1941 Kansas City, Kansas

Joyce Powers
1941
Kansas City Kansas
Interviewed February 16, 2021
by Kathryn Miyawaki

The first movie I remember seeing? Oh gosh, I certainly can’t remember the name of it, but I’m sure it was a film with Doris Day, Betty Grable, or maybe Jane Russel. I loved all those actresses’ movies. I used to have a bunch of paper dolls of all the current movie stars… I just adored them. Now that I think of it, I remember loving Pillow Talk with Doris Day and Rock Hudson. I was in high school when I first saw that movie, so it certainly wasn’t the first movie I saw.

I’m sorry, I really can’t remember the names of all these movies I went to when I was a kid and a teenager. One movie I will always remember seeing for the first time in theaters was The Sound of Music; I still have it on VHS. I enjoyed it so much that I’ve probably watched it ten times. I remember the first time seeing it, back in ‘65 or ’66, and I was so moved by the acting. I feel like nowadays, films can rely on computer generated visuals or special effects and the actual quality of the acting has diminished. With the Sound of Music, I just adored Julie Andrew’s acting—I thought it was phenomenal.

They don’t have many musicals anymore. Back when I was growing up, musicals were so popular. Of course, we had Westerns, and Mysteries, and Comedies, but the musicals were probably the most popular from my memory. Although musicals were my favorite, I loved the comedies of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin too.

I started going to the movie theater when I was in junior high school. I didn’t go very often because it was too expensive for my family. Other people from my junior high school were in the same boat (financially speaking), so it was a pretty rare and special occasion when we went to the theater. On really special occasions, we would go out for dinner and a movie—what a treat. I take that for granted now because I can watch any old movie from my own home. When we’d get to the theater, we’d munch on popcorn and Raisenets; we would actually dump the box of Raisenets into the bag of popcorn to create our own mix.

I usually went to the movie theater with a friend, or my dad would take us to the drive-in, which was such a special occasion. I loved mysteries, and that’s what I usually went to go see with my dad because he preferred them to comedies or musicals. I remember we went to see The Man Who Knew Too Much with Doris Day—a Hitchcock film. Now we didn’t go to the drive-in for that film, though. We went to a theater called The Electric on Quindaro Boulevard.

The other main theater in town was The Grenada, down on Minnesota Avenue.

They were pretty small theaters from what I remember. I couldn’t even tell you if they’re still there because I never drive over to that part of town anymore—it just isn’t safe. Back then, I used to walk home from Northwest Junior High School down Quindero Boulevard every day. This was back in 1953 through to 1955. You can’t really walk through that area safely now. It’s been very nostalgic for me to recall these memories. Going to the movies just isn’t quite the same as it used to be.