Century Club 100 YEARS

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The Majestic Theatre

Over the last 100 years, the Majestic Theatre has hosted performances by Harry Houdini, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Conan O’Brien, and the Moscow Ballet. While businesses have come and gone in downtown Dallas, “the Majestic has been there all along,” says Jennifer Scripps, director of the Office of Arts and Culture Dallas, the organization that runs the theater.

Karl Hoblitzelle opened the opulent 1,700-seat theater on April 11, 1921, as the flagship for his Interstate Theatre company, a chain showcasing vaudeville acts and silent films. The marble floors, glittering chandeliers, red velvet seats, and air conditioning (a luxury for most Texans at the time) attracted white-gloved visitors for decades. It later became a “movie palace” that showed some of Hollywood’s biggest films, like John Wayne’s Hatari! and The Great Escape with Steve McQueen.

“The Majestic exemplifies where Dallas came from and where it is today,” Scripps says. As neighborhood movie theaters became more common, and downtown’s oncebustling theater scene went dark, the Majestic closed its doors in 1973 after a showing of the James Bond film . In 1976, The Hoblitzelle Foundation gifted the theater to the city of Dallas, with the caveat that it would restore the historic venue. The marquee lit