Chisholm Place 5

2003 Photo from the Adam Martin collection.

300 Chisholm Pl Plano TX

Information for this tour was contributed by Mark Richey.

The multiplex made its belated Plano debut on December 18, 1981, when the Loews Chisholm opened (of course, with the problems that the Cameo and Plano Drive-In had had staying open, I don’t blame the circuits for being wary of Plano). The five-plex, located just south of Park Blvd. on the west side of Central Expressway behind a office building, opened with "Neighbors", "Absence of Malice", "Pennies From Heaven", "Ragtime", and "Reds". An opening-day blurb in the Star-Courier had a Loews representative bragging about how the auditoriums each had different color schemes, to allow the patrons to think they were getting a different theatrical experience every time they visited.

The Chisholm, which was four to six years older than the other four Plano multiplexes, always seemed rather dingy and small compared to the other theaters. It was also located in somewhat of a weird location, at least in my opinion. At the time, Park did not have an exit off of Central, so if you were trying to get to the theater off the highway northbound, you had to exit at the frontage road, take a side street to Park, cross the highway, then turn onto yet another street before finally arriving at the theater (which was, and still is, hidden behind that office building).

The best feature of the Chisholm, at least to me in high school, was their non-enforcement of the ratings system, something I can attest to first-hand, since I had no problems getting a ticket to "Terminator 2" during the summer of 1991, though I was only 14 (and looked younger) and was not accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. Otherwise, there was rarely a good reason to go to the theater, since the movie was usually also playing across town at one of the two better theaters.

The theater attracted some controversy in 1990, when they booked the unrated-but-originally-rated-X "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover". They dropped it after only two weeks, under pressure from various citizens, including the mayor of Plano, who admitted to not having seen the movie, but concluded on the basis of its original rating that it wasn’t appropriate for Plano. She even suggested she’d try to the city council to pass a law prohibiting future X-rated films from being screened in Plano (since "Showgirls" played here 5 years later, I guess it didn’t get very far). She is now our state senator. No, I didn’t vote for her.

Oddly, after the megaplexes drove the most of the smaller multiplexes out of business, the Chisholm (and the Loews Preston Park across town) stayed in business. They even ran the first Shooting Gallery film series the spring of 2000 (including "Croupier", which, unfortunately for the Chisholm, didn’t take off until after its summer re-release). It wasn’t until November 9, 2000 that the 19-year-old theater finally called it quits. The last shows were "Charlie’s Angels", "Lucky Numbers", "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2", "The Little Vampire", and "Meet the Parents". The theater still stands behind that office building.

September 2013 photos from the Adam Martin collection.

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September 2003 photos from the Adam Martin collection.

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• Cinema Treasures

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Last featured 6/26/2005. Last edited 9/17/2011.