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mong the resplendent survivors of the single-screen slaughterare the Paramount Theatre in Austin, the Palace Theatre in Georgetown, and the Granada Movie Grill in Dallas. Yet none of these venerable venues boasts a prouder heritage than the Yucca Theatre in Midland. The Yucca was an integral part of Midland's development as the capital of the oil industry in the burgeoning Permian Basin in the 1920s. Commissioned by financier T. S. Hogan, the Yucca was built in 1927, adjacent to Hogan's ornate Petroleum Building, Midland's first "skyscraper" office tower. The former Montana senator was attracted by Midland's fast growing economy and envisioned the town as the natural business center for the oil boom that was occurring in the wake of the mammoth Santa Rita oil strike. An aesthete as well as a supporter of the arts, Hogan recognized the need for a multi-purpose regional theatre to service the growing population. In an interview Hogan gave the local newspaper during the Yucca's construction he is quoted as saying, "it's not enough to offer prospective citizens brick and stone, the spirit must be fed. They must be surrounded by beauty." To meet this need, the Yucca was designed to accommodate both theatrical productions and the new talking motion pictures. At the gala opening in 1929, the new Yucca was heralded as "the biggest and finest theatre this side of Ft. Worth." |
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The Yucca Resuscitated
The Summer Mummers
Revived Texas Theaters
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The Golden Bulls
Click for an expanded image of the bulls' heads and surrounding details.
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The building was designed by noted Fort Worth architect Wyatt C. Hedrick with an elaborate facade featuring Greek Revival detailing. New York designer H. B. Layman created gilded motifs with Egyptian Revival characteristics for the interior (click image, left, for detailed images) and the original stage setting was designed by another New Yorker, Bert Rothe. The opulent interior features massive winged lions and bulls heads facing each other on both sides of the stage. The Assyrian motif is continued in intricate decorative scroll work, hand-laid brick tile and matching wall carvings of winged demons on opposite walls. A lotus pattern is repeated throughout the theatre, both on light fixtures and the ceiling.
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The gala grand premiere of the Yucca offered a live vaudeville show and the screening of Rio Rita, a talking picture version of a Ziegfeld musical spectacle. For the next thirty years, the theatre hosted traveling vaudeville shows, concerts, community productions, graduation ceremonies and feature films. By the mid-fifties, it had become strictly a movie house with the segregated balcony reserved for African-American patrons. As a child in the fifties, I saw my first movie at the Yucca, Mike Todd's 1955 technicolor epic Around the World in 80 Days. Even after more modern theatres were built in the suburbs, I never tired of spending broiling Saturday afternoons in the cool, inky darkness of the elegant old Yucca under the watchful gaze of the winged lions. Abandoned by movie lovers who preferred the newer state-of-the-art venues, the once ritzy beauty drew her curtains and barred her doors in 1974. A local entrepreneur named R.C. Cauble leased the lobby for a sandwich shop called Beef Delight in the late seventies, but the rest of the Yucca would have to wait a few more years to be rediscovered and revitalized.
Act II: The Yucca Resuscitated |
Opening Night Program, 1929.
Click for details of program, including the stage and film program of the Formal Opening, coming attractions "Midnight Daddies" and "The Great Garbo," and notes from Directing Manager John Bonner.
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