Royal Treatment
Archer City raises the roof on the theater made famous by The Last Picture Show.
It was a gala premiere at the Royal Theater in Archer City and a long-delayed tribute of sorts to the 1971 film The Last Picture Show that had immortalized the movie house. But no picture was playing because the starring attraction was the theater itself. On August 17—35 years to the day that it had burned down—the Royal reopened amid spectacle appropriate for this dusty North Texas town of 1,800 residents: The high school band played, and 600 people turned out for an old-fashioned celebration complete with free hot dogs. The next night 150 invited guests and benefactors came for a $100-a-plate dinner and show. It was eerie to drive up to the town square and see, in the place of a charred, crumbling ruin, the stone theater's red neon sign glowing once again above a blue-and-white marquee—just the way it looked in the movie.
After champagne toasts and a dinner of pork tenderloin and chicken breast stuffed with pesto, Larry McMurtry took the stage. The author of the novel The Last Picture Show, he lives in Archer City once again and owns the sprawling Booked Up bookstore. Movies were the cultural bonding experience for his family, he recalled, and they would drive the sixteen miles from their ranch to see films at the Royal about once a week. But the theater that inspired his book won't show movies anymore. The renovated Royal has a broader mission: It will be a venue for live theater, musical performances, poetry readings, and other cultural and community activities that Archer City couldn't offer when McMurtry was coming of age. "Here you are in a little sunbaked town kind of off to itself," he said. "That does not mean you have to limit yourself to country music, a square dance, and the TV." Why not perform the Greek tragedies at the Royal? Why not a ballet, he suggested. "It's important that a community not accept parochial notions."
Or a writer. It was McMurtry, after all, who railed against parochialism in his 1966 novel, a story of small-town love, loss, and isolation that was later made into an Academy award-winning film starring Timothy Bottoms, Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, and Randy Quaid. The movie, parts of which were filmed in Archer City, turned the theater into an icon. Though it had burned and closed before filming began, a temporary facade was constructed for the exterior shots. After The Last Picture Show came out, people from all over the country made the pilgrimage to Archer City, especially those from small towns who remembered their local movie houses as sanctuaries where they could escape for a few hours. Yet when they arrived, they discovered that the landmark was a burned-out shell, nearly forgotten.
That was fine with some folks in town, though, who disapproved of the novel's and the movie's strong sexual themes. Many believed McMurtry's book maligned their town, and they opposed the movie's filming in Archer City. One vocal critic was Bill Abernathy, a local rancher who was a fourth-generation Texan. McMurtry challenged Abernathy to a debate over the issue, but it never took place. In perhaps the ultimate twist of irony, when McMurtry made his remarks at the reopening, he had nothing but praise for another Abernathy—38-year-old Abby, Bill's son. Abby led the effort to revive the Royal, doing everything from raising money (to date about $350,000) to doing much of the physical labor. "My father had objections to the moral content of the book," Abernathy says. "When the movie came to town and they were beginning to use the youth of Archer City [as extras], he objected to that." What might his father, if he were still alive, think of his involvement in the Royal's resurrection? "I think my father would have been proud of me because he taught me the work ethic, he taught me tenacity, and he had a great amount of faith in what he believed," he replies after a pause. "But what I'm trying to do is diametrically opposed to what the movie offered."
Indeed, the Royal depicted in The Last Picture Show represented small-town stagnation. Who can forget the image of the closed movie house with its doors flapping in the dust driven by a bitter wind? The reality in Archer City reflected the story line: cycles of oil booms and bigger busts hammered the town. Stores along the square closed, and people—especially the young ones—left.
After the 1965 fire, the Royal deteriorated until Abernathy bought it in 1986. His father had died when Abby was eighteen, and after graduating from Southern Methodist University in 1984, he returned to Archer City to run the family ranch. He and his sister, Vivian Green, bought and restored the historic Spur Hotel downtown, then Abernathy decided to buy the Royal's remains with the idea of turning the landmark into a cafe. "That all fell through with the oil boom's bust," Abernathy says. Interest increased when parts of the sequel to The Last Picture Show, called Texasville, were filmed there in 1989, but it wasn't until 1992 that the nonprofit Archer Community Foundation was born to rejuvenate several community facilities. Abernathy gave the Royal to the foundation so that grants could be pursued to help finance its rebuilding. In 1993 he left to work as an actor and a producer in New York and stayed there until friends persuaded him to come back three years later and take over the project. At first the idea was to restore the Royal as a tourist attraction, but McMurtry opposed it. "He said he thought it was a hideous idea," Abernathy says. But when the plans evolved to turn the Royal into a cultural resource for the community, McMurtry gave his blessing. "When he was told about the plans and saw the drawings, he said, 'Okay, that makes more sense. I can get involved, and I can get with some people, but you need a leader,'" Abernathy recalls. "No sooner were those words out of his mouth than people around here started calling me."
