Group Fights to Save Theater in Oswald Capture

A preservation group is trying to save the landmark Texas Theater, the movie house where Lee Harvey Oswald was captured after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The theater, built in 1931 by billionaire Howard Hughes and considered one of the finest movie houses in Texas at the time, is scheduled to close Dec. 31. United Artists, which owns the theater in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, said the Texas is losing money showing second-run movies for a dollar.

The Texas Theater Historical Society made a hurried appeal to the company Thursday after learning of its decision earlier this week to close the theater. The group said the Texas has historical significance--both as an example of a 1930s-style movie palace and because of the Oswald connection.

“It’s just losing money,” said Dale Chappell, general manager of the southwest division of UA Theaters. “Our company’s policy is to close down theaters that are not profitable.”

“We’re not picking on the Texas,” Chappell said, noting that UA has closed 17 theaters this year, including five or six in the Dallas region, because of their inability to make money.

On Nov. 22, 1963, the movie house gained notoriety as the place where Dallas police captured Oswald after Kennedy was shot.

The Warren Commission later concluded that Oswald shot Kennedy from a sniper’s perch in the Texas Schoolbook Depository on the edge of downtown Dallas.

The historical society was formed to work with UA or a future owner to preserve the theater and help it turn a profit, the society’s president, Dennis Hamilton, said in a letter to UA. The society is seeking to buy, lease or be given the theater, the letter said.

“They say it’s not making any money and that they’re trying to cut their losses,” said Cheryl Griffith, secretary of the Texas Theater Historical Society. “But you can’t give a movie house third- and fourth-rate movies and expect it to make money,” she said.

This week, the theater was showing “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” which made its big splash in the summer. Chappell said the company, which has owned the theater since the mid-1950s, would consider proposals from the preservation group.