Varsity Theatre

The Varsity Theatre opened on November 20, 1936, at the corner of Guadalupe and West 24th streets, across from the University of Texas, with Fred MacMurray in The Texas Rangers. Cinema Treasures lists three circuits among its operators over the years: Interstate Theatres, which had opened the State Theatre on Congress Avenue the Christmas before; its successor ABC Interstate; and Texas Consolidated Theaters. The site also notes that Hill Country Deco attributes the Varsity's design to W. Scott Dunne, the architect whose plans Interstate had used for the State conversion a year earlier. In the 1960s the Varsity played Austin's original reserved-seat roadshow engagements of two major studio pictures. According to Michael Coate's engagement lists for Cinema Treasures, which list the films' original roadshow engagements city by city, MGM's 1959 production of Ben-Hur opened at the Varsity on July 29, 1960, and ran 10 weeks there. The Sound of Music opened its Austin roadshow run at the Varsity on December 24, 1965, and stayed 22 weeks. The theater was later split into two auditoriums. It closed on May 17, 1990, after more than half a century, with Michael Douglas in The War of the Roses on one screen and a pairing of Glory and Michael Moore's documentary Roger & Me on the other. The building then spent years as a Tower Records store and has since housed other shops. The theater's vertical blade sign, measuring 30 by 8 feet, was later restored by Ion Art, an Austin sign company, and the restoration was written up in the June 2012 issue of Signs of the Times.