North Dallas | Flashback : Dallas

August 3, 2015

Dallas’ First Two Drive-In Theaters — 1941

Northwest Hi-Way Drive-In, July 1941

by Paula Bosse

The drive-in theater arrived in Dallas on June 20, 1941, the night that “Give Us Wings,” starring the Dead End Kids, played as the first feature of the Northwest Hi-Way Drive-In, located at the northwest corner of Northwest Highway and Hillcrest. It stood on twelve-and-a-half acres and had a 450-car capacity. The drive-in was opened by W. G. Underwood and Claude Ezell, who had opened similar outdoor movie theaters in San Antonio and Houston.

The Hi-Way (which appears to have usually been spelled “Highway”) featured something I had never seen in drive-in design: cars parked on terraced ramps, where the car behind was always slightly higher than the one in front of it so as to offer an unobstructed view, and speakers were on stands embedded in cement and were placed between cars (no in-car speakers).

Rain was apparently not a problem in this brave new world of outdoor entertainment — if it rained the show would go on (even though the opening was delayed by a few days because of rainy weather) — but fog was a problem, and in case of such weather, movie-goers would be issued a “fog-check” to come back another (fog-free) night.

A newspaper article appeared a few days before the theater’s opening, explaining what a drive-in was and how it worked. Here is the last paragraph:

According to Mr. Underwood 80 per cent of the people who attend drive-in theaters are non-theatergoers. These include people with children and no one to leave them with, semi-invalids, cripples and corpulent individuals who find it embarrassing to attend the regulation theaters. At the Drive-In there is no necessity for getting out of the car, an attendant meets you at the gate, takes your money and buys your tickets, while another wipes your windshield. A third pilots the car to a space on one of the ramps. These are widely spaced enough that any car may leave at any time. (Dallas Morning News, “Northwest Highway Drive-In To Open Tuesday, Rain Or Stars,” by Fairfax Nisbet, June 14, 1941)

Okay then.

The the weather eventually behaved, and the opening on June 20, 1941 was a success, with an almost-capacity audience. The drive-in had arrived in Big D.

Two weeks later — on July 4, 1941 — Underwood and Ezell opened the Chalk Hill Drive-In in Oak Cliff, at about West Davis and Cockrell Hill Road. It looked almost exactly like the Northwest Highway drive-in, down to the great big star on the outside of it (to be replaced with a clown mural years later). The very first feature was “The Invisible Woman” with Virginia Bruce and John Barrymore.

1942, out on the Fort Worth pike (Library of Congress)

Both theaters had successful and relatively long lives. The Northwest Highway drive-in closed in 1963 when the land was purchased for development (the most notable occupant of the new businesses that occupied that corner was probably the fondly remembered Kip’s restaurant).

The Chalk Hill Drive-In closed in the late 1970s, and from what I can tell, it spent a couple of decades abandoned and decaying.

A few random tidbits.

Here’s a 1945 aerial shot over SMU looking north — the drive-in is in the middle of all that wide-open Caruth farmland, seen just left of Hillcrest (the Hillcrest Mausoleum, built in 1936, can be seen to the right of Hillcrest; the Caruth Homestead is at the far right edge of the photo).

Here’s a detail, showing it up-close:

Two aerial shots by the United States Army Air Forces, taken for a USDA survey in 1945. First, the Northwest Highway Drive-In, with Northwest Highway running horizontally in the photo and Hillcrest running vertically.

SMU

This aerial photo from 1947 shows a view to the northwest, with Hillcrest running from lower left corner to top right — it appears the photo was taken to show the new apartment complex just north of the parking area of the drive-in.

Dallas Public Library

And Chalk Hill, with Highway 80 running horizontally:

SMU

Chalk Hill again, this photo from 1973, with the clown face and circus theme that many remember:

Photo by Steve Fitch, Smithsonian American Art Museum

A couple of amusing livestock-oriented drive-in-related human-interest blurbs appeared in the pages of The Dallas Morning News:

Some cattle going from Waco to Wisconsin stampeded through University Park when their truck caught fire on Greenville. Police herded most of the steers into a Northwest Highway drive-in theater. Five were found nuzzling zinnias at a home on Southwestern. (Lorrie Brooks, DMN, Sept. 18, 1952)

Cattle in 1952, donkeys in 1955:

