavern Green Oaks. The circuit put in around $1 million to provide an improved lobby and spacious seating along with beer, wine and kitchen with expanded menu options reopening as Movie Tavern at Central Park. The chain would expand to 20 locations by the mid-2010s which included the Central Park location which had already surpassed 30 years of service as a multiplex.
Located in the former Sakowitz Village was the AMC Village on the Parkway architected by Dallas' firm Good Fulton & Farrell Architects (also known as GFF Architects). Though it was AMC’s 11th location in DFW, it had the distinction of being an original luxury concept theater coined as “The Marketplace” offering a different checkout process for concessions among its amenities. The theater contained a MacGuffins Bar & Lounge as well as the area’s first Prime theater with reverberating recliners. Moreover, the AMC VOTP represented was a throw-back to the days when Prestonwood was the second most popular zone for moviegoing in the Dallas-area back in the 1980s and into the 1990s and a throw-down when AMC battled for clearances against rivals for the exclusive right to show the best films.
True, Prestonwood Mall was long gone and Sakowitz was a distant memory when AMC got involved with the 30-acre, $40 million Village on the Parkway shopping center project. And though General Cinema and United Artists were long removed from the zone, a new kid on the block raised questions about the AMC location. The $20-million Look Cinema had opened in March 2013 in the former UA Prestonwood then Studio Movie Grill location less than a mile from Village on the Parkway. At that time, AMC was outside the territory about three miles away at the ailing Valley View Mall operating its low-cost, first-run 16-screener. No battles or clearance issues with the Look.
But AMC decided to hedge its bets by announcing its AMC Village on the Parkway, a 12-screen then reduced to 9-screen luxury cinema just yards away from the former General Cinema Prestonwood / Montfort theater. To Look, it seemed to be a way of siphoning product away from its screens. And it did almost from the outset, including the 2014 installment of the Hunger Games franchise that was booked at AMC and not Look. More bad news for the Look was when box office sensation American Sniper not only didn’t go to the Look but reaped additional revenue by playing in the more expensive Prime screen at the VOTP. It was the Dallas' area’s second such recent feud when Alamo Drafthouse came to Dallas and Studio Movie Grill moved in just an exit away to a former Loews theater. As of the mid-2010s, it was unclear which of the two high-end luxury theaters would come out on top or if a floated legal battle would take shape between the indy and corporate giant.
The John R. Thompson architected Belaire Theater project was just the second new build Interstate Theatre for the Dallas-Fort Worth area since the 1949 construction of Dallas’ Forest Theatre. The proposed 1,000 seat theater was arranged continental style with long rows instead of multiple aisles. The rows would become wider by the time it was built ending up with 860 total seats all on the main floor. The theater was housed in the Hurst-Belaire Shopping Center which, itself, opened theater-less on June 2, 1963 in Hurst, Texas by George P. Macatee III and Robert S. Folsom. The $350,000 theater had 70mm projection with 6-channel stereo sound and parking for mre than 700 cars. It was part of Interstate Theaters $4 million expansion with nine theaters including the Westwood in Richardson, South Fort Worth’s Wedgewood, the Westwood in Abilene, and Pasadena’s Parkview Theater.
The theater opened April 8, 1966 with “That Darn Cat” a day after an invitation-only screening of “The Trouble with Angels” the night before. It was quadplexed into four auditoriums and became a sub-run dollar house. The theater appears to have had a 20-year lease honored followed by, perhaps, a 15-year lease where it closed as a decrepit, seedy independent dollar house in a shopping center that had neither been updated nor had many retailers remaining when the theater closed in December of 2001. When the doors locked for the last time, few seemed to take notice. However, at least one group would come calling.
Empty for four years and with a very uncertain future, the Artisan Center operating in the faded North Hills Mall was looking for a new home. In 2005, the live theater group took over the Belaire knocking down the wall between screens three and four while using houses one and two for rehearsals and workshops. In 2013, the Artisan signed a five-year extension which would take the theater past its 50th anniversary. The theater was the Hurst-Belaire shopping center’s beacon of light salvaging the theater and proved that this location could provide decades of entertainment for the area.
The AMC Northwood Hills 4 was the second DFW AMC theater opening in 1970 with a 10-year lease at Coit and Spring Valley Road serving as a first-run theater and a renewed second 10-year lease in which the theater was a second-run dollar house. The theater was excised from the shopping center after shuttering at the start of 1990 and would be replaced by a new retail store.
In 1950, Richardson had doubled its growth post-War but to just 1,300 residents. The suburb just to the north of Dallas grew throughout the 1960s hitting 50,000 residents by year’s end. Interstate Circuit had predicted this trend building its single screen Westwood at Spring Valley and Coit Road opening in 1966. Downtown’s Ritz Theater would go out of business shortly thereafter and Interstate was sitting pretty. But upstart to the DFW area, AMC theaters had other exhibition ideas. Opening its hugely successful Northtown 6 about eight miles away in 1969, the AMC theater showed six first-run films while the suburban Westwood could show just one.
