Fort Worth Magazine

60 YEARS SINCE JFK ASSASSINATION: ACCOUNTS FROM THE DAY

PASTA and the Handmade Revolution / JAMMIE HOLMES Returns to the Place That Inspired His Art

BARRY CORBIN in THE FILM ISSUE

The screen legend works cattle, recites Shakespeare, and tells stories about your favorite actors. WITH Christina Voros Channing Godfrey Peoples Jessica Christopherson Chad Matthews and Red Sanders

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VOLUME 26 ISSUE 11

The Film Issue

Fort Worth is making a play for Hollywood with a concentration of resources, a film heritage, help from the state, and an emerging and venerable talent pool that includes faces like Barry Corbin, Channing Godfrey Peoples, and Christina Voros.

BY BRIAN KENDALL AND MICHAEL H. PRICE

Prelude to Tragedy

Despite all the hiccups in advance of President John F. Kennedy’s visit to Fort Worth, the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, went off without a glitch. “It was just a good morning.”

BY JOHN HENRY

Modern Deluxe Susan Semmelmann cuts no corners and goes full chic for her latest whole home design.

the fort

: know

16 Buzz

Broken artifacts and shredded remnants are all that remain of the ugly 13-year Tex-Mexit legal dispute that ultimately sent the famed Original Mexican Eats Café packing. But life goes on, and building owner Derek Muzquiz is moving forward, revitalizing the property for new life.

20 Calendar

Alright, alright, alright. The 94th football meeting between Texas and TCU will be its last in Fort Worth on Nov. 11. At least for a while, as geographically challenged UT heads southeast for greener (read, money) pastures.

22 Fort Worthian

Ryan Bijan is building a burgeoning career in cinema through unconditional love of the trade, as evidenced through his Cowtown Movie Classics, a curated, vintage cinema experience at the Downtown Cowtown at the Isis Theater in the Stockyards.

24 History

There is perhaps no better, more heroic story in Fort Worth history than Edna Gladney’s work on behalf of human life. Hollywood liked the story, too, telling it through the vehicle of the motion picture, “Blossoms in the Dust.”

: live

30 Art

Artist Jammie Holmes returns to the place of his life-changing epiphany, the Modern Art Museum, with the exhibition “Jammie Holmes: Make the Revolution Irresistible.”

32 State Lines

Welcome to Turkey, Texas, the tiny outpost at the base of the Panhandle, where Coronado and Bob Wills, paramount chiefs of their respective pursuits, both laid down stakes.

: eat

38 Flour Power

Since Marcus Paslay’s arrival on the restaurant scene, “from scratch” has become more and more a favorite pasta-time of Fort Worth chefs.

: snaps

112 Fort Worth Magazine kicks off the monthlong tour of its luxurious Dream Street with an exclusive grand opening party in the Colleyville neighborhood.

128 A 50-foot-tall sculpture at Burnett Park has become one of the city’s most photographed attractions. Local photographer Keith Barrett takes a stab at it.

CLOSE

MONTRACHET

WALSH

A Most Interesting Guy

It’s fascinating how people on screen become familiar faces. You see someone’s mug enough times on a television in your living room, and that person might eventually become something akin to a friend of a friend — or a brief acquaintance, at least. After all, you did invite their presence into your home.

Being a guy who spent the majority of his adolescence in the 1990s watching cable and the Home Box Office, Barry Corbin became a familiar face. The movies my family elected to watch on repeat, the ones whose humor seemed to swell with each subsequent re-watch, included “Who’s Harry Crumb?,” “Short Time,” and “Stir Crazy” — all Barry Corbin-starring movies. He wasn’t the “star.” His face wasn’t on any movie posters that I recall. But his appearance in films was also memorable. I also recall his presence on television shows we’d end up tuning into, “Lonesome Dove,” “Matlock,” “Columbo,” and, of course, “Northern Exposure.” He became an easy guy to spot.

Despite his roles being various and wideranging — from surly sheriffs to animated prison wardens — he’s a guy I felt I had met, like I knew a thing or two about him. It wasn’t anything I actively thought about, more a passing feeling likely brought about by hearing his distinct drawl and witnessing his mannerisms through a large chunk of my childhood.

It was only after I’d been at the magazine and lived in Fort Worth for a few years that I realized Barry called Fort Worth home. I can’t remember the context in which it was brought up, but I do recall my reaction

Brian Kendall EXECUTIVE EDITOR

to finding out: “That guy! I love that guy.” His name immediately went on my list of people I wanted to feature.

Of course, doing a feature package on Fort Worth’s contributions and ambitions around film made for a perfect opportunity to spotlight the venerable actor.

And, upon meeting him and his wife, Jo — who, by the way, is an extraordinarily kind and thoughtful person whose fascinating life is worthy of a story unto itself — I can say that the passing feeling of knowing what he might be like wasn’t entirely accurate. My assumption that he would be an “everyman” quickly dissipated within the first hour of meeting him when he started reciting Shakespeare. I would also contend that an “everyman” couldn’t possibly rack up the number of quips Barry delivers in an hour of conversation. I’ve interviewed countless people at my job — and I understand my fortune when I say that most interviewees have been wonderful — but Barry is the most interesting person I’ve met.

I hope my profile on the actor (page 58) does him justice, and I also hope you check out this issue’s other incredible stories. These include John Henry’s phenomenal feature on four people, including a Secret Service agent, recounting the events of the day JFK was assassinated (page 70) and Michael H. Price’s piece (page 50) on Fort Worth’s play to become the Hollywood of Texas — only without the Hollywood stuff.

ON THE COVER:

Photographer Crystal Wise, editor Brian Kendall, and social media specialist Lauren Roberts waited until golden hour at the Four Sixes to drag a director’s chair (on loan from Eric Nelsen) to the middle of a pasture and photograph Barry Corbin. The following day, Barry, at 83 years old, joined a group of legit cowboys to cut cattle for the first time in 18 years.

Special thanks to Fort Worth Camera for providing film for our profiles on Barry Corbin and Christina Voros.

Corrections? Comments? Concerns? Send to executive editor Brian Kendall at bkendall@fwtexas.com.

NEXT MONTH

The City’s Most Powerful Families

Celebrating 25 Years of Fort Worth Magazine

Holiday Gift Guide

What is your favorite movie quote?

“In this world, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.” – Elwood P. Dowd, Harvey

“You’re killing me, Smalls.” – Ham Porter, The Sandlot

“I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go.” – Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark

“What we have here is failure to communicate.”

– The Captain, Cool Hand Luke

owner/publisher hal a. brown vice president dream street operations mike waldum

EDITORIAL

executive editor brian kendall contributing editor john henry digital editor stephen montoya contributing writers malcolm mayhew, michael h. price, charlotte settle, shilo urban copy editor sharon casseday

ART

creative director craig sylva senior art director spray gleaves advertising art director ed woolf director of photography crystal wise

ADVERTISING

sales director andrew yeager

advertising account supervisors gina burns-wigginton x150 marion c. knight x135 account executive tammy denapoli x141 territory manager, fort worth inc. rita hale x133 client services manager julia martin x116 executive administrator/project coordinator kaitlyn lisenby

MARKETING

director of digital robby kyser director of marketing and audience development sarah benkendorfer content marketing specialist grace behr events and partnerships manager lauren roberts

CORPORATE

chief financial officer charles newton founding publisher mark hulme

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.” – Lester Bangs, Almost Famous

“Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t they?” – Scarecrow, The Wizard of Oz

“Here’s Johnny!” – Jack Torrance, The Shining

“We thought you was a TOAD” – Delmar O’Donnell, O Brother, Where Art Thou?

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An Ugly Tex-Mexit

After a 13-year

legal

battle and the departure of a cherished restaurant, the Muzquiz family is ready to put the ghost of the Original Mexican Eats Café in the rearview.

BY STEPHEN MONTOYA

Broken artifacts and shredded remnants are now all that occupy the 7,500-square-foot space that once housed Tarrant County’s first Tex-Mex joint, the Original Mexican Eats Café. Planks of wood flooring are stacked in what was once a bustling dining room, and a mural of Mexican farmers gathering food now feels eerily ironic.

The Original, as most grew to know it, was more than a restaurant; it was a cherished icon. Say what you will about the food and occasional health code violations — opinions vary — this is the place where, nearly 90 years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously and frequently ordered a plate with a beef taco, cheese enchilada, and a bean chalupa during his many visits to the city.

The Original on Camp Bowie Boulevard was living history.

And the restaurant’s July departure, neither an eviction nor a shuttering due to low sales or economic climate, was the result of a 13-year-long legal dispute over a dubious lease agreement signed 20 years ago.

Today, the shell that housed this culinary landmark is quickly transforming into a different space entirely. No longer will west siders dine where the Original once stood.

Instead, the whole of the space, which runs from the back wall of the Blue Bonnet Bakery to the end cap containing both Texas Designer Flooring and Fort Worth Coffee Co., will transform into six new retail spots.

All of this is the vision of property owner Derek Muzquiz, who has enlisted the help of retail neighbor and commercial real estate broker/developer Rodger Chieffalo. Chieffalo’s involvement in Roy Pope Grocery and Paris Coffee Shop point to a positive track record with revitalized spaces.

The developer, whose side hustle is owning nearby boutique Chieffalo Americana, says the building is being restored back to its original delineated spaces, which include six in all. “They’re all relatively small spaces and very easy to lease here on Camp Bowie,” he says. “I like to think of it like a small-business incubator, which can allow a business to get a foothold and some much-needed exposure in a relatively high-traffic area.”

The idea of small businesses and startups occupying the space is a far cry from the comforts of a 93-year-old restaurant — especially in a town that can occasionally show an aversion to change. But the property, arguably, is in need of a fresh start.

Derek became the property’s owner this summer, taking over from his father, Joe Frank Muzquiz.

The building has been in the Muzquiz family since Derek’s grandfather, Frank Muzquiz, purchased the property in 1964. According to an article penned by Fort Worth StarTelegram’s Bud Kennedy, Frank, an immigrant from Mexico, owned a radio-TV shop next door to the restaurant before buying the building outright. And, with this purchase, he became one of the first Mexican immigrants to own property on what we deem the west side of town. According to the East Texas Historical Association, at the time, the majority of Latinos were concentrated heavily in the north side and “the southern part of the city east of Hemphill Street.”

“This building was supposed to be an investment that would be in my family for generations to come,” Derek says. “It was a way of establishing a financial foothold for all of us.”

After his grandfather died, the business was passed to Derek’s grandmother, Leticia Grimaldo.

“Over the years, she got multiple offers to sell, and she refused every single one of them,” Derek says. “She did not want to sell. She even emphasized to us to never sell the property. My grandfather worked hard for it. And so, she felt a sense of responsibility to keep it in the family.”

Derek’s father, Joe Frank, was then bequeathed the business upon his grandmother’s death in 2014. Keeping with tradition, his father passed the deed to him this past summer.

In 1928, long before the Muzquiz family was involved, the building, then a brand-new structure, was leased to Lola San Miguel and Geronimo Piñeda, both immigrants — he from Barcelona and she, ironically, from Muzquiz, Mexico. Records verify that the Piñedas leased the space circa 1928 and opened the Original around 1930 (though their website claims an opening year of 1926). Obviously, the Piñedas remained tenants when Frank purchased the property 34 years later.

In 1999, Robert “Butch” Self took over the ownership of the Original. And, four years later, the new owner drafted

BY STEPHEN MONTOYA

PHOTO

a lease agreement that, according to Derek, included handwritten sentences. After Derek’s grandmother, Leticia Grimaldo, signed the document, she effectively agreed to Self’s peculiar terms that made the agreement permanent. In other words, the Muzquizes were perpetually locked into a $3.85-persquare-foot lease agreement.

To add insult to injury, Derek says Self, after signing the agreement, began freely taking over more square footage. “He starts going through walls,” Derek says. “He starts taking over suite after suite and in the meantime keeps making the property taxes go up. He did all this and never asked for permission to do any of it.”

By the time Self finished expanding, Derek says his footprint expanded from 3,971 square feet to 7,500 square feet. “He did all of this while still paying the same rent as before,” Derek adds.

In 2010, Derek says his grandmother approached Self about increasing rent due to rising insurance costs, taxes, and general maintenance on the building.

“He basically said you can’t raise the rent on me, and she doesn’t understand why. So, he goes to the back and pulls out this lease and points out to her that it says the lease is perpetual.”

This began what would turn into a 13-year legal battle for the Muzquiz family.

Not long after Grimaldo asked Self for more rent, he took her to court, using the aforementioned lease agreement as his basis for not complying with her request. According to Derek, his family lost almost $2 million in unrealized revenue from the property due to Self’s stubbornness. Adding to this situation, Derek verified that his family spent a quarter of a million dollars in attorney’s fees over the years to fight this claim.

In September of 2022, the years-long legal dispute between the Muzquiz family and Self finally came to an end. A decision handed down by the Texas Eighth Court of Appeals refused to acknowledge the lease agreement as perpetual. In other words, Self’s landlords could finally increase rent. The Texas Supreme Court also weighed in by declining to hear the case and backing the decision of the lower court.

Despite the ruling, Derek says he attempted to keep the restaurant in the space, hoping to look past any acrimony. But Self’s unwillingness to negotiate led to the eventual departure of the Original.

Or, at least, mostly.

When Self purchased the Original, he also inherited ownership of the parking spaces directly behind the restaurant and on the western-most end of the pieshaped lot. This footprint accounts for 30 parking spaces, equaling nearly half of the available spaces around the large structure that also houses Fort Worth Coffee Co. and Texas Designer Flooring. And, since one can’t very well pack up and take parking spaces with them, the day after the Original closed its doors, metal blockades appeared around the areas, prohibiting parking.

“He owns both of those [parking lots] and, I mean, to this day his goal is to choke off the parking and to squeeze me into selling him the property,” Derek says. “It’s not going to happen.”

Though a bit of a trek for west siders, people can still get their Original fix at the restaurant’s now only location on the north side of town (1400 N. Main St.), where the Roosevelt Special lives on. As for Derek and his family’s legacy, he says he’s optimistic about the future and is currently putting a million dollars’ worth of upgrades into the property. This includes a new roof, fresh paint, a total gut job on the water-damaged flooring, and more.

Despite the ongoing construction and renovations, Chieffalo remains hard at work finding viable tenants for the six new spaces — three of which should be ready for move-in by year’s end. “I’ve got more activity on this property than any other property I’ve ever had on the street,” Chieffalo says. “We just signed the first lease today. We also have three leases in the works here out of the six spaces.”

Derek says this Pyrrhic victory is bittersweet given the great memories he has eating at the Original with his family over the years, especially his grandmother. “If Grandma was here, she would say, ‘Oh, my lord,’” he says, welling up with tears. “She would be amazed and probably be pleasantly surprised that we fought this hard to keep this building in our family. No matter how tall the mountain is that you have to climb, you know, if you just keep working at it, you’ll get to the top.”

[Fort Worth Magazine reached out to Robert Self several times for comment but did not hear back before press time.]

A GIFT FOR OPAL »

AFTER TURNING 97, OPAL LEE, the Grandmother of Juneteenth, gets a surprise birthday gift: a home with some personal history.

A group of rioters may have driven civil rights activist Opal Lee and her family from their home in 1939 when she was 12, but that hasn’t stopped her from fighting for over 80 years to get it back.

Coming full circle, the property where her family’s home used to reside on 940 E. Annie St., was given to Lee on Oct. 7 as a gift for her 97th birthday from Trinity Habitat for Humanity (THH), the organization that acquired the property.

“You know what, I tried for years to find out who owned the lot,” Lee told CBS 11 at a groundbreaking ceremony. “I found out that Habitat owned it. I offered to buy it; they wouldn’t sell it to me. They gave it to me.”

The general contractor for this build, THH, will be working alongside Citizens Concerned with Human Dignity, who will serve as the organization funding the construction.

Lee, who is also one of THH’s founding board members, says she and her family only stayed in the home a few nights before rioters gathered to harass, vandalize, and burn down their home, which was located in Fort Worth’s historic Southside.

“If they had given us an opportunity to stay there and be their neighbors, they would have found out we didn’t want any more than what they had – a decent place to stay, jobs that paid, [to be] able to go to school in the neighborhood, even if it was a segregated school,” Lee said. “We would have been good neighbors, but they didn’t give us an opportunity. And I feel like everyone needs an opportunity.”

Lee, who is known as the Grandmother of Juneteenth, made history when she made the decision to walk from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., to try and get Juneteenth recognized as a federal holiday in 2016. Her dedication paid off, and nearly five years after she made that walk, President Joe Biden signed the legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.

» Not Its First Rodeo ...

The Cowtown Coliseum is one of the oldest standing rodeo arenas in the U.S., maintaining distinction as hosting the very first indoor rodeo in the world in 1918. Two presidents spoke there. Teddy Roosevelt opened the Feeders and Breeders Show in 1911, after he had left office but while eyeing another run at it. And Jimmy Carter addressed a crowd there during his only term in office in the late 1970s.

Today, the coliseum is host to more than 200 events per year, including weekly rodeos, Professional Bull Riders events, Ultimate Bullfighters (no bulls are harmed), and more.

Built in 1908, the arena was originally known, albeit only briefly, as the Grand Coliseum. Fast-forward 115 years and things have changed a little bit.

To meet the evolving demands of its audience, a newly formed joint venture management, which includes Stockyards Heritage Development, PBR, and ASM Global, was recently formed. Also, many of the renovations were made possible by the addition of two major sponsors, American Hat Co. and Pendleton Whisky.

“We started the major parts of the remodel last summer,” says Kelly Tarter, Cowtown Coliseum’s sales and marketing manager. “We also switched our production deck from the north end to the south end, which gave us room for our new baby — the Platinum Deck.”

In this new section, groups of up to 200 people can enjoy an open bar, several tables for seating, and the overview of the action overlooking the bucking chutes.

“We also use it as our top-selling, high-end seating,” Tarter says. “A ticket to this spot will offer guests a unique experience, which includes upgraded seating, a picture inside of the arena, and upgraded bathrooms.”

But these aren’t the only seats of mention post-remodel. An additional 200 seats have also been added to this over 3,000-seat venue. Included with this seating is the 36-seat American Hat Suite, formerly the west suite, which is

adorned with a few photos of the late Keith Maddox, one of the owners of the American Hat Co., who passed away four years ago.

“They are the official cowboy hat of the Fort Worth Stockyards and Cowtown Coliseum,” Tarter says.

“So, we’re very, very excited to have them here.” On top of the nostalgia of being seated in this section, Tarter says, if someone asks, they can have a custom hat shaping done for them as well.

Another sponsor that has thrown its hat into the ring is Pendleton Whisky. The new LED signage and VIP area are adorned with this Canadian libation company’s red westerninspired logo. “We’re part of their big launch to bring them into Texas and we’re honored to do so because they are just a great company and we stand behind everything that they do,” she says.

