Show a little sympathy for Karl Lybrand III.
The Wills Point man and third-generation -- following his father, Karl Lybrand Jr., and grandfather, Karl Lybrand Sr. -- family owner of the Majestic Theatre put an end to the family business, which opened in 1926, after Monday night’s showing of "Ramona and Beezus," and how’s that for an epitaph?
The single-screen movie house, the oldest family-owned theater in the country, became a victim of the times in which moviegoers frequent multiscreen gargantu-plexes with advanced sound systems, 3-D viewing and multiple screenings each day and night. The Majestic showed but one film per night and charged $5 admission.
It might have charged $450 for a bag of popcorn, slightly more than the average price at a gargantu-plex, but even that wouldn’t be enough to make it work.
Pity, too, because one more theater -- not "theatre" … this is America, damn it, not England -- with a classy name such as Majestic, Rialto, Bijou -- OK, maybe not Bijou, that kinda sounds like a Cajun-bayou-sneeze, and before y’all go saying anything, half my family is Cajun from southwest Louisiana -- disappears leaving the landscape dominated by Cinemax, sorry, Cinemark.
Bruce Felps owns and operates East Dallas Times, an online community news outlet serving the White Rock Lake area. He’ll raise a toast tonight to Karl Lybrand III. Hell, he’ll raise a toast to most anyone at most anytime.
