Remembering when the Fort Worth movie-going experience was far different than today
For those of a certain age (baby boomers) who grew up in Fort Worth in the 1950s and early ‘60s, there was no better way to spend a Saturday afternoon than sitting in a darkened movie theater watching a double-feature.
This was before Six Flags and water parks seduced us outdoors during long, hot summers. There was always a neighborhood theater close enough to walk to, admission was pocket change, and our parents didn’t mind us going.
The names of those old neighborhood theaters still reverberate in our memories: the Tower, Parkway, New Isis, Bowie, 7th Street, Grand, Poly, Varsity, and Tivoli, to name some of the more prominent.
You didn’t need to go all the way downtown to the Hollywood, Worth, or Palace on “Show Row.” These little local venues had all the screen action and hot popcorn you needed. Sure, they were B-movies and second-run features, but who could complain? There was usually a cartoon, too (Bugs Bunny? Roadrunner?).
The New Tivoli on Magnolia was “the first deluxe neighborhood theater” in 1935. Its success led to the White Theater (Hemphill) in 1940; the Rosen (Lake Worth) in 1941; the Bowie (Camp Bowie) and the Tower (Six Points), all in 1942; and the New Isis on North Main in 1944. There was not a hole-in-the wall joint in the lot.
Typically, they seated upward of 700 with the New Tivoli seating 1,000 (240 in the balcony), and the Tower having “more neon out front than any other Fort Worth playhouse.” They cost under $100,000 to construct and were cheap to run with high school kids behind the concession stand and manning the box office.
Some, like the TCU, were independent theaters; others, like the Tower and Parkway, were part of the Interstate chain.
Their bread and butter were second-run films (up to a year old), foreign imports, and poverty-row films from studios like Republic and Monogram. Most offerings were calculated to appeal to a younger audience, which meant a lot of Italian sword-and-sandal epics with second-tier stars like Richard Egan, Rory Calhoun, and Steve Reeves.
Who could ever forget “Hercules Unchained” or “The Colossus of Rhodes,” both 1960? Japanese monster films, cashing in on the popularity of “Godzilla” (1954) played well. My friends and I were enthralled by “Rodan” (1956) and “The Mysterians” (1957).
Each theater catered to its own neighborhood.
The Berry on Hemphill (formerly the White, named for the owners, not its admission policy) played Spanish-language films exclusively after 1961. The New Isis catered to a tough north side crowd that went for violent films and slapstick comedies.
At one point in the 1970s they ran nothing but kung fu films. The Grand on Fabons had an exclusively black audience from nearby Terrell Heights and showed a lot of old “Negro cinema” features that never played the white houses. The TCU theater on University (1946-2006) mixed classy second-run features (“To Kill a Mockingbird” in 1964) with more “artsy” bookings (“Far from the Madding Crowd”), both aimed at the nearby university crowd.
My personal favorite was the Tower at the intersection of Race, Riverside Drive, and Belknap. It was only 15 minutes (10 minutes by car) from our house in Oakhurst, and I was looking forward to the day I could ride my bicycle there when we moved across town after the third grade at Oakhurst Elementary.
Now that I was a west-sider, the closest neighborhood theaters besides the TCU were the Bowie and the Ridglea. The latter was too big and fancy to qualify as a neighborhood theater. It ran first-run and “road show” features, which meant higher ticket prices and concessions. After all, they had to pay for all the fancy artwork in the lobby, too.
Rise of multiplex theaters
By the end of the 1960s, malls and multiplex theaters were driving the little neighborhood theaters out of business. They died one by one, although the New Isis managed to hang on until the early 1980s.
The obituaries for others, like the Interstate’s Parkway (Eighth Avenue) in 1964, said they were victims of “the city’s growth patterns.” Even the Big 3 downtown show palaces, the Hollywood, Worth, and Palace, died before the 1970s were half over.
Today, movie houses have 10 or more different screens, reclining seats, and Dolby Surround Sound, and you can buy your ticket online. They also have concessions that cost more than a full meal at a nice restaurant used to cost.
What they don’t have is the magic of those old neighborhood theaters where you slapped down your quarter at the box office out front, bought your popcorn for 10 cents or maybe 15 cents (large with butter), then plopped down for a three hours of air-conditioned, thrills.
Author-historian Richard Selcer is a Fort Worth native and proud graduate of Paschal High and TCU.
This story was originally published December 7, 2019 at 6:00 AM.