I grew up in the little town of Mansfield, Texas, when it boasted fewer than a thousand residents and a one-block-long business district with a traffic signal at either end. Today Mansfield has more than 60,000 residents and lots of traffic signals, but never mind.
There wasn’t much to do in Mansfield when I lived there. There were high school football games on Friday nights during autumn. For a while there was a popular teen-age hangout/burger joint/dance venue called Curry’s on the north edge of town. It’s been gone for decades, but I worked behind the counter there in 1958, serving up burgers and fries and milk shakes right beside Mrs. Curry and her daughters Wanda and Suzy. In 1959 a local boy, Billy Hogg, built the Kow-Bell Indoor Rodeo Arena just down the road, and it drew folks from all over, but it’s gone now, too, torn down in 2004 to be replaced with the town’s fourth high school, Legacy High School, which welcomed 2,100 students on its opening day in 2007. But I digress.
The only steady entertainment in Mansfield in the old days was the Farr Best Theater, which had been run by the Farr family since 1917. In the years I sat before its silver screen it was run by Roy Farr, Mary Ann’s father. Mary Ann was a couple of years ahead of me in school and we took piano lessons from the same teacher. (Historical note: Mansfield had only two piano teachers in those days, Miss Clara Malone and Mrs. Alyne Eagan. Mary Ann and I, along with Loretta Turner and Butch Evans and Barbara Pigg and a few others, took lessons from Mrs. Eagan until she married a Mr. Cyrus and moved away to Las Cruces, New Mexico. I’m digressing again.)
Tickets to the Farr Best Theater were 25 cents for students -- this was in the days when a haircut at C.B. Gilstrap’s barber shop cost 75 cents -- and I remember sitting at the Farr Best and watching such unforgettable classics (it is to laugh) as Golden Earrings starring Ray Milland and Marlene Dietrich, and Destry Rides Again starring Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich (I think Mr. Farr had a thing for Marlene Dietrich) , and Repeat Performance starring nobody I ever heard of except Richard Basehart, and even Them, a science fiction thriller starring a nest of gigantic irradiated ants. Next door to the theater was the Farr Best Cafe, which was also run by Mr. Farr and his wife. I downed many a sweet iced tea there, and many a fried peach pie.
Click here to see a photograph of the Farr Best Theater. It is not as opulent as Royal Albert Hall or as grand as Radio City Music Hall, of course, but it was ours. We could go there and shut out the outside world for a couple of hours each week. The Farr Best Cafe occupied the building with the green awning in the photograph.
Lo and behold, I have learned that the Farr Best Theater was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 12, 1996.
If a place is named to the National Register of Historic Places, can its patrons be far behind?
All right, Mr. Demille, I’m ready for my close-up.
