1930s Brooklyn, New York

Mary Joan (Matos) Jain
Born in 1933
Brooklyn, New York
Interviewed on January 28, 2019
By Harry Jain

My earliest memory of going to the movies is very clear. At the time, I was living in Brooklyn, New York, and the theater was right down the street. I was five years old and saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was in color. Technicolor came out when I was very little, so there were a few color films beforehand, but that was the first movie I had seen. I went with my cousin Loretta and my older brother. I remember loving the movie and being amazed by the whole experience.

As soon as the film began, I was fascinated by how it worked. I really thought something was actually going on behind the screen. So I asked my cousin about it and she told me, “Yes if you go behind the curtain after the show, you will see everybody.”

So after the movie, I very gamely went onto the stage to look, but I was very quickly shooed off by a janitor or something. I remember running out of the theater, terrified that I had gotten myself into trouble. But before I left, I got a good look behind the curtain and saw nothing there. So now I knew that they were not acting behind the screen.

Maybe because I started going so early in my life, I can remember being so pulled into the movies. So it took me a long time when I left to really come out of the movie. If there was a heroine, I was that person for the longest time. I would walk like her, talk like her. After seeing a movie, I had to tell my father the whole movie from beginning to end. Luckily he would take us on walks, and I would tell him everything. While I was telling him, I was Jeanette MacDonald, or whoever the star of the movie was, and my father would have to be in every single frame. It took me a long time to shake off the movie experience. So it was only later in my life that I could look at a movie objectively.

I remember the theaters were very inviting and plush. This particular theater was not too big, but not too cozy. You could be on the third floor and still feel like you were immersed in the experience. It was very ornate and impressive to a five year old. Whoever built these movie theaters, they wanted to make it exotic, like something out of Arabian Nights. So there were all kinds of carved minerettes all around. Everything was very warm and inviting. I went to other movie theaters in this period, and they all had this quality, probably because the country was still coming out of the depression. So people could be very poor, but if they could muster up the money, they could escape at the movies. Opulence was presented wherever it could be so people could forget what they had to go home to.

In terms of the concession stands, I don’t remember them being as important. They’re really a big deal now, with pizza and everything. Back then, there was always a place to get popcorn and soda, but people did not really eat much of it. I don’t remember that until later. And that reminds me of Radio City Music Hall. Tickets there were $1.60 or $1.75, which was a lot of money. But I remember the concessions were very elegant, so I would always save 10 cents for a candy bar when we went, usually an Almond Joy.

In the 40s especially we went to the movies every Saturday. For the longest time, it cost 10 cents for everyone under a certain age and 12 cents for an adult. We had three nearby movie theaters to go to: two very nice ones and one everybody called “The Itch,” which you can imagine how that was. They were all double features, so we were there for quite a long time. We wondered why we were always encouraged to go off to the movies, and then I saw how happy my mom was to have a break from us for four hours. Also, they all had really good news reels in between films. And I remember those better than many of the movies themselves. The news was very important to film too, especially during wartime. People had radios, but this is where we had the picture of what was going on.

Silent films were really before me, but I do remember some Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton shorts that I saw closer to when they were released. I saw a Charlie Chaplin movie soon after I saw Snow White. It’s possible that I didn’t hear him speak in that film either, but the music really carried you through it. That was a very beautiful movie and for me at the time it stirred up strange reactions in that he was funny yet sad. In the movie, he was destitute, so in one scene he decided to make spaghetti out of his shoe laces. He put it into the pot, checked to see if it was ready, and scooped it out into a bowl. While everyone else in the audience was laughing, I was crying. I didn’t understand because it was really tragic to me. Then I noticed everyone was laughing but with tears coming down there face. And I learned you could have this pathos, the two emotions happening at the same time. I became a big fan after realizing how he could combine those two emotions.

He [Chaplin] was world famous and especially famous in our country. He was very popular and very loved, until he was suspected of having Communist sympathies. Then he moved to Switzerland where he stayed with his family. He was very progressive we would say now, but of course that made him suspicious to the McCarthy era people. His movies were beautiful. He could make people laugh and cry at the same time. And you couldn’t really contain either emotion. These people like him and Buster Keaton were the originals. It was fantastic when they had so little, and they created so much beauty out of it.

The issue of censorship reminds me of this whole issue about certain movies being condemned by the Catholic church. I know we used to get a church paper with a list of what you were allowed to see. I remember it was also in other papers sort of as a service because so many people were devout Catholics. They would have a list of “A” movies everyone could see, like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, then those okay for the general public, and then those that were for adults only or under certain circumstances, and the final ones, they were condemned. It was a mortal sin to go to these movies. And the church kept sway over these movies for a long period of time. Hollywood was very mindful of what level a movie would be at and whether it was worth the risk or not. Later on, they knew how to make movies provocative enough that people wanted to see it because it was risqué while still keeping a decent rating.

The serious movies really began in the 40s during the war. There were a lot of very good war movies. First they were the really typical shoot ’em up movies. I loved the Air Force, so I would just see every movie about the Air Force and sing the marching song for hours afterwards. And then they incorporated a lot of love stories, with women waiting for husbands to come home. The great Humphrey Bogart movie, Casablanca, is such a good example of a 40s wartime movie. I think movies in the 40s were quite mature, treating subjects with respect. And then the 50s I think also stayed a little complex.

Another thing I do remember is that we were treated to foreign movies very late in the 40s, certainly in the 50s. Right after the war and in the 50s, Europe was a wonderful place to film. Everything was inexpensive at the time and people were welcoming. At the time, I was just thrilled to see these movies. Most of them seemed to come from Japan and Italy. Those two countries I seem to remember as turning out outstanding and very meaningful movies. Italian movies were more easy to identify with, and they were often quite sorrowful but beautiful. That began to enrich our movie experiences.

In the late 50s, my mother saw that this three-part movie series was coming to the theater in Staten Island, The Apu Trilogy, by Satyajit Ray. I guess she saw all three, and the next time we saw her she was in love with India. While my mother always loved Vijay, it was kind of a big thing when I married an Indian. These movies really made all the difference, and afterwards she always wanted to go to India and meet the family. That really described simple Indian villages at the time and how they survived with so little. And that is why your Great Nana admired it so much.

Overall, I think from beginning to end, movies are great. It’s a powerful media, and a joyful one in many ways. They have stayed something important in my life, and I have been glad to have them, both in my childhood and now.