1934 Toronto, Canada

Warren Brodey
1924
Toronto, Canada
Interviewed on February 21, 2021
by Emma Brodey

I was born in 1924. At that time kids didn’t see movies, so the first movies I saw must have been when I was around ten. I remember watching a movie at a theater that my friend’s father owned. The kid’s name was Ginsberg, I think. This was in Toronto. I sat in the back, with the movie projector. That would have been about 1934.  Ginsberg was a member of a club that we had, a club for Jewish kids. I have no idea what the movie was about, but I remember it was fascinating to see a movie from the standpoint of the projector. We got in for free.

There was a theater near where we lived, the Christie Theater. It was a simple theater, down the street, where the streetcars were. It had posters outside, in a glass framed box, showing pictures from the movie. I guess it was exciting. But Ginsberg’s father’s theater was in another part of town. The Oakwood Theater. We’d talk there. And across from my Grandpa’s shoe store on the main drag of Toronto there was another theater, the big downtown Imperial theater. When you went into one of the theaters, the lights were on. There’d be some music, and the screen was covered with a curtain. And when the movie started they’d turn off the light, and the curtain would open.

The Christie theater had short movies for kids, on Saturdays. Like Walt Disney movies. They were quite an institution for the kids. My older brother took me sometimes. There were some funny ones, like animated animals. There was Popeye the Sailor Man, and Popeye had a big head. And later on Little Orphan Annie. I had a whole bunch of serials I listened to on the radio in the afternoon, and comic books, and some of the comic books were also in the movies. There were adventure stories. And this was a bit later, but I remember once my grandfather Brodey went with me to the theater, probably when I was a teenager, and he went completely wild seeing the movie. He was laughing and sort of jumping up and down on his seat, it was so exciting. He just loved the movies—even the kids’ movies.

I don’t remember what movie it was the he loved so much, but it was all more or less slapstick. Some of the stories in the movies were kind of crude—they were stories that were easy to make. They came out of Hollywood, and there were a lot of people making them. Of course I was in Canada, seeing these movies, and I remember them being simple movies. Somebody would get shot, or something like that, and there would be thieves and things like that. There were lots of stories of the West. The West was exciting, with horses and cowboys and things like that. I liked them very much.

We’d go to the movies on Saturdays if we could, and walk down to the Christie, and occasionally the Oakwood. You’d get snacks—that was part of the game. You bought popcorn, and early on you were given something. Mostly a little toy or a prize. The kids loved the prizes. They’d even give away things like forks and knives, so you could go to the front of the theater and get a whole set of tableware. On Saturday kids’ days, they’d do serial stories. Each serial would be a short story, and it would be continued when you came again the next week. It cost about ten or fifteen cents for a kid, and a grownup would be 25 cents.