1939 Plainfield, New Jersey

Sanford Wolfson
1932
Plainfield, New Jersey
Interviewed on February 13, 2021
by Emma Blue Kirby

I barely remember seeing something that had a bluebird in it. It’s a very hazy memory, but there was a bluebird in it. But the one that sticks in my mind, which we waited for, is The Wizard of Oz. When a movie opened up in those days—and this was in the 30s because I was born in ’32—it opened up in New York, and for the better movies, we never got them in the boondocks where I lived. Sometimes, if it was a great movie, it took up to a year before we got it.

We lived in a town that was mainly residential about 30 miles outside of New York. The population was about forty thousand. To get to New York at that time, you had to take a train—it was a commuter town—and then a ferry into New York. So, at that time, it was a pretty big deal to get into New York. Later on, sometime during the war, which started in ‘41, they put in a direct bus, which made it much easier to get in.

There were four theaters in the town; I remember them vividly. The Paramount, which was a beautiful old theater. Then, they had the Strand and the Oxford. There was another theater called the Liberty, but we didn’t go to that because that was on the wrong side of town. The three major ones were within walking distance of one another. Everyone in my age group at that time had a bicycle, or we walked. If it was a longer distance, one of our parents drove us. The main thing was we knew about the movies well before they came because they were all publicized, but they were not available. On rare occasions, we would go with our parents into New York to see something super special.

My group of friends went to the theater every Saturday afternoon like clockwork. This was the big event. When we went in the group of boys, parents were never with us. It was a much simpler life. There weren’t that many other distractions. They were all boys, of course. There were no girls in that group. There were five of us who pretty much hung together. Rarely, we all five went. Sometimes, it would be two or three.

The movies were very, very different in those days. The one thing they had in common was each one had a cartoon first and then The March of Time, which was a very shortened news program. They were usually about the wars that were going on—the one before the United States got into war. There was a short news thing, and then there was the main feature. On Saturdays, in the afternoon, they had one of these things called series. To go for children, it was 17 cents, which was a lot. This is the middle of the depression.

Hopalong Cassidy was the famous cowboy at that time. It was all cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers. It was action, which in many ways was emulated by our play. They’d go on for about twenty to thirty minutes. They’d stop at the most threatening part, and you’d have to go the next week to see the continuation. They’d give you a little card, which they punched, and if you saw the first nine of them, they’d let you see the tenth one for free. It was like a tradition. It was the big thing to do for kids of my age at that time.

So, in all truth, the first one that I remember was something about bluebirds, but the next one was The Wizard of Oz. It was probably between ‘36, ‘37, ‘38, ‘39. Again, it was delayed a little bit before the first time it came. I had the mumps, so I couldn’t see it the first time it was showing in my theater. That’s why I was about seven years old or maybe six when I saw it.

I was awed by all the colors and how much detail they went into because it was so much more involved than anything I had ever seen before. I knew a little bit what to expect in the movie because when I missed seeing it the first time it came, we got a book, so I had read about it beforehand. I loved the characters. I liked her little dog, but I didn’t particularly like the Scarecrow as much or the Lion. But the Tin Man was nice.

For that one, I think I went with my parents. I think we went by car if we went with my parents. It was probably at the Paramount Theatre in Plainfield, New Jersey. They just took your ticket, and you went in and found your own seat. I loved all sweets, but I think we usually had the popcorn; that was the traditional thing we had at the movie theater. We always were eating something, whether it was popcorn or candy or something else. These were nice, comfortable movies. The only other thing is, in those days, when I was going in the summer, there was no air conditioning. They had something called “air cooled.”

It was a simpler life. Movies were really, really big because there wasn’t much else that we could do. You know, there were sports, of course. Everyone was interested in sports, and we all played sports. But again, movies were really, really the biggest entertainment. For recreation, movies had a much bigger place than anything else in our leisure time. From ‘32 to ‘41, we really were in a big depression. There wasn’t a lot of vacationing and things like that. We didn’t go to concerts; we didn’t go to the opera. There was not a lot of disposable income. For those of us who were lucky enough to go, during the week, we went to school, and on Saturdays, we went to the movies.