The theater chain decided to build three additional multiplexes in Dallas. The Northwood Hills neighborhood of Dallas would get one theater. N-H was created in the late 1950s bounded by Belt Line Rd. on the north, Coit Rd. on the east, Alpha Rd. on the south and White Rock Creek on the west. The Northwood Hills 4 would open in the backyard of the Westwood signing a lease at Coit and Spring Valley in January of 1970 less than a mile away from the Interstate operation.
Interstate countered by hastily creating a second auditorium called the Promenade reflecting the new name of the shopping center that housed the theater and the later name of that operation. Meanwhile, AMC had its four-screener NH-4 ready to go July 1, 1970 with its first auditorium of 350 seats opening with “Paint Your Wagon,” its second screen of 250 seats with “Which Way to the Front?” the third screen and fourth screen with 225 seats with “The Reivers” and “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.” For AMC, it was game on as the company expanded in the next calendar year to the Forum 303 Mall 6 in Grand Prairie, the Preston Center 2 in Dallas, and two disastrous entries into Oak Cliff with the short-lived Golden Triangle 4 and the open-then-closed Western Park Village Center 4.
The cinematic money was heading to the west about four miles away as in May of 1980 the AMC Prestonwood launched near the General Cinema Prestonwood and near the forthcoming UA Prestonwood that same year. With the Prestonwood area becoming Dallas' second most lucrative theatrical zone, in July of 1980, a pricing policy change downgraded the Northwood Hills 4 to a dollar house. The same occurred at the rival Promenade Twin. For the next ten years, the property would age quickly showing second-run fare as AMC grinded out what it could from the aging property. The theater closed as its 20 years of lease cycles concluded on January 1, 1990.
The final films were “Dead Poets’ Society,” “Parenthood,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” “Immediate Family,” and “Let It Ride.” Interstate now under Plitt operation decided to up the ante for the dollar house fare and turned its Westwood into a six-screen facility in 1984 that lasted for its final ten-year stretch. AMC’s plan proved to be the winner, however, vanquishing the Interstate/Plitt Circuit as Plitt just wasn’t aggressive in the multiplex era. Well played AMC and the Northwood Hills 4 played a role in moving Dallas to the multiplex era.
The fast-growing AMC Theater chain wanted to follow up its game- changing AMC Northtown 6 and its follow-up AMC Northwood Hills 4 on the border of Richardson with another 42 screens with 10,000 seats in Dallas during the 1971 calendar year. On the periphery of Dallas’ Preston Hollow neighborhood, the Preston Center 2 Theatres was built by contractor Koonce & Davis and in support of AMC’s architects was Albert R. Smith, a Dallas architect. The side-by-side theaters each had their own attraction sign and entrance at the Preston Center East Shopping Center but shared every other theater amenity. The 10,200 square foot theater had two 450 seat houses for a capacity of 900 patrons (technically 446x2 892 total). Opening on Nov. 10, 1971, the theater had a first-run film in “Joe Hill” and a return presentation of “Carnal Knowledge” which had played at the General Cinema NorthPark I & II. The opening was sandwiched between AMC’s grand opening of the AMC Golden Triangle 4 in Oak Cliff in July and the Nov. 17th opening of the ill-fated AMC Western Park 4.
The theater featured first-run fare and great midnight shows. While the theater had many up days, the challenges for the twin screener were that it was land-locked, had parking challenges at key points in the day, and with only two screens was AMC’s only area theater with fewer than four screens. By 1980, AMC demoted the theater to sub-run $1 movies for all shows, a mis-match for the Preston Hollow neighborhood. Meanwhile, a sleepy twin-screen theater in Farmers Branch, TX rebranded itself from dollar house to art theater. Brought in to the Showcase was Bob Berney who had managed AMC’s Greenway 3 which, itself, had transitioned from mainstream to successful art film policy. Suddenly, AMC had a notion! The Preston theater was rebranded as the Park Cities Theatres 2 and closed after a handful of dollar screenings to renovate the theater to show art films full-time. AMC hoped that the Greenway’s success in Houston would translate within Dallas.
