1942 Forrest Hills, New York

Enid Fern Kaplan
Born in 1936
Forrest Hills, New York
Interviewed on 29 January 2019
by Noah Gershenson

It was Bambi. Let’s see, I was born in ’36, I was six years old. I remember a fair amount. It was a very frightening movie for me, but it started very beautifully with Bambi’s being born. And it’s a very sweet beginning. He’s befriended immediately by a rabbit whose name is Thumper who shows him around. And I remember beautiful images—colorful images—of flowers and forest life, you know, growth. And he teaches him to walk and talk and then he also has a friend, a little lady—a skunk named Flower, which is kind of cute because you think of skunks as having a bad smell but his name was Flower—and they were very very fine friends. And the beginning of the movie is very beautiful and loving and warm. He is very very close to his mom—his mother—and they’re together almost all the time. And one day she finally—the father isn’t in the picture. The father is kind of head of all the animals. He’s the great prince—the prince of all the animals in this area—this grassy area and woodsy area. And he was kind of a leader and protector. So, the father wasn’t around much, so Bambi was very close to his mother and these two little animals—the rabbit and the skunk—and they kind of teach him everything that he gets to know. And one day his mom finally takes him with her to get food and suddenly man shows up. Man is the enemy because man comes with rifles to kill the animals. He’s already heard about man but there on that first trip they become present. And you don’t see them—I don’t remember seeing them—but I remember the mother being very frightened and running with Bambi back to the security of where they lived. And then they go again—if I remember properly—and man appears again, and in running away, the mother gets killed—the mother is shot.

I was hysterical. Utterly hysterical. Nothing could console me. I was so upset. It’s a memory that I have to this day of being hysterical in the movie house when Bambi’s mother is shot and killed. It remains with me now—just horrifying for me. But you know, he goes back home, and his father—this great prince, the one who lords over all the animals of the forest, presents himself to Bambi, so Bambi finally knows who his father is. And I know there’s a little female faun in the picture who he falls in love with—a Doe—I don’t remember that part so well. They finally get together, Bambi and the Doe. The thing I remember most—the last image of the movie was also an image that I—it’s in my mind as clear as it was when it occurred—the father, this great large, imposing, wonderful looking deer as king of the deer standing over his whole brood of animals that he protects in the forest. And then of course Bambi takes over that role by the end of the movie, and he becomes the great prince of the forest itself. The thing for me was not his childhood—the thing for me that was so horrifying was not his becoming the ruler, the protector, but that he had lost his mother when he was so very little and how that affected him. It was a stunning stunning movie. What a beautiful movie; it was all animated and it was magnificently done. Walt Disney was just a genius at that. And I have this picture of Bambi at the end as the prince—or whatever he was called—this magnificent picture of him as in control and taking on the role that his father had taken but at the cost of having lost his mother because of the horrors that man brought to the forest. And that’s about all that I remember. That’s the only movie I remember from childhood.

I only saw it that one time. I don’t think I took my children to it because it was so horrifying for me! All the other movies—the Cinderella movies, Hansel and Gretel—even though those were heavy duty, they never affected me the way this did. The death of the mother at such a very tender age when the relationship was so beautifully, beautifully described—it was really gorgeous. The little kids—I think of them as kids—Thumper and Flower were adorable. They took care of him and protected him.

If I was six, I went with my mother. I don’t know who else would’ve taken me. [We went] by bus. Where we lived, there were buses into town and the local movie houses were in kind of the business district of town. Because my mother did not drive then.

It was much simpler than these days. There was popcorn—if I remember there was a little bit of candy and popcorn and soda, but much smaller than what they offer now. I like the popcorn. Still do.

[I saw my first movie in] the Austin Theater. It was in Forrest Hills, New York, and Austin was one of the streets in the town. It was a smaller town. Now it’s a big city out there, but then it was a small theater. There were ushers that had flashlights. [We went] not too frequently, gosh, maybe a couple times a year. 

And actually you know, thinking back, I don’t even know if my mother went with me. There was a children’s section in those days and the matron would kind of watch over the kids in the movie. It was really the olden days! I don’t even know if my mother stayed or if she just got me there and didn’t stay. I would almost suspect that she wasn’t there. That really changed the viewing experience for me, not having my mother there. Yeah, the matron would walk up and down the aisles with a flashlight making sure that we were okay. She wore a white dress. The movie cost 25 cents; I don’t remember how much the popcorn was. I would estimate [the theater] was about a mile and a half [away]. I took a little town bus. Isn’t that interesting how different the world was? A very different world that mothers would just drop their kids off and know that they would be safe. Here, it was kind of the way it was done—the custom—that in the afternoons they would have children’s movies or movies geared more to kids and there would be this matron that would look over everyone.

I would suspect—I don’t know but I would suspect that [Bambi] played in the afternoon and there were adult movies at night. When I—I did go to other movies with my mother, she would take one of us, she’d alternate my brother and me on a Friday night and those movies, the adult movies, which I don’t remember at all I do remember they showed there was always a news broadcast in the movies and they would talk about the war—World War Two—so there would be a long short movie on the war that preceded the movie and there was often a double feature. There were two movies at night for the adults plus the news.