1948 Norfolk, Virginia
Elizabeth Parisot (Yale School of Music)
1942
Norfolk, VA
Interviewed on 1/30/19
By Alan Chiang
…crossing the prairies, you know… Covered wagons, when the settlers went to conquer the West… We had no electricity, we had no running water, no TV, we saw no movies… Good times.
I see you’re not used to my humor; I’m kidding! Are you from another country?
In all seriousness, it was when my family lived in the country, when we barely had electricity and running water. My grandmother always drove us about a mile and a half, me and my sister. We went to the Rosna Theater. There was a bigger theater, NorVa, but to me, Rosna was big enough of a theater (Were there ushers? Nooo). Every Saturday morning, that was the big thing, we go to the movies, and that was the reward before being forced to come home and practice [piano]. We would eat AlmondJoys at the concession stand. My mother did not buy AlmondJoys, we ate very healthy, but when we went to the movies, we look forward to it. We never ate popcorn, for some reason. Smoking was big. Look at some old TV shows, look at I Love Lucy, they smoked all the time. That was the big, glamorous thing. Everybody did, at the movies.
I know I was 6 years old in 1948, and I thought I knew the name of it until I looked it up. I thought it was The Long Gray Line, which is a movie about VMI (Virginia Military Institute) plebs in uniforms. But it wasn’t because it came out in 1955, long after 1948, which was my first cinematic memory. It was either a western or a civil war film. I had never been to the movie before, and I went with my friend and her mother. Apparently, it was very impressive to me — all I remember was it had fighting in it. And apparently, that night, I had a dream, stood up in my bed, and pretended I had a fight and fell out of my bed and knocked my tooth out. I’ve never done that, I don’t walk in my sleep. I don’t remember any of this, but the only thing they could figure out was I must have seen something in the movies which I tried to recreate, and I stood up in my bed, and I remember waking up on the floor. There was blood all over the floor, and my mother freaked out when she walked in, and they rushed me to the emergency room. That was my first reaction to the movies!
I’d never seen anything like it before. I mean, back then, you didn’t have TV, and you basically didn’t had movies. It was a big deal. …you know, with my mother wondering whether I should go, but it wasn’t a movie about killing. My mother would never let me go to the movies to let me see just anything. There was a movie called Prince of Peace or King of Kings, one of those, those were the movies about Jesus. Not Ben-Hur, but something of that nature, big giant spectacles. A movie about Jesus, that was alright, so those were my first proper experience with going to the theater. Every Saturday they would also have Durango Kid. [series of western films starring Charles Starrett]
Probably, the one I went to wasn’t appropriate. Maybe it was a cowboys and indians movie, and in the dream I was trying to stand on the back of a horse, because I did like horses, and I was only six years old, and I didn’t have a horse or was riding one. I believe it was in color. It wasn’t a silent film. Whatever it was, it was exciting.
That was my movie experience. The theater is gone now, no way is it still there. Norfolk has been raised.
