CEAC-2018-12-December

American Street Guide
1930s Hollywood Theater in Fort Worth
Needs Pricey Face-Lift By Bud Kennedy | Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Downtown Fort Worth’s hidden Hollywood Theater has been closed for around 40 years. Only an awning outside the Historic Electric Building Apartments
hints that the mezzanine lobby, balcony and ornate auditorium of a 1,800-seat theater are hidden behind locked doors. (Steve Wilson/Star-Telegram via
AP)
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Dark 41 years, a forgotten downtown
movie theater flickered to life the other day, and for a
few minutes Fort Worth relived the era of downtown glitz,
showbiz premieres and Gone With the Wind.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports the 1930-vintage Hollywood
Theater, sealed away for decades like some old movie
monster’s secret crypt, opened to daylight for the first time
in two generations as a crowd relived past grandeur and
imagined a future restoration.
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Only an awning outside the Historic Electric Building Apartments
hints that the mezzanine lobby, balcony and ornate
auditorium of a 1,800-seat theater are hidden behind locked
doors at 410 W. Seventh St.
“I love old Fort Worth things,” said Casey Tibbetts, 36, president
at the new Guaranty Bank & Trust location next door.
He saw the theater and arranged public tours as part of the
new bank’s open house.
“When we picked this location, people started asking about
the theater. We wanted people to come take a look.”
Like an aging movie star, the Hollywood needs an expensive
face-lift.
Restoring a typical theater costs from $5 million to $10 million,
according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The lower auditorium floor and seats are gone, stripped and
removed to make room for residents of the adjacent apartments
to park underneath.
But the balcony, walls, ceiling and screen area remain, along
with the mezzanine, marble staircase and part of the lobby,
in a style described in one opening-day 1930 news report as
Georgian modernist.
Houston-based owner Tradewind Properties has been
advertising the 3,000-square-foot lobby and concourse and
12,000-square-foot theater for lease.
“I personally think it sets up nicely for a performance venue,”
said Andy Taft, president of Downtown Fort Worth, Inc.
“I was surprised at how intact the features are inside. It
doesn’t take much imagination to see the potential.”
It’d need disability access and an auditorium floor. But it
could easily become a black-box performance theater or
music club.
The Hollywood is inside the Electric Building, built in 1929 by
Houston investor Jesse H. Jones for Texas Electric Service Co.,
now TXU Energy.
The Historic Star-Telegram Building, converted in 2013 to
MorningStar Partners, is next door. (The Star-Telegram is now
in a different Jesse Jones tower at 808 Throckmorton St.,
built in 1930 as the Fair Building.)
The Hollywood was built in 1930, just when the industry
was switching from silent movies and musicians to “talking
pictures,” so it only has a screen, not a stage. The first movie
shown was director Frank Capra’s “Flight.”
In 1940, the Hollywood was in the spotlight twice.
In February, it unreeled Fort Worth’s first-run showings of
“Gone With the Wind,” to audiences that included Civil War
veterans and that stood in lines circling the block.
That September, the Hollywood and the larger Worth Theater
one block east co-hosted the city’s first world movie
premiere: “The Westerner” with Gary Cooper, telling the
story of legendary Texas frontier Judge Roy Bean.
The movie was partly shot at Star-Telegram owner Amon G.
Carter’s Shady Oak Ranch. A Houston movie critic described
the premiere, hosted by comedian Bob Hope, as classic Fort
Worth:
“Cowboys in full regalia slouched around in boots, cowboy
Stetsons at rakish angles.
The dinner out at Amon G. Carter’s ranch looked like a
miniature Academy Awards banquet. In cowboy outfit and
riding his Palomino pony, he greeted the celebrities. ‘I can
think of nothing more appropriate than having the premiere
here where the West begins,’ he said.”
It was the night Hollywood came to the Hollywood.
66 | Chief Engineer
Volume 83 · Number 12 | 67