The shows have also expanded, she says. Instead of there only being a Stockyards Championship rodeo on Fridays and Saturdays, Tarter says that the arena will also host the PBR Stockyards Showcase on Thursdays.

Wish you could have the coliseum to yourself? Tarter says along with this new remodel, guests can also rent the entire facility either by section or the whole thing. And just like a value menu, guests who reserved the Cowtown Coliseum for a private party can choose what they see.

“They can choose from barrel racing, to bronc riding, to whatever. The sky is the limit. Groups can come in and rent the entire building, so, they can do a small Western experience,” she says. “They could add catering to it. They could do like a happy hour with entertainment and all the way to doing a full-blown private rodeo.”

For the most part, Tarter says the interior remodel is done, but that will only give way to the Cowtown Coliseum’s next venture — remodeling the exterior.

“We have some new things coming outside. So, you’re definitely going to want to come back and see what those are when the remodel is done,” she says. “We’re really, really excited with all of these changes and equally excited about being able to bring in new concerts and shows. Plus, the fact that we’re doubling the shows weekly.” — Stephen Montoya

NOV. 5 – JAN. 28

Bonnard’s Worlds

Pierre Bonnard, the French painter whose work you’ve likely seen, thanks to the popularity of his graphic art posters from the late 19th century, gets a career retrospective at the Kimbell. The exhibit will include the post-impressionist’s most celebrated works as well as some of his lesser-known pieces.

Kimbell Art Museum 3333 Camp Bowie Blvd. kimbellart.org

NOV. 8

Nathaniel Rateliff

Today, getting a tune on the “Yellowstone” soundtrack is akin to performing on the Grand Ole Opry radio show in 1939; once you’ve done it, you’ve made it. The Denverbased singer-songwriter has managed to get a couple of tunes on the popular TV show and is set to hit the stage without his usual backing band, The Night Sweats. Will Rogers Auditorium 3401 W. Lancaster Ave. nathanielrateliff.com

NOV. 10 – 12

Bond and Beyond

The Fort Symphony Orchestra tackles iconic themes from our favorite (English? Scottish? Irish?) secret agent as well as other popular spy thrillers of the era — “Mission Impossible,” “Pink Panther,” etc. Great fun, but you’ll likely leave with little insight into the age-old question: Who is the best Bond?

Bass Performance Hall 525 Commerce St. basshall.com

NOV. 11

Texas at TCU

This will mark the 94th meeting between the two schools. It will also mark the last meeting for the foreseeable future, as Austin elects to be considered geographically Southeast beginning next year. Since joining the Big 12, the Horned Frogs have gone 8-3 against their burntorange foe — the Longhorns’ worst record against any school during that stretch. Amon G. Carter Stadium 2850 Stadium Drive gofrogs.com

NOV. 11

Water Lantern Festival

For those seeking a nice night out with the fam — with plenty of food vendors and entertainment to boot — Panther Island’s Water Lantern Festival checks all the boxes. Thousands of personalized lanterns, many with messages of hope and healing, will light up the Trinity River, making for an awe-inspiring sight.

Panther Island Pavilion 396 Purcey St. waterlanternfestival.com

NOV.

Texas Country Music Awards

Honoring the best in Texas country music, heck, this might as well be the Grammys to us. In addition to the awards ceremony, performers include Cody Canada and the Departed, Coffey Anderson, Ken Holloway, and plenty more.

Billy Bob’s Texas 2520 Rodeo Plaza billybobstexas.com

Lightscape

Remember when the Botanic Garden got all decked out in hundreds of thousands of lights during Christmas last year, creating a bevy of dropped jaws and Instagram posts? Well, it’s back. And, for you selfie-takers, don’t sweat repeating last year’s pose; the new displays will be 80% newly designed.

Fort Worth Botanic Garden 3200 Botanic Garden Blvd., fwbg.org

NOV. 17 – JAN. 1

NOV. 15

The Head and the Heart

The proliﬁc indie folksters have steadily released a new long-playing album every couple years since 2011. They’re currently touring behind their last e ort,

a 16-song epic that introduced more sonic elements to their repertoire.

Tannahill’s Tavern and Music Hall

122 E. Exchange Ave. tannahills.com

NOV. 16 – 20

World Wushu Championships

Wushu, also known as Kung fu (the more popular American nomenclature, thanks to David Carradine and Jack Black), is a competitive sport that covers several Chinese martial arts disciplines. Attendees will have a chance to catch choreographed weapons routines and mixed martial arts-style ﬁghting.

Fort Worth Convention Center

1201 Houston St. 16thwwc.org

NOV. 18

The Black Lips

Hard to believe these garage rockers have been around since 2007. Those who listened to “Bad Kids” when it ﬁrst hit the low-end-of-thedial radio stations might now have kids who are actually bad. The band’s continued to pump out new music over the years, most of which remains raw and energetic.

Tulips

112 St. Louis Ave. tulipsftw.com

NOV. 20

35th Annual Carol of Lights

The Christmas Capital of Texas holds its annual lighting of the town’s historic Main Street. In addition to the mayor ﬂipping the light switch, other family-friendly activities include photos with live reindeer, arts and crafts, bouncy houses, and an abundance of holiday fare. We recommend gorging oneself post-bouncy house.

Historic Downtown Grapevine gograpevine.com

NOV. 24

YMCA Turkey Trot

Not only is Thanksgiving the day when people consume more turkey and cranberry sauce than any other, but it’s also the day when people run more 5Ks than any other. For those returning to the race, this year’s trot will commence at the Shops at Clearfork, and as always, all proceeds go toward scholarships for families in our community. The Shops at Clearfork 5188 Monahans ymcafw.org

NOV. 28 – DEC. 3

‘SIX’

The Broadway musical gives a modern take (like, datingapps-and-all take) on the tribulations of the six wives of King Henry VIII — who, in case you didn’t know, was the quintessential megalomaniac and a tyrant. The critically acclaimed musical took home two statuettes at last year’s Tonys.

Bass Performance Hall

525 Commerce St. basshall.com

NOV. 17 – 18

George Strait

NOV. 30 – DEC. 17

‘Poor Clare’

The Near Southside theater company puts on a retelling of the story of St. Clare of Assisi, a wealthy teen who, inspired by the words of a street-preaching St. Francis, rejected materialism and led a life of poverty devoted to God. “It’s a very human tale of the making of a saint,” associated producer Garret Storms says. “We could all use a story like this right now.”

Stage West 821 W. Vickery Blvd. stagewest.org

Dickies Arena 1911 Montgomery St. dickiesarena.com

After rightfully christening the venue in 2019, the ordained King of Country Music returns to Dickies Arena for another two-night stint. It’s been a few years since his last release, but with 30 albums-worth of songs in his repertoire, we suspect he’ll ﬁll the time just ﬁne.

Ryan Bijan

BY CHARLOTTE SETTLE

Filmmaker, painter, and host of Cowtown Movie Classics

PHOTO

CRYSTAL WISE

Ryan Bijan’s passion for cinema knows no bounds. “Since I was a kid, I was writing, producing, and acting in short films,” he says. Born and raised in Fort Worth, Bijan attended Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts and studied film, TV, and digital media at TCU. “To me, filmmaking is the grand culmination of every artistic medium,” he says. “I love the art form.”

Bijan has worn many hats in the film industry, from writing and directing his own projects to acting in TV shows and movies to working behind the scenes. He was a production assistant on Richard Linklater’s film — “Everybody Wants Some!!” — and played featured roles in “1883” and “12 Mighty Orphans.” “It’s kind of a job-by-job basis,” he says. “I’ve done a lot of stuff in front of the camera and behind the camera throughout the years.”

available to the community are very important to me,” he says.

The Isis boasts a rotating menu of over 40 classic films, and during traditional showtimes, the first patron to arrive gets to choose what to watch.

Bijan hosts Cowtown Movie Classics during off-hours (Monday nights at 7:30 p.m.) and hand picks exclusive features based on a monthly theme. “Your average patron can pick whatever they want to watch,” says Bijan. “That’s why I curate showings that are more specialized that you’re not necessarily going to find on the main menu.”

Bijan’s work at the Isis is all volunteer-based. He plans, markets, and hosts each event himself and even creates the promotional artwork for each showing. “All the posters and graphics, all the digital stuff, anything you see hanging up — I make all of that,” he says. “It’s fulfilling because it gives me an artistic outlet.”

In 2016, Bijan wrote, directed, and starred in the first episode of his original web series, “Mystery of the Bat-Man: The Lost Serial.” “It was an adaptation of early Batman comics, filmed in black and white in the format of a lost movie serial from the 1930s,” he explains. Bijan initially intended to release only one episode, but when the first chapter amassed over 250,000 views on YouTube, he decided to continue writing the story. From 2017-2020, Bijan released five more episodes, each garnering an impressive number of views.

Since October of 2022, Bijan has hosted Cowtown Movie Classics — a curated, vintage cinema experience — at the historic Downtown Cowtown at the Isis Theater in the Stockyards. “Film preservation and making old Hollywood classics

TOP 5

FAVORITE FILMS

“The

(Francis

Through Cowtown Movie Classics, Bijan hopes to challenge preconceived notions of old films. “The movies of old Hollywood are the movies that are continuing to inspire the art and entertainment that we enjoy now,” he says. “If you give them a chance, these movies are just as exciting, entertaining, and emotionally moving as anything we’re going to see in the cinema or on TV today.”

“Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” (Steven Spielberg, 1981)

“The Ten Commandments” (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956)

“Scarface” (Brian De Palma, 1983)

“The Bride of Frankenstein” (James Whale, 1935)

Above all, Bijan wants to cultivate reverence for the art of film. “Because of mainstream accessibility today, people view film as a disposable art form, as background noise,” he says. “I think that’s an unfair bias, and if we look past that as viewers, we’re going to get something very rich and valuable from the film-going experience.”

Godfather”

Ford Coppola, 1972)

1. Bijan with a 16mm film reel. 2. Audience at Cowtown Movie Classics watching “The Phantom of the Opera” (1925) on 16mm film. 3. Bijan on the set of “1883” with star Tim McGraw. He played a featured Eastern European immigrant. 4. Bijan painting recreationally. 5. Bijan, photographed by Greg TeGantvoort. 6. Bijan standing in front of a hand-painted poster he created for a screening. 7. Bijan and Charlotte Haveron before a screening of “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” (1977) with star, Patrick Wayne.

A Spirit That Blossoms Eternal

Edna Gladney championed the rights of the “illegitimate” and “unwanted” and inspired a silver screen adaptation of her life.

BY MICHAEL H. PRICE

“I just wish that all of you men were pregnant!” — Edna Gladney In an appeal to an all-male board for Children’s Home funding.

No author of heroic fiction could have imagined a social-reform powerhouse such as Fort Worth’s Edna Gladney (1886–1961). She invented herself, instead, out of loneliness and charitable indignation and wound up inspiring big-league Hollywood to tell her story in an Oscar-bait motion picture of 1941 called “Blossoms in the Dust.” (The film landed the Academy Award in 1942 for Best Art Direction, among four nominations.)

At 17, during 1903-04, Edna was sent to reside with relatives in Fort Worth, where the climate would prove healthful for her delicate respiratory system. Edna found herself drawn into civic-betterment activities. At age 20, Edna married Sam Gladney,

a flour-milling operator. They spent their first year of marriage in Cuba, where Sam had business interests. A tubal pregnancy ended Edna’s chances of motherhood. They returned to Texas in 1909, eventually settling in Sherman. Edna became active as a Civic League volunteer, concentrating by 1917 upon improvements at the Grayson County Poor Farm, which housed orphans and disabled or aged citizens. She was appalled to find the Poor Farm scarcely more than a dumping ground, ramshackle and unsanitary, for the unwanted. She petitioned the County Commissioners Court for reforms, only to find that upstanding governing body quick to agree but slow to act. Gladney led the women of the Civic League on a housecleaning mission at the Poor Farm, then arranged for the transfer of its abandoned children to the Texas Children’s Home & Aid Society in Fort Worth, a shelter developed by the Rev. Isaac Morris and his wife, Belle.

The number of orphans in the area had increased since the 1850s as a consequence of a so-called “orphan train” movement. That nationwide campaign sought to relocate orphans and impoverished families to rural areas. Also known as “placing out,” the process ended with as many as 200,000 individuals having been relocated. The trains would make drop-offs across the nation. At each stop, those who had promised to raise the kids as their own would make their selections, practicing a type of indentured servitude. Those making the selections were usually farmers in search of cheap fieldhand labor.

The “placing out” scam was discontinued during the 1920s. Isaac and Belle Morris had found homes for some 1,000 children. Belle Morris invited Edna to join the board of the Children’s Home. The Gladneys moved to Fort Worth around 1920 after the collapse of Sam Gladney’s granary business. He died in 1935.

As a board member-turned-superintendent (at no salary) with the Texas Children’s Home, Edna organized and operated a day-care center and school for children of working women, similar to a venture she had begun in Sherman. During her three decadesand-change as superintendent, she supervised the placement of more

than 10,000 children into nurturing families and promoted adoption as a positive option for unmarried mothers.

She also established a nonjudgmental environment for birth mothers to make their own decisions whether to seek adoption. During the 1930s, as a lobbyist for adoption-law revision before the Texas Legislature, Gladney helped to achieve such changes as the removal of the label of “illegitimate” from birth certificates and the assurance that a child’s adopted status would be protected information. She promoted privacy in the adoption process — both for birth parents and adoptive families — and argued successfully to change the once-common “guardianship” label to that of “adopted.” She helped further to affirm inheritance rights for adopted children.

In 1939, Ralph Wheelwright, an MGM Studios publicist who had adopted a child from the Texas Children’s Home, composed a story based on Gladney’s work. His tale formed the basis of the 1941 film “Blossoms in the Dust,” starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon as Edna and Sam Gladney. Shooting was done in Hollywood, but the essentially accurate sets were modeled after photographs of authentic locations in Sherman, Fort Worth, and Austin. A friendship developed between Gladney and Garson, and Gladney channeled her movie stipend into funding for the Children’s Home.

By 1950, the place was renamed as the Edna Gladney Home, having expanded into a maternity hospital building. Edna lobbied again in 1951 before the Legislature for adoption-law

refinements. In 1953, she appeared on the network-television program “This Is Your Life,” a real-time broadcast usually reserved for prominent entertainers in their waning years. Edna’s task had been formidable: Well along into the 20th century, pregnancy signaled ostracism and stigma for unmarried women, largely stemming from a child’s official designation as “illegitimate” on the birth certificates. Such mothers were often forced by their families to marry. Abortion was illegal. Adoption was a more complicated procedure. By the 1950s, the situation had improved, largely through the efforts of Edna Gladney. A colleague, Ruby Lee Piester, once wrote, “No one in this country had done more than Edna Gladney to erase the stigma of unwed motherhood and to promote adoption as a positive option...”

Edna Gladney retired in 1960 but remained active at the Gladney Home until her death in 1961. Her principles remain in place at Fort Worth’s Gladney Center for Adoption.

Edna Gladney Home

HISTORY:

EDNA GLADNEY

The Ultimate Gentleman’s Pursuit

Historic, Documented Factory Engraved and Inscribed, Colt Single Action Army Revolver Presented to the Outstanding Contestant Burel Mulkey at the 1937 Ft. Worth, Texas Rodeo by the Governor of Louisiana

Full Circle

He might live in Dallas, but Jammie Holmes first picked up a paintbrush thanks to the Fort Worth museum that’s currently exhibiting his art.

BY SHASTA HAUBRICH

Seats filled quickly inside the auditorium at the Modern Art Museum, forcing patrons to sit in the aisles or stand at the back of the room — a slight discomfort that didn’t deter any audience members. The massive crowd was awaiting the arrival of artist Jammie Holmes, who was tapped to give a lecture and discuss his current exhibition, “Jammie Holmes: Make the Revolution Irresistible,” which is currently on display at the Modern through Nov. 26.

As Holmes began to speak about his early life in small-town Louisiana (the bayou town of Thibodaux, to be exact), his charming and open personality matched the intimate work within the exhibit. Holmes’ paintings, eye-catching

in their composition, are deeply personal and brutally honest depictions of contemporary life for Black families in the Deep South, incontrovertibly tackling race, religion, poverty, and politics.

Coming full circle, it was a visit to the very museum hosting his lecture, our Fort Worth’s Modern, that led to a life-changing epiphany that inspired Holmes to pick up a paintbrush. “I thought a museum was just a place with old coins, dinosaur bones, and things like that,” Holmes says. “Because growing up in Thibodaux, the only time you’ve seen a painting of anything was an alligator or bird, and it was always at a restaurant. So, I never thought that being a painter was even a thing to do or care about.”

As a child, Holmes, 39, began sketching as he watched cartoons and fancied himself working for Nickelodeon. After his visit to the Modern, he connected the cartoon imagery created by Kaws, whose “CLEAN SLATE” sculpture sits adjacent to the museum’s pond, with the cartoons he had sketched since childhood. “[I realized], man, I think I can do this … I could feel how much I really liked [painting]. I felt like I was actually doing something that I loved for the first time in my life.”

Six years later, the artist is now exhibiting his work in the very museum that ignited his interest in the art — where past exhibits have included such world-renowned artists as Kaws himself, Mark Bradford, and Takashi Murakami. Despite his meteoric rise, Holmes remains humble.

“I’m a real grateful person,” Holmes says. “You could give me a piece of bubblegum, and I want to thank you for the rest of your life. I’m super grateful because things don’t have to happen like this. But I also understand things are just written, and it’s just part of your destiny.”

In the 15 paintings on display, one can see how Holmes’ work has

evolved. Older paintings utilize wider brushstrokes and representative imagery. His more recent work portrays subjects in more detail, especially his striking self-portraits. Apparently, his transition to self-portraiture occurred during an exhibit that focused on his latent feelings about losing family members.

“At the time, I never really painted myself,” Holmes says. “So that solo show was the first time, and I kind of started forgiving myself. Early on [my self-portraiture] was me trying to heal and to forgive myself and understand, like, ‘Dude, a lot of stuff wasn’t your problem or your fault.’ And [the act of painting a self-portrait] was me appreciating myself. You don’t really appreciate yourself until you really have to recreate yourself.”

Nowhere is this gentle portrayal of himself and his family life more evident than in his piece “Endurance,” which depicts Holmes shaving his brother’s head. An intimate moment that purposefully depicts his day-today life. To this day, Holmes still cuts the hair of his little brother, who, like Holmes, has moved to Dallas — and he admits to still calling his mom to settle fights between the two of them.

While his work is personal and tends to relate to his life and memories, Holmes sometimes uses the canvas as a way to recognize others. When asked about his piece, “Fred Hampton” (a portrait of the American activist and Black Panther Party leader within an analog television set), Holmes says, “I feel like everybody deserves their roses.”

“When it came down to Black Panthers, I’m, like, ‘Man, these people are people who fought hard to help clean up their community. They combated the gangs that were selling drugs. They combated starvation, like kids not having food.

They started their own education programs. I just thought that was an amazing thing.”

