Reclaiming the Forest Theater After years of decline, can the theater return to its place as the hub of South Dallas culture? Sometimes the history of a single building can tell the story of an entire city. The Forest Theater, which has stood at the corner of Harwood Street and what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard since 1949, is one of those buildings. The theater’s first incarnation opened a few blocks west in 1930. It was the entertainment centerpiece of a stable, upper-middle-class—and primarily Jewish—community. It hosted the first-ever screening of an all-Yiddish film in 1938, and when it moved to a new and much larger home in 1949, 5,000 people attended a raucous grand opening that featured a block party and square dance headlined by the Big D Jamboree band and organist Norma Ballard. A double showing of the baseball comedy