1939 Hartford, Connecticut

Lorraine Powers
Born on June 11, 1936
First movie memories from Hartford, CT
Interviewed on January 21, 2019
by Lucy Tomasso

I used to go on Friday nights to the Webster Theater in Hartford and I loved Barbara Stanwyck. The first movie I saw had to be one of her first ones. I had one rule: that the movie had to be a love story. They were in black and white at the time. They were talkies.

But the first movie I can remember goes back to 1939. Gone with the Wind. I’m better off telling you that, I have more of a recollection.

Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. It was in color, it was a long movie. It went in two parts – probably was like four hours. Two hours, then two and a half hours with a break in the middle, a fifteen or twenty minute break. I went with my brother and my mother, because my father worked. We walked. Probably a fifteen minute walk. Everybody walked. We walked everywhere.

We used to eat candy for a nickel and popcorn which was a quarter. At that time when we went to church my father would always give me a dime to throw in the church basket and I always gave a nickel and kept the other one for movie theater candy. When I got to be about grammar school age we used to go every Friday and Sunday afternoon and the movies were fifty cents.

There were ushers and the kids behaved.

As far as I know, the Webster Theater’s still there. Last I went by they might have reopened it.

To this day when I see Vivien Leigh – well I look her up on the Internet, and it shows pictures of her in pinstripe. I’ll look up her background, and Clark Gable’s as well, and some say he had the worst breath in the world.

Vivien would make her dresses out of the draperies. She was a spoiled brat but she was gorgeous at the time. She had a sister. They were classy, not like the ones that you get now. They were married about ten times. Very few got married and stayed married.

Well, that’s why I picked Gone with the Wind. Because I remember more about it.