11/18 Amargosa Opera House, Death Valley Junction, Nevada

The story of the Amargosa Opera House begins here in 1923. The Pacific Coast Borax Company was mining in Death Valley and needed a place to house 300 miners so they built this complex in Death Valley Junction.

The complex included a hotel, theater, dormitory, restaurant, dining hall, infirmary and store.

Marta Becket was born Martha Beckett on August 9, 1924. She was a ballet dancer in New York City. She was also a musician and artist.
     In the 1960s, she was vacationing with her husband in Death Valley National Park when their car broke down. The National Park staff told Martha and her husband to have it repaired at the garage in Death Valley Junction. While their car was being fixed, Martha wandered around Death Valley Junction and saw the boarded up Amargosa Theater. Looking through a crack in the door, she saw the empty theater and imagined herself dancing there. She was tired of dancing other people's dances to other people's music and wearing costumes designed by other people. Marta and her husband inquired about the theater and found out that they could rent it!
They went back to New York, packed up their belongings and moved to Death Valley Junction!  (Photograph by Carl Moellenberndt.)

With her husband's help, she repaired and enlarged the stage, installed spot lights made from old coffee cans, and repaired the floor and the walls. They also installed a pot-bellied stove to warm the theater in the cold winters.

Marta set out at once to create her own music, costumes, backdrops, props and dances.   

Often Marta gave performances with NO ONE in the audience, so she decided to paint an audience on the theater walls! It took her four years to complete the walls.

She painted nuns, people who lived at the turn of the century and knights in shining armor! 

She painted "ladies of the night' since they were the one group who came to see her every month because their 'madam' wanted to expose them to 'culture.'

She loved animals and painted her cats!


Marta painted people on the doors and the walls! 
(Photograph by Carl Moellenberndt.)

She painted a courtier throwing a rose to his beloved and in return she passes a love letter up to him.  Each panel she painted told its own story! And when she finished the walls, she spent the next two years painting the ceiling!

On the ceiling she painted cherubs.

She also painted birds, and in the center of the ceiling, a group of musician.

She painted angels, cherubs and clouds on the front of the stage.

By now Marta had purchased the entire complex, so when she finished painting the walls, ceiling and stage of the theater, she started painting other rooms in the building. 

She signed and dated some of her works. 

She painted each hotel room in a different theme. The swan is actually painted on the wall behind the bed!

She painted the headboard and the curtains above it!

She painted the jesters!

She painted the ballerina dancing on a ball!

She painted the trapeze artists on the ceiling!

She painted scenes on the walls below the skylight in the library.

She painted scenes on the walls in the library.

Marta continued to dance into her 80s! She died on January 20, 2017 at the age of 92.  In her honor, one of her dresses lays on the theater chair next to the pot-bellied stove. On top of her dress is a bouquet of flowers. The Amargosa Opera House is now a historic building!

Marta's ballet shoes and other memorabilia are displayed in the entryway to the hotel.

Marta wrote an autobiography. It is called To Dance on Sands. 
A documentary about Marta and her opera house was made by Todd Robinson in 2000.  It won an Emmy in 2003 and is called Amargosa. It is available as a DVD, or can be streamed on Amazon Prime. 
If you're interested in finding out more about Marta and her opera house, I highly recommend reading her autobiography and/or watching the dvd. You can also google the Amargosa Opera House, or Marta Becket.