A Favorite Venue: The Camelot

The Camelot in Layton, Utah,
with Hunt's pumpkin at the
entrance, Oct. 1993.

One of our favorite venues for Hunt Mysteries was the original Camelot at 930 W. 2000 North in Layton, Utah. The restaurant and wedding facility featured great food in a really nice banquet hall.

A description of the facility appeared an article by Al Church in the Deseret News on Dec. 3, 1993:

"The legend of King Arthur and the knights of the

Cast: James Tensley, Lenore
Cambria, Bruce Craven, Mike
Weaver, JoDean Pond, Diane
Lyon, Monte Lyon and ??

Round Table has inspired just about every genre of literature, from epic poems to comic strips. The royal court's residence, Camelot, is glamourized in a Broadway musical and linked in present day history with the administration of President Kennedy.

"The imagined opulence and grandeur of Camelot have also inspired the Camelot Restaurant in Layton. The exterior is ringed with wrought iron and guarded by statuesque lions. Though there is no moat, a wide cobblestone drive circles around the front, leading to a drawbridge-size door.

Bruce Craven and
Lenore Cambria

"The interior is spacious with several different dining areas stretching under vaulted ceilings. A large fireplace warmed one large party during our weekday visit in a cozy, hearth-like room. We were seated in the main dining area, adorned as a hunting hall with sets of antlers ringing the walls. 

"More modern conveniences such as a piano, small inlaid dance floor and glowing gas fireplace kept us from straying into the realms of Sherwood Forest. We barely noticed the glowering and somewhat anachronistic portrait of Henry VIII above the mantle...."

Bruce Craven and Monte
Lyon at Vladimir Brothers.

Hunt Mysteries performed many different shows, public and private engagements, at The Camelot over several years before it was sold. The new owner remodeled and added another larger reception banquet hall. We eventually returned there and did several more years of public and private shows in the larger venue and occasionally in the smaller original hall.

One of the first shows we performed at the Camelot was "The Beast Must Eat, and the Camelot became Vladimir's Castle for the evening.

Diane & Monte Lyon

Here's a portion of an entertainment news article that appeared in the Deseret News, Oct. 10, 1993: 

"The Beast Must Eat," a Halloween dinner mystery by Hunt Mystery & Company, will have three public performances in October.

First up is Friday, Oct. 15, at the Camelot Restaurant in Layton. Tickets are $28 each and include dinner (choice of London Broil or Chicken Merlin) and a costume contest. Call The Camelot Restaurant at 773-1336 to make reservations.

Lenore Cambria as
Sybil Hex.

On Saturday, Oct. 16, the participatory mystery will unfold as a fund-raiser at West Jordan High School for the West Jordan Chamber of Commerce and will also include a costume contest. Tickets are $25 a person or $45 a couple. Call the Chamber at 569-5151 to make reservations.

A special performance is scheduled at Snowbird Ski & Summer Resort on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 29 and 30, in which the mystery continues with an addition segment Saturday morning. Ticket packages start at $64 and also include a prime rib dinner, costume contest, overnight lodging and a breakfast buffet. KSL Television's Shelly Osterloh will be a special guest and have a cameo role in the show. Call 521-6040, ext. 4080, to make reservations.

James Tensley at Camelot

Seating for all three shows begins at 7 p.m.

"The Beast Must Eat," in which guests interact with the actors and solve the mystery, poses several mysteries: Is the Halloween party just a unique sales ploy to lure innocent timeshare customers to the Vladimir Castle Condominiums - or is it a dark illusion created by Victor and Lucious Vladimir? Are they really hundreds of years old? What does their secretary, Sybil Hex, have to do with their business?

Randy Pond as the
arresting officer.

Performers include Bruce Craven (director), Lenore Cambria (choreographer), Diane and Monte Lyon, JoDene Pond, James Tensley and Mike Weaver.

Included here are photos from the show at The Camelot and of the facility itself.

Banquet hall, Camelot

Banquet Hall, Camelot

Banquet Hall, Camelot

The Knight
at Camelot

Mike Weaver, Mrs. Weaver,
James Tensley, JoDean Pond,
W. Lee Hunt, Diane Lyon,
and Brian Cambria

Guests in costumes pose with
members of the cast.

Entrance to The
Camelot in Layton

Lion water feature at
entrance to The Camelot

Lions protect the entrance to
The Camelot. (Note the huge
pumpkin grown in Nancy
Hunt's home garden.)

Group of guests dressed for the
show at The Camelot in Layton.

Hallway leading to the
Camelot Banquet Hall.

Huge pumpkin grown in Nancy
Hunt's home garden.

King Henry VIII reigns
over the hall at Camelot.