Starting in Nov. 17, 1980, the Park Cities 2 showed “Practice Makes Perfect,” a French film, and “Rude Boy,” a British film. The concessions now included coffee and imported candy along with much classier carpeting. For 14 months, the Park Cities 2 tried every language of film imaginable but the losses mounted to a six figure loss. Dallas proved to be a much worse draw for art films than Houston in the early 1980s. At the end of the 10-year lease cycle and a short-term re-up, the writing was on the wall and AMC would pull up anchor. On the Park Cities 2 marquee the last night of its operation, the message read on the left attraction board for screen one, “Dallas One,” and on the right attraction board for screen two, “Art Zero.” In a classy move, the theater manager addressed the audiences for the last showings of the Park Cities 2 in January of 1982 telling audiences to go to the Inwood Theater, which would switch to an all-art film policy. Meanwhile, the Showcase Cinema in Farmers Branch would move to full-time X and XXX films. And the Park Cities 2 closed up shop and would be repurposed for other retail purposes. AMC would get back to the general area moving to the AMC Highland Park Village in the Park Cities five years later.
Correction: Closing date of January 28, 1982
The Perkowitz + Ruth architected AMC Parks 18 megaplex was nothing short of a bombshell in South Arlington opening November 6, 2002. The 18-plex occupied 72,800 square feet with 3,360 seats—auditoriums ranging in size from 100 to 350 seats. Its announcement in 1999 as a 4,000 seat 24-screen multiplex had employees at aging Arlington multiplexes updating their resumes as the theater’s footprint would impact the AMC Green Oaks, General Cinema Arlington Square 8, UA Bowen. AMC Festival (former Forum), Loews Lincoln Square, and Loews Cinemas 20 & 287, all of which would close due in part to the Parks. The megaplex was in and multiplex was under pressure.
Sears’ Homart Development had the 112-acre site for the Arlington Park Mall since the 1970s but didn’t announce its anchors or plans until January of 1983 with a 1986 targeted opening date as the Arlington Park Mall. The initial theater was external to the mall as General Cinema theater opened December 12, 1986 with its Arlington Park Square 8 much as was the case with Homart’s Seminary Square and Town East malls which featured neighboring external General Cinema properties. But unlike those projects, the Arlington Park Mall was stalled, slowed by inability to get tenants signed on quickly and wasn’t even approved by the Arlington City Council until 1987 and finally opened in 1988.
In 1995, Homart was purchased by General Growth Properties and that same year the AMC Grand in Dallas revolutionized film going for the area. General Growth announced an AMC property inside its new Stonebriar Mall in Frisco, TX in 1998 and had already plotted how to renovate its aging Parks property even prior. In talks for several years with AMC regarding the Parks the announcement came in 1999 and the AMC Parks opened in 2002. There was no questioning the impact of the project to south Arlington. General Cinema would bail out of its neighboring Arlington Park Square 8 and all other Tarrant County locations on October 5th, 2000 even prior to the AMC Parks facelift finishing, leaving the mall area theaterless until 2002.
With aged malls dying all over the DFW area, the AMC Parks megaplex project was the heart of a big-risk 1.6 million-square-foot addition. An expanded food court, an ice skating rink, the replacement of the ghost town Sears-owned Great Indoors anchor, Arlington police stations, carousel and – possibly most important, two new adjacent parking deck structures remade the mall. The $70 million renovation plan with tax rebate incentives paid out big.
The AMC Parks 18’s overall theme was called Film City and upped AMC’s more benign Stonebriar 24 in Frisco with more design flair. Hallway walls had murals of movie stars and the terrazzo floor design had famous movie quotes, “Here’s lookin' at you, kid!” and “We’re not in Kansas anymore” among them. A similar design would be used at Dallas’ Valley View 16 and elsewhere across the country. Ample legroom, with each row 18 inches higher than the one in front along with AMC’s loveseats were there. The theater went all in for Sony Dynamic Digital Sound is in all auditoriums. The theater had a single large concession stand opting for vending machines near each auditorium rather than the multiple concession areas tried in other area AMC multiplexes.
Its November 6, 2002 opening would spell the end for the area’s multiplexes associated with the major chains. The Loews properties would be bulldozed. The General Cinema property became home to the Arlington school district. The former AMC Green Oaks and Festival became Movie Tavern and dollar house locations and the UA Bowen – which, itself, was ticketed for a megaplex makeover that never happened – became a storage facility. While competition came in the form of a nearby Studio Movie Grill in January of 2007, the AMC Parks continued to thrive into the 2010s.
In the realm of Dallas trivia, if someone were to ask which Dallas movie theater originally constructed as a movie theater was the first one able to survive 100 years, you’ve found your answer. The Crystal Theater building actually survived a century in demolition-happy Dallas, Texas. In the store-show era of movie exhibition, the Crystal was like the Candy, Princess, Dalton and many others housed in converted retail spaces. Dallas movie pioneer and capitalist W.D. Nevills had the most downtown theaters but George Jorgenson had one of the largest with the converted retail space known as the Crystal Theatre at 1608 Elm Street. Jorgenson had seven store shows in Galveston but knew bigger coin could be had in downtown Dallas.
