I still have the old soldering gun my dad used to help install equipment in the projection booth at the Ridglea Theater. He worked there as a projectionist for many years, just blocks from the house where I grew up in Ridglea.
The theater was a big part of my youth. I went to work with my father almost every Saturday and watched everything from early westerns to '50s sci-fi thrillers that have since become "classics."
The Ridglea was like a second home to me. I knew every inch of the theater from the booth to backstage. The space was grand and exciting. The mural of Spanish conquistadors that adorned the lobby is still etched in my memory. This theater had style and character, and I was proud to feel a connection with the place, the people and the movies.
The movies have strongly influenced my family, with three generations of projectionists and parents who met while working at a theater in the mid-1940s.
My grandfather came to Fort Worth as a carpenter. He was hired to build a projection booth in the old Opera House theater to enclose a hand-cranked projector for a new medium, silent films. The manager told him there were opportunities for young men willing to learn to operate the equipment. My grandfather seized that opportunity and continued working as a projectionist for more than 60 years. My dad and my youngest brother followed in his footsteps. We all loved the movies and the great Fort Worth theaters where they were shown.
Since those days, I have seen far too many examples of Fort Worth's shortsightedness when it comes to its theaters. One by one, they have fallen, often for questionable reasons. We have lost all the grand theaters that once graced downtown. The incredible Worth Theater, with its ornate Egyptian interior and vaudevillian legacy, became a parking garage. The Hollywood, smaller but elegant in its own right, is a shell next to the Electric Building (which isn't the same without Reddy Kilowatt on the corner). The Palace, which once had a separate entrance and balcony seating for black patrons, fell to downtown development with little recognition of its history.
These were the big three on Seventh Street, and if you stood near Burnett Park and looked east, you could see all three marquees at once.
Although the modest little Bowie Theater became a nondescript bank, I still expect to see my grandfather's pink and white Rambler parked out front when I pass by. The Seventh Street Theater, which once enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the Carnation ice cream parlor, was reduced to rubble years ago.
The Heights Theatre, revived by my family as a venue for classic films, gave way to the expansion of the West Freeway, thus ending decades of family dedication to the lost art of real movie theaters. Now the Ridglea, the last of the grand movie houses in Fort Worth, is facing its unfortunate demise.
Somehow today's multiscreen houses just don't measure up to the unique, stylish theaters of the past. There is no charm and little magic. It is sad that this generation never experienced those wonderful old places. I consider myself fortunate to have spent so many hours there, learning to appciate great films psented in a grand manner.
I will continue to enjoy the memories, but it may be a long intermission before people here realize the significance of what we have lost.
Sam Austin of Fort Worth is a senior project architect for CMA. wsaustin@cmatx.com
