Here's a story about the It Theatre from the 1946-47 Theatre Catalog. Gidney is seated at the desk, and his manager is standing. I think the auditorium at the It and the Hi-Ho were identical.
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I knew Gidney Talley, owner of the Hi-Ho Theatre. He was a good friend of Mr. Barry, and he visited us at the Capitan regularly. We even ran a "roadshow" of a film he held the rights to titled "Mom and Dad". Gidney was a very nice man, and I enjoyed knowing him. I also befriended his son Gidney (Thumper) Talley, Jr., who was a movie in town until he died at a young age of kidney disease, and I have met Mike a few times. Besides the Hi-Ho, Gidney owned the Medina Valley Drive-In in Devine, the It Theatre in Mathis (it was aclone of the Hi-Ho Quonset hut theatre), the original Ples-Tex in Pleasanton. Today's Ples-Tex was called something else, and when Gidney bought it, he changed the name. Mike Talley, and Gidney Jr.'s widow, June also own the Forum Theatre in Uvalde.
Gidney told me he named the theatre Hi-Ho because it was in between the neighborhoods Highlands and Hot Wells. I and many others thought it was named after the song from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". One of my dearest friends, John Bird was the projectionist at the Hi-Ho for many years, and has many nice stories about the Talleys.
In 1973, Gidney made a REAL offer to sell me the It in Mathis for $1. He was sick of paying taxes on it, and it needed a lot of repair. He had even taken the seats out of it, and put in benches, and opened it only when the migrant cotton pickers were in town, and he would run Spanish language films. I turned him down. I thought he wanted too much money for it!
