Yucca Theatre

Midland oilman T.S. Hogan built the Yucca Theatre, attached to the Petroleum Building in downtown Midland. Fort Worth architect Wyatt C. Hedrick designed its Gothic Revival exterior, faced in cut sandstone and black marble, as a decorative counterpart to the more restrained office tower. Inside, New York architect H.B. Layman went further, with an Egyptian Revival interior of the kind made fashionable by the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb. Cinema Treasures describes gilded lions, ornate columns and elaborate light fixtures, and a house of a little over 1,600 seats.

The Yucca opened on December 5, 1929, with the Hollywood musical Rio Rita, starring Bebe Daniels and John Boles, on screen and a live musical comedy revue from New York on stage. It served downtown Midland as a movie theater for more than four decades and closed as one in 1974, according to Cinema Treasures.

The building's second life came through Midland Community Theatre. The company, founded in 1946, had started an annual fundraiser called Summer Mummers in 1949: a nightly, locally written melodrama followed by an olio of vaudeville acts and musical comedy, with the audience throwing popcorn along with the action. After the Yucca was restored in 1981, Summer Mummers moved into the old movie palace, and Midland Community Theatre bought the building in 1999. The company calls Summer Mummers the longest continuing melodrama in the United States. It runs through the summer with nearly 100 volunteers a night, raises about a quarter of a million dollars a year, and in 2023 marked its 75th season. Cinema Treasures lists the Yucca as a Texas historical medallion landmark.