Good Ole Days Opus One: Cinema Overtures

I connected with movies immediately and forever when I saw my first film. It was How Green Was My Valley. My Dad took my brother and myself to see it. I must have been two years old. All I remembered of the film growing up was the old man and a boy and a dog walking above a meadow. My Mom thought it must have been a Lassie movie; but I can imagine that my Dad would have taken us to How Green Was My Valley. The first film that stayed with me in total recollection was Song of the South. I loved that movie and saw frame after frame, song after song, in my mind throughout my childhood. (I know it's politically incorrect to even mention that film now. But the characters were like family to me. And I was pretty much color-blind, so I missed the racial thing.) I must have seen other movies in between those two films, because somehow the reality of movies got all mixed up with the actuality of my life. I would change my clothes in my bedroom closet – in case I was really a person in a movie and people were watching me; I didn’t want to be seen without my clothes on. I’d peek out of the closet and wonder where the audience was. (No, I never told anyone that at the time. They would have locked me in that closet for keeps.)
Gratefully, by the time I was seven or eight I understood what movies really were. Along with being my refuge. By then I wanted to be a movie star (when I didn’t want to be a dancer), and Elizabeth Taylor was my idol. (I had all of her cutout dolls and coloring books.) Every neighborhood had its movie house. The big one on the “avenue” was called “The Midwood;” several blocks away from our house in the opposite direction was “The Leader.” But around the corner from where we lived was “The Kent.” I probably spent almost every Sunday afternoon of all my growing up years there. Kids were permitted to attend by themselves. One day they announced a new rule that you had to be accompanied by a 16 year old if you were under 12. I know I couldn’t get in to see Pinocchio when it finally arrived at The Kent – that was the first day of the regulation. I was probably about nine, because my brother was able to go to see it with his buddies; he was three years older than me. They wouldn’t let me go into the theatre with him, and he “nyah-nyahed” me home. I was devastated. It was too late to see the film by the time my Dad came home. Realizing how unhappy I was, he went to the store and bought a game of Tidally-Winks; we played Tidally-Winks all afternoon. I don’t think I saw Pinocchio until I’d grown up. I ‘m not certain how I got into The Kent after that; I think my brother sometimes saw me inside and then we’d part. I do know that I was quite tall at 10 years old and probably passed for 12 without a hassle.
So every Sunday, after religious school, after going to the shops on Avenue J for my Mom (usually Stern’s Bakery, and I’d eat an entire loaf of New York corn rye before I reached home), after whatever else was going on - I was permitted to go to the movies. It didn’t matter what was playing. There was always a newsreel, a cartoon, and a double feature. All shown continuously. You could stay to see the films as often as you liked, and if you came in late, you’d just stay to see the part you’d missed. (I knew I was growing up when I started phoning to find out what time the film began so I wouldn’t miss the beginning.) It cost no more than 25 cents to get in back then if you were a kid. And Jujubes or Jordan Almonds would cost 5 or 10 cents. A coke was 10 cents. So for half a dollar, I had an entire afternoon’s entertainment. Sometimes, I’d have to return the empties (soda bottles; jars; milk bottles) to collect the deposits for my movie money.
Very rarely did I go to the movies with a friend. Not until I was a teenager. Then we’d go to The Midwood on Avenue J because there was a balcony and we could smoke up there (or practice smoking). There were actually ashtrays on the back of the seat in front of you. We were encouraged to be like the smoking stars on the screen: Paul Henreid lighting two cigarettes at once and sharing with Bette Davis! And we could watch the couples “make out.” On those excursions the film itself was less important than the side-show. The kids I knew didn’t watch movies the way I did. They’d talk or make frequent trips to the washroom or give a full critique before we’d left the theatre. And I hated that. I can count on one hand the people in my life I’ve enjoyed seeing movies with. Yes, I suppose I’ve always been an elitist of sorts. But certainly, when it came to cinema or the theatre, I was never a civilian!
My mother would take me to Radio City Music Hall or the Roxy maybe once a year. I don’t remember her ever coming with me to the local theatres. She liked the expedition from Brooklyn to Manhattan; the event. Most of the time, she’d take my older brother and me; sometimes she and I would go “into the city” and shop and have lunch either before or after the show. At a restaurant called “The Virginian.” (It was a chain specializing in burgers.) And later, more elegantly, to The Charleston Gardens at B. Altman’s Department Store. (Finger sandwiches served with your salad or soup – wonderful sandwiches and no limit!) Radio City and the Roxy had colossal productions before the film. But it wasn’t the stage show that impressed me. It was the huge screen in a huge theatre. It changed the way I perceived the movie. It was less intimate, of course. In the smaller venue, I felt as though I were experiencing a private showing. I had a personal relationship with the film. I could be part of the movie. In the larger theatre, I was a member of the audience. The film washed over me instead of whispering in my ear. What’s remarkable to me now is that I recognized this as a kid. Even if I couldn’t have put it into words.