Nevills decided the time was right to move past the “store-show” concept and project to more people simultaneously. He launched the Washington Theatre at 1615 Elm St. as the first movie palace built for photoplays in Dallas seating 600 people. It opened Thanksgiving Day 1912 and moviegoers lined up there. For Jorgenson peering across the street and seeing this, it must not have sat well. Meanwhile, a block away work was almost completed on an even more oppulent movie palace, I.A. Walker’s awesome Queen Theatre. For Jorgenson to survive, there were few options.
He was able to secure a bit more land – 25 feet to the east adjoining 1608 Elm and had his store-show theater razed. Using Queen architect Walker and $100,000, the new Crystal would one-up the Washington – both of which launched with short-term leases. Jorgenson and Walker also carved out space for retail and office space above the theater just to secure additional sources of revenue. On September 25, 1913, an audience filling each of the theater’s 600 seats saw the grand opening feature of “A Sister to Carmen.” Audiences were impressed with Walker’s Oriental design starting with its lobby with a fresco of a Japanese love story and oversized Japanese lantern at its center. As the theatergoer’s path continued complete with Japanese art, they would notice the Oriental light fixtures, elevated boxes, and main auditorium – a joss house temple creation. Gaudy but nice. At the $10,000 Wurlitzer pipe organ the first night was Carmenza Vendeless of Chicago who said that while there were bigger houses in Chicago, nothing could compare to Walker’s Queen and Crystal in downtown Dallas.
The Crystal became known as one Dallas’ “Big Four,” along with the Washington, Queen, and Hippodrome. The competition was pretty fierce. Jorgenson managed to wrestle the Universal Film Studio contract away from the Queen in the fall of 1913. The Queen siezed the General Film Company contract (Edison, Mélies, Biograph, Lubin, Pathé, et al) away from the smaller Washington. And the Hippodrome retained Mutual Films.
P.G. Cameron would take on the profitable Crystal for Southern Enterprises. But times were changing rapidly in downtown Dallas. The Big Four were under big pressure in the early 1920s with the creation of the Palace, the Majestic and others. Cameron would move on to greener pasture locations and W.G. Underwood would become the third operator of the Crystal. Across the street, the Washington was done after its 15-year lease cycle (a 5-year and 10-year) was up in 1927 and would be demolished not long after. Underwood would finish out the theater’s 15-year lease (one 10-year and one 5-year) and move to the Pantages renaming it the Ritz. The Crystal would be spared as a building, however, because of its multi-use construction and existing clients including Kushner Brothers Men’s Store. Walker’s Oriental designs were removed and theater gutted to create additional retail space. The Crystal became home to many clients with the lobby becoming a long-running Bakers Shoe store and, in the 2010s, the Donut Palace.
So while the Crystal didn’t go out as a movie palace after over 100 years in downtown Dallas, at least it was a palace for donuts. Sadly, the building was largely overlooked for its significance as the last remaining homes of Dallas' “Big Four” in early silent film exhibition.
The Golden Triangle is the area extending from Denton at the north point to the south with Dallas on the eastern point and Fort Worth on the western point. Developers launched the Golden Triangle Shopping Center in 1964 at the confluence of U.S. 67, S. Polk Street and W. Pentagon Parkway forming a triangular plot of land in south Dallas' Oak Cliff. The fast-growing AMC Theater chain wanted to follow up its uber successful AMC Northtown 6 and its follow-up AMC Northwood Hills on the border of Richardson with another 42 screens with 10,000 seats in the 1971 calendar year. Oak Cliff would receive two theaters during this growth spurt.
Both theaters would be almost identical to the Northwood Hills 4 and the Triangle 4 would be the first of the two Oak Cliff properties to launch. Opening July 1, 1971 with “Cold Turkey,” “Patton,” “The Owl and the Pussycat,” and “Song of Norway,” the theater was underway. Four months later and just 4.5 miles away, the theater’s cousin – the Western Park 4 launched, as well. But the population shifts were rapid and the Western Park 4 closed just seven months into what was a disastrous situation.
The Triangle 4 was AMC’s last theater standing in Oak Cliff. It wouldn’t last long, either. The theater failed miserably closing in February of 1974. The theater would get one last shot at finding its audience when the operators of the Canyon Creek took on the theater in the summer of 1976 running it as a sub-run dollar house. The neighborhood didn’t show up and the theater was a quick casualty. Both the Western Park 4 and the Triangle 4 would have two different operators and both failed to gain an audience. Their total running time was four years combined. AMC wouldn’t repeat the mistake by building any more theaters in Oak Cliff. The only theaters which would be added would be General Cinemas adding two multiplexes near Red Bird Mall and United Artists building an eight-screen ‘plex in the vacinity of Red Bird Mall.
