1952 Los Angeles, California

Phil Evans
1938
Los Angeles, CA
Interviewed on 9/22/19
by Steven Barbee

The first movie I vividly remember seeing was A Street Car Named Desire. It was around 1952 and I was only 14 years old. I saw the film by myself because I was the only person in my immediate family who had any interest in watching movies. Malden Brando, the main actor, had received a lot of publicity from his performance in the film. I repeatedly heard about how spectacular his acting was in several articles I had read. He was considered the best American actor of his time, maybe of all time. I decided to learn about the plot and then go to the local theater to see the movie.

The Stadium Theater was only a couple blocks away from my house. This was the theater that I spent my teenage years attending because it was close enough that I could walk to it. It was located on Pico and is currently home to a Jewish Temple. Unlike the extravagant theaters on Hollywood Boulevard, this theater was quite ordinary. It was not very large and only sat around 600 people in the audience. The chairs were quite comfortable and I always purchased popcorn from the concession stand accompanied by an occasional Coke. There were no ushers in the Stadium Theater and the seats were given out on a first come first serve basis. I always attended movies on the weekends because it was the only free time I had away from school. Fortunately, the showings were never too crowded and I was always able to see the film that I came to watch.

A Street Car Named Desire was about the story of Blanche DuBois moving to New Orleans following a series of personal issues that led to her losing her aristocratic lifestyle. Blanche moved in with her sister, Stella, and her brother-in-law, Stanley. You can see how shocked Blanche is by Stella’s poorer lifestyle and the way she allows Stanley to treat her. As I watched the film, I was in awe. I can remember every single scene of the movie as if I were watching it right now. In every film, there are one or two lines that’ll stick with you forever. For A Street Car Named Desire, it has to be when Malden’s character yells “Stella!” after Blanche had angrily run onto the balcony because of how he treated her sister. I can perfectly picture him on his knees in the open atrium shouting his wife’s name. What made this movie incredible had to be the beauty of the writing. Tennessee William’s script made the actors seem better than they actually were. Parts of the dialogue almost sounded poetic which made the film even more beautiful than it already was.

This film caused me to become incredibly fascinated with movies. To this day, I continue to watch movies daily either alone or with anyone who wants to share the enjoyment with me. Following this movie, I routinely tried to attend first-runs of newly released films. I would take a bus to Hollywood Boulevard and get tickets at the Pantages Theater which is now home to several Broadway productions.

During my studies at the University of California Berkeley, I could not leave my passion for cinema behind in Los Angeles. I regularly attended a local theater that would exclusively show classical Hollywood films. I would also read countless New Yorker Magazine articles from Pauline Kael, one of, if not the, best film critics of all time. Little did I know that this theater that I attended at Berkeley was partly owned by her. Movies have been an enormous part of my life and I am so glad I was able to experience A Street Car Named Desire back in 1952.