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Collin Creek Twin Theatre

North Central Expy
Plano TX

Demolished
Record #25596  
 Opened: November 8, 1970
 Closed: 1989
 Demolished: Yes (date unknown)
Capacity:
Architect(s):
Architectural Style(s):
National Register:
Current Organ: none
 Also Known As: Cameo, Collin Creek Cameo
 Previously operated by: ABC Interstate Theatres, Plitt Theatres, Cinemark Theatres

Information for this tour was contributed by Mark Richey.

Interstate built their final theater in the Dallas area with the Cameo in Plano. Located behind a shopping center, across the street from a giant vacant lot, the theater opened with the usual relentless promotion by Interstate on November 18, 1970. "It’s Plano Wonderful!", the opening day ad promised. The Plano Star-Courier wrote several articles about the new theater, including a front-page review of the opening attraction, "Scrooge", and multiple mentions of a time capsule placed in one of the columns in the front of the 600-seat theater. The capsule was to be opened in 2005, the 100th birthday of the Interstate circuit.

Despite the lavish promotion (and the lack of indoor competition), the theater ran into financial trouble, closing down only three years later, in November 1973. An Interstate spokesman said it was because they didn’t "feel that the people of Plano have supported the theater as much as they could have." It reopened in June 1974 (with a repeat of the "It’s Plano Wonderful" ad), but closed down again on November 30, 1974 with "Blazing Saddles" (that day’s ad proclaimed it "Positively Last Day!" Who knew it meant the theater as well as the movie?).

The building sat empty until April 6, 1979, when Plitt, which had taken over Interstate’s Dallas theaters the previous fall, reopened it with "The Deer Hunter". This time the Cameo managed to stay open for nearly 5 years. Along the way, its name changed to the Collin Creek Cameo, after a large mall was built in that vacant lot across the street.

The theater shuttered again on or around January 20, 1984 (a Friday, there was no ad for the theater on Saturday). The final show was "Uncommon Valor". It reopened on June 1 with a new name, the Collin Creek Twin. The first shows at the newly renovated theater were "Splash" and "Once Upon a Time in America".

It lasted a mere two more years as a first-run. On June 20, 1986, two weeks after AMC opened its 7-plex about a mile north, the Twin became a discount house with "Out of Africa" and "Back to the Future" ("Africa" had also run the previous day as a first-run show, along with "Sweet Liberty"). Shortly afterwards, Plitt sold the theater to the then fledgling Cinemark chain.

Cinemark turned around and sold it to an outfit called National United Theaters a year later. By mid-1989 there was no chain listed in the theater’s ads. Soon, there weren’t even any ads. The final week appears to have been December 1, 1989, when it showed "Fat Man and Little Boy" and a Spanish-language film. Its fourth and final closing went unremarked on in the Plano Star-Courier. Within a couple of years, the theater was torn down to make way for more retail space. I have no idea what happened to the time capsule.



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Last featured 6/26/2005. Last edited 5/10/2010.


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