Like the above muse, Holmes is doing his part to have a positive impact on his childhood community of Thibodaux. For context, Thibodaux is home to about 15,000 people — 23.7% of whom live below the poverty line — and is the scene of the Thibodaux Massacre, brought about by racial violence, which resulted in the estimated deaths of 35 Black workers and their family members in 1887. Despite now residing in Dallas, Holmes has become a bit of a local celebrity within the bayou town he once called home, with many people sending him their children’s draw-

ings. He also recently returned home to teach a summer camp for kids. So, thanks to Holmes, a whole generation of youngsters in Thibodaux now have an expanded view of art from beyond the screen.

You can view Jammie Holmes’ new exhbit, “Make the Revolution Irresistible,” at the Modern Art Museum (3200 Darnell St.) through Nov. 26.

“A Cup Full of Whatever,” 2021

“MLK at MLK Park,” 2023

“I Have a Dream,” 2021

Turkey, Texas

Population: 326

BY SHILO URBAN

Cattle ranches and cotton fields populate the high plains around Turkey, a tiny outpost four hours northwest of Fort Worth in the base of the Panhandle. Sparse and set away from the wiles of the world, the emptiness here has a certain allure. The conquistador Coronado trudged through the area in 1541 seeking the Seven Cities of Gold; centuries later the Comanche made it the geographic heart of their empire, the Comancheria. Today, gas stations and grocery stores are few and far between. Time seems to expand as the flatland stretches on. Approaching Turkey, you’ll come upon a metal sign that

proclaims: HOME OF BOB WILLS — your first glimpse of the town’s claim to fame. It won’t be your last. By the time you depart, you’ll never forget where the King of Western Swing was from.

Fort Worth likes to claim this legendary bandleader and songwriter, who transformed American music during the Depression by inventing an entirely new genre: Western swing. After all, it was in Cowtown where he joined forces with Milton Brown and introduced the revolutionary sound inspired by big band jazz, blues rhythms, Tejano horns and German polka — all with a Western twang and plenty of fiddlin’ to

boot. Wills and his group, the Texas Playboys, set dance floors on fire in Fort Worth and far beyond. Songs like “New San Antonio Rose” and “Spanish Two Step” propelled them to international fame, and Western swing went on to influence the development of honky-tonk, rockabilly, and rock ’n’ roll. Countless artists owe a musical debt to the trailblazing Wills, from Fats Domino and Chuck Berry to Elvis, Willie, and Waylon.

Western swing may have been born in Fort Worth, but it was conceived in Turkey, where Wills spent most of his childhood. He worked long hours in the fields alongside Black and Hispanic farmhands, soaking in the folk songs that he heard all around him. Fiddling ran in his family on both sides, and the talented Texan was performing at local ranch dances by the time he was 10. Wills arrived in Fort Worth in 1929, and his decades-long career took off, but he never forgot his Panhandle roots. Turkey celebrates its hometown

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hero during Bob Wills Day every spring, a music festival that attracts 10,000 people (next up: April 25-27, 2024). Bands jam and fiddlers battle. Cheerleaders toss candy from parade floats. There’s a free concert on the old football field with the Texas Playboys, whose lineup has changed slightly since the 1930s. Everyone ends up on the dance floor at the high school gymnasium: small tots and awkward teens, young cowboys and white-haired veterans, church leaders and RVers — they’re all cutting a rug to the sounds of Western swing.

You can celebrate Wills’ legacy year-round in Turkey at the Bob Wills Museum, and you’ll see plaques and monuments to the bandleader and his Texas Playboys all over town (including a replica of their 1948 tour bus). Western swing may not pack many dancehalls beyond Turkey anymore, but in this part of the Panhandle, the immortal words of Waylon Jennings still ring true: “It don’t matter who’s in Austin, Bob Wills is still the king.”

Savor: Turkey Creek Winery is the new kid on the scene, an offshoot of J Welch Farms in Victoria. Pouring a dozen Texan vintages and fruity wine slushies, the hangout also serves sandwiches and charcuterie. Walk across Main Street for dessert at Tony’s Ice Cream, where you can order sundaes and snow cones with flavors like wedding cake and pickle juice (not recommended together). For something quick, Toña’s Mexican Kitchen food truck dishes up tacos, tamales, and gorditas for lunch and breakfast. Hotel Turkey’s restaurant offers popular daily specials including chili relleno plates and rib-eye steaks. Burgers, pizza, and fried fish round out the menu.

Shop: Established in 1916 and now operated by the fifth generation of the same family, Lacy Dry Goods is the local go-to for gifts, fringy clothing, and handtooled pistol cases. Nearby you’ll find the combination shop and café called Turkey Tracks Coffee, Tea, & Tee’s. It’s a great place to purchase a souvenir shirt and coffee mug — or a pot roast lunch and a cinnamon roll. Nine miles west of Turkey in Quitaque, you can pick up farmfresh eggs and live chickens at Gettim Homestead and buy groceries at Merrell Food (good to note on Sunday evenings when no local restaurants are open).

Enjoy: Buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play at Caprock Canyons State Park (15 miles from Turkey), home to the Official Texas State Bison Herd. The ruddy bluffs and juniper groves set a dramatic stage for hiking and horseback riding. Visit the Comanchero Canyons Museum in Quitaque to learn about the distinct culture of the Comancheros, mestizo merchants from New Mexico who traded with Plains tribes in the region. Back in Turkey, keep an eye out for the 20-foot-tall arrow in the city park; it’s one of 80 in the Panhandle that mark important Comanche sites on the Quanah Parker Trail. Discover more local history

at the Turkey Roost Museum and be sure to check out the restored Phillips 66 service station opened in 1928, the first one built in Texas.

Snooze: All roads lead to Hotel Turkey, a historic B&B from 1927 with authentic Western charm. Besides a couple of houses for rent on Airbnb, it’s the only place to stay unless you’ve driven your own home from Fort Worth. This singular institution piles on the nostalgic character and down-home Texas hospitality. Listen to live music on the patio every Friday and Saturday night, then wake up to a cooked-to-order breakfast. Rooms have comfortable beds and vintage furniture, and you can also stay in a converted shipping container (complete with a rooftop lounge for cold beers and stargazing). Sipping coffee in a rocking chair on the hotel’s porch, it’s hard to imagine that there’s anything wrong in the world.

How to Get There: Drive north from Fort Worth on Interstate 35 for about 30 miles, then take the exit for US 287-N. You’ll stay on 287 for 200 miles or so, passing through Bowie, Wichita Falls, and Childress. When you reach Estelline, turn left onto TX-86 W/Harper Street and follow it for 30 miles into Turkey.

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Flour Power

There’s a new generation of chefs dead set on freshly made pasta. It’s a dang revolution.

BY MALCOLM MAYHEW

Not that long ago, the number of Fort Worth restaurants that went to the trouble of making their own pastas was relatively small. Most local restaurants that served pasta settled for the pre-packaged variety, relying on sauces and seasonings to win over diners.

The arrival of Piattello Italian Kitchen in 2017 was a turning point for pasta lovers in Fort Worth. Piattello was the first modern Italian restaurant in Fort Worth to make each of its pastas in-house — an absolute rarity in our city.

Opened by local chef and restaurateur Marcus Paslay, Piattello paved the way for other modern Italian restaurants to open in Fort Worth — in particular, those that make their own pastas. Today, there’s nearly a half-dozen restaurants that serve freshly made pasta.

Some of the chefs responsible for this pasta revolution spoke to us about their cooking techniques, what makes their pastas tick, and the first time they fell in love with pasta.

Chef: Scott Lewis, executive chef for Scratch Made Hospitality, the local restaurant group formed by Marcus Paslay.

Restaurant: Lewis oversees the kitchens in each of Scratch Made’s restaurants, but he has a particular love for Piattello, where Paslay encouraged him to make the modern Italian menu his own.

Pasta he wants you to try: Piattello’s superb saffron linguine is a menu mainstay, but its ingredients change with the season. Right now, Lewis is serving it with Gulf shrimp, end of summer corn, jalapeno, and basil.

Cooking technique: “You need a bit of finesse when it comes to getting the pasta al dente. The pasta can overcook quickly in the sauce, so you have to be very accurate with the amount of sauce you have in the pan. Using salted water to cook the pasta is

crucial at the beginning stage so the pasta itself gets seasoned. We only use bronze die to extrude our pasta, which creates ridges in the pasta that help the sauce cling to it.”

What he loves about this pasta: “The amazing thing about the linguine is, it’s a very classic dish that embodies simplicity. And that’s what Italian food is to me.”

Favorite childhood memory of pasta: “My mom would make a delicious Bolognese and an amazing chicken and noodles dish. This was probably where I fell in love with pasta and different types of sauces. Growing up, my friends would pile into my house every Sunday for my mom’s chicken and noodles. It was such a simple dish but one I will never forget.”

Scott Lewis Piattello Italian Kitchen, 5924 Convair Drive piattelloitaliankitchen.com

Piattello’s saffron linguine

Chef: Donatella Trotti

Restaurant: Nonna Tata, a long-running Italian restaurant on the Near Southside whose patio overlooks Magnolia Avenue.

Pasta she wants you to try: Her housemade cappellacci, a hard-to-find stuffed pasta that takes time and patience to make. “It resembles a hat, which is `cappello’ in Italian,” she says. “It’s just a little bigger than another pasta called cappelletti. As you know, there are more pasta shapes and kinds than Italians.”

What’s in it: “The filling is a combination of cured meats, prosciutto, mortadella, salame, prosciutto cotto, sausage, spinach, parmigiano, and pork loin, that I cook porchetta-style, using a combination of Tuscan spices,” she says. “Everything is ground together; then I shape it into small balls. The pasta is an egg pasta made with soft flour. It is a `rich pasta,’ because I do not use egg whites, only yolks. The classic serving is with brown butter and sage. Right now, I am serving it with brown

Nonna Tata, 1400 W. Magnolia Ave., nonnatata.com

butter and truffle-infused Marcona almonds. What she loves about this pasta: “I can change the filling from time to time, sometimes just because of a new dream — I do dream about food combinations! I really like the shape, too. Not only is it unique but it has so many folds and crevices, it’s easy for a sauce to hold onto.”

Favorite childhood memory of pasta: “I started working on pasta when I was 6. That makes a LOT of years, but please do not ask how many. My grandma, Nonna Tata, who I named the restaurant after, would always make ravioli for Christmas. The day before, all the aunts would meet in her kitchen and work on the ravioli. My job was to close them, making sure no air was left inside. I still am very careful, still a little scared, or I can see my grandma’s disapproving smile. On Christmas Day we would serve them with a meat sauce for lunch and in a wonderful broth for the evening.”

Donatella Trotti

Nonna Tata’s housemade cappellacci

Chef: Blaine Staniford Restaurant: Grace, Little Red Wasp, 61 Osteria Pasta he wants you to try: At the recently opened 61 Osteria, an exquisite contemporary Italian restaurant located on the ground floor of the First on 7th tower downtown, the pasta du jour is Serpente, a visually stunning pasta stuffed with ricotta cheese and topped with a lemon butter sauce and hen of the wood mushrooms. The pasta itself is served coiled, like a snake. “It’s a derivative of a very famous pasta shape called agnolotti, which translates to little pillows,” says Staniford, the restaurant’s executive chef. “What we do is make the agnolotti, then roll into what resembles a serpent’s tail, and then we coil the tail. It’s a really cool presentation.”

It’s made the old-fashioned way: While some chefs use pasta makers for their housemade pastas,

Blaine Staniford 61 Osteria

500 West Seventh St. 61osteria.com

Staniford says this particular dish requires everything to be made by hand. “There’s just no way you could get a machine to make pasta in such an unusual shape,” he says. The ricotta cheese is made by hand, too. What isn’t made by hand is painstakingly utilized, such as the hen of the wood mushrooms, which sit atop the pasta. “We wanted mushrooms to be a big focus of this dish,” he says. “So, we take hen of the wood mushrooms and ferment them, and that’s about a four-week process. But doing that, spending that much time on something so seemingly small, produces a flavor that keeps you coming back for more and more.”

Favorite kind of pasta growing up: “Man, that’s a hard one for me. I’m not gonna lie, though — I’ve probably had Velvetta shells and cheese in about every form you can think of. It was always something that was so easy to make. To this day, I still love it!”

Serpente

Chef: Greg Pawlowski Restaurant: Il Modo, the stylish modern Italian restaurant found on the ground level of the Kimpton Harper Hotel downtown. The dining area looks onto the glass-enclosed pasta-making room, where chefs and cooks create their pastas, and where pasta-making classes are hosted monthly by Pawlowski and other members of the kitchen team.

Pasta he wants you to try: Pawlowski’s show-stopping fettucine with wild mushrooms and white truffle, the featured dish on Il Modo’s new fall menu. “It is a simple dish, but I feel it is one of the best ways to showcase the beautiful mush -

rooms,” he says. “It is rich and buttery. It doesn’t hurt that it goes with almost every wine on our menu.”

Those mushrooms, though: “The grower is Texas Fungus. They are a mushroom mix grown in Arlington. These are some of the best-looking mushrooms I have seen in my career.”

Favorite kind of pasta growing up: “My favorite pasta to eat was spaghetti Bolognese. Sometimes you can’t beat the classics. My favorite pasta to make was tortellini en brodo (a stuffed pasta served in a broth). My grandmother would make everything from scratch; then she would form thousands of mini tortellini by hand.”

Greg Pawlowski Il Modo

Fettucine with wild mushrooms and white truffle

Chef: Tim Love Restaurant: The city’s most well-known chef owns several restaurants in and beyond Fort Worth, including the high-end Italian eatery Caterina’s in the Fort Worth Stockyards. Before Love opened Caterina’s, he was making his own pastas at Gemelle.

Pasta he wants you to try: Spaghetti Carbonara at Caterina’s. Think regular spaghetti but with a baconand-eggs flavor.

Looks can be deceiving: When it comes to making pasta, most chefs agree on at least one thing: Pasta is a simple dish, pieced together with only a handful of ingredients but often difficult to make. Same goes for Love’s Spaghetti Carbonara. “The dish is actually quite simple but not particularly easy to make, at least not easy to make really well,” he says. The secret lies within the water used

Tim Love Caterina’s 128 E. Exchange Ave. Ste. 620 caterinasftx.com

to cook the pasta, he says. “The pasta must be cooked in water that tastes like the ocean,” says Love. “When cooking pasta, you must season the water in order to season the pasta.”

What’s in it? “The noodle is pure semolina flour and water — that’s it,” Love says. The noodles are cooked with/tricked out with guaciale (pork cheek), which the restaurant makes in-house; egg yolks; chopped garlic; pepper; fresh shaved Parmesan; and a touch of sea salt. “Carbonara is one of the four Roman pastas,” he says. “The others are cacio e pepe, amatriciana, and gricia. All of them are quite simple and very similar. Carbonara is the richest of all four, yet there is no cream or extra butter. It’s eggs and bacon for dinner.”

Favorite pasta dish growing up: My favorite pasta as a kid was spaghetti with garlic and Parmesan — the cheap kind in a can!

Spaghetti Carbonara

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Oftentimes when I am talking with residents they say to me, “I wish I had moved to The Tradition much sooner.” Also, they remark on the many meaningful friendships they have developed. Studies show companionship is vital to all of us; it makes for a thriving and healthy lifetime.

If you are starting your search for luxury, rental retirement living, you’ll love our beautiful Communities and all the extraordinary services, amenities, activities, and new friendships that our residents enjoy. Maintaining an engaged and independent lifestyle is easy when you are close to the city’s most desirable neighborhoods and near to all that is familiar. Start enjoying your to-do list in warm, enriching surroundings, and take advantage of our many educational and social events as well as outings to cultural venues, popular restaurants, and special area attractions.

I hope that you consider a new way of living and join us at The Tradition. Please make an appointment to tour our beautiful Community, meet residents firsthand and learn more. I look forward to welcoming you home!

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S tatement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation (required by 39 U.S.C. 3685). Title of Publication: Fort Worth Magazine Publication No. 1536-8939 Date of filing: 11/1/23 Frequency of Issue (Monthly) Number of issues published annually: 12 Annual subscription price is $23.95 Complete mailing address of Publication: 6777 Camp Bowie Blvd., Ste.130, Fort Worth, Texas 76116 Complete mailing address of Headquarters of general business office of publisher: Panther City Media Group, LP, 6777 Camp Bowie Blvd., Ste.130, Fort Worth, Texas 76116 Names and complete mailing address of Publisher, and Editor, Publisher: Hal A. Brown, 6777 Camp Bowie Blvd., Ste.130, Fort Worth, Texas 76116, Editor: Brian Kendall, 6777 Camp Bowie Blvd., Ste.130, Fort Worth, Texas 76116 Owners: Panther City Media Group LP, 6777 Camp Bowie Blvd., Ste.130, Fort Worth, Texas 76116, Hal A. Brown, 6777 Camp Bowie Blvd., Ste.130, Fort Worth, Texas 76116. Known bondholders, mortgages and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amounts of bonds, mortgages or other securities: None Tax status: has not changed during preceding 12 months Publication Title: Fort Worth Magazine Issue date for circulation: 11/2023 Average no. copies each issue during preceding 12 months 1,047 Total no. copies printed (Net Press Run) 12,567 Legitimate Paid and/or Requested Distribution(By mail and outside the mail): 8,266 Mailed OutsideCounty Paid/Requested Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541: 1,171 Mailed In-County Paid/Requested Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541: 4,519 Sales through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales and Other Paid or Requested Distribution outside USPS: 2,577 Requested Copies by Other Classes of Mail Through the USPS: 0. Total Paid Distribution (Sum of 15b, (1), (2), (3) and (4): 9,079 Total Nonrequested Distribution: Outside County Copies stated on PS Form 3541: 1,560 In-County Nonrequested Copies included on PS Form 3541: 0 Nonrequested Copies Distributed through the USPS by Other Classes of Mail: 752 Nonrequested Copies Distributed Outside the Mail: 3,549 Total Nonrequested Distribution (Sum of 15d, (1), (2), (3) and (4): 6,878 Total Distribution (sum of 15c and 15e): 15,144 Copies not Distributed: 1,184 Total (sum of 15f and 15g): 16,328 Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation (15c divided by 15f times 100): 54.58% No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest To Filing Date: printed (Net Press Run) 10,797 Legitimate Paid and/or Requested Distribution (By mail and outside the mail): Mailed Outside-County Paid/Requested Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541: 1,151 Mailed In-County Paid/Requested Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541: 3,464. Sales through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales and Other Paid or Requested Distribution outside USPS: 2,565 Requested Copies by Other Classes of Mail Through the USPS: 0 Total Paid Distribution (Sum of 15b, (1), (2), (3) and (4): 7,180 Total Nonrequested Distribution: Outside County Copies stated on PS Form 3541: 0 In-County Nonrequested Copies included on PS Form 3541: 213 Nonrequested Copies Distributed through the USPS by Other Classes of Mail: 2,565 Nonrequested Copies Distributed Outside the Mail: 3,404 Total Nonrequested Distribution (Sum of 15d, (1), (2), (3) and (4): 6,182 Total Distribution (sum of 15c and 15e): 13,362 Copies not Distributed: 1,166 Total (sum of 15f and g): 14,528 Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation (15c divided by 15f times 100): 53.73% Publication of Statement of Ownership for a Requester Publication is required and will be printed in the November 2023 issue of this publication. Signature and Title of Editor, Publisher, Business Manager, or Owner: Hal A. Brown Date: 10/17/2023 I certify that all information furnished in this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanctions (including fines and imprisonment) and/or civil sanctions (including civil penalties.)

