View of the auditorium from the main level.
Delayed and over budget, the Paramount Theatre in Marshall, Texas opened on March 31, 1930. The opening was the first event in what the city of Marshall dubbed “Program of Progress” month. The East Texas Theatre Company, Inc. commissioned Emil Weil, Inc., an architecture firm based in New Orleans, to design the 1,500 seat atmospheric theater.
The auditorium is currently used for storage.
On opening day the front windows were decorated with telegrams from prominent movies stars congratulating the theater on the opening. The first feature was “Young Eagles,” starring Buddy Rogers and Jean Arthur, and “Brats,” a Laurel and Hardy comedy short. Live acts, including Rajah Vogi, an East Indian hypnotist, played at the theater during its early years.
Sunlight pours in through holes in the ceiling due to years of water damage.
The Paramount would play a small role in the American Civil Rights Movement by helping to inspire James L. Farmer, Jr., a civil rights activist, to form the Congress of Racial Equality in 1942. Farmer, who was born and raised in Marshall, said that the humiliation of using the segregated entrance and sitting in the balcony were some of the things that inspired him. In 1950, W. L. Gelling, the manager of the Paramount, booked the movie “Pinky” to show in February. “Pinky,” a film about an interracial romance, was banned by the city of Marshall due to its subject matter. Gelling was fined and convicted for showing the film. He appealed his conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, who overturned it.
The Paramount was segregated for most of its time as a theater. Black patrons were forced to use a separate entrance and could only sit in the balcony.
The Paramount closed as a movie theater in the 1970s, and was turned into a western themed dinner theater. The seats on the main level were replaced by a dance floor. After the themed theater closed, the building was purchased in 1986 by Sky Spencer, who intended to turn it into a recording studio. Spencer gradually began to make alterations to the theater, but was unable to complete them and the recording studio never opened. After owning the theater for over two decades, Spencer unsuccessfully tried to sell the Paramount via eBay in 2007.
The remains of the dance floor that was installed when the building was used as a dinner theater.
The theater’s proscenium arch.
Exit, stage left.
View of the auditorium from the balcony.
A closer view of some of the surviving theater details.
The original marquee is still on the front of the building.
The lobby was converted by Spencer to look like an office entrance.
The original estimated cost to build the theater was $150,000. By the time it opened the total cost was $250,000. When adjusted for inflation the cost today would be $3,396,507.
