Desert Star Theater, Art Moderne movie theater in Murray, United States

The Desert Star Theater is a movie and stage theater built in the Art Moderne style in Murray, Utah. The building has a full auditorium where guests are served dinner at their seats during performances.

The current building dates from 1930, when it opened as the Iris Theater, an Art Deco commercial block with apartments above the storefronts. It replaced the earlier Gem, a small silent-movie house that was demolished. The Duvall family ran the theater and lived upstairs; after Tony Duvall's retirement it passed through several owners and was renamed the Vista. The Todds bought the closed Vista and reopened it as the Desert Star Playhouse, and the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

Desert Star shows are parody plays spoofing classic movies and stories, with political jokes and themes that revolve around Utah. Each performance ends with a musical olio in which the cast appears in various costumes and performs musical numbers.

The theater sits on State Street in Murray, where parking nearby is easy to find. Arriving a little early is a good idea since dinner and the show are combined, and seating fills up before the performance starts.

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the theater accepted scrap metal from children as payment when families had no cash. Kids in the neighborhood would collect old metal to trade for a ticket, making the cinema accessible even in the hardest times.