The Malco Theatre, located at 817 Central Avenue in Hot Springs, Arkansas, was built on a site that has housed vaudeville shows, silent movies, modern films, and specialty productions.

In 1882, the Opera House on Hot Springs’ Central Avenue was opened to present theatrical productions, including hosting traveling companies from New York.

Frank Head, manager of the Opera House, commissioned the construction of the Princess Theatre in 1910 for viewing silent movies as well as attending vaudeville shows.

Hot Springs resident Sidney Nutt Sr. bought the Princess Theatre in 1927, converting it to sound in 1929 as talking pictures began to replace silent films.

In 1936, Nutt sold his interest in the Princess to M. A. Lightman of Memphis, Tennessee, a successful theater owner throughout the South and founder of the Malco Theatre group.

During the Cold War era, the building's heavy steel beams and fourteen-inch concrete walls led to the Malco being declared a bomb shelter.

Magician Maxwell Blade and his Theater of Magic were housed there, joined in 1996 by the HSDFI, which hosts the oldest all-documentary film festival in North America.

The theater boasts design elements such as ceiling tiles, decorative features, and lighting accents that suggest the Art Deco style of the 1920s when Sidney Nutt bought the Princess Theatre and converted it to showing “talking pictures.” However, Maxwell Blade's magic show has also incorporated twenty-first century components such as digital audio and video projection, including three-dimensional backgrounds.