THE FILM ISSUE

Hollywood, Schmollywood. With a concentration of resources, a film heritage, and a venerable talent pool, which includes the likes of Barry Corbin, Channing Godfrey Peoples, and Christina Voros, Fort Worth is making a serious play to become the Lone Star Tinseltown.

SILVER SCREEN CITY

A combination of talent and incentives is making Fort Worth the breakout star of its own movie.

By Michael H. Price / Photography by Crystal Wise

Ben Hecht had his bases covered when he composed that couplet back in 1946: Classically speaking, the Seven Lively Arts would include drama, drawing, painting, movement, music, modeling, and speech.

Not to mention that the art and commerce of filmmaking fit all those categories, and never more so than in the film-friendly climate of Fort Worth. As the city gathers momentum toward an aggressive new phase for the Lone Star Film Festival — Nov. 2-5 and Nov. 10, in the North Side’s historic Isis showplace and the Stockyards District-at-large — it also cinches its grasp upon a moviemaking heritage that dates from the earlier years of the last century.

The overriding encouragement lies in a $200 million statewide grubstake, established this year by the Texas Legislature to provide a sweeping and competitive incentive to filmmaking projects, with on-the-spot encouragement from Sen. Craig Goldman (R-Fort Worth), Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, and producer Red Sanders. The sum represents what Goldman calls “monumental” in its leap from the state’s former $50 million incentive package, a two-year sum that left Fort Worth and Texas overall ill-equipped to compete with such movie-welcoming states as New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Georgia.

A key provocation to the beefed-up incentive lay in the 2016 crime drama “Hell or High Water.” Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay hinges upon a flatlands West Texas setting, but the shooting was accomplished in mountainous New Mexico — because Texas lacked the economic incentives to appeal to the producers. With an average major-league motion picture budgeted around $100 million, the ability to save even a small hunk can add millions to

a film’s spending budget. To encourage production companies to spend more money in far-flung regions, various states offer such incentives as tax credits, grants, and bonuses.

Generally speaking, to qualify for Texas’ film-production tax credits, a project must spend 60% of its filming days within the state. Fifty-five percent of the cast must include local extras or background players. And 70% of the tech-support crew must be residents. A resident crew earns varying tax credits or rebates, 5% to 20%, depending upon a film’s budget in a range from beneath $1 million to above $3.5 million. The state affords a 2.5% tax credit if a project completes 25% of its shooting days in an economically disadvantaged region. Qualifying expenditures include money spent with Texas companies for goods and services used in production, from chow-time catering to lodging.

To sway a legislative faction that had regarded incentives as merely a handout to Hollywood, as Rep. Goldman says, “we needed to do a better job of educating and advocating.” Mission accomplished.

The $200 million incentive tank makes Texas competitive with neighbors such as New Mexico and Louisiana, each of which have invested significantly in film production. The goal, as Sanders tells it, is to use the $200 million to prime the pump to encourage a steady and self-renewing pace of productions statewide, “ranging from big-studio projects to small independent pictures.” Constant shooting for a procession of one film after another would call for a permanent resident class of crew members.

Toward that objective, the interlocked Fort Worth Film Commission has raised the stakes since September with a new

Jessica Christopherson

educational pipeline program — called the Fort Worth Film Collaborative – that promises to blaze trails to employment on the city’s mounting film-production scene. The educational venture is an invention of the Fort Worth Film Commission and Tarrant County College, in partnership with 101 Studios — the production company responsible for such hot-ticket series as “Yellowstone,” “Tulsa King,” “Mayor of Kingstown,” and “Special Ops: Lioness.”

And, yes, the celebrated journalist-dramatist Ben Hecht (1894-1964) is a forerunner of the Fort Worth scene: Hecht’s collaborative circus/musical drama, “Jumbo,” was transplanted in 1936 from Broadway to become a centerpiece of Fort Worth’s Texas Centennial celebration. That summer-into-fall extravaganza pointed toward an eventual Hollywood filming of “Jumbo,” in 1962. In adapting “Jumbo” to a heart-of-Texas presentation, Hecht trimmed the production’s running time to a brisk hour-and-change — the better to lessen the discomforts of an unventilated Frontier Pavilion in 110-degree 1936 Texas weather.

About That Heritage Fort Worth owns a proud filmmaking heritage, as an inspiration to Hollywood — as seen in Mervyn LeRoy’s homage to child-adoption pioneer Edna Gladney, “Blossoms in the Dust” (1941), and in Western champ Randolph Scott’s frontier drama “Fort Worth” (1951). The city figures, too, as a site of practical locations, as in James Stewart’s starring picture of 1955, “Strategic Air Command.” “Blossoms” and “Fort Worth” required Hollywood sound-stage settings, standing in for historic Fort Worth. “Strategic Air Command” used real-world locations at Carswell Air Force Base, which also welcomed a much smaller production company in 1960 for the shooting of portions of the maverick director Edgar G. Ulmer’s science-fiction adventure, “Beyond the Time Barrier.”

Texas at large had established filmmaking resources as early as 1900, when the trailblazing cameraman G.W. “Billy” Bitzer defied a disaster-area ban on cameras to shoot motion-picture footage of the aftermath of the Galveston hurricane. San Antonio became a headquarters in 1910 of Gaston Méliès’ Star Film Company, branching out from its origins in France. As Los Angeles proved a practical and lasting base of operations for the major film studios, Texas provided shooting locales for the likes of Fox Films’ Civil War epic, “The Warrens of Virginia” (1924), and Paramount Pictures’ Oscar-anointed WWI drama, “Wings.” Those were shot in part around San Antonio.

As the Hollywood establishment came to rely increasingly upon sound-stage production, Texas saw less shooting during the 1930s and 1940s. A significant exception lay in Dallas-based producer Alfred R. Sack’s Sack Amusement Attractions, which shot its unique catalogue of Black-ensemble features during 1940-1947 on locations around Dallas and Fort Worth, with Waxahachie providing rural scenery.

Sack was a niche-market specialist, delivering pictures for Black-neighborhood theatres during an age of segregated filmgoing. The Jewish entrepreneur Sack formed a partnership with an African American actor/writer/director, Spencer Williams, Jr., to make 11 such feature films, ranging in genre from monster-atlarge horrors (“Son of Ingagi”) to slapstick comedy (“Juke Joint”)

to spiritual matters (“The Blood of Jesus”) to crime melodramas (“Dirty Gertie from Harlem, U.S.A.”). In 1991, the lone surviving print of “The Blood of Jesus” became the first of its kind to be selected as an addition to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.

Texas reasserted itself during the 1950s-1960s as a lure for corporate filmmaking, owing to an increasing demand for scenic realism — as opposed to manufactured studio settings. From the renewed interest, there came such made-in-Texas powerhouses as 1956s “Giant” (at Marfa and Valentine) and 1960s John Wayne epic, “The Alamo” (at Brackettville). In 1971, Governor Preston Smith established the Texas Film Commission, and by the waning 1970s, the state had earned more than $40 million from film-related goods and services. In 1976, Fort Worth’s Water Gardens landmark placed its futuristic sculptural contours at the service of Michael Anderson’s science-fictional race-against-time picture, “Logan’s Run.”

The Here-and-Now No low profile for Fort Worth, not then and not now — though never has the city touted such an aggressive concentration of resources, emerging talent, and administrative gumption as it’s seen during the past few years.

The momentum began building anew as early as the fading 1990s when Interlight Productions, an off-Hollywood company, leased an idled shopping center to stage a $5 million shoot’emup called “Recoil” — sort of a “‘Die Hard’ in a shopping mall,” as one show-biz newspaper put it. A 1998 notice in Texas Monthly offered the lowdown: “Fort Worth’s Town Center Mall [now La Gran Plaza] became a war zone — the principal location where Mickey Rourke, the brawl-prone star…, knocked out the indie feature ‘Recoil.’”

Matt Beesley’s “Recoil” (a.k.a. “Point Blank”) made scarcely a ripple at the box office, but its extensive use of local talent and technical expertise had demonstrated the city’s practical value to the larger sphere of filmmaking while providing a homecoming for supporting actor Frederic Forrest, a Waxahachie native and alumnus of Texas Christian University.

That same general period, 1996-1998, saw the establishment of the Fort Worth Film Festival as a year-round agency devoted to independent productions (including premieres for locally made pictures) as well as general-interest film appreciation. The nonprofit agency had evolved into the Lone Star Film Society by 2003-2004, and by 2015 the Fort Worth Film Commission had emerged as a driver of more than $50 million in economic impact.

The state’s newly minted $200 million incentive requires support from a localized community of filmmaking talent. A production company is likelier to select a location-shooting region that has a built-in supply of lighting technicians, hair-andmakeup artisans, set-building crews, and the like. Hence the Fort Worth Film Collaborative.

The Fort Worth Film Collaborative Launched this fall at Tarrant County College, the Fort Worth Film Collaborative proposes to create pathways to employment on Fort Worth’s growing filmproduction scene. The project is a milestone in the eight-year

progress of the Fort Worth Film Commission and a breakthrough for Tarrant County College, with the added clout of 101 Studios, whose more prominent telefeature productions of modern times include the likes of “Yellowstone,” the soon-to-release “Lawmen: Bass Reeves,” the generational sagas “1883” and “1923,” and “Tulsa King,” “Mayor of Kingstown,” and “Special Ops: Lioness.”

“I want to see what we can grow here,” says Rep. Goldman. “Fort Worth has the growth potential to become the other major filmmaking hub in Texas.” (Austin would be the state’s filmmaking kingpin, having built steadily over a span of two generations upon such touchstones as Tobe Hooper’s rough-and-ready production of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1973-1974) and Warner Bros.’ major-league production of “Outlaw Blues” (1977).

The Fort Worth Film Collaborative is a workforce development certification program, calculated to address the growing need for trained film industry crew members in the Fort Worth-to-Dallas metropolitan area. The one-of-a-kind curriculum promises to provide students with a pathway to employment in the film industry.

In addition to 101 Studios, the Fort Worth Film Commission and Tarrant County College have worked with several locally based entities on the project, including Red Productions and Backlot Studios, Out of Order Studios (producer of “The Chosen”), MPS Studios, and Panavision, the camera-equipment company. The Film Commission has produced 20 instructional videos, featuring working professionals, to accompany the curriculum. These videos cover such key fields of specialization as gaffer (lighting and electrical power), grip (rigging to support cameras), set construction, location-scouting, hairdressing and makeup, accounting; camera use, production assistance, and props (inanimate objects required to tell a story on film). Additional disciplines will be covered as the series progresses.

“This initiative will create a talent pipeline within the Fort Worth film industry,” says Jessica Christopherson, Fort Worth’s film commissioner. (The Fort Worth Film Commission is a division of the tourism organization known as Visit Fort Worth, of which Christopherson is vice president of marketing. Her family background includes filmmaking, as well.)

“Our goal is to attract projects that will create sustainable job opportunities for locals,” adds Christopherson.

Tarrant County College will serve as the educational framework of the Fort Worth Film Collaborative. By leveraging its state-of-the-art facilities and experienced faculty, the college will provide a platform for students to gain an understanding of the film industry and to develop practical skills essential to success in the film industry.

Dr. Kenya Ayers-Palmore, president for Tarrant County College’s Northeast Campus, explains: “This way of doing business — with community colleges providing nimble responses to support the expressed needs of industry partners — is how we jointly create sustainable opportunities. The Fort Worth Film Collaborative serves as a driver for economic development through job growth… We are very appreciative to our Texas Legislature for … facilitating job opportunities through increased incentives for filmmakers to work in Texas.

“This unprecedented partnership in Texas is truly a game-

changer, as it reflects a new normal for education in Texas with the development of micro-credentials and short-term, flexible offerings [at the college] to ensure that our citizens are workready,” adds Dr. Ayers-Palmore.

Tarrant County College’s fast-track certification program is designed to accommodate students’ work-and-family schedules. Coursework includes classes at an affordable tuition. Certifications in additional filmmaking specialty fields will follow in 2024. Details can be found online at tccd.edu.

Meanwhile, back at the Film Festival Meanwhile, at November’s Lone Star Film Festival, two formal world premieres are locked in for the principal venue, Downtown Cowtown at the Isis Theatre: November 2 sees a 7 p.m. showing of Eric Parkinson’s “Wildfire: The Legend of the Cherokee Ghost Horse,” with director Parkinson and songwriter Michael Martin Murphey in attendance. November 5 sees a 7 p.m. showing of “Lane,” Bradley Hughes and James Trawick’s documentary biography of the championship bull-riding cowboy Lane Frost (1963-1989), with directors Hughes and Trawick in attendance.

Then at 6 p.m., November 10, at the Hotel Drover, the Lone Star Film Festival’s gala climax will include presentations of the traditional Visionary Award to Fort Worth-bred film producer Marty Bowen, the Stephen Bruton Award (in memory of the Fort Worth-based musician and actor) to the Texas roots-music artist musician Charley Crockett, and the Bill Paxton Award (in memory of the Fort Worth-to-Hollywood actor-producer-director) to the Dallas-born actor Luke Wilson.

The festival’s slate of films in competition includes Katherine Propper’s “Lost Soulz,” a tale of a rap artist’s odyssey through Texas, Thaddeus D. Matula’s “Into the Spotlight,” documenting the empowerment of artists dealing with disabilities, and Chase Joliet’s family drama “Grapefruit” (online at lonestarfilmfestival. com).

“There is something special happening in Fort Worth,” says Mayor Parker, citing the burgeoning accumulation of opportunities and interest, which also includes a summertime filmmaking workshop by the Lone Star Film Society at Texas Christian University. “The aim is to make our city a destination for film and television productions.”

The city has long since proved its civilian interest in film appreciation, generating steady audiences nowadays for such recurring participatory attractions as the Fort Worth Film Club at Stage West Theatre and Cowtown Movie Classics at Downtown Cowtown at the Isis. From civilian movie-buff interests, there often grow professional interests. The city now finds itself equipped to nurture such ambitions, to encourage spontaneous local filmmaking projects — and to give the Hollywood establishment increasing reasons to take advantage of the indigenous production resources, as well as the natural and ready-built scenic values, that abound in Fort Worth.

“Investing in local film productions has an incredible return on investment,” as Mattie Parker explains in a formal statement through the Fort Worth Film Commission. “And in Fort Worth, we’re ready to capitalize on their opportunities.”

Chad Matthews

THE FILM HISTORIAN’S GUIDE TO FORT WORTH

An essential directory to the best, most prominent flicks filmed (or allegedly based) in and around Cowtown.

By Michael H. Price and Brian Kendall

“SON OF INGAGI” (Sack Amusement Attractions, 1940)

Screenwriter

Spencer Williams, Jr., stars in this Black-ensemble thriller about a mad scientist (Broadway star Laura Bowman), a captive ape-man (Zack Williams, of 1939s “Gone with the Wind”), and an abducted bride (Daisy Bufford). Williams, who plays a comical detective, styled the story as an unofﬁcial sequel to 1930s “Ingagi,” a mock-documentary purporting to depict an exploration of the wilds of Africa. Filmed on Fort Worth and Dallas locations.

“BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST” (MGM Pictures, 1941)

Director

Mervyn LeRoy might have settled for soap-opera schmaltz in retelling the career of Fort Worth’s Edna Gladney (see accompanying story on page 24). Leading lady Greer Garson found a tougher variety of gumption in her portrayal of Gladney, to the extent that Garson overshadows a ﬁne supporting cast, including the forceful Walter

Pidgeon as Gladney’s husband. The Motion Picture Academy bestowed four Oscar nominations, with a win in the category of Technicolor Art Direction. Shot on Hollywood sound stages, dressed to match photographs of authentic sites in Fort Worth, Sherman, and Austin.

“FORT WORTH” (Warner Bros., 1951) The California ranchland locations give away the geographical masquerade, but Edwin Marin’s “Fort Worth” is nonetheless a stirring ﬁction about a reformed gunﬁghter (Randolph Scott) who seeks to revive a depressed Fort Worth economy by publishing a progressive newspaper. Scott and director Marin made this one as a follow-through to their 1950 hit, “Colt 45.”

“STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND” (1955) Director Anthony Mann crystallizes James Stewart’s identiﬁcation with Fort Worth in this Cold War morale-boosting tale of a heroic

athlete-turned-pilot. Carswell Air Force base provided the authentic settings. Stewart had ﬂown real-world combat missions during World War II and long remained active with the Air Force Reserve. His late-in-life visits to Fort Worth included a 1990s ﬁlm appearance in a public-service featurette for the Fort Worth Zoological Gardens.

“LOGAN’S RUN” (Metro-GoldwynMayer, 1976) — One could allude to the “‘Logan’s Run’ fountains,” and even an infrequent Fort Worth ﬁlmgoer will know one speaks of the Water Gardens.

The urban park — along with other futuristic structures in the metroplex — plays a prominent role in this sci-ﬁ number that’s managed to become a classic within the genre. Despite its camp, the ﬁlm wound up garnering three Academy Award nominations and even took home a special achievement award.

“THROUGH THE FIRE” (1988) — Gary Mitchum’s audacious thriller, recalling the Italian giallo genre, stars Tamara Hext Hilliard, Miss Texas of 1984, in a tale of mysterious disappearances and a predatory cult. Filmed in Fort Worth.

“PURE COUNTRY” (Warner Bros., 1992)

— Aside from a cameo appearance as himself in 1982s “Soldier,” “Pure Country” marked the ﬁrst time George Strait tested out his acting chops. The role wasn’t much of a stretch for Strait, who plays a famous country-western musician whose existential crisis triggers a return to his hometown (ﬁlmed in nearby Cresson). All of the concert footage was shot at Fort Worth venues, including Cowtown Coliseum and Will Rogers, where Strait clearly feels more at home than reciting lines in front of a camera.

“HEXED” (Columbia Pictures, 1993) Columbia had all but orphaned Alan Spencer’s grim comedy, even before shooting could begin — slashing the budget and forcing Spencer to resort to low-rent Fort Worth locations and a near-impossibly tight

shooting schedule. Arye Gross stars as a hotel clerk who becomes involved with a sinister model, played with wicked glee by Claudia Christian. “It’s not an erotic thriller,” Spencer told me in 1993. “It’s a neurotic thriller.”

