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Friday, August 18, 2000

'Last Picture Show' theater reopening

The 1971 Academy Award-winning film portrayed the fictional '50s Texas town

Associated Press

ARCHER CITY - In this one-stoplight town immortalized in a 1971 Academy Award-winning film, a national icon is returning to the limelight.
   Thirty-five years after the Royal Theater burned down, the front of the stone building - complete with a blue and white marquee, orange awnings and illuminated "Royal" sign - has been rebuilt to appear as it did in "The Last Picture Show," based on a novel by Archer City native Larry McMurtry.
   The site of the original 100-seat theater won't show movies but will be an open-air amphitheater with a larger room next door for bands, plays, dinner theater and art classes.
   "This," said project coordinator Abby Abernathy, "would have been simple to rebuild as a movie theater, but for what? To get 100 people in here?"
   The renovated theater was unveiled Thursday night, the 35th anniversary of the fire.
   Filmed in black-and-white and hailed as a masterpiece, "The Last Picture Show" portrayed the breakdown of an unhappy fictional one-horse Texas town in the 1950s.
   McMurtry, who won a Pulitzer Prize for "Lonesome Dove," and others in town are not surprised by lingering interest in the landmark thanks to the film, which was nominated for eight Oscars.
   "'The Last Picture Show' had a lasting impression because it's representative of small-town America," he said. "People with small-town backgrounds can relate to it."
  
  

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