1953 Quincy, Massachusetts
James Bowman
1943
Quincy, Massachusetts
Interviewed on 19 February 2021
By Tyler Harmon
The first movie I remember seeing was Shane in 1953. If it was 1953, I would have been ten years old when I went to watch it. I remember going to some movies before, but Shane was the first movie that I distinctly remember watching. I remember it was me, Bobby Douglas, Buddy Malqueny, and Terry O’Connell. We all lived on the same street in our neighborhood, and they were the group that I mostly hung out with as a kid. We never really associated ourselves with the kids from other parts of the neighborhood, but we four were best friends and did almost everything together.
Back then, our family did not have a car, so my friends and I would walk to the movie theatre. Growing up in the town of Quincy, Massachusetts, there were a couple of theatres close by, and we always went to the closest one: The Wollaston Theatre. They had about three or four theatres in Quincy, but The Wollaston Theatre was the closest for us, as it was only a ten minute walk away for us.
Every Saturday afternoon, The Wollaston Theatre put on Saturday Matinees: a double movie feature that first showed a cartoon movie and then usually followed with a Western. The theatre had good options for concessions, and my friends and I would always get the popcorn, which only cost a dime. We would also grab our favorite candies for only a nickel, of which I was always sure to grab a pack of Raisinets (chocolate-covered raisins) before heading into the theatre.
If you have seen Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Shane was a lot like that film. It centered around a cowboy coming into town, changing something up, and ending the movie with a shootout scene. My friends and I had seen Westerns before this, but the acting in this film was why I remember it distinctly. We talked about the movie for weeks after we had watched it, and if I remember correctly, the film even won some Academy Awards.
The theatre was always an important place for me growing up. In terms of dating and the social scene, the theatre was where we would go every weekend to hang out and have fun. We didn’t mind making the walk to the theatre there every weekend because we knew we would see our friends and spend our afternoons there.