Knight in his alcove
at The Camelot.

W. Lee Hunt and
Nancy Hunt at
The Camelot in Layton.

Pond at The Camelot. The
area now is overwhelmed
with businesses, restaurants
and congested traffic.

Pond at The Camelot. The
area now is overwhelmed
with businesses, restaurants
and congested traffic.

Northeast view of The Camelot.

Hunting Mysteries at Deseret News in 2000!

OUR ‘SLOT’ IS A HEADLINER

ON SEVERAL STAGES

By Steve Warren
Deseret News staff writer
© 2000 Deseret News Publishing Co.

   Some people never find a niche in life that suits them.
   W. Lee Hunt doesn't have that problem. In 1983, he found his niche -
actually, it's called a slot – as chief copy editor at the Deseret News.

   The "slot" is a person who sits in the vertex of a U-shaped arrangement of
computer workstations occupied by up to seven copy editors. After
individual copy editors edit a story and write a headline, the slot either
OKs the story and sends it along for final preprint positioning on a page or returns it
to the copy editor with suggested changes. All the while, he keeps an eye
on page deadlines.
   It's no place for shrinking violets, and it suits Hunt fine. "I enjoy being
in the middle of all the news, the hot, breaking stuff."
   When he came to the Deseret News fresh out of BYU in 1974, Hunt didn't
have a clue that he'd wind up within a few months on the copy desk.
   "I thought of myself as a writer or reporter. I had no experience at all in
copy editing. It was a real challenge," he recalls.
   His first months as a copy editor were so inauspicious that he saw the
handwriting on the wall (but not the misspellings and grammatical problems
in that handwriting) and promptly enrolled in basic English classes through
community education.
   One headline that got him in hot water with the managing editor at the time
was: "Vietnam hoard flees Cong." It's a mistake he's had a "horde" time
forgetting.
   Although Hunt no longer finds the nuances of copy editing a mystery, his
life isn't short on mystery - not by a long shot.
   That's because he's the founder and proprietor of Hunt Mystery & Company,
which produces dinner-theater programs wherein actors stage a murder
mystery and the audience tries to solve it by questioning the performers, or
"suspects."
   Hunt Mystery & Company began in 1991. Early that year, Hunt, his wife Nancy
and children Heather, Lena, Jason, Jared and Nathan discussed ways to earn
money for a trip to California. Before long, the children were selling
Valentine's candy, cookies, pizza and pies.
   At that time, Hunt had already written three murder mysteries but had
staged them only on family occasions and at parties. Spurred on both by the
importunings of friends to go public and by the desire to fund the
California trip, Hunt hired actors and staged a production at a local resort - and they've
been doing them ever since.
   In 1994, the company put on 49 shows. [In 2001, the company stage close to 100 shows.]

   [Hunt Mystery stages public shows about twice a month at various locations.] … Other bookings include conventions and private and employee parties.
   Hunt leaves the acting to professionals (each presentation features six to
eight acting roles), but he continues to write most of the scripts and
lines up shows. Family members help by setting up the programs and in
handling lighting and sound.
   When he's not on the job as copy chief or involved in a dinner theater,
Hunt finds time to change the landscape of West Jordan.
   [Hunt was] …chairman of the West Jordan Urban Forest Committee and spearheaded
efforts that have resulted in the planting of hundreds of trees around the
city…..His appointment as chairman stemmed from his part in organizing tree
plantings at a neighborhood park. "The city saw my interest in trees and
the mayor came calling."

Linda Bisson, Pam Olsen, W. Lee Hunt, Marilyn
Karras and Susan Hermance pose with BYU's
Ty Detmer's Heisman Trophy at work. 

   Even though Hunt enjoys adding green to the West Jordan landscape, he
points out that his real color is "true-blue BYU." Whenever the Cougars
play, he tries to be near a TV -- or at the game, when possible. He does not,
however, belong to the fanatic - some would say frothing, lunatic - fringe
in the BYU-University of Utah rivalry that hopes for its team to win every
game and for its chief rival always to lose. "I cheer for Utah whenever
they're not playing BYU," he said.
   A word of warning to first-time visitors at the Hunt home. Near the front

30-year service
award from
Deseret News.

door, a plaque reads: The Hunt's. Alert souls will notice that the
apostrophe in Hunt's is in the wrong place. But don't be tempted to say,
"Aha, someone who claims to know grammar but who puts apostrophes in the wrong place doesn't have a leg to stand on."
   First, Hunt always has a leg to stand on, sometimes two. (He has a
prosthetic limb.) And second, "That (the plaque) was a gift," he emphasizes.
   Spoken like a true copy editor.