As of the mid-2010s, both former AMC theaters were still standing. Both were converted into retail spaces. Both were in business as of this writing. The Western Park 4 was a Family Dollar franchise retail store. And the Triangle 4 was also a Family Dollar franchise retail store. An odd coincidence for two of the worst performing new-build theaters in the history of Dallas.
Western Park is a neighborhood in the Southwest-Redbird area of Oak Cliff established in the early 1960s. The fast-growing AMC Circuit had dropped a bombshell on Dallas called the Northtown 6 that was changing the very nature of film exhibition in the Dallas area as the decade of the 1960s concluded. Following up that theater with its AMC Northwood Hills on the border of fast-growing Richardson, AMC looked to keep the momentum going in the early 1970s. In a curious decision, the chain targeted Oak Cliff for two new nearly-identical four-screen multiplexes announced in January 1971 that would have the same design as the Northwood Hills 4. The goal in Dallas was to operate an additional 42 automated screens with 10,000 seats in 1971, alone.
The AMC Western Park launched at the corner of Illinois Ave. and Cockrell Hill in the Western Park Village shopping center on 17 November 1971. It showed “Murphy’s War,” “The Tender Warrior,” “The Organization,” and “McCabe and Mrs. Miller.” Population shifts were already underway in the ten-year old neighborhood. CEO Stanley Durwood noted the challenging economic climate that the theater faced. He suggested that twilite shows priced under $1 would be what the area needed and that the theater would be run with the efficiency of a military division. But unlike some military operations, Durwood and AMC almost immediately realized that they had hit a buzz saw by opening in Oak Cliff. And unlike some military operations, Durwood and AMC wouldn’t wait long before taking steps to bug out.
Just completing its seventh month in its new build Western Park 4, AMC hastily closed up shop just as the big summer films were coming in. They would put all of their Oak Cliff eggs in the remaining Triangle 4 which had also opened in 1971 just 4.5 miles away. A new operator was identified and ran the Western Park 4 as a sub-run, sub-dollar house. That run was even less successful lasting just two months and the Western Park 4 was closed again. For a new build theater, the Western Park 4 holds the record as the worst performing movie theater in the city’s history. Its cousin, the Triangle 4, didn’t fare much better failing to make it to its third anniversary. It also closed ignominiously in February of 1974. For AMC, these two Oak Cliff theaters were unusual missteps and the theaters were just a blip on its radar as it righted the ship and became a dominate player in Dallas.
As for the two theaters in the mid-2010s, both spaces were converted to retail spaces within their shopping centers. Still standing in 2015, the Triangle 4 at 3939 S. Polk was a Family Dollar franchise retail store. And the Western Park 4 at 4404 W. Illinois was, ironically, also a Family Dollar franchise retail store.
Correction: Family Dollar — not Dollar General.
Correction: Family Dollar — not Dollar General.
When Texas Automated Theaters was looking to establish low-cost automated theaters, many would be located adjacent to – or inside of – hotels or other high traffic areas and run with minimal personnel. But as was the case in Garland – with the Walnut Twin – the theaters were tucked behind other buildings and were low risk investments to utilize challenging retail spaces. For the Farmers Branch Showcase I & II in Farmers Branch, suite 400 at 2825 Valley View Lane was out of view from the road thanks to a strip shopping center that blocked the standalone twin-screen theater built in 1974. The attraction board on the street was the only hope for most patrons driving past to see the theater’s offerings. Another attraction board was featured in front of the theater, itself. The features on the boards for Friday, April 4, 1974 were its grand opening films of “The Way We Were” and “Billy Jack.” Thanks to the installed equipment, the theater had five to six showings each day of its feature films.
Showcase tried to eke out its existence playing first-run fare and then tried lower cost sub-runs but the audiences just didn’t come. The operators sold out in early 1980 prior to their sixth anniversary. Circuit owner Theaters West of Houston took on the struggling twin-screener and tried something totally different beginning April 26, 1980 switching to full time art house. The theater’s name was changed from the Farmers Branch Showcase I & II to the Showcase Cinema 1 & 2. The art house policy brought with it free publicity from the local Dallas Morning News whenever a significant art film opened.The first films were foreign language films “Till Marriage Do Us Part” and “Robert et Robert.” However, the audiences weren’t enough to keep the theater viable. This problem worsened when AMC renamed its Preston Center 2 as the Park Cities 2 playing art films
Exactly one year into its Showcase art run, Theaters West purchased Dallas' venerable Inwood Theater which had been closed for months due to a fire and converted a new upstairs theater to show art films hoping to find a boutique clientele in Dallas. It worked. So in June of 1981, Theaters West reversed course in Farmers Branch shelving art and turning Showcase Screen Two into a mainstream sub-run dollar house but adding an X-rated adult film to Showcase Screen One. The theater’s performance issues were behind it as the adult fare did brisk business.
