1950s Juarez, Mexico

Armida Cohen
1943
Juarez, Mexico
Interviewed on 1/29/19
By Carlos Cohen

Mystery, love, hate, music, oh, Casablanca was all of those things, and more. That was the first movie I remember seeing, back when I was 16 or 17 in Juarez, Mexico, in the 1950’s. I went with my co-worker Julia, and our friends Oscar and Luis. They were both interested in us, and, well, you know. Our friend Yolanda came with us too. She liked watching wrestling, but her parents didn’t like her seeing something so violent, so she came with us to the movies that day. We agreed to meet in the plaza at 4 PM, so we can could catch earlier buses home. It was nice in the summer; we could stay out later.

The theater we went to was called Cine Plaza, and it was the nicest one in town. They had concessions and popcorn, but we would get our snacks before the movie because it was cheaper. Outside of the theater, vendors would be selling sunflower seeds and other snacks for a few cents. But I would bring Hershey Kisses and butterscotch candies, my favorites. Inside, popcorn cost 1 peso and the ticket would cost 3 or 4 pesos, depending whether you sat in the balcony or not. We almost always sat in the balcony, because it was cheaper.

The theater was beautiful inside. We sat under chandeliers, and it had wine-colored velvet curtains. When you looked up at the ceiling, the lights looked like stars above us. There were also a bunch of statues. It was air conditioned and felt great inside; the bathrooms were also really nice. There were only two issues. The first was that everyone smoked inside, and when you left, you smelled like cigarettes. The second was that in that time, the older men would sometimes try to feel up the younger girls, so us girls would always carry open safety pins to prick the old guys if they got too handsy. It didn’t happen frequently, but it sometimes did. Back then, going to the movies was family friendly. There wasn’t so much sex in the movies.

[I researched the theater, and found a picture (included) and description of the theater. “A fancy mixture of Deco with neo-classical styles, with large, artistic nude sculptures of a male and a female as mythology characters at the lobby, designed by Aurelio G. Mendoza. It opened 19 March, 1947, seating 1,900 people in three levels. Inside, a fake night sky displayed hundreds of little “stars”, clouds and nebullas, mixed effects according to the movie being projected.-cinematreasures.org]

Casablanca. We didn’t get many American movies in Mexico back then, unless they were really good, and that’s probably why we were able to see it years after it came out.  We watched it with subtitles in Spanish, but wow, it was so good. It was a suspenseful, romantic movie. Humphrey Bogart was incredible. I felt like I was inside of the movie. Back in those days, the men and the women were really well dressed, with nice hair, gloves, and dresses. The characters smoked a lot, constantly, because it looked so glamorous. And in the movie, everything happened in a bar in a place like Instanbul, or an Arabic movie.

The scene I’ll never forget is the first time one of the characters entered a bar, and this one song was playing. I’ll never forget that song, it was so beautiful. La la la. That’s what it sounded like. Bogart told the pianist to stop playing it because it made him remember a girl he loved. The girl was also in love with Bogart, but a powerful man was in love with the girl, and it didn’t work out. But that’s why it was such a good movie. Mystery, love, hate, music, it had it all. Crime too.
But what impressed me most was how much they loved each other, and also how they treated each other. It’s one of my favorite movies.