Two native sons of different generations, drawn away from Archer City and then pulled back, came together to build something lasting. McMurtry, of course, also had left Archer City for fame as a novelist, winning a Pulitzer prize for 1985's Lonesome Dove. He returned in 1986 to pursue his passion for books, snapping up some of the closed-up storefronts along the square with the idea of turning Archer City into a "book town" and opening a branch of his Washington, D.C., store, Booked Up. Now the town can boast its own McMurtry Economy, in which fans of his work, booklovers of all sorts, and curiosity seekers flock to the city. In addition to the Spur, a bed-and-breakfast called the Lonesome Dove Inn is now open. Several antiques shops and a cafe have popped up as well.
Other people are coming to Archer City too. Though the young once plotted their escape, Archer City is now drawing residents trying to escape larger cities. People are beginning to move from Wichita Falls to put their kids in Archer City schools. "The Last Picture Show represented an urban migration," Abernathy says. "Now Archer City is representing a rural migration." And the people coming into the town from larger cities are bringing the desire for culture with them. The Royal provides an outlet for that. "This place offers to the youth of Archer City what The Last Picture Show said they didn't have," Abernathy says.
The renovated theater preserves the original sandstone walls of the Royal—or what's left of them—as a kind of cultural ruin. The fragments enclose an open-air amphitheater. Next door, in what used to be a barbershop and a White's Auto store, is a large space with a stage where live theater, readings, and other events will be held. The Late Week Lazy Boy Supper Club, a monthly evening of music and dinner that helps raise money for the Royal, will continue, as will the Picture Show Players, a local theater troupe. When I last spoke to Abernathy, he was in the process of hiring a part-time director of programming, and he relies heavily on volunteers for the Royal's productions. He is also trying to connect the theater and its programs with local public schools and Midwestern State University, where he teaches acting (at the Larry McMurtry Center for the Arts and Humanities, no less). Despite all of this activity, though, McMurtry won't play a role in the theater's programming. "I'm just a happy spectator," he said. 
It was a gala premiere at the Royal Theater in Archer City and a long-delayed tribute of sorts to the 1971 film The Last Picture Show that had immortalized the movie house. But no picture was playing because the starring attraction was the theater itself. On August 17—35 years to the day that it had burned down—the Royal reopened amid spectacle appropriate for this dusty North Texas town of 1,800 residents: The high school band played, and 600 people turned out for an old-fashioned celebration complete with free hot dogs. The next night 150 invited guests and benefactors came for a $100-a-plate dinner and show. It was eerie to drive up to the town square and see, in the place of a charred, crumbling ruin, the stone theater's red neon sign glowing once again above a blue-and-white marquee—just the way it looked in the movie.
After champagne toasts and a dinner of pork tenderloin and chicken breast stuffed with pesto, Larry McMurtry took the stage. The author of the novel The Last Picture Show, he lives in Archer City once again and owns the sprawling Booked Up bookstore. Movies were the cultural bonding experience for his family, he recalled, and they would drive the sixteen miles from their ranch to see films at the Royal about once a week. But the theater that inspired his book won't show movies anymore. The renovated Royal has a broader mission: It will be a venue for live theater, musical performances, poetry readings, and other cultural and community activities that Archer City couldn't offer when McMurtry was coming of age. "Here you are in a little sunbaked town kind of off to itself," he said. "That does not mean you have to limit yourself to country music, a square dance, and the TV." Why not perform the Greek tragedies at the Royal? Why not a ballet, he suggested. "It's important that a community not accept parochial notions."
Or a writer. It was McMurtry, after all, who railed against parochialism in his 1966 novel, a story of small-town love, loss, and isolation that was later made into an Academy award-winning film starring Timothy Bottoms, Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, and Randy Quaid. The movie, parts of which were filmed in Archer City, turned the theater into an icon. Though it had burned and closed before filming began, a temporary facade was constructed for the exterior shots. After The Last Picture Show came out, people from all over the country made the pilgrimage to Archer City, especially those from small towns who remembered their local movie houses as sanctuaries where they could escape for a few hours. Yet when they arrived, they discovered that the landmark was a burned-out shell, nearly forgotten.
