1950s, Çorlu, Turkey
Turhan Binay
Born in 1943
Çorlu, Turkey
Interviewed on September 20th, 2019
by Eda Naz Dinc
I cannot remember the exact date of the first time I saw a movie but it must be between 1950 and 1960, when I was in elementary school, in the theater named Akgün in Çorlu, where I grew up.
Let me give you some information about those days. Usually on the weekends Tarzan movies were screened in the movie theaters. In Tarzan movies, there was Jane, a tamed monkey and of course Tarzan. Plot was like this; Tarzan is raised by animals in the jungle and he screams “Aaaaooooo” and he is capable of communicating with the animals. His relationship with the animals helps him fight against the evil forces; people who kill animals to profit off their horns an etc. or who want to sell the them to zoos. The Tarzan movies would come in series, each with a different storyline. The sequels to the first Tarzan movie depicted his struggles in adapting to the Western civilization and its urban aspects.
The other type of movies I watched was cowboy movies. At that time, the wildness, savageness and brutality of Native Americans and their massacre in the hands of colonizers occupied the world agenda. Among the cowboy movies, Tom Mix was my favorite. In those movies, Native Americans would block the roads. During that time period, transportation was conducted by horse carts which usually came with two, sometimes four and even six horses pulling it. They would make a convoy to go to the bank or to the new settlement that the colonizers established which eventually evolved to cities.
Before the gentrification of such desolate places, the colonizers always struggled to overcome the Native American domination of the territory. Usually, Native Americans would combat with arrows while colonizers in return invaded Native American camps. As childish and naive we were, we most often rooted for the colonizers.
However, there were also villains living in these settlements, usually built from wood. These villains were for the most part heavily armed. The common themes that reoccurred through these cowboy movies included saloon scenes and unprofessional mobsters attempting to rob local banks, who would, for the most part, be sentenced to execution by hanging. The only social life was that of the saloon scene; women from all around the world would put on cabaret shows for the male crowd who would enjoy the show and excessively drink. Simple entertainment is how I would describe it.
Meanwhile, they would create heroes, such as Tom Mix, out of these men so that they can fight against the villains. These were simple narratives yet we adored them since we were only children and we would always side with the “good guys”. The bad guys were always defeated at the end. Everybody, including the old members of the audience, I even remember my mom and dad being among them, applauded when the good guys eventually won. When the villains were on the screen and you would see Tom Mix coming, riding his horse, every single person in the movie theater would start applauding and cheering.
I also liked the films of Jerry Lewis. He was the funniest actor of that time. If anybody wanted to have a good laugh, they would go and see his movies. I cannot remember the titles of any of his movies unfortunately, after all I was just a child. By the way, I should add that there were also silent movies, but not the cowboy ones, no. There was a silent movie, I should remember its name, starring a duo, one of them is fat and the other one is slim but after they also started doing talkies.
The reason why the names have not stayed in my memory is that I was so young and I saw a lot of movies. My grandma joined the phone call briefly to remind my grandpa that their names were Laurel and Hardy. Hardy was the fat one and Laurel was the slim one.
At that time there were big Chevrolet cars, long and beautiful, and they were the type of cars that the leading part would usually ride. Though not in comedy movies, but in musicals featuring stars like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. Such movies would take advantage of their artistic talents and fame. Their movies were romantic and adored by all people from all ages.
There was no concession inside the movie theater but there were people selling fizzy drinks and sunflower seeds right next to the theatre across the street. During the intermission, they would walk across the rows, yelling “Soda, soda, get your soda!” while carrying a huge case of cheap soda. But more importantly, you would always hear the loud and distinct sound of viewers snacking on sunflower seeds in the background while watching the movie.
Sometimes the audio record would malfunction due to the rudimentary conditions of the theatre, and in that case, someone would always yell “Projectionist! Sound!” Projectionist is the person in charge of the screening and all of these movies were in black and white. Until the 70s there was no such thing as color movies, even in the television.
Sometimes I would go with my parents and sometimes I entered without paying but because my dad worked in the police station as a night guard, everybody knew him and I would tell the attendants in the movie theater that I am the son of Ismail the night guard and then they would let me sit in an empty seat after the movie started. But for daytime screenings, I would usually go with my dad, if we could afford it.
At the entrance, the usher would ask for our tickets right away. There were two types of seating; one that worked on a first-come-first serve basis, and one that was arranged by reservations prior to the screening. In a theatre play, usually the front seats are most favored, however, that was not the case for movies. It was considered that the ones who were seated in front of the screen were at an unfavorable place. If you had a reservation, an usher would guide you to your seat with a flashlight, even after the movie started but they would also expect you to tip them, usually 25 kuruş.