University Park police early Wednesday captured two pet donkeys who escaped their pen at the Northwest Highway Drive-In Theater during the night. A startled passerby spotted the two donkeys grazing contentedly on a lawn at Centenary and Hillcrest, about four blocks from the theater…. Bill Duckett, manager of the theater, reported the loss of the two pets, which he keeps for the entertainment of the theater’s small-fry patrons. (DMN, May 26, 1955)

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Sources & Notes

I’m not sure of the source of the top photo, but I’m pretty sure of when it was taken: the marquee shows that the movie “Tall, Dark and Handsome,” starring Cesar Romero, was playing; that movie ran at the Northwest Hi-Way Drive-In July 12-14, 1941.

The aerial photo (by Capt. Lloyd N. Young) showing SMU and the land that lay north of it is from the Highland Park United Methodist Church Archives; I found it in Diane Galloway’s fantastic book The Park Cities, A Photohistory.

The two aerial photos are details of larger photographs from the collection of Dallas Aerial Photographs, 1945 USDA Survey, Edwin J. Foscue Map Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University. The full (labeled) Northwest Highway photo is here; the Chalk Hill photo is here.

Two other aerial photos (from 1958) are interesting because they are a bit closer and because you can see the terraced ramps — they can be seen here (apologies for the watermarks — photos from HistoricAerials.com).

The Wikipedia entry for the Drive-In Theater is here.

The patent (with illustrations) for the drive-in theater, filed by Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr. in 1932 is here (it’s a very interesting read). I had no idea a drive-in movie theater could be patented. This cool drawing is part of it (click it to see it larger):

A great history of drive-ins in the Dallas-Fort Worth area can be found in the article “Starlit Skies and Memories” by Susan and Don Sanders; it appeared in the Spring, 1999 issue of Legacies, and can be read here. Great photos! (Who knew there was a drive-in on South Lamar — the Starlite — which catered exclusively to the black community?)

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November 7, 2014

Preston Royal Fire Station — 1958

Station No. 41, 5920 Royal Lane (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

Above, Dallas Fire Station 41 on Royal Lane, just west of Preston Road, about the time it opened (the back of the photo says service at the station began Jan. 16, 1958). It looks as if it’s been set down upon a bleak and barren piece of land in the middle of nowhere, but, actually, commercial development in this Preston Hollow-area neighborhood was … um … on fire in 1958. The large shopping centers at Preston and Royal were under construction at this time, and even though it was very far north, it was most certainly a desirable area in which to live (as, of course, it still is).

The station was designed by architect Raymond F. Smith who had previously designed a couple of other fire stations in town, but who was known mainly for his work designing movie theaters, such as the Casa Linda (1945), the Delman (1947), and — hey! — the (long-gone) Preston Royal Theatre, which opened in 1959 right across the street from this fire station (both of which were, rather conveniently, a mere four blocks away from Smith’s Royal Lane residence).

The station is still in operation, working to keep North Dallas flame-free — it just has a few more neighbors (and trees!) now than it did in 1958.

UPDATED Oct. 22, 2019: A powerful tornado hit northwest Dallas on Oct. 20, 2019 and devastated much of the Preston Hollow area. This fire station was hit hard, and it is currently out of commission. Below are photos from DFR’s Twitter feed.

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Sources & Notes

Photo from the Dallas Firefighters Museum, via the Portal to Texas History. It can be viewed here.

Second image of the firehouse from Google Street View.

Bottom two photos of the station post-tornado are from the Twitter feed of @DallasFireRes_q.

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June 10, 2014

Welcome, Dallas Morning News Blog Readers!

by Paula Bosse

Thanks to the link in yesterday’s Dallas Morning News blog post by Rudolph Bush (about the COOL mosaic he stumbled upon at the Preston-Forest shopping center), I’ve had a ton of new people checking out this blog. Welcome, everyone! And thanks for the mention, Rudy!

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Check out Rudy’s post “Flashback Dallas Solves the Mystery of the Preston Forest Mosaic” on the dallasnews.com Opinion page, here.

To see the full-page spread on the opening of the shopping center (DMN, Aug. 24, 1960) that Rudy reproduced in the article, check out the zoomable PDF here.

