Drew Hunter Oral History

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Videotaped oral history interview with Drew Hunter. Hunter was the creative director of the Southwestern Historical Wax Museum in Grand Prairie, Texas. The museum, which first opened at Dallas Fair Park in September 1963, featured a multi-diorama Kennedy assassination section, including a reproduction of the sixth floor "sniper's perch," for more than two decades before it was destroyed by fire in September 1988.Interview conducted at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on August 13, 2010 by Stephen Fagin. The interview is two hours and twenty-one minutes long.

Object Details

Object title:

Drew Hunter Oral History

Date:

08/13/2010

Medium:

Born digital (.m2ts file)

Dimensions:

Duration: 141 Minutes

Credit line:

Oral History Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

Object number:

2010.001.0091

Curatorial Note:

An article I wrote in the Fall 2015 issue of Legacies Dallas History Journal about Kennedy memorialization in Dallas includes the Southwestern Historical Wax Museum dioramas based on the assassination. The article may be read here: Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 27, Number 2, Fall 2015 - Page 24 of 67 - The Portal to Texas History (unt.edu). A presentation of the paper at the 2015 Legacies Dallas History Conference, which includes rare color film of the Lee Harvey Oswald tableau, may be viewed here: Legacies 2015: Kennedy Memorialization in Dallas (youtube.com). A collection of postcards from the Southwestern Historical Wax Museum showing each of the Kennedy assassination tableaus may be found here in the Museum's online collections database: https://emuseum.jfk.org/objects/35155. The tableaus are also depicted in the out-of-print (though highly fascinating) 1977 book, America in Wax by Gene Gurney. The Museum has a copy of this book in the Library Collection: Bibliovation | Details for America in wax. - Stephen Fagin, Curator

Since 1997, and current as of summer 2024, Drew Hunter is vice president of creative design at Sally Dark Rides in Jacksonville, Florida. In that capacity, Hunter has contributed to a wide variety of themed attractions around the world, including multiple Six Flags, Legoland and Universal Studios theme parks, zoos across the United States, Tower Bridge in London, Hersheypark in Pennsylvania, Disney on Ice, Warner Bros. Movie World in Australia, Ripley's Believe it or Not, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Neiman Marcus in Dallas and Grand Century Plaza in Hong Kong. - Stephen Fagin, Curator

Billed as the "only permanent wax museum in the Southwest" when it opened with the State Fair of Texas in September 1963, the Southwestern Historical Wax Museum initially included 76 figures primarily depicting western scenes such as the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the battle of the Alamo. Within a year of opening, the museum began adding Kennedy assassination tableaus, including a swearing-in diorama featuring President Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One. The actual U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes dedicated the tableau personally in September 1964. As the wax museum continued to grow, so did its historical collections on display, including 287 antique firearms that made up the multimillion-dollar Schwend Collection of Outlaw Guns. By the early 1970s, the museum had outgrown its original Fair Park location and moved to a larger 40,000-square foot facility in Grand Prairie, Texas, which opened in May 1972. By 1988, the museum was described by The Dallas Morning News as "America's largest wax museum" and included some 300 wax figures and hundreds of historical artifacts. Unfortunately, as discussed at length in this oral history, the entire museum and its contents were destroyed by a four-alarm fire on Friday, September 9, 1988. The nearly twenty-five-year-old Kennedy tableaus, still on display in the museum, were among the exhibits lost. Less than a month later, museum owners declared that the structure would be rebuilt. Occupying the same footprint as the original museum, a combination Palace of Wax and Ripley's Believe It or Not attraction opened in 1990. Now owned by Ripley Entertainment Inc., the rebuilt building (as of summer 2024) now houses multiple themed attractions, including Louis Tussaud's Waxworks. Coming full circle in a way, the exhibit today includes a figure of John F. Kennedy as part of a hall of presidents tableau. - Stephen Fagin, Curator