1938 Newark, New Jersey

Matthew Russomanno

Born in 1934

First movie memory in Newark, New Jersey

Interviewed on 15 September 2019

By Benjamin Ravelo, Pace University

            It was a Tarzan movie, it was brown. Johnny Weissmuller, he was an Olympic swimmer. Those particular Tarzan movies. I was with my father, I guess I was three or four. First, we went to see my grandmother and grandfather, then on the way back we went to the movies. If I was four then it was about 1938. All I remember is how Tarzan outswam alligators and swung from tree to tree and gave his famous yell. I remember the color well, it was a brown, sepia-whatever you called it. After that, movies were in black & white or color.

It was the Embassy Theatre. There was at least two ushers and the Embassy wasn’t a big theatre but the area was big. We didn’t go to the Embassy too often; we would’ve gone to the Region. The Embassy was the kind of theatre where if you missed it at the Region, you caught it at the Embassy. It just happened the movie was playing there at the Embassy and I asked my father to take me. “Papa, can we go to the movies?” And whatever I asked he gave me. That was when Newark was an entertainment center. We walked from my grandmother’s house on 16 Summer Avenue and Bloomfield Avenue, it was about 5 minutes away. Then we walked home half-a-mile from the theater to home. After a while my father was carrying me.

I loved it. It was just a wonderful experience. And the admission price made it great. It started out as 15 cents for adults and 10 for children. You had just enough for a Milky Way or something else. When I was that young, maybe I had Goobers. Or a Milky Way, that was my favorite. On special days, they’d give you an ice cream pop for free. Me and my friend went faithfully every Saturday and Sunday afternoon. We were so early we saw them play the National Anthem. You’d have an A film, a B film, a chapter, like a crime chapter with Spysmasher, Batman, Superman, then something would happen and they’d pick it up the next week. Then there’d be a cartoon or a comedy short.

The main movie for the week was Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. When we went Sunday after dinner, you saw the main movie, whatever it was. The B movies were Wednesdays and Thursdays. And the comedies, Friday and Saturday. Friday and Saturday were wonderful, always comedy, you always left the movie feeling good.

The scary movies were usually on Friday. Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, the Invisible Man. Those were the 4 scary movies. Not like today where you hide under your seat, all the violence and bloodshed. There was absolutely no vulgarity. No swearing at all, never! And no, how should I put it, shameful religious swearing. Absolutely zero. Forget about today. There were plenty of war movies, we were kids during World War II, I guess you’d call them propaganda films, get people fired up about the war.

I got to tell you about George M Cohen. I knew I was five years old because I went with my sisters. It was the George M Cohen family movie; he wrote a lot of songs. The star of that was James Cagney. I remember it because it was one of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen, but also because when I got home, I had a 104 fever. Imagine that? Every time that Yankee Doodle movie comes on TV, I see it often, I always watch it from beginning to end.