“SEVENTY-8” (E Films, 2004)

Shot on Fort Worthand-area locations by writer-director Erik Clapp, “Seventy-8” recalls the suspenseful dream-state style of “Twin Peaks’” David Lynch, in a tale of a mentally challenged man (Merk Harbour) who, released after a long institutional stay, attempts to regain a place in society. The picture makes a keen triple bill of like-minded titles with William Castle’s “Strait-Jacket” (1964) and Billy Bob Thornton’s “Sling Blade” (1996).

“THE OLD MAN & THE GUN” (Endgame Entertainment, 2018) — Helmed by nearby Irving-raised David Lowery, who also filmed some scenes of his previous film, “A Ghost Story,” in Fort Worth, this Robert Redford vehicle follows a man in the late 1970s who makes a habit of robbing banks and escaping prisons. Large parts of the film were shot in Fort Worth to, according to Lowery, “give the film an authentically Texan” atmosphere. Translation: There’s nothing more authentically Texas than Fort Worth.

“MISS JUNETEENTH” (Sailor Bear, 2020)

— With a 99% “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, “Miss Juneteenth” is undoubtedly the bestreviewed ﬁlm ever shot in or based in Fort Worth. The charming story of a single mother preparing and pushing her daughter to participate in the Miss Juneteenth beauty pageant marked the debut of local director Channing Godfrey Peoples (read story on page 67), who received the award of Best Directorial Debut from the National Board of Review.

“12 MIGHTY ORPHANS” (Sony Pictures, 2021)

— Based on the novel by Jim Dent — which itself is based on the true story of the 1932 Mighty Mite football team — the Luke Wilson-, Martin Sheen-, and Robert Duvall-starring movie manages to become more than your typical underdog ﬂick, thanks to a gritty portrayal of Depression-era Fort Worth. While the real Masonic School for Orphans got the wrecking ball in 2005, location scouts found a suitable replacement in nearby Weatherford, where the majority of principal photography occurred.

THE TAO OF BARRY

If you ever find yourself shooting the breeze with Barry Corbin, the legendary actor with too many credits to list, here are some words of advice: take it all in.

By Brian Kendall / Photography by Crystal Wise

Barry Corbin hasn’t worked cattle on horseback in 18 years. This tidbit clearly didn’t influence anyone’s thought process, as the 83-year-old legend of both the silver and small screens is preparing to gingerly mount a horse with zero objections. He’s about to join 15 other cowboys and one cowgirl — all legitimate ranch workers ranging in age from teenager to codger — to round up and cut cattle at the famed Four Sixes. The Guthrie ranch is where Barry, in an appearance on “Yellowstone,” gave a notable monologue on cowboying, “It’s the most glorious work you can do that nobody ever sees.” So, the idea of interviewing and photographing Barry doing all the unglamorous and unacknowledged work of an honestto-goodness cowboy felt like a good one.

While the years have peppered his skin with a few more spots and wrinkles, and alopecia has robbed him of his eyebrows and the hair from under his cowboy hat, you might still recognize Barry as one of Hollywood’s most preeminent and consistent character actors. Despite not catching his big break until his 40s, when he played the venerable but tragically doomed Uncle Bob in “Urban Cowboy,” he’s one of those guys who was in seemingly every other film when the world incessantly flipped through 45 cable channels. He’s a “heck, yeah” guy, as I like to call them (Oh, that guy’s in this movie? Heck, yeah.), and his unmistakable drawl and easy-to-work-with disposition has landed him a wide range of iconic roles in Oscar-winning masterpieces (“No Country for Old Men”) and some of television’s most popular shows (“Dallas,” “Lonesome Dove,” “Northern Exposure”).

Once he’s mounted his roan horse, Barry looks down at the saddle and quickly asks his wife, Jo, for his iPhone so he can snap a picture of something he sees. The saddle is engraved with the name “Boots O’Neal.”

Barry, a man who boasts over 100 film and television credits, worked for some of the greatest directors in film history and acted alongside some of the most iconic stars of his time, is genuinely thrilled by the sight of this old cowboy’s name. It was as if he’d stumbled upon John Wayne’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And, in this world, the world of cowboying, that’s not too far off. When it comes to ranching and the rodeo, few names are as renowned as Boots’. The 91-year-old cowboy, seemingly born with reins in his hands and stirrups around his feet, has spent the last 30 years doing ranch work at the Four Sixes. What makes Boots so

fascinating is not just his exploits on the back of a horse — which are legendary unto themselves — but that, at 91, he’s still saddling up on a daily basis.

So, naturally, Boots will be joining Barry to round up cattle on this July morning. Temps are expected to reach 105 in the afternoon, and I’m already starting to sweat at 9 a.m. I wouldn’t have judged Barry if he had wanted to throw in the towel and opt for a photoshoot in a more temperate location — like, indoors, perhaps. But Barry’s determined to ride.

“If you ride every day, you can ride till something gets wrong with you,” Corbin told me the night before over what we later deemed “only a few beers” in the Four Sixes’ main house. “But I don’t ride every day anymore. I quit cowboying when I was 70.”

“What kept you at it till then?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s good to get out with the crew and do work — real work instead of pretend work.”

“Is acting work?”

“No, that’s play.”

“Ever miss cowboying?”

“A little bit, but if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to stay in shape. There aren’t too many of ’em. There aren’t too many active cowboys over 80. I guess you got ol’ Boots out here. He’s older than I am, but he’s the only one.”

I’mshocked how spry Barry appears the morning of the cattle roundup. And I’m not referencing his age. I’m referencing the night before when we were up late shooting the breeze and drinking Coors and Michelobs, whichever managed to hit one’s hand out of the cooler. We discussed religion, politics, acting, his upbringing, and he shared dozens of stories related to dozens of people — some famous, some not. Name an actor Barry’s worked with, and there’s little doubt he has a story that will make you laugh while giving fascinating insight into the people who you see on screen. Tommy Lee Jones, Dabney Coleman, Gene Wilder, Sam Elliott — none escaped Barry’s cache of engrossing anecdotes.

It would take a memoir approaching the page count of War and Peace to capture Barry’s intimate stories about the people with whom he’s crossed paths. And it’s a memoir he tells me he’s going to write.

There was one particular story about the casting of “Urban Cowboy,” Barry’s big break when he played the wise, tobacco-

chewing Uncle Bob, that stood out.

“The original plan was to use one of those kids there from Gilley’s to play the part of Bud,” Barry tells me. “But he was such an objectionable little shit that they couldn’t use him. Travolta was easier to work with than the guy from the actual Gilley’s.”

And, being a fellow San Antonian, I was particularly interested in the famously elusive Tommy Lee Jones. Knowing he and Barry were friends and had been in several films together, I couldn’t help but ask what he’s like.

“I’ll tell you what Tommy’s like,” Barry asserted. “He walked into a bar down in Alpine, I think it was, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. He walks in, looks around, walks over to the bar, reaches in his pocket, and takes out a $50 bill. He slips it on the bar and shoves it across. Bartender comes over, looks at it, and then looks at him, and Tommy says, ‘Don’t tell anybody who I am.’ The bartender picks up the money, leans over, and says, ‘Who are you?’ Tommy didn’t even take his beer. He just turned around and walked out.”

Barry can hold the proverbial microphone with ease.

Some people are just gifted in the art of saying words, and Barry’s one of them. His accent is thick — a drawl that manages to keep pace with the conversation due to a cadence that poetically switches from little air between words to large gaps. And his intonation likely wouldn’t pass the muster at any of today’s acting schools. Yet, he’s made a living off of it. It’s a distinct timbre that feels tied to an endangered regional dialect — call it Texas Panhandle.

He also tells stories at a quick tempo. There are few, if any, wasted words. Each assertion or anecdote lasts only a few sentences, just enough time to set up and deliver the inevitable punch line without testing his audience’s patience. And when Barry’s listening, he never fails to respond with a quip that’s sure to make you cackle uncontrollably. It’s no wonder he ends up writing a good chunk of his own lines — including his final “pride” monologue in “Urban Cowboy,” something he can still recite with ease.

But this past year, his livelihood — and life — was very much at risk due to a bout of oral cancer.

After discovering a growing spot on the inside of his cheek, the biopsy came back positive for cancer and would require surgery.

According to his wife, Jo, they found out it was an aggressive form of oral cancer, and the surgery, which lasted eight hours, could affect his speech. There was also the possibility that they’d have to cut his vocal cords or remove his jawbone and replace it with a bone from his fibula. Ultimately, Barry dodged the worst-case scenario but still lost 25 pounds in the two weeks after the surgery.

When Barry mentioned it to me, he said, “They cut my neck open last year. It was cancer, but they got it all.” It’s the one story he never felt like sharing.

Concerning religion and politics, though our conversation touched on it, he’d prefer I not divulge his stances. And I’ll acquiesce. One can call his reluctance a gentlemanly refrain from putting one’s foot in one’s mouth.

But I will say that his opinions are thoughtful, well researched, and grounded.

“What’s fascinating about Barry is he does a lot of research,” Barry’s wife, Jo Corbin, says. “I think so many people underestimate him, and then when they meet him, they’re like, ‘Wow, I didn’t expect that.’ Including me. He’s a dichotomy.”

Anything for Barry. That was the general feeling we had since making the request to Four Sixes manager, Joe Leathers, for us to spend a day with Barry Corbin on the ranch. Pushing our luck, we also requested he get on a horse and “help you guys out” (I honestly can’t remember if this was our idea or Barry’s). A big ask that felt like a reach for the stars. But, as I understand it, “Anything for Barry” was the response.

The Four Sixes rolled out the red carpet the way any ranch would: a nice place to rest (in what happened to be a historically significant house), three square meals made by the ranch cook, and all the black coffee you can drink. [Tip: Don’t ask for cream at a working ranch.]

Back on the pastures, Barry and Joe meet up with the rest of the drovers, including Boots O’Neal, as they bring the herd of cattle toward the pens. Barry, still on horseback, is assisting in cutting cattle in preparation for branding the following day.

The sound of distressed calves ringing through the air makes the moment feel more chaotic and tense than it actually is. For me, the uninitiated, this is a fraught time. But, around these parts, it’s a Saturday.

The temperature’s reaching the triple digits, and Barry’s now been on his rust and roan horse for going on three hours. I’m suddenly reminded why 5 a.m. is a typical breakfast hour for these fellas. Any hour past noon in July is unworkable, so you better get to working before dawn breaks. And, at the Four Sixes, where trees are as sparse as milk on a bull, there’s little reprieve from the unrelenting sun.

Luckily, just as I’m getting sunbeaten, the cowboys wrap up their work.

While still on their horses, Joe requests a group photo with Barry in the middle. I can’t be for certain many of the younger guys know who Barry is or why we’re following him around. Maybe they know him from “Yellowstone,” I think. As Barry dismounts, Boots, the man whose name graced Barry’s saddle, gives him a hardy handshake and a pat on the back and professes, “Good ridin’.” The two chat, sharing pleasantries, before Barry does a post-ride hobble to the airconditioned cab of Joe’s truck. He’s done riding for the day. Heck, he’s done riding for a good while.

The way the crow flies, the Four Sixes is 90 miles east from where Barry earned his drawl and love of the Texas plains: Lubbock.

Born Leonard Barrie Corbin in the Dawson County seat of Lamesa, Barry is the son of Kilmer, a county judge with no law degree at the age of 22, and Alma, a teacher who was born in a covered wagon and adopted by Barry’s grandfather. Seven years after Kilmer became county judge, he would run for and win a seat in the state senate, making him the youngest senator in the Legislature.

After serving two terms, the family would move 60 miles north to Lubbock, where Kilmer, still lacking a law degree but sporting a certificate stating he passed the state bar exam, opened a legal practice.

Barry’s time in Lubbock coincided with the rise of rock ‘n’ roll and its favorite son, Buddy Holly.

“There’s a reason there are so many musicians in Lubbock,” Barry laments after we rattle off names like Sonny Curtis and Terry Allen. “All that people could do in Lubbock at that time was sit on the porch and play the guitar.”

Barry had Lubbock circled on a map of the U.S. with an arrow pointed toward New York and text that read “Toward Civilization.”

“And I got to New York, and I realized they weren’t any more

civilized than we were.”

Before his stint in New York, Barry settled on attending Texas Tech, where he was highly involved in theater but dropped out to join the Marine Corps in 1961. After his two-year commitment was up, Barry returned to Lubbock, where he continued his involvement in local theater and fine-tuned his craft. He’d marry his girlfriend in 1965, and the pair would gallivant from Chicago to Raleigh, North Carolina, to Abingdon, Virginia, taking odd jobs and participating in community theater. He would eventually end up in New York in 1967, with he and his wife taking up residence in Greenwich Village — the two would divorce in 1970 soon after the birth of his first son.

In New York, he’d perform on Broadway and basically any theater looking for a cast member. His most memorable role was as the titular character in a hippie version of Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” which his Panhandle parents attended on Broadway.

“I said, ‘Well, Dad, what’d you think about it?’ And he said, ‘Well, you were good as always. But for the rest of it, I might as well have been sittin’ on the top rail of a breeding pen for two hours. At least I would be embarrassed by my own species behaving that way.”

Throughout the early 70s, Barry lived the life of a nomadic actor and writer, traveling to Alabama, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Georgia getting work in stage productions, writing plays, and appearing in small TV spots, including “Hawaii Five-O.”

In 1977, on the cusp of his fourth decade, Barry finally moved to the city where actors move — at least if they want to make a good living. He hightailed it to Los Angeles with his then-wife, where a performance of his play, “The Whiz Bang Café,” secured an audition for the role of Uncle Bob in “Urban Cowboy.”

“[My dad] never approved what I did until I was in a movie,” Barry says. “My mother’s argument against it was, well, nobody in our family’s ever done that before. My dad was a little more practical. He said, ‘Well, that’s a good hobby for a person, but a man’s gotta make a living.’ And I said, ‘Well, I can make a living doing this.’ And it turned out that I did. But it was touch and go for a while.”

Barry knows how he’d like to leave this world. He had a friend who was a cowboy in his twilight years. The last time Barry saw him, Barry said adieu with the habitually standard, “See you later.” And the cowboy responded, “If the lord permits it.” Between Christmas and New Year’s of that year, the cowboy was out checking fences late at night when he felt something off. He dismounted from his horse, lay down, placed his hat over his chest, and died.

“That’s how I’d like to go,” Barry said after telling the story. To cowboys, real cowboys, this exit is about more than simply being at peace. What is it about? The explanation is slightly ambiguous and impossible for a non-real cowboy like myself to explain, so I won’t even try. But in that moment, after he completed the story, I saw that Barry, even when playing the hippie Henry V, coaching basketball on “One Tree Hill,” or telling me about the religious history of Vietnam, is still, deep down, a cowboy from Lubbock.

Granted, Barry proclaiming that he “personally liked the smell of horse shit,” might’ve tipped me off earlier. “It smells clean to me,” he contended. “All it is, is just hay and oats.” And, like that, I found myself in agreement.

Truth is, Barry’s more like Boots O’Neal than fill-in-the-blank-

with-Hollywood-actor. But perhaps I’m only considering one part of Barry’s dichotomous personality, ignoring an integral part of him that is equally crucial to what makes Barry, well, Barry. He is as complex a man as any.

Itching to get back to his roots after living in Seattle to film “Northern Exposure,” Barry bought a ranch in East Fort Worth. On this 15-acre plot, Barry at one point kept cattle — or at least a longhorn bull gifted to him from Will Rogers’ herd in Oklahoma named Barry Corbin — and rode horses. While the property doesn’t have as many animals as it once did, Barry and his wife, Jo, whom he married in 2016, do keep some English mastiffs.

On the acting front, he remains as busy as ever. Performers like Barry — those who are equally at home in a Best Picture-winning masterpiece as they are in “Critters 2” — will never struggle for parts. He has a brief role in the just-released “Killers of the Flower Moon” and will no doubt show up here and there on streaming service shows.

Fans of the Taylor Sheridan universe will recognize Barry from his recurring role on the Sylvester Stallone-starring “Tulsa King,” and his appearance on “Yellowstone,” during which Taylor Sheridan gave Barry one simple directive: Show up for what you want to show up in. Barry also performs in theaters as a one-man show. While he’ll normally kick off the show with the famous “All the world’s a stage” monologue from Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” — of which we received a private showing — he fills the remaining hour with stories, observations, and a Q&A. As previously mentioned, few are as gifted with a microphone in their hand.

It’s lunch at the Four Sixes, and Barry’s keeping a cool towel around his neck. I’m sure he’s thinking he’d left all the real work to the kids after his odometer hit 70, but what he did today was a major accomplishment. He worked a herd at 83.

The younger ranch workers had already finished their grub, and Barry, Joe Leathers, and the magazine’s photographer, Crystal Wise, are the only other people at the table. We get lucky, and the conversation manages to lead to another classic Barry story. This time about Barbara Stanwyck.

“[Barbara] was sitting in one makeup chair, and I was sitting in the one next to her. She says, with no preamble or anything else, ‘I counted 14 hookers on the Hollywood Boulevard on the way to work this morning. Something should be done about that.’ And I said, ‘I’ll try to do something about it.’ That’s the only words we ever exchanged.”

Once Barry finishes his dessert, Joe leans back in his chair and calls out, “All right, boys, line up.” And the 15 cowboys and one cowgirl enter the dining room and make an orderly line adjacent to the table. They’re all here to get an autograph from Barry. Barry keeps some photos and markers within reach for such occasions.

As each tells Barry his or her name, every ranch worker, still in their spurs, looks just about as plum pleased and starstruck as one could be. And when the youngest looking one of the bunch approaches Barry, he has a small request: “Can you sign it ‘Uncle Bob’ for me?”

And to think I wasn’t sure if these guys knew.

REINVIGORATING THE WESTERN

Christina Voros has risen THROUGH the ranks of the Taylor Sheridan universe and just directed the upcoming “Lawmen: Bass Reeves” miniseries. Now, she’s ready to helm her own Western feature. But first, let’s check in on her pet donkey.

By Brian Kendall / Photography by Crystal Wise

When civil engineers, or whoever, mapped out our interstate highway system circa 1956, they typically chose big cities in which to intersect highways — our beloved Fort Worth being one of them. Yet, the major thoroughfares of Interstate 10 and Interstate 20 ignored this preference and elected to cross paths in West Texas’ Scroggins Draw.

Scoggins Draw, you should know, is not the name of a town. It’s the name of a valley. And there is no town in the valley of Scroggins Draw. There is not … anything in Scroggins Draw. But despite its seclusion, I hesitate to call this the middle of nowhere. After all, if you’re in Texas, you’re somewhere.

Forty miles west of this “somewhere,” Texas, is Van Horn, a town of 2,000 people that’s also home to Jeff Bezos’ rocket playground — nearby Corn Ranch is where Blue Origin launches celebrities and thrill-seeking millionaires into the final frontier at $300,000 a pop. This place, which boasts sweeping desert mountain views, an absence of hustle and bustle, and a quirky combination of cattle ranchers and space tourists is (currently) where home resides for Christina Voros and her husband, Jason Owen, a film-set wrangler.

