It wasn't the movie. On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald slipped past ticket taker Julia Postal without paying, settling into the dark of the Texas Theatre while War Is Hell flickered on the screen. He wanted to get lost. Instead, shoe store manager Johnny Brewer spotted him acting suspicious outside, tracked him to the lobby, and tipped off the staff. The cops descended fast. Within minutes, fifteen officers flooded the auditorium, wrestled Oswald in seat 2 of row 3, and dragged him out into a screaming, hostile crowd on Jefferson Boulevard. That chaotic arrest cemented the theater's place in American tragedy.
But the building at 231 West Jefferson was actually a big deal before Oswald ever bought a ticket. Opened in 1931, it was the flagship of Howard Hughes's movie palace empire. Hughes poured money into the place. He demanded Venetian plaster, a massive pipe organ, and, most importantly for sweltering Dallas summers, the first cooling system in the region. It cost $250,000 to construct during the onset of the Great Depression. Locals loved the chill. Architect W. Scott Dunne went all out with the Italian Renaissance styling, making the Oak Cliff neighborhood feel like high society, if only for the price of a ten-cent matinee.
Then came the lean years. By the late 1980s, the theater was a derelict shell. A fire gutted the lobby in 1990, and developers wanted to level the block for parking. The neighborhood fought back, though. Local film buffs and preservationists formed the Oak Cliff Foundation, raising enough cash to rescue the brickwork and neon sign from the wrecking ball. Today, it is a bustling two-screen art house. You can still sit near the spot where the cops grabbed the century's most infamous assassin, sipping a local craft beer under the same restored ceiling where Hughes's patrons once escaped the Texas heat.
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