1944 Bronx, New York

Janet Hose

1940

The Bronx, New York, NY

Interviewed on 2/3/2022

by Claire Lee

I saw Bambi before the age of five. I was born in 1940. One thing about this time is that we didn’t have too many movie theaters around, and there’s no other way I could have seen that movie except in a theater. There was no big TV or movies on TV. We didn’t have a television until the 50s. So that’s one way how I date when things happened. The other way is that there was a war going on and my dad wasn’t there. He didn’t come home until 1945. I don’t remember going to the movies with him until the 50s, so I’m pretty sure I saw Bambi around the time when I was four years old, which would have been 1944. 

My mom was with me. I had an older brother, but he didn’t take me to the movies. Or if he was there with us at that particular time, I don’t remember. But he would have been thirteen or fourteen, and I don’t think he would have been that interested. He was probably playing baseball. 

We lived in the Bronx. You could walk to three movie theaters. Two of them were Crotona theaters. One was an independent called the Deluxe, which as it turns out, was anything but. It was much smaller than the Crotona theaters. I probably saw Bambi at Crotona, but I don’t know for sure. 

There were always ushers at the theater, and they had flashlights. The usher would come in with a flashlight and flash the light on the kid that was causing the disturbance. This didn’t happen when I was watching Bambi. 

I have images in my mind – maybe all of us are this way – you take in the pictures before you take in the words. The dialogue in Bambi is really quite simple, but I remember the scene in the beginning of the movie where Bambi is a young fawn and he meets the other animals in the woods. There’s a rabbit called Thumper, and Thumper makes friends with Bambi. Bambi’s mother is encouraging Bambi to come out of the woods and the other animals are there and it’s winter. The lake is frozen and Bambi steps on the lake and then the animation shows the animals sliding. He falls, and then he’s sliding as he’s scrambling to get back up on his feet. I remember being fascinated by that. Thinking, Wow that’s probably really true. Ice is slippery. By this time I had enough awareness of the world that I knew ice was slippery and you fell down on it.

That was probably my favorite part of the movie – the introduction of Bambi to the scene. Being little and awkward and having a difficult time navigating. I would have identified with that. 

The next thing was the scary part. The hunters are coming and the mother is shot and killed. I remember being very frightened at that. Oh, it was so scary for me. The thing about Bambi was that I had a toy Bambi which was made up of some kind of a green material. The toy itself was not very large even for a child. These toys are what we call in our family “stuffies.” My two grandchildren have these toys all over the place. But this was wartime and there weren’t many toys available. A lot of things were restricted. But I could hold this toy Bambi. My little hand was big enough to hold it under its stomach and it would be the width of that little hand and then the legs would come out. I’m thinking maybe two or three inches under the tummy so the whole thing was maybe five inches long or maybe six from nose to tail. I carried that around with me all the time. And I remember thinking, No no no my Bambi’s not going to get shot. I’ve got my Bambi. I would hide it sometimes to protect it. 

There was no explanation of the scene, nor was there any discussion that I recall afterwards. If I was frightened did my mother put her arm around me? Did she notice? I have no idea. I don’t remember. Back then, there was very little explanation to a child about anything. Let alone, “Today we’re going to the movies” so you’d have the opportunity to say, “What’s a movie?” You just take it you know. 

Of course at the end of the movie there is the scene where Bambi’s father, the stag, is sort of in the background on the mountainside and I remember thinking, Bambi is going on to other things. He’s going to become something else. This is merely a transition in his life. 

But during that scene I also thought, Where were you? This is the daddy. Where was the daddy when we needed you? I had that feeling too because my father was away and my brother was the one that had to assume that role even though we didn’t say to him, “You’re now going to be the dad.” In the summertime, a lot of people were out on the street into the late evening hours because it was cooler than being in a closed Bronx apartment. This was before central air conditioning. I can remember walking down the street with my brother when I was a little bit older than that and asking him to hold my hand because we were walking past the group of neighbors. I said to my brother, “Hold my hand when we walk past so everyone will think you’re my father.” So I must have missed my dad. There would have been on some level that recognition when I was watching the movie. Dad wasn’t there, or whatever thought I gave it at the time, I don’t have clearly in my mind, and then the movie ends.