Majestic Theater

dukeisduke on February 20, 2012 at 5:15 pm

That’s US Highway 80, not Texas Highway 80. And yes, the article in the Dallas Morning News was a very good one.

CSWalczak on October 4, 2010 at 2:43 am

After eighty-four years, the theater closed on October 3, 2010:
View link

dbphotos on July 14, 2008 at 10:19 pm

You can see a photo of the Majestic Theater in Wills Point, Texas taken on July 13, 2008 by clicking HERE.

www.DavidBailey.com

Don Lewis on September 10, 2006 at 5:59 pm

My photograph of the MAJESTIC in Wills Point.
www.flickr.com/photos/lastpictureshow/239985070

teecee on August 3, 2005 at 6:41 am

Named after Dallas' Elm Street movie palace, the Wills Point Majestic opened in 1926, two years before the first “talkie.” In that time, it has had three owners, all named Karl Lybrand _ I, II and III.

The eldest began showing movies in the back of his tailor shop in 1907, in a makeshift theater called The Home. The Lybrands contend that theirs is the oldest continuously operating, family-owned theater in the United States.

Lybrand III, 61, has two daughters, who have shown little interest in running the faded theater, whose exterior bricks are the same rusty color as those on its bumpy surrounding streets.

“I plan on being here as long as I am physically able,” says Karl III, who knows his customers by name and who refuses to leave until the last underage patron finds a ride. Rather than leave a kid stranded, he occasionally drives them home.

His theater is like a comfortable old shoe, which got a minor makeover a few years back. Its 315 seats were reupholstered in 2003, and during the 1980s, Karl III went to “the platter system,” eliminating the need for the theater’s carbon-arc projectors, which pre-dated World War II. He also installed a new screen. The sound, however, still rattles through a Radio Shack amplifier.

“I don’t have reclining seats, or stadium seating or surround sound or any of the stuff you get at the AMC 30 in Mesquite _ where all of our teenagers go, which is why I don’t have a teenage crowd any more. What people tell me they love here is the nostalgia, and we’ve got plenty of that.”

Like everybody who grew up in Wills Point, 48 miles east of Dallas on Highway 80, assistant manager John Allen, 28, has seen movies here since he could talk. “It’s my entire childhood wrapped up in one building,” he says.

Source: Dallas Morning News, The (TX), Jul 07, 2005

teecee on March 17, 2005 at 1:35 pm

Color print (or low resolution photo)

http://www.moviepalaces.net/wpmajestic.jpg