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April 22, 2014

Back When Preston Royal Was “Exotic” and Had Its Very Own Elephant

safari-preston-royal-back

by Paula Bosse

Dallas had a restaurant like this?! Yes, it did. (EDIT: It has been brought to my attention in the comments that the image above shows the *Houston* location. But I have been assured that the Dallas location had its very own elephant standing guard outside — so I will not have to ignominiously change the title of this post!)

The Safari Steak House was in the Preston Royal Shopping Center at the northeast corner of Preston & Royal (in the space now occupied by the venerable Royal China restaurant). The decor shown in the postcard above is something else — someone put their whole heart and soul into that, from the elephant and, um, elephant wrangler (“mahout“?) out front, to the ornate wood carving and the somewhat… busy murals inside. And the uniformed staff is pretty impressive, too.

Here are photos of the DALLAS Safari, taken in 1961 by Squire Haskins (photos from the UTA Libraries, Special Collections — click the links below the photos for full descriptions and large images). (Thanks, Tom Bowen, for sharing these links in the comments.)

via UTA Libraries, Special Collections

via UTA Libraries, Special Collections

Guy T. Jones opened the Safari in mid 1956 (I think the Houston location was opened later — it was open by at least 1959). I could find almost no early advertising for the place — perhaps Jones blew his advertising budget on elephants and murals. At this point, the shopping center was basically still under construction — the eastern-edge building (home of the Safari) opened about a year after the larger northern-edge building. There used to be a gap between the two buildings, which can be seen in the photo immediately above and can (sort of) be seen in the 1955 ad below, which shows a model of what the finished shopping center would look like.

Ad detail, March 1955

In 1974, Royal China (which is a fantastic place, by the way) took over the space.

I really wish I’d seen that elephant, which — according to the comment below — “was highly visible and well lit at night.” I certainly hope so!

From the cover of the menu:

safari-matchbook-a

safari-matchbook

safari-matchbook_story

safari-preston-royal_menu-1969

Below, the steak menu. One could choose between the “Maharajah (Man’s) Size” and the “Maharanee (Ladies’) Size.” Or get the kebabs of skewered beef “deliciously seasoned with Safari Sauce — A Treat.”

One of the stars of the restaurant was Iqbal “Ike” Singh Sekhon, who started working as the restaurant’s host while studying for his Master’s degree at SMU. He left a few years later to run the fabulous La Tunisia.

safari_dmn_062756-photo

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Sources & Notes

Edit (Sept. 2022): Wow. This post had a bunch of problems! All I can say is that this was one of my very earliest posts. I was so enamored of that elephant that I made a couple of very glaring errors.

First off, the original title of this post was “Back When Preston Royal Village Was ‘Exotic’ and Had Its Very Own Elephant.” The Safari Steak House was in the Preston Royal Shopping Center, located on the northeast corner of Preston and Royal; the Preston Royal Village shopping center, is on the northwest corner. I’ve (ignominiously) changed the title, but… yikes.

And, as mentioned in the first paragraph, the postcard at the top shows the Houston location, not the Dallas location. Incidentally, the Houston building is still there — it can be seen in a 2011 Google Street View capture here.

The two photos by Squire Haskins (linked below the images) are from the Squire Haskins Photography Inc. Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections (thanks, Tom!). They are dated 1961, one year before a major fire at the restaurant. They reopened the following month, with what sounds like quite an update in decor. I’m not sure when the “gap” between the two shopping center buildings was filled in, but that would have been a good time to expand.

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March 2, 2014

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House … In Preston Hollow — 1948

The Blandings Dream House in Preston Hollow… (click for larger image)

by Paula Bosse

I watch a lot of old movies, and one of my favorites has always been Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, the 1948 comedy about the trials and tribulations of home renovation and construction starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, and Melvyn Douglas. It wasn’t until fairly recently that I learned there had been a nationwide promotion in which replicas of the “dream house” were built in cities around the country. And, to my surprise, one of those houses was built in Dallas! To be exact, in Preston Hollow. To be precise, at 5423 Walnut Hill Lane (the northwest corner of Walnut Hill and Hollow Way). Sadly, when I went looking for it last week, I found an empty lot. (Figures.) The photo above shows the house in September, 1948 when it (and, not so coincidentally, the movie) opened to the public.

