The boom ended in the mid-1980s, with many of the theaters closing. Film and television stars ceased working in dinner theater. Booth commented: "They could make more in a day doing a commercial than they could make during the entire run of dinner theater show, and they didn't have to travel. Plus, a lot of the stars just started dying off. It was a fine gig for a while." He also said that, in 1999, you could count the number of surviving professional dinner theaters on two hands. There was a stigma attached to dinner theater, and audiences got tired of such shows as "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers" and "Arsenic and Old Lace".