Unfortunately for Theaters West, they were in court often as the city of Farmers Branch did anything and everything to close the theater down including citing the theaters 14 times and confiscating films. The $200 a day fines could add up quickly but Theaters West counter-sued citing harassment and seeking an injunction against the city in 1982. The city kept trying to close the theater saying it was “pollution of our minds and our youth.” As the city’s federal suit and theater’s counter-suit were still on the table all the way to 1988, Theaters West and the city of Farmers Branch finally said each side would drop their suits if the theater took all signage down for its attractions. Rather than changing the type of films back to unsuccessful sub-runs, first runs or art runs or possibly something new, the theater threw in the towel ending a litigious final seven years and 14 altogether for the Farmers Branch Showcase / Showcase Cinema 1 & 2.
The theater has been home to many non-profit houses of worship over the years. The 2015-era owner took down the attraction board in front of the cinema which still has its original box office, movie poster boxes, doors to cinemas one and two and interior attraction boards. But the fortunes for the hidden retail spot are rather subpar as the Dallas County Appraisal District lists the former showcase theater’s valuation at just $5,220. But the theater looks pretty similar to the way it did back in the day and audiences still come once or twice a week so that’s not too bad for the 40-plus year old facility.
The 862-acre Canyon Creek subdivision was given approval by the Richardson City Council in 1962 to include a golf course, shopping center, apartments and single-family housing. In 1974, it had its first theater named the Canyon Creek Family Theater 1 & 2 located within the Canyon Creek Square Shopping Center. The theater was at 911 Canyon Creek Square next door to the Bonanza Steak House. The theater was known for showing first-run family fare and featured midnight cult and cult-to-be films. The theater also had a world premiere at its location. Palmer Rockey’s “It Happened One Weekend” had a two-week engagement at the Canyon Creek beginning October 11, 1974 making $696.25. But soon after as the theater underachieved, it was switched to a dollar house. The theater limped to its end as an English-language cinema failing to find its core audience in November of 1982. The theater became the Victory Theater beginning in 1983 showing Asian films though not making it into the 1990s. The space was converted for other purposes and then was demolished.
Probably not much to add to the fine comments already here but the the theater’s grand opening was Sept. 17, 1999 with the largest auditoriums seating 475 in highback plush chairs with stadium seating and 56' wide screens with smaller auditoriums holding 125 to 225 patrons. UA installed an experimental concession stand bringing expanded products through high-tech devices. But the 80,000 square foot UA MacArthur Marketplace 16 was a megaflop as megaplex overbuild was a problem for many circuits. UA was among many exhibitors filing for bankruptcy protection.
Philip Anschutz took over controlling interest in United Artists and Regal, as well as Edwards Theaters in October of 2001 and the economy worsened. The Regal Circuit shuttered 30 theaters with 208 screens in 2003. Among them was the McArthur Marketplace shuttered very suddenly on June 30, 2003 just prior to some of the year’s biggest summer flicks. To punctuate that they weren’t coming back, they even took the seats all the way to Garland to place in their aged UA Northstar theater. Regal wanted no part of the MacArthur property ever again providing less than four years of service at the location.
Developers Diversified Reality which owned the space had to find another owner quickly. In a surprise move, Marquee Cinemas out of Beckley, W. Virginia announced within two week’s time that it would re-open the theater possibly within the month targeting July 25, 2003 as a possibility. Finding the theater stripped of so much, Marquee’s opening would be set back to February 13th, 2004 and an amazingly high price tag in the three million dollar range. Theater sizes dropped a bit to 100, 200 and 425 in stadium seating configuration. But it was all trick and no treat as Marquee fled the twice-bitten loser Marketplace on Halloween of 2005 not making it two full years.
Portland-based circuit Hollywood Theaters – which had properties including the Town Center Cinema in Fort Worth and South Freeway 14 in Burleson – reopened the theater as its third operator inside of seven years on June 23, 2006. The theater’s Bollywood / Hindi films drew audiences and the theater experienced an overall uptick in business.
On February 19, 2013, Regal purchased Hollywood Theaters circuit and almost unbelievably had returned one of its most notable liabilities back into its portfolio. Regal almost immediately announced the name change of the theater as the Regal MacArthur Marketplace Stadium 16. The Hollywood signage stayed longer on the attraction sign and facade although the logo was quickly dispensed with at the concession stands replaced by Regal cups and popcorn bags. The operation continued with the same first-run and Bollywood offerings.
The first films were Top Gun, Three Amigos, Name of the Rose and Stand By Me all released in 1986 and General Cinema didn’t announce its lease agreement on the property until March of 1986 so that pretty much leaves out the other two suggested opening dates. Grand opening ad of 12 December 1986 posted to clarify. But the date discrepancies are why I started provided information about theaters in my area so agree with the point. As for the closing of the theater as AMC v. GCC, the 5 October 2000 date is more than a year prior to the AMC buyout of GCC on 8 December 2001. Definitely a GCC property from open to close.