At home we listened to the radio. Everyone listened to the radio. The women could knit or crochet or whatever. The kids could color or do jigsaw puzzles. It was so long ago but I remember it very well. There was an uncommon closeness about it because people could continue to interact with each other while they listened to the show. My brother wouldn’t miss Terry and the Pirates, The Shadow, Henry Aldrich, The Green Hornet, Dick Tracy. During the day, my mother listened to the “soaps:” Back Stage Wife, Aunt Jennie, Stella Dallas and the rest. (she could cook, clean, sew --whatever--while listening to the radio). Dad liked the news programs; Pal liked the comedy: Allen’s Alley, Can You Top This? Fibber MaGee and Molly, Baby Snooks, Halls of Ivy. Grandma didn’t like to miss the variety shows: Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, stuff like that. There were also quiz shows and talk shows. And sports events were narrated, often generating more excitement than if we’d been there in person. Not surprisingly, my favorite shows were the dramas: “LUX Radio Theatre.” I’d sneak out of bed and curl up at the top of the stairs to hear the plays. (When I’d grown up I realized that curling up at the top of the stairs cast a shadow on the stairway wall. My folks knew I was there but never bothered me. Wish I’d known they did that.) Some of those radio dramas remained with me, along with the voices of the major stars who performed them. Plays like Sorry– Wrong Number (Barbara Stanwyck) became motion pictures and many programs were later transformed into television shows.

We didn’t have a television set until I was in high school. I was probably 13 or 14 years old. It was a large piece of furniture with a 10 inch screen. Dad put the TV in the basement (which was sort of finished) because he didn’t want it to dominate our home life. He only went downstairs once in awhile to see something. My grandparents and Mom would watch Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle and the Show of Shows with Sid Caeser and Imogine Coca, and Pal liked the wrestling. It made him laugh. My younger brother watched Howdy Doody. I, of course, liked the movies. They were shown almost exclusively late at night. There was the Late Show and the Late Late Show. (Really.) On a Friday or Saturday night, I frequently stayed up until the last station signed off. Eating my way through early Jennifer Jones. In fact, the first show I remember seeing on television was a late night movie starring Jennifer Jones: Good Morning Miss Dove. And what a luxury! To sit up late, alone in the basement, eating leftovers and sobbing into paper napkins.

My grandma, Jennie, took me to the art cinema on Coney Island Avenue to see foreign films. She adored Marlene Dietrich – not only for her talent, but also because of her stand against Germany and her courage going overseas to entertain the troops. We saw all of her movies together. She especially loved Golden Earrings. She played her records. And Piaf’s records. And Russian music. And she sang all the time, in Russian and in Yiddish. She loved to sing. She didn’t have much of a voice, but that didn’t stop her. She would read Pushkin to me in the Russian and translate it. In the summer evenings, she’d drive me to Brighten Beach and we’d walk the boardwalk in search of Russian music – all the little gazebos on the boardwalk hosted a different nationality. People gathered nightly to sing and dance and laugh together. When she heard the Balalaikas and found a welcoming group, she’d give me some money to basically “get lost” at the arcade, and she’d sing for hours with her old or new landsmen.

I write screenplays now. All the movies I've created in my head over the years might never make it to the paper. And all the screenplays I do write down may never make it to the screen. But those Brooklyn Sundays at The Kent; those afternoons watching Jennie weep over a film in French or Italian or whatever while I attempted to read the subtitles; the warm dynamic of visualizing radio shows within a family circle; it was all so special. We connected.
If you're fortunate enough to live in a town somewhere that has preserved an old movie theatre (without stadium seating and often with freshly popped corn), I hope you frequent it. The seats may be rather uncomfortable, and it might smell of age. Or is that history? But even if you're watching a first-run film, it will be like time travel. I hope you'll go there. It's part of our cultural DNA. If you can, pass it forward.