Ahead of the movie’s release, Selznick Studios approached local builders around the country and provided them with architectural plans, asking that they build houses as near to the specifications of the movie house as conditions would permit. The studio contracted Dallas builder A. Pollard Simons and supervising architect Lucien O’Brien to work on the Dallas dream house, seen below in a rendering (all images are larger when clicked).

Simons greatly increased the size of the original two-story, three-bedroom house quite a bit (of course he did!), and he allowed the Junior League to raise money by selling 25-cent tickets to curious dream-house-wanters clamoring to wander through the house and gawk at its plush interior and its state-of-the art appliances. Afterwards, Simons put the completely furnished house on the market (in some cities the houses were put up as raffle prizes), and life, presumably, returned to normal for all concerned.

It was a clever way to promote the movie, and, as most of the contractors rushed to boast of their participation by taking out large ads (likely bought in conjunction with studio money), it was also an advertising bonanza for local newspapers. In amongst such ads I discovered that the company owned by my mother’s uncle and my grandfather — Fred Werry Electric Co. — did all the electrical work for the house!

Below are some of those ads that appeared at the time — and, trust me, this was just the tip of the iceberg. The ads were non-stop. This was a huge campaign, going far beyond traditional Hollywood promotion — and it certainly paid off. I’m fairly certain that most Dallasites who read the paper during that time were aware of the house (and the movie), even if they had absolutely no interest in houses (or movies). It was that that unavoidable. (Scroll to the bottom of this post to listen to a FABULOUS commercial-slash-PSA made by actor Melvyn Douglas at a local radio station during a trip to Dallas to tour the Preston Hollow house.)

There were other Texas “Dream Houses” built in Fort Worth (still standing, see link at bottom of page), Austin, Houston, and Amarillo. I only wish Dallas still had its “Dream House,” but I fear a tasteful-but-puny, little ol’ 3,000-square-foot house would not meet today’s definition of a “dream house” in ultra-swanky Preston Hollow.

The Ford people got into the advertising. This appears to be have been taken in front of the Dallas house.

My great-uncle and grandfather! I can now claim my six degrees of separation (LESS!) from Cary, Myrna, and Melvyn.

Kitchen porn from Lang’s.

The Baptist Book Store stocked the shelves of the Blandings library!

I really like the Wyatt’s Cafeteria ad below, which begins with an itinerary. “Program for today: go to church, eat at Wyatt’s, drive out to see the Mr. Blandings’ ‘Dream House’ in Preston Hollow.” This cafeteria ad sneaked in a mention of the Wyatt’s grocery stores by informing the reader that they had supplied the food for the Dream House’s refrigerator and pantry shelves. But this was my favorite part: “When Mr. Blandings takes his family out for a delicious meal you may rest assured that he will take them to a Wyatt’s De Luxe Cafeteria where each may choose the foods of his own liking from Wyatt’s tremendous varieties. Mr. Blandings won’t mind paying the bill because Wyatt’s prices are really modest.” If Cary Grant was going to be dining at a Dallas cafeteria, I only hope he was choking down large slabs of Wham.

The original “dream house” from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House — cute, but much smaller than its Dallas counterpart.

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Sources & Notes

All ads relating to the Dallas Dream House appeared throughout September, 1948.

A nice look at the still-standing Fort Worth Dream House can be found in “Standing at the Corner of Hollywood and Cowtown,” here.

A short radio promo about the Preston Hollow Dream House was recorded on Aug. 10, 1948 by the wonderful Melvyn Douglas, one of the stars of the film (who, by the way, went on to win an Oscar for his role as the family patriarch in the brilliant — and iconically Texan — film Hud in 1963). It was recorded when he visited Dallas in August, 1948 at station KIXL (in which he was an investor), and it can be heard here. (By permission of the great Dallas DJ and broadcasting archivist, George Gimarc.) I LOVE THIS! Thank you, George!

UPDATE: I wrote this post in 2014, and at the time I could find no information about this Dallas Blandings house outside contemporary newspaper archives. Which is the only reason I took some small amount of credit for the house showing up in a Preston Hollow-centric mural in 2015 at the then-new Trader Joe’s at Walnut Hill and Central. I took the photo below in 2015, but, sadly, this tribute to Mr. Blandings and his Dallas dream house is no more. Last time I stopped in, it had been painted over. But here it lives on!

Trader Joe’s, Walnut Hill, Dallas (photo by Paula Bosse, 2015)

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