Century Theatre
214 E. Cano Street,
Edinburg,
TX
78539
214 E. Cano Street,
Edinburg,
TX
78539
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It’s increasingly likely that the Aztec was the house that opened in 1930 as the Grande Theatre. Film Daily of June 2 noted the recent opening of the house by Mrs. Velma Montague. This web page reveals that it was the Valley Theatre that became the Juarez, probably in 1939 or 1940.
I still haven’t tracked down the Alameda and Roxy theaters, which were operated by Mike Benitez in the 1950s. These might have been aka’s for the Aztec and Juarez, though the names Aztec and Juarez were in use in 1966, when trade journals reported that the Aztec had just been renamed the Century, so it’s quite uncertain. There also appears to have been a different Juarez Theatre opened in 1939, before its owner took over the Valley Theatre and moved the name Juarez there. It’s possible that the first Juarez became the Roxy or the Alameda.
I remember there was a building here in the mid to late 80s that had a box office and at one point the box office was the window to a snow cone stand.
Sorry. Used HTML instead of BBS code, so the block quote failed in that comment.
Either the Aztec or the Juarez Theatre was probably the new house being built by L.J. Montague, owner of the Valley Theatre in Edinburg, as reported in the March 18, 1930, issue of Motion Picture Times. The new theatre was intended to serve the Spanish-speaking population of the area, and was to have 350 seats.
The Aztec is mentioned frequently in various issues of Boxoffice in the 1940s, but without details. Then the house underwent a remodeling in 1966 and was reopened as an art house called the Century. The August 8, 1966, issue of Boxoffice reported on the change:<blockquote>“Manager Jim Longoria has changed the name of the Aztec Theatre to Century following a name-seeking contest won by Aron Pena of Edinburg. Pena won ten passes to the theatre, which officially opened under its new name Saturday, July 23 with ‘A patch of Blue.’
“Longoria also is manager of the Citrus and Juarez theatres in Edinburg.”</blockquote>The Aztec might have also briefly been called the Alameda Theatre. A review of the Mexican movie “El Gallo de Oro” by manager Mike Benitez of the Alameda Theatre, Edinburg, was published in the “Exhibitor Has His Say” section of Boxoffice on November 22, 1965. That’s the only mention of the Alameda in Boxoffice, but if it wasn’t the Aztec under another name then there was a fourth theater in Edinburg around that time. The Citrus and Juarez are accounted for at that time.
Edinburg had three theaters in operation in 1970, when an item about the Citrus Theatre appeared in the October 26 issue of Boxoffice. The item said that Jimmy Longoria, manager of the Citrus, “…also manages the town’s two other theatres.” The two others were not named in the item, but one was certainly the Juarez, and the other most likely the Aztec/Century.