Saenger (typo above)
Many cities have their Lakewood Theater. It’s that suburban single screen theater that somehow was neither twinned nor demolished or gutted to the point of losing its original features. In Dallas, the Lakewood and Circle were two Interstate theaters fitting this category. But because the Lakewood was part of a well-identified neighborhood and part of a shopping center, it had a more successful history.
The H.F. Pettigrew architected theater constructed by George P. O’Rourke Construction was probably Eugene Gilboe of Franklin & Gilboe’s most flamboyant mural painting and interior decoration of his many Dallas/Fort Worth theater and hotel works. Gilboe’s full-mirrored ceiling and mural work using Dallas artists Perry Nichols, Harry Carnohan and Victor Lallier was what made the theater experience at Lakewood memorable. Dallas sculptor José Martin’s life-sized statutes adorned each side of the stage. Loveseat seating, a first in Dallas, only added to the ambience. And the exterior flourish that will likely live on as long as the building survives was its 100 foot tower by Texlite with 7,000 watt power to operate its colorful neon. Harold H. Wineburgh considered his firm’s Lakewood signage with porcelain enamel front, flashing tower and markee ceiling his best and most difficult sign. Pettigrew would be recognized by Architectural Record magazine with honorable mention for his architectural work on the Lakewood.
Opening October 27, 1938 with “Love Finds Andy Hardy,” the Lakewood was a hit for Interstate Theaters Circuit. Its success was found in connecting with its tight knit local community. Allowing the hosting of local church services, establishing low cost Kiddie Club Saturday screenings, hosting events including a WW2-era paper drive in which boy scouts brought over 18,000 pounds of paper, fielding a city-winning bowling league, and allowing all sorts of local live acts ranging from pets to Southern Methodist University (SMU) plays were all on the table for the community-minded suburban theater. But films were mostly where it was at as Interstate scaled back live stage shows and mostly ran second-run fare and lots of family films in the first ten years of the theater’s operation. But as Interstate opened theaters to the north in Dallas, the circuit changed with the age of its neighboring residents to art films post World War 2.
In 1956, the Lakewood was the first theater to install an automatic parking gate by Parking Service Company and patrons received a token for free parking to avoid the 25 cent fee. That same year, Lakewood also created a space for wheelchair accessibility and had hearing aids for the hearing impaired. Interstate ran the theater for 35 years – likely a 15 year initial lease and two 10-year re-ups and left at the end of the 35th year. Sam Chernoff of Theater Corporations took on the theater in September of 1973 put $25,000 into refurbishing the theater allowing SMU to run art films under its Cinematheque nameplate and showing mostly older and quality films. It ran Columbia Pictures’ 50th Anniversary Retrospective series in 1974. But that wasn’t the answer and the film was relegated to dollar house status, the first Dallas dollar house in 1974. It was a hit for K-Co Corp. as dollar mania hit Dallas as General Cinema’s Big Town Mall, Oak Cliff’s Aquarius, the nearby Granada, Oak Cliff’s Texas Theater, and the suburban north Park Forest Theater would all follow suit. Facing competition as a single-screener, the Lakewood switched to double-feature status and the theater’s biggest success was Rocky. When the 10-year lease was up, the now $1.50 Lakewood was without an operator and closed just prior to its 45th anniversary after a double feature of Cujo and The Man With Two Brains.
On Sept. 26, 1984, the theater came back under Burt Barr after a $500,000 renovation including Dolby sound, a 1927 theater organ, and new electrical system. As a nice touch, the first feature was “Love Finds Andy Hardy” with live musicians harkening back to the first day of the theater’s original operation. The Theater Organ Society played mini-concerts before the show. The theater’s first run policy faded over time and the theater went dark again on Halloween of 1993. After three years, the theater reopened in December of 1996 as a live performance and occasional film venue under manager Keith McKeague. A screening of Pearl Harbor was a huge success and live shows were often well attended.
The live booking space became even more crowded when the Granada switched from films to live events and many new places opened around the city. The theater operated all the way until January of 2015 when a comic heroine themed burlesque show was booked as the final event. The theater’s lack of historical designation provided many options for its owners and its interior faced an uncertain future. However, the owners vowed to keep the Texlite tower signage.
The movie palace era that launched theater row in downtown Dallas started on Thanksgiving Day, 1912 with the opening of the Washington Theater. But the Washington was soon overshadowed by the far superior 800-seat Queen Theater by architect I.A. Walker. The $47,000 project was on the books in 1911 with Earl H. (“E.H.”) Hulsey converting an existing retail building at Elm and Akard with a five-year lease beginning in August of 1912.
