The History of Casa Mañana: Fort Worth's Iconic Theater

The original Casa Mañana was a café–theater created as a principal attraction of Fort Worth’s celebration of the Texas Centennial, dubbed the Frontier Centennial. In March 1936 centennial planners hired famed Broadway producer Billy Rose to produce the city’s celebration. Rose had recently produced Jumbo (1935), a circus musical incorporating live animals on stage. For Fort Worth’s celebration, he promised to provide entertainment venues on such a large scale that they would draw millions of spectators. Casa Mañana led the entertainment offerings, which included Jumbo, the entire production having been transported from New York, and other Western-themed entertainment, including The Last Frontier, a musical rodeo.

Early on Rose identified the show that would become the Casa Mañana Revue as the “Frontier Follies.” He promised to headline the event with a string of celebrities, but leggy showgirls were to be the primary draw for the venue. Rose quipped that “pelvic machinery” was the only means by which the Frontier Centennial could induce audiences to travel the thirty miles from the Texas Centennial celebration in Dallas to Fort Worth. In addition to importing a host of New York showgirls, Rose launched the “Texas Sweetheart No. 1” competition to promote and scout talent for the show. Shocking many, depictions of nude women dancing on the stage or bathing in the theater’s pool graced early promotional materials. In conjunction with such advertisements and the hiring of famed fan dancer Sally Rand, the Frontier Centennial was scrutinized by several local religious groups, causing Rose to roll back the use of sexuality in promoting the event.

Rose initially identified the theater as Casa Diablo but settled on Casa Mañana—house of tomorrow—because it branded the show as cutting-edge entertainment. Designed by Joseph R. Pelich, the Casa Mañana occupied a place of prominence on the Frontier Centennial grounds, situated on the Van Zandt tract along the Clear Fork of the Trinity River. The hastily-built theater included a 130-foot in diameter revolving stage, billed as the world’s largest. Resting above a pool of water, the stage appeared to float when canals separating the audience from the stage were revealed. The pool featured a set of fountains that dramatically hid the stage from view, and during shows gondolas and other boats could also move freely between the audience and the stage. From the stage, rows of tables and chairs fanned outward in escalating tiers to meet the first and second floor box seats at the sides and rear of the theater. Audiences as large as 3,500 could watch the show while eating dinner. In keeping with Rose’s concept of theming the principal entertainment venues on the six flags of Texas, the Casa Mañana, with its many arches and Spanish-style lanterns, was intended to represent Texas under the Spanish flag.

The Casa Mañana Revue presented the development of world fairs through interpretations of the St. Louis Fair of 1904, the Paris Fair of 1925, the Chicago Fair of 1934, and the Texas Centennial of 1936. The production achieved national acclaim. Despite losing money, Casa Mañana provided major economic stimulus for Fort Worth in the midst of the Great Depression. The theater reopened for a second season during Fort Worth’s Frontier Fiesta in 1937. Rose intended this second season to offer more intellectual fare than the previous year. The production centered around the staging of scenes from four best-selling books: Gone with the Wind (1936), Wake Up and Live (1936), Lost Horizon (1933), and It Can’t Happen Here (1935). Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer filmed a two-reel short of the revue, which played in theaters across the country. Rose also recreated the Casa Mañana stage for his Aquacade, performed at the Great Lakes Exhibition in Cleveland in 1937. The Casa Mañana Revue was continued for two additional seasons without Rose. By the end of the theater’s final season in 1939, the stage, built as a temporary fixture, was in need of extensive repairs. Plans to renovate the theater as a permanent building were derailed by the onset of World War II. In 1942 Casa Mañana was dismantled; its steel frame was left abandoned on the former fairgrounds until 1958.

The splendor of Casa Mañana was remembered as a high-water mark in Fort Worth’s history. In 1949 Fiesta-Cade, a production celebrating Fort Worth’s centennial was performed at Farrington Field, near the site of the old theater. The Frontier Centennial, featuring Casa Mañana, was among the major historical episodes depicted, and the show featured a recreation of the performance “The Night Is Young and You’re So Beautiful” from the 1936 Casa Mañana Revue.

In 1958 the city of Fort Worth sponsored the construction of a permanent theater in the round, also called Casa Mañana. The 1,800-seat theater was designed by A. Geroge King and built on the old centennial grounds. The theater’s aluminum geodesic dome was designed by Henry Kaiser and Richard Buckminster Fuller. Among the invitation-only audience at the new Casa Mañana’s opening on July 5, 1958, were former showgirls and performers from the 1936 production. The theater was managed by Casa Mañana Musicals, Inc., a non-profit organization. Melvin O. Dacus served as general manager. The name of the organization was shortened to Casa Mañana, Inc., in 2004. The new Casa Mañana brought professional theatrical productions, including Broadway productions, to Fort Worth.

In 1962 Casa Mañana opened a theater school for children; initially called the Merry-Go-Round School and subsequently Casa Mañana Studios. It eventually became a nationally recognized performing arts school. The theater also expanded its programming to include professional productions for children and students. In 2000 the theater inaugurated the Betty Lynn Buckley Awards, a scholarship awards program for student performers, named after Fort Worth native and Tony Award-winning actress Betty Lynn Buckley. By 2018 the Children’s Theatre boasted an attendance of more than 165,000 students and educators each year.

In 1991 a smaller theater, Casa on the Square, was opened in Downtown Fort Worth. Larger productions were held in the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall following its opening in 1998. The theater underwent a major renovation in 2003. The central stage was converted into a thrust stage, seating capacity was lowered, space for educational programs was added, and a new lobby was built. In 2017 additional renovations were completed which saw the theater’s original lobby converted into the Reid Cabaret Theatre, named for longtime Casa Mañana supporters Molly and Rusty Reid. The revived Casa Mañana remains a fixture in Fort Worth’s Cultural District.