Voros living in Van Horn won’t come as a shock to anyone who’s seen her name on film or television credits. After all, it’s a name that’s become commonplace on many a Taylor Sheridan-produced or -created project — “Yellowstone,” “1883,” and now as director of the upcoming “Lawmen: Bass Reeves.”

The miniseries, which was filmed in Fort Worth this past spring and stars David Oyelowo, Dennis Quaid, and Donald Sutherland, follows the life and exploits of the first Black deputy U.S. Marshal west of the Mississippi. Voros directed all eight episodes and, fittingly, it will hold its premiere at the Lone Star Film Festival on Nov. 21 at the Isis Theater.

When the magazine’s photographer, Crystal Wise, and I first met Voros in the driveway of her and her husband’s Van Horn

ranch, she sported a cowboy hat and turquoise jewelry and quickly introduced us to their hoard of excitable ranch mongrels and pet miniature donkey named Leon — who happens to have his own Instagram account. She then gave us a tour of the grounds, which includes horse stables, a metal shop, a rusted old truck whose make and model were indecipherable, and a vintage Argosy travel trailer from which she offices.

Yeah, it quickly became obvious why Voros has a knack for directing gritty Westerns and why the town of Van Horn fits her like a glove. Yet, her path to helming Sheridan projects and becoming enveloped in the Western world is anything but obvious.

Voros is a Hungarian dual citizen who grew up in the Boston area and attended Harvard, where she says she got accepted because she was active in fencing. But, after spending a semester before college to train in Hungary, she bowed out of the sport.

“I was accepted because I was a fencer, but I wasn’t obligated,” Voros says. “Luckily, [Harvard] doesn’t have athletic scholarships, so I didn’t fence. Then I proceeded to do theater and bartend for the rest of my education at Harvard — smoking, like, a pack of cigarettes a day until 4 a.m. bartending three nights a week. It’s a miracle I graduated.”

Though she studied theater at Harvard and had planned to pursue the craft in post-grad — at a program that would send her to the Moscow Art Theater School for year — Voros also applied for NYU film school despite thinking she had little chance of being accepted.

“I didn’t know anything about filmmaking, but it felt like a challenge to pull together my theater portfolio and pull together my artist portfolio. It felt like an exercise.”

A few weeks following a tense interview (“I was shocked I got an interview”) that left her crying on the $30 bus ride back to Boston, Voros was notified she’d been accepted into both NYU and her desired theater program. But, ultimately, this was a conundrum

made easier after NYU offered Voros a fellowship that covered her tuition and a job. “I went to film school because it would cost less than theater school would have,” Voros says.

While it took her a minute to get her sea legs, having admittedly known nothing about film, one of her first film school projects — a “Gray Gardens”-inspired 12-minute documentary, “The Ladies,” about Voros’ two great aunts with whom she lived in New York — took the leap to the film festival circuit. Following this accomplishment, Voros started getting requests from people to film their projects.

NYU also opened the door for her work with James Franco, who started film school the year after Voros graduated. Upon the recommendation of her mentor, Voros served as a graduate assistant and director of photography on his student films, including his feature-length thesis project and a documentary on “Saturday Night Live.” Voros, who never realized the extent of Franco’s fame until he was recognized on the street one day, says Franco was her first real creative partner.

“He was the first person who put trust in me,” Voros says. Addressing accusations of his misconduct — multiple students at Franco’s acting school accused him in 2018 of sexual misconduct — Voros says of Franco, “I think he’s done a tremendous amount of work on himself. I think he’s in a really good place now. During that moment [when the accusations came out], I remember getting a lot of phone calls asking me to weigh in. But I have no frame of reference to talk about somebody else’s experience. And my experience [with Franco] was so wildly different.”

Voros would partner with Franco on four feature-length films. The last of which, “As I Lay Dying,” is where Voros would meet her now-husband, Jason Owen.

With Owen, about as legit a cowboy as a legit cowboy could be, living in Van Horn, and Voros taking on an ambitious documentary about young cowgirls making commitments to the ranching life (a project that remains on hold), her visits to Texas became more frequent. And, more importantly, she started missing it when gone.

“When I would pull up to the driveway, I’d be like, ‘God, I have to write something for this place. I want to shoot a Western.’ I think I still see this place with an East Coaster’s fresh eyes, especially when I’ve been away from it for a long time. It doesn’t lose its splendor.”

It’s a common occurrence among those who work with Sheridan. He either hires cowboys and cowgirls or people who want to become cowboys and cowgirls. Having a disingenuous love of ranching, horses, and landscapes with no concrete obstructions just isn’t going to fly on the set of a Taylor Sheridan show. Whether one has to go through his famous cowboy camp or, like Voros, has already adopted the lifestyle, the cast and crew of Sheridan’s shows display an authenticity that has never been seen in Western filmmaking. The actors are really riding horses and really getting dirt on their faces, and visual effects aren’t generated from a computer. Call it the de-Hollywooding of the Western genre, and Voros is playing a lead role in its reformation.

While Voros got her start in the Sheridan universe as a camera operator during the first season of “Yellowstone,” she quickly climbed the proverbial film crew ladder — jumping from camera operator to director of photography during Season Two — and eventually directed eight episodes of the popular TV series. This

includes four episodes of Season Five, which averaged over 8.2 million viewers per episode. Following the Dutton clan back in time, Voros also directed four episodes of “Yellowstone” spinoff prequel “1883” — including the tornado episode, “Lightning Yellow Hair,” which Voros roundly admits entering having “no idea how to make a tornado.”

Clearly, she did one hell of a job. The episode received an Emmy nomination and is considered one of the highlights of the series.

“I feel so lucky to have been on that show,” Voros says. “When I was at the Four Sixes with Tim [McGraw], Faith [Hill], Sam [Elliott], Isabel [May], Lamonica [Garrett], and Gratiela [Brancusi], we would have dinner together every night, and someone would ask a question that everyone at the table had to answer. And I’m sitting at the table with these creative giants eating biscuits and chicken and having deep, thoughtful conversations about our own vulnerabilities as artists. I’m pinching myself; it was just such a beautiful moment.

“But I know for every moment like that, there was a lot of cursing about the drive, or the hours, or the lack of turnaround, or the lack of Fahrenheit.”

Following the show’s success, Voros would get tapped to helm the Sheridan-produced Paramount+ miniseries “Lawmen: Bass Reeves.” For the series, not only did Voros direct all eight episodes, but she directed with very little outside influence. In other words, she had complete control while filming. But don’t expect the show to lack what one might deem a “Sheridan feel.”

“I think Taylor is very good at finding his people,” Voros says. “He’s good at being able to spot people who think like him. I think the reasons I got the [director of photography] job for Season Two is because he had been watching my camera work very carefully during Season One.

Our trip to Van Horn happened soon after both the writers and actors went on strike, so potential projects in the industry had been at a standstill. But Voros made it clear what she wants her next project to be: directing a feature. And, of course, she wants that feature to be a Western.

“I feel like I’ve learned so much in the last couple of years, and I’ve become much more fluent in the animal side of things, the weaponry side of things, and production design side of things. I would like to find something that feels different enough and doesn’t retread the same boards, but would allow me to take everything I’ve learned in the last five years and elevate it.

“I like to tell myself that, someday, I’ll write my own [script]. But there’s also part of me that thinks the downside to working with Taylor [Sheridan] for five years is your own personal bar of what a good script is, getting so high that I don’t know if I could reach it.”

Voros is also planning a permanent move to Fort Worth. While we initially speculated her reasoning was due to the city becoming the epicenter of the Taylor Sheridan universe, it’s also because her mother is already a Cowtown resident.

“I love Fort Worth,” Voros says. “My mother was living in New York, and I made her move to Fort Worth.

“Our goal is to move to Fort Worth. I think Fort Worth is, as far as livable creative communities go, hard to beat.”

At least it also has proximity to an interstate intersection. Perhaps it’s not too different from Van Horn.

THE COMMUNITY FILMMAKER

Channing Godfrey Peoples is an auteur filmmaker who has become a darling of the critics. And all she wants to do is film in Fort Worth and tell its story.

By Brian Kendall

It’s not a stretch to presume that Channing Godfrey Peoples’ debut feature, “Miss Juneteenth,” is the most critically acclaimed movie ever filmed in, makes reference to, or was produced by people who live in Fort Worth. With a 99% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the go-to ratings aggregate that has a finger on the general pulse of the critics, “Miss Juneteenth” is also one of the best-reviewed films of 2020.

“The movie tackles multitudinous themes in its roughly 100 minutes,” Lovia Gyarkye wrote in a review for The New York Times, “from the significance of Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, to the legacy of racism in predatory bank lending practices. But what’s most impressive is the amount of space Peoples’ Black female characters inhabit in the narrative.”

So, perhaps we should amend our previous statement: “Miss Juneteenth” is one of the most critically acclaimed films, period.

“That’s very kind of you,” Peoples, who wrote and directed the film, says in response to my assertion. “You don’t think about it [the reviews]. I didn’t, at least; I guess some people do. When we were about to premiere [the film], I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, people are about to see this movie.’ I took it for granted that it was going out into the world. It wasn’t mine anymore. It was going out there for people to experience in whatever way.”

The film — which was shot entirely in Fort Worth and produced by Sailor Bear’s James Johnston, also a Fort Worthian — is about a young single mother and former beauty pageant queen, Turquoise, who registers her unenthusiastic daughter, Kai, for the annual Miss Juneteenth competition. Turquoise, once crowned Miss Juneteenth herself, couldn’t take full advantage of the competition’s scholarship money due to the birth of Kai and now works two jobs — at a bar and a mortuary — to make ends meet.

While her hopes for Kai, and the pressures she places on her daughter, are no doubt fueled by her nostalgia for her own hopes and dreams, the film brilliantly doesn’t suggest regret. “I ain’t sorry for putting food on the table,” Turquoise tells Kai after her daughter approaches her after discovering that Turquoise was once a stripper. Turquoise is a good mom. In fact, she’s a great mom, who tackles crummy circumstances with a combination of grace and determination. “I wanted to tell a story about a Black woman with a dream deferred, who just knows that she wants something for

herself,” Peoples says. “I didn’t learn until later that that felt more radical — getting to see a Black woman in that way.”

Shot in a fly-on-the-wall style that allows people on screen to, I don’t know, just be, the film also employs natural dialogue and relatable circumstances that make it an easy task to invest oneself in the characters.

And one of the most important characters in the film is Fort Worth itself.

The historical Southside’s row of near-dilapidated, porch-laden houses; brief views of the downtown skyline; the now-endangered Grand Theater; and the typical characters whom we frequently encounter all make significant appearances. The same way Chicago often plays a role in 80s-era John Hughes flicks — or New York for the contentious Woody Allen — “Miss Juneteenth” films Fort Worth with affection and treats the city as a living, breathing thing. The events in the film don’t just happen in Fort Worth; the city and its cast of characters play a significant role in driving the plot forward.

“Miss Juneteenth” is, for lack of a better expression, the quintessential Fort Worth film.

It’s clear Peoples has an affinity for the city. After all, she is a born-and-raised Fort Worthian who counts the city and its cast of characters as the film’s main inspiration.

“I tell stories about Black Texans,” Peoples says. “That’s because I was growing up in such a culturally rich environment. A lot of folks, where I grew up, had grit, but they also had a grace about them. Those kinds of people stayed with me and really inspired me to want to be a filmmaker.

“The people that I knew and experienced growing up in Fort Worth, I never got a chance to really see in films and on TV. I never got a chance to see the people who I felt were ordinary people doing extraordinary things. To me, growing up in the community, I felt like people carried themselves with this sense of pomp and circumstance that I wanted to see put on screen.”

Peoples’ knack for storytelling was clear at a young age. Thanks to her mother Deborah being involved in the local theater company Sojourner Truth Players, Peoples was frequently exposed to live performances of complex narratives. Sojourner Truth Players, which was founded by Erma Duffy Lewis, received national recognition for many of their performances and nontraditional casting of Black actors in plays by white playwrights, including Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcaår Named Desire” and Ernest Thompson’s “On Golden Pond.”

“I would see these really intricate and complex Black plays right in the neighborhood in which I grew up,” Peoples says. “I think that really spurned this love of storytelling.”

And, like Kai in “Miss Juneteenth,” Peoples was raised by a single mother. “[My mother Deborah] was juggling both her dreams and raising children. She had hopes and dreams for herself, but really had hopes and dreams for her children and would expose us to things like community theater because she wanted this better life for us. And, ultimately, that translated to me wanting to be involved in the arts and ending up as a filmmaker. She’s a big part of the reason I’m a storyteller, for sure.”

Her first love was theater, and Peoples admits she wasn’t drawn to cinema until later in life when she discovered filmmakers like Charles Burnett, Jonathan Demi, and Richard Linklater.

Peoples would eventually go to film school at the University of Southern California, where she would begin writing the script for “Miss Juneteenth.” Highly involved in the institutes of filmmaking, Peoples would attend filmmaking workshops, including at Sundance and the Austin Film Society, where she would fine-tune the script, develop relationships, and partner with producers who would push the film forward. You see, without a studio backing her vision, Peoples had to rely on the resources and communal spirit of film institutes.

“You have mentors who are there to guide you but, also, to protect the story,” Peoples says. “Going through the process of getting it produced, these stories can very easily change away from a filmmaker’s vision. And I was lucky to have organizations and mentors on the ground who were like, ‘OK, we’ll focus on the reason that you initially made the film.’”

After completion, Peoples would submit the film to the Sundance Film Festival. In the American independent cinema world, having a film play at the Park City, Utah, festival is akin to medaling in the Olympics. This is where auteur filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, David O. Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Steven Soderbergh all got their big breaks. And not only was the film selected to show at the festival, but it was selected to show in-competition, meaning it could compete for the festival’s prizes.

“That was pretty incredible,” Peoples says. “I mean, you don’t know what you have because you’re just so in it; you have so much tunnel vision. I couldn’t believe it. This little movie that we made on the Southside, just essentially bare bones, I wanted it to go into the world. And Sundance, these incredible curators of cinema, is a tool for that. But also, for me, I wanted the community to feel proud. The community invested so much into this film. They were our sets and our actors. It was important to me that they felt good about what we’d done.”

A lot of people are from a lot of places. Many directors, in fact, were not born and raised in Southern California, despite their location preferences suggesting otherwise. They use the tricks of the trade to tell the stories that fill the seats at movie theaters: superhero and car-chase flicks or rinse-and-repeat romantic comedies. For a city to have a filmmaker with a global reach who prioritizes telling the stories that reside within his or her hometown is, well, a blessing.

“I really consider myself a community filmmaker,” Peoples says. “I’m also a very interior filmmaker because I always want to be with the character instead of outside of them. That idea of just letting people be, to be authentic, is important to me.”

Following the release of “Miss Juneteenth,” which you can now stream on Netflix, Peoples remains coy concerning her next project and whether it will remain an independent film. “I got my space to really define my style through independent film,” Peoples says. “I’ve done studio work, and everything has its benefits and drawbacks, but I think you have more autonomy as an independent filmmaker. You have to be more creative because there’s less money. You’re not going to have cranes and drones, so you’ve got to figure it out.”

Pressed on whether she has studio backing for her next project, Peoples responds, “We’ll see. You never know.”

Whatever her next project may be, one thing is for sure: You’ll get a taste of the Fort Worth Peoples saw while growing up.

AN ODE TO THE MOVIE HOUSE

every Fort Worth neighborhood’s most popular attraction Eventually gave way to multiplexes and your TV.

By Brian Kendall

The July demolition of the Berry Theater, one of the last shells of the once-popular neighborhood movie houses that sported a single screen and flashy, contemporary signage, was a stark reminder of a bygone era.

Every neighborhood had a movie theater — the Bowie, the Ridglea, the Poly, each proudly displaying its neighborhood’s moniker on brightly lit marquees. They were places, inexpensive places at 15 cents a screening, where one could take their families or a date or hang out with friends. And, since the neighborhood theater’s heyday was before air conditioning became commonplace, the theaters also served as reprieves from the heat — all cinemas had air conditioning by the late 1920s, yet most households didn’t upgrade till the 1950s.

In addition to the neighborhood theaters, there were also the three downtown theaters: the Hollywood, the Worth, and the Palace — all built between 1919 and 1927. These were bigger, fancier theaters that had ornate interior designs (the

Worth’s was Egyptian-inspired) and even held world premieres. In 1940, “The Westerner,” a Gary Cooper-starring Western held its world premiere at the Worth. At first, the three did both vaudeville and movies — this was during the silent era. Yet, once “The Jazz Singer” introduced moviegoers to the world of sound in 1927, the theaters had to do little tweaking since they already contained good sound systems in large auditoriums.

WHERE TO WATCH YOUR MOVIES: (Our recommendations)

• Downtown Cowtown at the Isis, 2401 N. Main St.

• AMC Palace 9, 220 E. Third St.

• Movie Tavern West 7th, 2872 Crockett St.

• Coyote Drive-In, 223 NE Fourth St.

A fourth downtown theater, the Majestic, was far less popular but gained notoriety for being the place where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in October of 1959. Two years later, it would be torn down.

In the 1960s, multiplexes, with larger screens and more theaters (sometimes even 16 of them), started popping up. These were big operations headed by national corporations — not locally owned — so they had the resources to plow their smaller-screened competition. Ultimately, this was the death knell for nearly all neighborhood theaters. Most would get demolished, while the Bowie would turn into a Frost Bank and the Ridglea, which is one of the few theaters that kept its signage, turned into a live music venue.

Meanwhile, the Worth would implode along with the Worth Hotel in 1972, the Hollywood would survive off blaxploitation films through the 1970s but eventually succumb at the end of the decade, and the Palace shuttered in 1970.

Forty years later, and one neighborhood theater would return.

Showing a desire for the nostalgic movie-going experience, Jeffrey and Debbie Smith, both former educators, bought, refurbished, and reopened the historic Isis Theatre in the Stockyards. Rebranded the Downtown Cowtown at the Isis, the theater screens classic films four times a day and holds a special Monday-night screening curated by local film buff, actor, and director, Ryan Bijan. With multiplexes and air-conditioned homes with large-screen TVs as its biggest competition, here’s hoping Fort Worth will start going back to the movies. And, specifically, this old movie house.

*Special thanks to Richard Selcer for providing research and information.

The Isis

The Worth

This city has been a great Western city, the defense of the West, cattle, oil, and all the rest. It has believed in strength in this city and strength in this state and strength in this country. What we’re trying to do in this country and what we’re trying to do around the world, I believe, is quite simple and that is to build a military structure which will defend the vital interests of the United States, and in that great cause, Fort Worth will play its proper part.

Prelude to Tragedy

Everyone remembers where they were 60 years ago when they heard the news that the president had been shot. But for a secret service agent, a trumpeter, a daughter of a mortician, and a son of a civil rights icon, well, they were right in the thick of it.

