Bozo Drive-In
Interstate 27 Frontage and Country Road 185,
Hale Center,
TX
79041
Interstate 27 Frontage and Country Road 185,
Hale Center,
TX
79041
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Then again, maybe it would have been difficult to get tornado insurance in Hale Center. The June 14, 1965 issue of Boxoffice told of a visit from R. A. “Skeet” Noret, who told of a twister that hit the town on June 2 and did “slight damage” to the screen. “Tommie Leathers, manager of the Bozo, took his wife and new baby (born May 22) into a cellar for the night … (The tornado) leveled 66 homes, the post office, bank, drug store, city hall, Ford Motor Co. and other businesses. Three were killed and more than 100 injured in Hale Center.”
According to a story in the May 21, 1974 Hale Center American, Boyd Prather opened the XIT “around 1952 … The drive-in was named in honor of the famous XIT ranch.” Skeet Norris bought it years later and renamed it the Bozo. The article said the Bozo closed “in the mid 1960s,” and a tornado wrecked the screen in 1967. The wreckage and ramps were still there at the time of the 1974 article, when the site was given to the FFA for a lamb breeding program.
In a Looking Backward column on April 8, 1994, the American included movie listings for the Bozo on that day in 1964.
The April 24, 1967 Boxoffice reported that Ted Contreras of Lubbock had purchased the Bozo from Skeet Noret of Lamesa “who had owned the situation the last five years and had not planned to reopen this spring due to the complications of making a smalltown airer pay off.” Contreras reopened for the season on April 9 that year. I hope that he bought tornado insurance.
The Motion Picture Almanac didn’t include the name “Bozo” until its 1966 edition, when it erroneously listed two drive-ins for Hale Center – the 200-car Xit, owned by Boyd Prather, and the 275-car Bozo, owned by Skeet Woret. Both persisted through the 1976 edition, but when the MPA rebooted its drive-in list for the 1977 edition, Hale Center no longer had any drive-ins.
Approx. location for this drive-in was Interstate 27 Frontage & County Road 185
Added 2012 and 1966 aerials. Drive-in was located south of town.