Her marriage dissolved in 1983, but she soon took on a performing partner named Thomas J. Over the course of several years in the early 1970s, she decorated the walls and ceiling with elaborate murals depicting a Renaissance theater. So she would never have to perform in front of an empty house, Becket decided to paint herself a permanent audience. The curtains parted every Monday, Friday and Saturday for years after that, though some nights no one showed up to buy a ticket.
They rented the old building the next day for $45 a month.
While there, she discovered an abandoned theater in the then-booming mining town just across the border from Nevada, 95 miles west of Las Vegas. As a young woman, she performed on Broadway and at Radio City Music Hall.īecket was camping with her husband in Death Valley in the spring of 1967 when a flat tire sent them to the junction for a repair. 9, 1924, in New York City, where she grew up studying dance, piano and art. She was extremely dedicated to her art to the point where she could become something of a hermit.”īecket was born Aug. The world will remember Marta for what she created, Sorrells said. Susan Sorrells, who owns the nearby town of Shoshone, California, and knew Becket throughout her time in the desert, said she will remember Marta for her talent and generosity, her sense of humor and her deep love of animals - from her small army of pet cats to the herds of wild horses and burros she fed and ferociously protected near her home. (Mary Walter Scodwell)Ī flat tire brought classically trained dancer Marta Becket to Death Valley Junction, California, in 1967.įor decades, the artist and performer put on one-woman shows inside the Pacific Coast Borax Co.’s old community hall, which she transformed with her paint brush and her passion into the weird and world-famous Amargosa Opera House.īecket died Monday at her home in the near-ghost town of Death Valley Junction, according to Inyo County deputy coroner Jeff Mullenhour. Marta Becket on Februin the Amargosa Opera House, Death Valley Junction.
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