That was fine with some folks in town, though, who disapproved of the novel's and the movie's strong sexual themes. Many believed McMurtry's book maligned their town, and they opposed the movie's filming in Archer City. One vocal critic was Bill Abernathy, a local rancher who was a fourth-generation Texan. McMurtry challenged Abernathy to a debate over the issue, but it never took place. In perhaps the ultimate twist of irony, when McMurtry made his remarks at the reopening, he had nothing but praise for another Abernathy—38-year-old Abby, Bill's son. Abby led the effort to revive the Royal, doing everything from raising money (to date about $350,000) to doing much of the physical labor. "My father had objections to the moral content of the book," Abernathy says. "When the movie came to town and they were beginning to use the youth of Archer City [as extras], he objected to that." What might his father, if he were still alive, think of his involvement in the Royal's resurrection? "I think my father would have been proud of me because he taught me the work ethic, he taught me tenacity, and he had a great amount of faith in what he believed," he replies after a pause. "But what I'm trying to do is diametrically opposed to what the movie offered."
Indeed, the Royal depicted in The Last Picture Show represented small-town stagnation. Who can forget the image of the closed movie house with its doors flapping in the dust driven by a bitter wind? The reality in Archer City reflected the story line: cycles of oil booms and bigger busts hammered the town. Stores along the square closed, and people—especially the young ones—left.
After the 1965 fire, the Royal deteriorated until Abernathy bought it in 1986. His father had died when Abby was eighteen, and after graduating from Southern Methodist University in 1984, he returned to Archer City to run the family ranch. He and his sister, Vivian Green, bought and restored the historic Spur Hotel downtown, then Abernathy decided to buy the Royal's remains with the idea of turning the landmark into a cafe. "That all fell through with the oil boom's bust," Abernathy says. Interest increased when parts of the sequel to The Last Picture Show, called Texasville, were filmed there in 1989, but it wasn't until 1992 that the nonprofit Archer Community Foundation was born to rejuvenate several community facilities. Abernathy gave the Royal to the foundation so that grants could be pursued to help finance its rebuilding. In 1993 he left to work as an actor and a producer in New York and stayed there until friends persuaded him to come back three years later and take over the project. At first the idea was to restore the Royal as a tourist attraction, but McMurtry opposed it. "He said he thought it was a hideous idea," Abernathy says. But when the plans evolved to turn the Royal into a cultural resource for the community, McMurtry gave his blessing. "When he was told about the plans and saw the drawings, he said, 'Okay, that makes more sense. I can get involved, and I can get with some people, but you need a leader,'" Abernathy recalls. "No sooner were those words out of his mouth than people around here started calling me."
Two native sons of different generations, drawn away from Archer City and then pulled back, came together to build something lasting. McMurtry, of course, also had left Archer City for fame as a novelist, winning a Pulitzer prize for 1985's Lonesome Dove. He returned in 1986 to pursue his passion for books, snapping up some of the closed-up storefronts along the square with the idea of turning Archer City into a "book town" and opening a branch of his Washington, D.C., store, Booked Up. Now the town can boast its own McMurtry Economy, in which fans of his work, booklovers of all sorts, and curiosity seekers flock to the city. In addition to the Spur, a bed-and-breakfast called the Lonesome Dove Inn is now open. Several antiques shops and a cafe have popped up as well.
Other people are coming to Archer City too. Though the young once plotted their escape, Archer City is now drawing residents trying to escape larger cities. People are beginning to move from Wichita Falls to put their kids in Archer City schools. "The Last Picture Show represented an urban migration," Abernathy says. "Now Archer City is representing a rural migration." And the people coming into the town from larger cities are bringing the desire for culture with them. The Royal provides an outlet for that. "This place offers to the youth of Archer City what The Last Picture Show said they didn't have," Abernathy says.
The renovated theater preserves the original sandstone walls of the Royal—or what's left of them—as a kind of cultural ruin. The fragments enclose an open-air amphitheater. Next door, in what used to be a barbershop and a White's Auto store, is a large space with a stage where live theater, readings, and other events will be held. The Late Week Lazy Boy Supper Club, a monthly evening of music and dinner that helps raise money for the Royal, will continue, as will the Picture Show Players, a local theater troupe. When I last spoke to Abernathy, he was in the process of hiring a part-time director of programming, and he relies heavily on volunteers for the Royal's productions. He is also trying to connect the theater and its programs with local public schools and Midwestern State University, where he teaches acting (at the Larry McMurtry Center for the Arts and Humanities, no less). Despite all of this activity, though, McMurtry won't play a role in the theater's programming. "I'm just a happy spectator," he said.
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