1950 Newton, Massachusetts

Maureen Kenney
Born 1944
First movie memories in Newton, Massachusetts
Interviewed by Alexa Tsay, 1/22/18

I don’t remember which one was the very first movie I saw, but the Disney movies were just unbelievably charming and captivating to me. I loved Cinderella. For me personally, it was the joyfulness, and the cheerfulness, and the animations. I was captivated by the singing, and the joy, and the movement, and the colors. I can remember just being riveted by the technicolor, which was a big deal when it came out.

My favorite moment is when she’s going to the ball. All the little birds come in, and they’re making her dress and singing together. It was such a joyful moment. The birds are singing “Cinderelli, Cinderelli,” and they’re all buzzing around, making her beautiful and getting her ready for the ball. As a young child — eight years old I probably was when I saw it — I just thought, ‘that’s the most wonderful thing in the world.’

At that time, as a young girl, going to the movies was a big deal. It was the whole family. My mother particularly would pile all of us kids in the car, and we’d go. It was all very exciting to go and get in the car together and go to this. It was an event. Once we got to the theater, there was no such thing as buying a lot of sodas. All of that stuff was expensive. I mean, you could get a little thing of chocolate-covered raisins or something, but buying concessions was nothing of the proportion like movies now.

We had no television; television came for us in the mid-50s maybe. That’s another reason why it was such a big deal. Since we didn’t grow up with television, going to the movies was an enormous excitement. And entertainment back then wasn’t like today. I have four brothers, and we lived in Newton, which was a suburban town. Our source of entertainment was playing games all the time. On rainy days, we’d be out on the porch, and we’d play monopoly. We were all big readers too, because that’s what kids did: you read, you played with one another, you made up games, you played board games, you played card games. Our entertainment was much more active than passive. You didn’t just go and sit and see something. So when we went to a movie, and it was a great big screen, it was a big deal.

Westerns were very big when I was a child because when you’re born in the 1940s — mind you, the Western frontier had just been settled in 1900 — it was only a generation and a half after the Westward expansion. So Cowboys versus Indians was a very big item, and it was always about the pretty girl. It was very stereotypical when you think about it. But we were captivated by it. It had a very romantic feeling to it.

I remember my mother used to also take us to Charlie Chaplin movies, which we loved. City Lights was so sad and touching. There’s a blind flower girl, and Charlie Chaplin comes by, and it’s a love story. She is so vulnerable and sweet, and of course Charlie Chaplin… oh he’s hilarious.

And when we went on a little vacation or something, driving up to Maine, I can remember we’d stop at a drive-in theater to break up the trip. That was always a huge excitement because they had girls who came around and took your order for food. The girls came right up to your car, and a lot of times they’d be on roller-skates or something like that.

I also remember later on, when I was probably in fifth grade, maybe ten years old, we’d go on a Saturday to the movie theater on the reservoir. That was a big excitement. We’d take the bus, and it would cost 17 cents for a double bill. There was always the first run movie, and then there would be what was called a B movie. Those were usually in black and white. And they were family stories, stories of loyalty. All of these stories were geared to develop values. It was nothing like today’s movies.

For the most part, movies had a much different impact then. I didn’t go to any movies that were raw or violent. For us, the impact of movies was the excitement for something very different. It was like, in more rural areas, when the circus came to town, and people got all excited. For us, movies meant excitement, and it meant uplifting stories. I never remember as a child coming out of a movie scared, or depressed, or worried. Going to a movie didn’t create anxiety like some movies do today.

The movies at that time were escapism, basically. They were value-based stories elevating our ethical standards, or they were just sheer entertainment: singing, and dancing, that sort of thing. You had a lot of musicals. By the time I was in high school, I saw White Christmas, all of those. I loved all the musicals because we weren’t a family that could afford to go to Broadway shows or anything like that. The movies brought to middle class families with five children a way to see these entertainments. It was an affordable way to see the world, to see different places. And the visuals were very, very strong.

And, of course, the star system was very dominant. Someone like an Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe, these were very, very dominant figures. Children were named after movie stars and things like that because there was a striving, aspirational component in movies. People went to the movies to see wonderful parts of the world, to have wonderful stories and lighthearted fun, to have singing and dancing. It was fun. Everybody I know loved the movies. That’s all I remember.