By John Henry

For the occasion of breakfast at the Hotel Texas on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, officials of the host Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce summoned a Catholic priest for the benediction of the event in honor of the country’s first Catholic president.

And, so, Msgr. Vincent J. Wolf of St. Alice Catholic Church — soon to become Holy Family on the city’s West Side — rose and took his place at the makeshift pulpit that on this day included the presidential seal on the front. The good father pulled out a copy of his planned remarks and proceeded.

“Oh, God of might and wisdom, assist with thy spirit of counsel and fortitude the president of these United States, that his administration will be eminently useful and fruitful to thy people over whom he presides.

“May we, with him, be thine instruments in establishing divine harmony throughout the world so that thy sons and daughters from one end of the earth to the other may be free to join the glorious hymn of worship, ‘Glory to the Highest, Oh, God, and Peace on Earth.’”

he could. Then he argued against it.

The governor lost out because President John F. Kennedy wanted the trip. He needed to negotiate a peace — or at least a degree of harmony — within the state’s Democratic Party. Feuding conservatives and liberals, represented by Connally and U.S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough, hampered Kennedy’s election efforts in 1964.

Plus, the president wanted to fundraise in the state. The president initially wanted four, possibly even five, fundraisers. Dinners in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth would do the trick, the president thought. Connally was aghast at the thought of the appearance that would leave Democrats: The president merely coming here to pass around the hat.

To win again in 1964 required the same Boston-Austin axis of four years earlier. “If we don’t raise funds in any other state, I want to do so in Massachusetts and in Texas,” the president said. “If we don’t carry any other state next year, I want to carry Texas and Massachusetts.”

As it turned out, prayer was the only hope on this day, one of the worst days in U.S. history. Sixty years ago this month, Fort Worth was a prelude to tragedy. The murder of the president was committed by a sad sack nobody with delusions of grandeur and benefitting from a bizarre twist of fate.

It required providence — and presidential influence — to even stage these four days in November. Gov. John Connally, who was tasked with planning it, didn’t want it at all. First, he stalled as long as

Connally successfully argued against it. The only place the president would ask for checks would be Austin in a trip that would include stops in San Antonio and Houston on Thursday, Nov. 21, and Fort Worth and Dallas on Nov. 22.

Austin was scheduled for Nov. 23, where guests would be treated to Fort Worth barbecue empresario Walter Jetton’s fare. A visit to Lyndon Johnson’s ranch would conclude the trip. Fort Worth almost didn’t happen.

Connally wanted to do something distinguished for the president in his hometown. Connally lived here while working for Sid Richardson. The governor

wanted TCU to confer an honorary degree on the president. According to The Lone Star, a Connally biography authored by James Reston, TCU President Ellis Sadler “liked” the idea.

The Kennedy people loved the idea. The honor, they believed, bestowed by a “bedrock Protestant university,” would further bury the South’s concerns over a Catholic president.

As a matter of scheduling, the event fit snugly. The degree ceremony would be in midmorning. Afterward, the presidential caravan would travel by car the 30 miles to Dallas for the president’s speech at the Trade Mart.

Under this plan, there was likely no time for a motorcade through downtown Dallas. Or, if there was, the motorcade would follow a fairly direct course.

A seeming done deal at one point, it ultimately never made the itinerary.

TCU had decided against the degree. The university’s reasoning was a matter of protocol and tradition. The normal process for conferring a degree included deliberations and approval by the faculty senate and the student senate. There simply was not enough time for such a process — a process that made no exceptions, even for a sitting president.

There also was now no reason to come to Fort Worth.

Connally had another plan. The Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce would like to give the president a breakfast.

The presidential traveling party would fly to Carswell Air Force Base around midnight of the new day, Friday, and spend the night at the Hotel Texas.

“We drove into Fort Worth [from Carswell] and got to the hotel a little after midnight sometime,” says Clint Hill, Secret Service agent assigned to Jacqueline Kennedy, best known to history as the agent who climbed aboard the presidential car on Elm Street. We spoke by Zoom. “There was a big crowd outside the hotel waiting to see President and Mrs. Kennedy. They were crazy to see and hear the president of the United States.

“The people in Fort Worth were extremely friendly. They did everything they could to make this visit of President and Mrs. Kennedy jubilant. They went all out to really show them that they cared

The President and Mrs. Kennedy arrive at Carswell Air Force Base on the night of Nov. 21.

and that they enjoyed their time in Fort Worth.”

In addition to the president, on the VIP dais at breakfast that morning included Connally, Lyndon Johnson, Yarborough, U.S. Rep. Jim Wright of Fort Worth, Texas Speaker of the House Byron Tunnell, and state Attorney General Waggoner Carr. Wright was already doing what he did best, securing defense contracts for Fort Worth-based General Dynamics. The city was still basking in the afterglow of GD securing a contract for a tactical strike fighter.

“And in the not-too-distant future, a new Fort Worth product … the TFX Tactical Fighter Experimental will serve the forces of freedom and will be the No. 1 airplane in the world today,” Kennedy attested during his remarks at the breakfast.

It was a beautiful morning, even with gray skies and a persistent drizzle. Roughly 2,200 attended the event. The only awkward moment was the gift of a Western hat from Peters Bros. The president clearly did not want to wear it.

All in all, Fort Worth had pulled off a very nice presidential visit. That is per-

haps the greatest irony of all on Nov. 22: It started off so well.

As one man remembered, “It was such a good morning.”

Theone person not in attendance, at least initially, was first lady Jackie Kennedy. She was the best political asset on the trip, the one who transcended all the politics. JFK knew it and so did Connally, who specifically asked that she make the trip.

However, she had no plans to attend the breakfast that morning.

“[Those in attendance] all assumed that she was going to come to this breakfast, but the indication on her schedule, which I still have a copy of, in red pencil was ‘do not plan to attend.’ The reason was she assumed this was a total political thing,” says Hill, who, with his wife, Lisa McCubbin Hill, this fall is rereleasing their best-seller Five Days in November. “And she really wasn’t into politics.

“I was up there [with her] on the eighth floor. The president realizes people are wanting to see her. So, he summons the agent who was the advance agent for that

trip, Bill Duncan was his name. He called him over and said, ‘Bill, call Clint to bring Mrs. Kennedy down here right now.’

“I answered [Duncan’s call]. I said, ‘Gee, Bill, Mrs. Kennedy wasn’t expected to be at the breakfast.’ He said, ‘Clint, you didn’t get the message. The president wants Mrs. Kennedy down here. Now!’”

In the ballroom, Hill and the first lady very likely passed Fort Worth Police Lt. Stanley Pruitt, who also spent the night — awake — on the eighth floor. Stanley Pruitt was a U.S. Marine in WWII. His war service included the Guadalcanal campaign of 1942-43.

Pruitt, then 39 in 1963, called his role the morning of the breakfast the most memorable in his career, which spanned 27 years. By then a 10-year veteran and a lieutenant who had gained the trust of Chief Cato Hightower, Pruitt was put in charge of the department detail at the hotel that morning.

“Chief Hightower called him in and said, ‘Hey, Stan, I want you to take care of the presidential detail,’” his son Mike Pruitt recalls. “And Dad said, ‘Are you mad at me or what?’”

Stanley Pruitt, then head of the depart-

President Kennedy being given a Western hat made for a funny, and a little awkward, moment. He clearly wasn’t interested in wearing it — ever.

ment’s burglary and canine teams, both of which he formed, selected 30 men for the job. In preparing, Pruitt took a floor plan of the hotel and scribbled the names of each of the officers and where they were to be. Mike Pruitt found the document after his father’s death in 1998. Mike Pruitt provided a copy to Fort Worth Magazine.

Pruitt was attended to the detail all night until the presidential party left for Dallas. Pruitt stayed on the president’s eighth floor the entire night. The next morning, he walked with Kennedy outside for the president’s impromptu address to an adoring crowd waiting to see him. Later, there is a photograph showing Pruitt with the first couple as they are exiting the Hotel Texas.

Mike Pruitt, himself a retired Fort Worth police officer, who joined the department in 1972, knew many of these guys. They included Tom Hollis, Harvey McMahan, both lieutenants, and Sgt. Dick Yaws.

Yaws, Stanley Pruitt said years later in an interview with the Fort Worth StarTelegram, was the officer who directed Secret Service agents going to The Cellar. For years, speculation centered on the agents’ not being their sharpest on Nov. 22 because of a late night at The Cellar, a somewhat colorful, eccentric night spot in downtown.

Lots of stories swirl about concerning

The Cellar, known to some as a “beatnik pad.” Jack Ruby was said to have recruited waitresses there to work at his Carousel Club in Dallas. One of those was Karen Bennett, the employee Ruby wired money to just minutes before he stepped into the basement of Dallas police headquarters to kill Oswald. “Little Lynn,” as she was called, lived in east Fort Worth at the time.

At any rate, that the agents went over there in the earliest morning hours of Nov. 22 and allegedly stayed has become legend. And not only is it said they got into their cups, but they were indulging in The Cellar’s special: Everclear grain alcohol.

Hill, the Secret Service agent, disputes that agents were out carousing the night before. Rather, they went out looking for food. They hadn’t eaten since lunch. It was now after 11 p.m. A member of the media recommended the Press Club.

When they got there, however, there was no food. Hill says he had a scotch and soda and bought a couple of packs of cigarettes before planning to head back to the hotel. Someone else, though, suggested the possibility of food at The Cellar, at 10th and Main Street.

“We went down there, and it turns out they didn’t have any food, either,” Hill says. “We were not out partying the night before. We were in search of something to eat. We couldn’t find it. I went to

bed. There was only one guy who stayed up later.”

The Warren Commission report concluded that the agents had not been drinking but acknowledged they had committed a “breach of discipline.” Stanley Pruitt, though, stood guard on the eighth floor not far from the first couple’s room No. 850.

Following the breakfast, JFK and the first lady were to be escorted to waiting vehicles to drive the party through downtown to Carswell for the short plane trip to Dallas. Kennedy’s vehicle was a 1963 white Lincoln. (A story persisted for years that the car belonged to Ben Hogan. It did not, at least at the time of JFK’s use of it.)

Stanley Pruitt recounted in the StarTelegram: “On the morning the picture was taken, we were informed that when President Kennedy came out of the hotel, it would only take a few seconds for him to depart. Instead, he came out of the hotel, looked at the crowd across Eighth Street and suddenly walked across the street to the roped-off area.

“Of course, the people in the crowd began to push forward, all wanting to shake hands and greet President Kennedy. Needless to say, we had our hands full.”

According to Mike Pruitt, the president also stepped on Pruitt’s foot as he was reaching across the rope to shake hands, a sin for which the president apologized profusely. There was no need to apologize, Pruitt replied, “Let’s just get you out of here.”

Stanley Pruitt continued: “Right before President Kennedy’s car left from in front of the Hotel Texas, he said to Assistant Chief of Police Roland Howerton, ‘You look like Harry Truman.’ I always thought so, too.”

Despiteearnest pleas to attend the breakfast with his father, Roy Charles Brooks was not allowed. He was told he would do as ninth graders at Morningside Junior High were expected to do on a typical Friday in November: Go to school.

“He said no,” says Brooks, a Tarrant County Commissioner representing Precinct 1. “He said, ‘These tickets are for people who have led the struggle for

By the thousands, enthusiastic people showed up outside the Hotel Texas to get a glimpse and maybe even a grab of JFK.

freedom. We’re not going to use them for our family or our children.’”

In Tarrant County in 1963, the African American population in Tarrant County was about 70,000. Fort Worth was still mostly segregated. For the breakfast, officials with the chamber had made two tickets available for Black residents, inviting Dr. and Mrs. Marion J. Brooks, the parents of Roy Brooks.

Dr. Brooks, a Fort Worth Civil Rights icon, had no intention of taking the two tickets to attend. Roy Brooks recalls: “He said, ‘We will take 50 tickets, or I will not be there.’ They said to him, ‘Well, Dr. Brooks, you don’t understand; this breakfast has been sold out for weeks. He said, ‘I understand perfectly. We will take 50 tickets, or we won’t be there.’

“They found 50 tickets. Fifty African American Fort Worth leaders attended that morning.”

The White House was also curious. Officials there quizzed organizers here about how many Black residents would be in attendance. When told none, the White House said “tersely” that there would be no breakfast in Fort Worth without Black representation.

Only two months earlier, in August 1963, Dr. Brooks had led a march in Austin in harmony with the history-making events that same day in Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in front of more than 200,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial.

Roughly one-third of the 5,000 who showed in the parking lot to see the president’s speech were made up of Black residents, according to reports from that day. The band from Dunbar High School, then an all-Black school, played music while waiting for the president. The Dunbar students earned their right to play by winning a coin flip with I.M. Terrell.

The president’s assassination just a few hours later was devastating to American Blacks. He was a hero to them.

“We had great hopes for John Kennedy. He was a different kind of man from previous presidents of the United States,” says Roy Charles Brooks. “He was young; he was well-educated. He was Catholic, which in many ways made him as unacceptable to the power structure as Black folk were. We all felt a kind of kin-

ship with John Kennedy, and we rooted for him. It was a tragedy in the Black community especially that he was assassinated, that his life and his dreams of Camelot were cut short. Camelot was, in our eyes, and I believe in his, an inclusive place so all could rise to the level of their abilities, unencumbered by the strictures of Jim Crow.”

Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society was a champion of equality, beginning with the end of Kennedy’s term in 1964. Unbelievably, without concern for his own election hopes in 1964, LBJ pushed through the most sweeping Civil Rights legislation since Reconstruction, prohibiting discrimination in public places and in employment. The next year, in 1965, by his sheer will, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act.

What JFK couldn’t get done in Congress, LBJ did.

“We were skeptical, but Johnson proved himself to be a statesman,” Brooks says. “His message to the people of the United States was that we’re going to do this because it’s the right thing to do.”

Brooks was at school that day. He and his classmates learned of JFK’s shooting while in class after lunch, he remembers.

“We wanted to do something,” he recalls. “So, we went to the principal. I was vice president of the student council, and the president and I went to the principal and said, ‘May we lower the flag to half-staff?’”

The principal, Troy Sparks, told the boys that they could not, not without a declaration from either the president or the governor. “So, we sucked it up and went back to class, and when we got home that evening, all of our family gathered around the television and sat in rapt attention for the next several days.”

Roy Charles Brooks

JohnSparks played the trumpet in the 80-piece Eastern Hills High School band. Eastern Hills was the newest high school in town, opening its doors in 1959. The school’s principal was a gentleman named Roy Johnson.

Sparks, then a junior, says that Johnson got on the PA system during sixth period to instruct the band to meet in the band hall immediately. It was a strange request considering that football season had just passed. And, anyway, the band knew its music backward and forward.

“We all sit down with our instruments and they’re passing out music to us and our band director, Ronnie Martin, tells us that tomorrow morning we are to meet at the school at 6:30 a.m. We’re going to play

at the breakfast for President Kennedy.”

Martin, who passed away at 82 in 2018, said later that he wished he’d had a camera. “Eighty mouths just dropped.”

Martin was a Paschal High School guy, where he graduated in 1954 before moving on to TCU for college. Over the course of a career in music, he was said to be a prolific writer and arranger. At the time of his death in 2018 at age 82, he had written more than 1,000 arrangements for the Ronnie Martin Orchestra, as well as others for Ted Weems, Les Elgart, and the Miss Texas Pageant.

During his years at TCU and after, Martin was also politically active in the local Democratic Party. So much so that he had involvement as a “gofer” to help plan

the Fort Worth portion of the JFK visit to Texas. In that role as gofer, he had met a Secret Service agent, Bill Duncan, during an advance trip here to scope out things.

Martin, it was said, knew how to make friends, and he had made many connections through music. But it was that connection with the Secret Service that, he said, helped him land the biggest show this version of Eastern Hills’ band ever played.

On the Wednesday before Kennedy’s arrival late Thursday night, Martin made a visit to TCU to see his former band director, Jim Jacobson, who just happened to jump on a phone call when Martin arrived. The TCU band was slated to play at the breakfast.

Eavesdropping slightly, he could tell that it was someone — a higher-up — at TCU.

“I could tell [Jacobson] was upset,” Martin said in an interview with the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. As best as Martin could tell from his side of the phone call, some officials at TCU didn’t want the band to be associated with the JFK event in Fort Worth because “it was too political.”

If the story is true, it wasn’t the first fuss involving TCU and the JFK visit. There was also the honorary degree. However, through his connection with Duncan, the Eastern Hills 80 were on-site to play “Hail to the Chief”; “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” a tribute to Jackie; and “The Yellow Rose of Texas”; among others. Martin had a full program set up.

Martin said he had set all of this up without bothering to receive approval from Johnson, the principal. He needed to do that. Johnson was excited but cautious at the same time. Martin remembered his boss throwing caution to the wind: “Wait. Is this a political event?” Martin replied that, “Well, there will be a lot of Democrats down there.” Johnson said he better get approval from the superintendent’s office.

Martin painted the scene: Johnson picked up the phone and began to call downtown. He paused and asked rhetorically, “He is the democratically elected president, right?” Martin said that, having answered his own question, Johnson put the phone down and said, “We’ll go.”

William Cravens

One of the members of the band who didn’t show up at 6:30 a.m. to get on the bus was William Cravens. His mother and father had a seat at Marvin Leonard’s table. Cravens’ father, Travis, handled the Leonards’ mineral interests. He arrived closer to the 9 o’clock kickoff.

“I thought, ‘Why do I want to get my ass up at 6 o’clock in the morning and come down there where I’m not gonna play until 9,’” Cravens says with a wry smile. “‘I’ll meet you boys.’”

Martin recalled for the Sixth Street Museum what a “good morning it was,” not only for the band but for all in attendance. Just a joyful occasion. Before boarding the bus to return to school, the band director permitted his charges to go outside and watch the parade down Main Street.

Martin said he remembered getting back to school and everybody was walking on air.

“And then it just stopped.”

Some 46 years after the morning of Nov. 22, Cravens found the trombone he played that day in the house of his then recently deceased mother, who lived in the same neighborhood.

“I thought, ‘What am I gonna do with this thing?’” Cravens says. He decided he would take it to Eastern Hills. “Surely, they got somebody who needs an instrument, and I’ll give it to them. And that’s what I did.”

More recently, he began to wonder if the trombone was still over there. Eastern Hills didn’t know where it was. As it turns out, the horn was at Southwest High School, having had at least one stint at I.M. Terrell.

The story had followed the horn. Most everyone knew of its historical significance.

The district-wide director of the bands had found it and returned it to Cravens. In January, he donated it to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. The trombone had earned retirement finally to a display cabinet.

One of Sparks and Cravens’ classmates also had an intimate connection to the JFK visit.

“Daddy got a call in the middle of the night, the same night Oswald was murdered. It was the Fort Worth police,” says

Pat Groody Enstrom. The police officer said they had gotten a call from the FBI looking for a funeral home to get Lee Harvey Oswald to. No funeral home in Fort Worth-Dallas would take him.

