Plains Theatre

Just saw a piece on Mysteries at the Museum on the Travel Channel which mentioned this venue and showed some of the exhibits.

The L.A. Times has a travel article about the UFO Museum, with a photo

Photos of the Plains and three other Corgan-designed theaters appeared in Boxoffice of December 6, 1947. The other houses featured in the article are the Agnew and May theatres in Oklahoma City, and the Boomer, Norman, Oklahoma.

I worked at the Plains theater (worked the concession, took tickets, ushered and changed the marquis) in part of 1952 and 1953. The Plains theater was managed by Mike Allred. Boyd Scott was general manager over all of the theaters in Roswell.
I started out working for Buddy at the Twilight drive in theater, located southeast of town. His last name might have been Hale.
I met my wife Peggy at The Plains where she worked p/t while attending business college. She worked with a very nice girl (in the ticket booth) by the name of Ruby.
I was a S/Sgt. at Walker AFB and worked p/t for the extra money and to stay busy
Boyd Scott attended our wedding. He had been good enough to overlook the rule that you could not date and work at the same theater.
Upon discharge, we moved to Albuq for ten years and on to Illinois where we currently live. We have not been to Roswell for ten years.
All of the people associated with the Plains were fine people and I respected them very much. (Thank you Ken for the photo of the Plains theater. It is just like I remember it)..
The only movie I really remember (because it played over and over and over) was Ichabod Crane and Mr. Toad.
If anyone knows anything about the above people, please email me

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

I posted kind of a grainy photo on 3/23/07 that shows the booth, as far as i can tell.

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

I have a photo of the Yucca Theatre in Roswell (124 E. 3rd St.,by the way) in 1950. Leave your e-mail address here if you’d like a jpg of it.

Here is a 1948 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/2a3tqu

A rare photo I took before the UFO craze in Roswell
www.flickr.com/photos/lastpictureshow/262644711

My father, Stanley Irons, worked at the Yucca Theater when he was in high school (1935-1939). I passed through Roswell recently and thought that this theater must be the Yucca, but apparently I was incorrect. Does anyone know anything about the Yucca?

The Plains Theatre was designed by Jack Corgan in 1946 for Theatre Enterprises. It was built of reinforced concrete. The Plains seated approximately 1000 on its main floor. At one side of the projection booth was a cry room and on the other -due to the regrettable segregation laws of the time- were 30 seats for “colored” patrons.

A triangle marquee and an elegant vertical sign were the main architectural features.