1938 McCook, Nebraska

Barbara Dehlinger
Born in 1932
First movie memories from McCook, Nebraska, population 6,200 Interviewed on January 19, 2019
by Sarah Siegel

The first movie I remember seeing was Snow White. I was with my friend and our two mothers. I had to be about five or six.

We lived in Cambridge, Nebraska at the time. McCook was 25-30 miles away. It was a huge deal to go on the train. So we went on the train to the town where the theater was, McCook, and went into this big theater which seemed really big to us. It was like going into a temple. It was really a big deal. We saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I got so scared at the witch in the forest that I wet my pants.

I don’t remember if there were concessions, but I think probably not, because nobody had money like that. You had your dime to get into the movie, but you didn’t have another dime to to get popcorn. I was born in ’32, so that was the Dust Bowl. I didn’t buy popcorn in a movie theater for a long time.

Movies were a big deal. When I was in school, that was basically the only recreation. So you went to the movies. As you got older, you might have a date. In these little towns, there wasn’t much to do. People would save and save to get a dime. It was a big thing that the kids could do.

Movies came into their own during the early days. I can’t remember ever having seen the silent movies. All the ones I remember had sound and everything. Most of the films that we saw were in black and white, particularly the Westerns, when I was really little. I think that was part of what made Snow White so good – not only the story, which we knew, but it was one of the first stories in Technicolor.

I can’t really remember any other individual movie, but we had a small theater in Cambridge. Kids would go to the show. We didn’t always have a dime in those days, so it was really a treat. So if we had a dime we’d go to the picture show there (that’s what they were called – picture shows). I remember we went to a lot of Westerns with horses. I remember that was what we all liked and talked about.

There was Hop Along Cassidy. I think the actor’s name was William Boyd. I’m not sure. We saw lots of Dale Evans and Roy Rogers in their Westerns. We saw Gene Autry in his Westerns. Those are all really old names nowadays.

When I was in grade school and probably into junior high, when you went into the movies, before the main feature, they’d have a serial. You’d see one part of the story and you’d have to go to the movies again the next week to see the second part. There was always one of those.

Particularly during the war (Second World War), they always had the news before the movie would start. And there would be 10, 15, 20 minutes of news reel about what was going on. That was a big thing to see that. It was just there. It was part of the experience of going to the movies. They also always had a cartoon. Bugs Bunny, Popeye and Olive Oil, and that sort of thing.

Then we moved to Wyoming when I was about junior high age. We saw Gone with the Wind. That was really, really fun. It was a real long movie and we were kind of scared walking home in the dark, so I couldn’t have been too old. Everybody was talking about that movie because Clark Gable, who was Rhett Butler in the movie, walked out of the house on Scarlet into a misty, foggy day, and she was hollering at him, and he said, “Frankly, dear, I don’t give a damn.” And everybody was talking about this movie because that was the first time anybody had sworn in a movie! So I remember that.

Image accessed at https://imgc.allpostersimages.com/img/print/u-g- P98IRJ0.jpg?w=550&h=550&p=0