That is, with the exception of Paul Groody, the funeral director of Miller Funeral Home on Camp Bowie, who embalmed Oswald and buried him at Rose Hill Cemetery.

“He said, ‘Oswald has a family. He has a mother, a wife, children. It is what it is,’” Enstrom says of her father’s thinking at the time. “He can’t turn the family away no matter who the body is.”

The authorities wanted to expedite the process.

Groody woke up his daughter in the middle of the night to see if she wanted to go with him. This was history, after all.

“He said that I couldn’t go with him, but I could follow him over there,” Enstrom says. “I wanted to go, and I called one of my friends to go with me. We followed Daddy and went right to Parkland.”

She never saw Oswald’s body, but she did see him moved, under the strictest security, from the hospital with a sheet over his body to the hearse. “There were about four with rifles and they came out first, and then Daddy came out wheeling Oswald.”

The Dallas police led an escort to the Turnpike booths near Nolan Catholic High School. The Fort Worth police

picked up the escort from there.

“We couldn’t keep up with him,” she says of the hearse her father was driving. “Daddy was well over 100 mph coming back. When we got to the toll booth, he just threaded that needle and kept going. The Fort Worth police picked him up there and followed him to Miller. From then on, they had FBI and Fort Worth police stationed at the funeral home 24/7.”

Paul Groody, who died in 2010, would recall in later years about the concern he had in taking the job: “We already had two nuts [Oswald and Ruby]; I didn’t want a third nut to shoot the undertaker.”

The undertaker’s $710 bill for services rendered was paid by Oswald’s brother, Robert. That likely did not include any of the costs of transport.

Groody’s job on the Oswald case wouldn’t end in 1963. He was also involved in Oswald’s exhumation in 1981. Officials discovered that the body buried at Rose Hill was indeed Oswald and not a Soviet spy, as conspiracy theorists suspected.

Enstrom, who lives in Rockport, says Oswald’s wife, Marina, “was so grateful” to her father.

“She kept up with Daddy for years,” Enstrom says. “It was almost tearful how much she appreciated him. And, of course, that was the kind of guy he was. Very loving, almost kind of a minister, you know?”

And off they went. The president, Jackie Kennedy, and Gov. John Connally set off for the trip to Dallas.

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byFWmag photography by

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Aaron Iron Works, Inc.

Simple Timeless Beauty

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BlueWater Pools LLC

An Essence of Tuscany

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Project Profile

The Complete Backyard

Elegant Backyard Resort in the Heart of DFW

Every now and then, a customer with big dreams and a big space walks in and says the two words that every designer loves to hear: “Wow me.” The customer wanted a rustic backyard resort with a modernistic feel. The Complete Backyard team accomplished this in multiple ways, from the freeform shape of both pools and the rock waterfall to the rectangular vanishing edge spa and modern choices in materials. For this pool, the concept of having a play pool spilling over into a diving pool sets this project apart. The oversized Champagne Spa provides an elegant visual from all aspects of the home. Although big and dramatic, the finished product is elegant and luxurious. The travertine deck that connects the backyard together is stunning. The landscape lighting that

directs your way at night brings the project to life. The massive 21-ton moss rock grotto waterfall and 15-foot slide add fun and excitement to the project. The oversized tanning ledge provides a spot for relaxation and for small children to enjoy the pool. Multiple approaches were used to accomplish the goal of the overall look and vision of the backyard. From the modernistic approaches with the travertine and glass tile to the rustic color choices and the rock waterfall, this yard provided the canvas for TCB to create a vision for the customer, and the construction team at The Complete Backyard was able to take the artistic rendering and turn it into a beautiful masterpiece.

Project Profile

Emerald Custom Pools & Patios

The Lakeside Retreat

Clients looked to Emerald Custom Pools with their dream of completing a perfect Lakeside Retreat on Eagle Mountain Lake. It was time to bring the lake and their dream home together with an infinity edge luxury pool. The design aesthetic was to allow for a calming and relaxing retreat-type environment while taking advantage of the perfect waterfront setting. Ocean blue water, light stone masonry, and endless royal blue tile on both the spa and the infinity edge spillway disappearing into the water’s edge are what make this project one of a kind. The elevation in this backyard created a unique multilevel pool and deck allowing for the infinity edge waterfront view. Engineered piers were required to ensure stability.

When entertaining, clients not only enjoy swimming or lounging in the pool, but they also have fun playing games on the soft, forever-green, turfgrass lawn. The zero-edge spa, along with the addition of fire bowls and the firepit seating area, make this retreat a perfect place to spend the evening year-round. The wow factor in this project is the contrast of light stone with ocean blue water and royal blue tile, creating a vision that is hard to forget. Add in zero edge spa, the fire features, and the perfect green lawn to be the envy of the neighborhood. The massive infinity wall and attention to detail on this waterfront project really set Emerald apart when it comes to quality in luxury pool building.

Project Profile

H Customs Audio Video Dream Home Elegance and Innovation

In 2023, H Customs Audio Video embarked on a dream home project, infusing elegance and innovation into every corner of the residence through expert audio-video work. The team meticulously designed the media room and seamlessly integrated state-of-the-art smart home technology, featuring cutting-edge TVs, immersive speakers, and high-quality projection screens. This project redefined modern living, creating a luxurious, techsavvy haven for delighted clients, where entertainment and sophistication coalesce effortlessly. What sets this project apart and makes it truly unforgettable is their innovative approach, especially evident in the multiuse game room. Unlike other homes on the tour, they chose to showcase the speakers rather than conceal them, adding a distinctive touch. This room boasts incredible versatility,

offering endless possibilities for its use. What sets this project apart is its remarkable versatility within the multiuse media room, delivering a truly “wow” factor. Its ability to seamlessly adapt to various purposes and functions is truly amazing. The design philosophy driving this project can be summed up in two words: functional simplicity. The approach to this home encompasses not only the integration of cutting-edge audiovisual technology but also the seamless incorporation of smart lighting, all orchestrated through Control4 automation. This project epitomizes H Customs Audio Video’s design ethos through its emphasis on functionality through simplicity. It stands out by decluttering the excessive elements commonly found in audio-video solutions from other companies and revolves around streamlining the user experience.

Project Profile

Multimedia Solutions

Dream Home: Heritage Homes Lighting & Audio/Video System

Multimedia Solutions worked with Heritage Homes on the 2023 Dream Home to provide a few of the many options available for smart and easy lighting control, while also providing an elegant and aesthetically pleasing audio/ video experience throughout the home. Some of the installed products include Lutron Radio Ra3 lighting control with keypads, 85-inch Samsung Frame TV with art display, Aminia Invisible speakers, JL Audio in-wall subwoofer in the media room, and Control4 throughout the media room and house audio. This project blends the clients’ desire for a high-performance audio/video system with a simple and unobtrusive appearance using Samsung Frame TV and Aminia Invisible speakers hidden within the walls. The home presented a challenge to blend the audio/ video system into the home

without detracting from the décor, furnishings, and the beauty of the home, but with the products and design, it was accomplished. A unique aspect of this home is the use of the hidden in-wall speakers that are installed behind the drywall and painted over, providing high-quality sound without any noticeable speakers cluttering the wall. A wow factor for this home is the incredible audio/ video system in the media/ multipurpose room that is especially dramatic because it is difficult to even see it in the room. Everything is kept simple, high performing, and pleasant to the eye. This project demonstrates how Multimedia Solutions can take any home or environment and provide the best possible options for the client’s desired experience.

Project Profile

Closet Factory DFW

Boutique Master Closet & Tranquil Home Office

Closet Factory’s client wanted a boutiquestyle closet to showcase her incredible collection of shoes, clothes, jewelry, and handbags. The focal wall utilizes staggered heights, vertical strip lighting, and glass doors to exude a high-end appeal. Short hang with shelving was mixed for the client’s elegant designer handbags and shoe collection. The streamlined design also boasts a glass-top island to showcase pieces of jewelry. For the home office, the client needed a custom built-in that would help her stay organized while reflecting her personal style. The beautiful tranquil green is layered in gold accessories and uses both open and closed cabinetry to offer plenty of display and storage, without sacrificing the overall aesthetic. Every space the Closet Factory team designs is unique to their client, and they blew it out of the water with these two spaces.

Elements of Design, Traci Darden

This 7,588-square-foot Modern Tuscan adobe harmoniously combines stone, stucco, tile, and wood, evoking enchanting details found while wandering the cobblestone streets of Tuscany. While showcasing these materials in a manner that flatters the age-old architectural style, the Elements of Design team completely updated the “vibe,” showcasing the newest features in the finishes and amenities. The common areas in the main living truly evoke the feel of old-world Tuscany. Natural light from the six sets of custom iron arched doors floods the interior, and natural stone flanks both the entry and the kitchen areas. Each space within the home has a wow factor. The balance of the worn comfort of the stone with the polished counters and natural wood elements speaks to Traci Darden’s design style – comfortable, fashionable but highly functional living spaces.

Elements of Design

817.428.0657

traci@elementsofdesignllc.com elementsofdesignllc.com

A Tuscan Retreat

Hiding your wine in the basement is a thing of the past! We've done away with the traditional wine cellar and moved forward with wine walls and wine rooms. From the nearly frameless edges to the perfectly placed doors and racks, this work of art becomes the center piece of this living space. Something as refined as wine takes time to create; wouldn't you want to store it in a place representative of that same process? This application took time to measure, fabricate and install. Galactic Glass separates itself from the competition with this type of craftmanship.

Galactic Glass LLC A Dream Wine Wall Showcase

Galvan Floors

Tuscan-Inspired Home

The Brian Michael Distinctive dream home that we participated in is very different from any other in the sense of the warm at-home feeling when you walk into the unique design area. The large format tile on the master bath floor was an exquisitely clean and elegant look for this main bath. The accent vanity wall tile was extruded from the wall, and the added light on the back really made it pop! What makes this project unique is the variety of backsplashes throughout the vanities; it’s always fun to install different cool-looking tiles and see how it all comes together with the other key elements of the spaces. The wow factor in this project is the 9 ½-inch-wide plank wood floors with the herringbone design at the foyer. The wood flooring truly kept the warm feeling of the home and helped draw in the unique exterior design.

Galvan Floors

Project Profile

Semmelmann Interiors

Golden Glam

The feel in every room is set through a contemporary lens for this project. We’ve conceptualized a beautifully spacious master bedroom that allows for ample dresser space, along with a gorgeous view overlooking blue skies. To create the perfect living room, we upholstered the seating with cowhide leather that brings the look and feel of your local ranch to the comfort of home. In envisioning a bathroom that relieves the pressures of the day, we stole an all-white color palette and focused on implementing perfect symmetry in the safe space. With generous countertop space available to customize the dream kitchen, we’ll add a decorative touch that’s sure to amaze your houseguests. For the freshest take on contemporary home creation, trust Susan Semmelmann and her 23 years of Interior Design experience to bring your dreams to life.

Dream Street

On the evening of Oct. 5, Fort Worth Magazine hosted the exclusive grand opening of the Dream Street homes, kicking off the month-long luxury home tours. The Dream Street project unites the area’s top builders, architects, designers, and subcontractors to produce three epic homes.

As guests explored dreamy bedrooms, extravagant living spaces, and inviting patios, upscale living came to life. Special thanks to Platinum Tour Sponsor, Sewell, and Gold Tour Sponsor, Fiber Seal Fabric Care System.

Mark & Susan Semmelmann

Bryan Lucas

Kevin, Leslie & Grayson Rhodes

Nadia Kim, Nafees Alam

Camille Brown, Melissa & Mike Hoque, Hal Brown

Patty & Andrew Yeager, Steven & Kimberly Kaplin, Mitch & Karie Hagy

Savrina Guardado, Marion Knight, Eloy Guardado

Wild Game Dinner

Ronald McDonald House of Fort Worth

Wild Game Dinner is an exclusive annual fundraising event benefiting the Ronald McDonald House of Fort Worth. The evening features an exceptional dinner spread of wild game prepared by Fort Worth Club executive chef Tim Prefontaine, unique and engaging games, and highly sought-after live auction and raffle offerings.

Kim Johnson, Don Marable

Loretta Marable, Jana Morton

Molly Austin, Leia McQuien, Jana Morton Don Marable, Jason Mills

Molly Cowell, Trevor Cowell, Donnie Burns, Shelli Burns, Heidi Arwine

Ben Farrell, Jennifer Johns

Marie & Robby Rhom PHOTOS

No Substitutions.

Insist on Benjamin Moore paint for unmatchable color and luxury performance. There’s no substitution for quality. See the Love. Find all 3500 Benjamin Moore Colors at your locally owned Benjamin Moore store.

Give Back

There’s nothing more rewarding than giving back and making a difference in the lives of people in this great community. As the city’s magazine — which has the eyes and ears of some of Fort Worth’s most affluent and philanthropic citizens — we feel a responsibility to give back to the people of the city that is our namesake, which is why Philanthropy is one of our core values.

Every year, Fort Worth Magazine sponsors more than 100 charity events, which range from luncheons to black-tie galas. The following promotional section is devoted to these charities and their fundraisers. We invite you to consciously peruse and consider lending a helping hand by either making a donation or attending these events.

Nov. 2

Wranglers & Wishes Make a Wish

Nov. 2

Women’s Leadership Summit Fort Worth Chamber

Nov. 2

Launch Party

Greatest Gift Catalog

Nov. 3

Artists’ Christmas Art Auction & Gala Camp Fire First Texas

Nov. 5

Light the Night

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

Nov. 9

Bring the Conversation to Light Luncheon

Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation

Nov. 11

Esperanza Ball

International Esperanza Project

Nov. 16

Jeweler Party (Angel) for 2024 Ball

Jewel Charity (Cook Children’s Foundation)

Nov. 17-Jan. 1

BRIT Lightscape BRIT Foundation

YOU’RE INVITED

Thursday, November 2, 2023

River Ranch Stockyards 500 NE 23rd St. Fort Worth, TX 76164

2023 Honorary Chairs

Belinda & Glenn Cooper

2023 Chair Elizabeth Dalton

Please join us for the 3rd annual Wranglers & Wishes benefiting Make-A-Wish North Texas and celebrate the power of a wish come true. Featuring live music, traditional Texas fare, inspiring wish stories and more. Help us grant more wishes for children with critical illnesses.

thank you to our sponsors

AZZ Cooper Oil & Gas Best Maid Pickles Gilchrist Automotive

Stellantis Financial Services Muckleroy & Falls Frost Bank Luther King Capital Management

Mike & Erica McCrary Reeder General Contractors Rockin J Mechanical Rockin J Electric

SEDALCO Jerri Anne Watt Bank of Texas Ciera Bank Higginbotham Southern State Rebar Stellar Drilling Fluids Texas Capital Bank Zeb's Foundation

Scan the QR code to learn more about the event and purchasing sponsorships.

Questions?

Email wranglers@ntx.wish.org

AnnuAl clay shoot

S ILVER C REEK M ATERIALS steward of the earth

GIVE BACK

JANUARY 6, 2024

Will Rogers Memorial Coliseum featuring

For sponsorship information visit grandentrygala.com or contact funddevelopment@juniorleaguefw.org

Gary P. Nunn

Ray Benson

Radney Foster

Roger Creager

Ray Wylie Hubbard

Jack Ingram

5 Cook Off Events

$2.6

The Greatest Gift Catalog Ever and local charities are helping more than 280,000 Tarrant County neighbors with critical services like hunger and homelessness. We need your help. Please consider:

OPTION 1

Scan to make a donation to any of our 24 local charities.

OPTION 2

Read about the charities and make a donation on the website, scan below.

OPTION 3

Venmo @Greatest-Gift-Catalog-Ever

Send $24 or more. Note preferred charity or leave blank to help them all.

HUMANE SOCIETY OF NORTH TEXAS

thank you to our 2023 sponsors

Presenting Sponsor

Texas Oncology

Exchange Ave Supporter

D&M Leasing Fort Worth

Kelly Hernandez

Stockyards Heritage Development Co.

Cattlepen Supporter

Bell

Cavender,s Boot City

Lockheed Martin | Higginbotham

Ketchum Family Foundation

Two-Step Partner

American Airlines

lfs Technologies

Premium Table Sponsor

Andrews Distributing

Bank of Texas

Baylor Scott & White

Brenner Family bnsf

CapTex Bank

CultureMap Fort Worth

Double Eagle

Fort Worth Magazine

Incline Energy

Pine Wave Energy Partners

Ravnaas Family Roxo

The Skillman & Cammack Families

Third Coast Bank us Polyco

ut Southwestern Medical Center

Virginia Durham Carter

Texas Health Resources

umb Bank

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Pheasant Energy 30thAnniversary

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On the north side of Burk Burnett Park in downtown Fort Worth, a 50-foot-tall aluminum sculpture of a man holding a briefcase provides photographers and selfie-takers with one of the city’s best photo ops. Designed by Maine-based sculptor and printmaker, Jonathan Borofsky, the hollowed silhouette, which many believe to be a representation of Charles Tandy — of Fort Worth’s Tandy Corporation/RadioShack — is a depiction of an “everyman.” Similar works by Borofsky appear in Los Angeles, Dallas, Seattle, Seoul, and Frankfort.

Get your photo on this page and win a $100 gift card to Fort Worth Camera. Just tag Fort Worth Magazine (@fwtxmag) and Fort Worth Camera (@fwcamera) and use the hashtags #fwtxmag and #fwcamera on all your amazing Cowtown images. main line 817.560.6111 | subscriptions 817.766.5550 | website fwtx.com

@KDBarrett

PHOTO BY KEITH BARRETT

Gilchrist Direct makes the process easier than ever. Shop 100% online, in-person, or let your personal concierge do the work for you.

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Electric Elegance

When Paula and Franson Nwaeze decided to buy an all-electric 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS 580 4Matic, their short list of dealerships included but one name: Park Place Motorcars Fort Worth. “We have an established relationship with them and like their service department,” says Paula, co-owner of Chef Point Restaurant in Colleyville. “I park my car in front of the restaurant, and guests ask me all the time if it’s my car. I proudly tell them all the amazing features and how easy it is to drive.” Together, the husband-wife duo stays quite busy with their business endeavors — their restaurant’s former location inside a Watauga gas station was made famous by Guy Fieri on the Food Network’s show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” So, when it’s time to let off a little steam, they jump into their EQS SUV. Paula prizes the assistance systems, whisperquiet ride, and posh, high-tech interior. “The intelligent driving features are amazing,”

Paula says. And the vehicle is large enough for her three dogs, including a standard poodle, Kingsley, that she takes to work with her daily. The couple credits the dealership’s awardwinning service for their repeat business.

“Beau was the salesperson I worked with, and he made the purchasing experience so easy,” Paula says. “Park Place is our place because of the incomparable service. We have purchased vehicles from them for more than 20 years, and they service all our vehicles.” For these reasons and more, the Nwaezes consider themselves loyal Park Place customers.