The Queen opened to the public on January 24, 1913 at Elm and Akard with an over-capacity crowd which had its high expectations more than delivered. Commenters of the pre-Yelp era were astonished by the improved definition of the Queen’s projection described as “flickerless” machines projecting bright, sharp pictures on the wall. Reviews said of the Queen that it was the “most completely equipped and elegantly finished photo playhouses in the country.” Life-sized sculptures of Queen of Carthage, Queen Dido of Carthage and Queen Isabel of Spain along with Cleopatra were nice touches. Assigned seating with ushers was another. And a cigar parlor for those watching in the boxes showed class and spotlighted the theater’s fireproof construction. A $20,000 pipe organ with many special effects, grand piano and a six-person orchestra of “first-class musicians” accompanied the program which was upped to 12-person orchestra. William T. Street was brought in from London to play the pipe organ. And the management pledged to assure the “moral protection” of all children. The Queen was a hit.
The Queen was also in touch with its Dallas populace. The Queen produced some local moving pictures shot by manager E.V. Richards Jr. on the streets of Dallas and his first film’s storyline conveniently ended at the Queen Theater. That film was shown for four days in 1913 which was considered a success back in that era. Richards soon left and would run 200 theaters as general manager of Saenger Amusement. Just three months into the Queen’s operation, Louis Bissinger (known as Uncle Lou) took over managing the theater and the showmanship continued with little drop-off. The theater would become home to first-run silent Paramount and Realart Pictures before more stringent on booking procedures. The Theater’s tagline was “crowned with public favor.” The name of Queen Theaters was so popular in Dallas and around the country that an Oak Cliff Queen theater was opened called the Cliff Queen in 1915. Hulsey renewed for another five-year lease in August 1917 but a major fire on Sept. 27, 1917 caused $22,000 in damages and led to renovations to the theater including new fixtures, paintings, roof, and ticket booth, as well as a lawsuit about the actual damages to the building resolved seven years later.
In its tenth year, Uncle Lou and Joe Bissinger subleased the theater from Hulsey and it finally adopted a general admission seating policy instead of assigned seating as the theater began to slip in stature. Larger, more modern theaters had surpassed the Queen as Dallas' theater row matured along Elm Street. By October of 1926, the theater became a second run house with discount ticket pricing. The theater finally received sound equipment in 1930 and played “The Cock-Eyed World” as its first talkie using the Western Electric sound on film technology. Uncle Lou acquired the lease from operator Earl Hulsey’s estate in 1931 after Hulsey’s death. Lou Bissinger was recognized by The Variety Club of Texas which celebrated his 30th year of operating the Queen.
In post-War Dallas, the Queen was becoming decrepit and programmatically had lost distinctiveness. As freshly-built suburban theaters were being opened that would siphon audiences away from second-run and badly-aging facilities like the Queen, something had to be done. Uncle Lou was gone and the Queen Theater marquee came down in September of 1948 when after 35 years, the theater was renamed the Leo Theater under the Joy Houck circuit that also operated the Strand in Dallas. The Cliff-Queen carried the Queen’s moniker a year and a half beyond the original Queen for the city of Dallas. The former Queen now Leo was completely remodeled, renovated and playing to desegregated audiences. Though trying to find its footing as a family second-run house at the outset, the Leo soon found the freedom to experiment under its new name, even playing exploitation and “adult” fare as the former Queen was no longer concerned about quality audiences / “public favor.” They just needed people to come through the turnstile.
The rebranding didn’t work. Much as the film industry was in retreat, the Leo was swept under as other theaters would convert to Cinemascope or VistaVision, the Leo was simply old school. In 1953, the Leo was flailing and turned to live 10-act vaudeville under the direction of Richard Crane perhaps to change its fading fortunes. Crane promised no burlesque at the Leo, just vaudeville for 60 cents. When that didn’t work, the Leo tried the combination of films and burlesque for two months thereafter. But nothing worked and the theater was shuttered on April 15th, 1953 after 40-plus years of total service though less than five as the post-regal Leo.
The Dallas Federal Savings and Loan Association (Dallas Fed) secured the site planning to bulldoze the Queen Theater in 1953. But that project was delayed at the last minute apparently left the city with what locals called an unfortunate eyesore for two years: a shocking turnaround for the former palace. Only the cigar store associated with the theater soldiered on until the bitter end of the building’s life. The Queen was finally abdicated on November 4, 1955 when the wrecking ball struck. Because all references to the Leo were removed from the building in 1953, the theater’s demolition coverage only referred to to it as the former Queen Theater. In some respect, that was a nice final touch recalling the theater’s glory days which had left such a lasting memory to Dallas' moviegoers and provided classy showmanship in silent film exhibition in the 1910s and 1920s. And onward to progress, the Fed’s modern 17-story skyrise was scheduled to be completed in 1957 in the Queen’s former spot.