1953 Santa Monica, California
Douglas Schramel
Born 1933 (The year of the depression)
Santa Monica, California
Interviewed on September 18th, 2019
by Teava Torres de Sa
It was a safe time. I mean, if you were drafted, you’d go to Korea and die, but it was a safe time otherwise. People felt comfortable going out to the theatre back then, when there was nothing else to do. I would always go by myself and see whatever was playing. I never checked to see what was on. I found out when I got there.
There were a few main theatres near 1950’s Santa Monica Boulevard: Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (where the Walk of Fame is), The Egyptian, and Pantages. There were never any lines, which was good because I always went alone and had no one to talk to. The showings were double booked back then, and at least one of them would be a series. I saw bits and pieces of all sorts of series, but I was more discerning for Mickey Spillane movies. Detective stories were always popular, especially in LA with the policemen and bad guys. The cops in LA were tough at that time: they wore blue, they carried batons, and they beat the crap out of people.
There was a reverence for the theatre when I used to go. There was a lot of fanfare, you could say. There were all sorts of food: popcorn, hotdogs, ice cream bars and all. Sometimes they played news before the showings, news of the war and other things. There were ushers, of course, and they wore little hats and carried flashlights. That’s because it was so dark in there, and crowded. You couldn’t make any noise, or you’d get kicked out. People sat and stayed quiet like they were watching a live show. It had that kind of energy. People were enamored by the movies. The big screen commanded your attention.
Movie stars were so much more approachable than they are today. Of course, you’d look at them in awe, but they were still friendly to you. My mother was a nurse and she’d get autographs for me whenever she met a star. Clark Gable, Cary Grant, my mother took care of all of them in the hospital. Johnny, my friend from high school, had a wife named Donna, who went to University High in Santa Monica. She said she saw Robert Redford all the time at her school. There were movie stars in my fraternity class. They were everywhere. It was probably because acting wasn’t a big deal then. We would say, “acting is what you do if you failed at everything else.” They were just fucking actors back then. Now they think they’re senators. I grew up in Hollywood so I know as well as anyone that I’d rather be a doctor than play one.
I do think you carry movies with you more than books, and that was true even then. I liked a bunch of movies: Rebel Without a Cause, The Wild One, and Julius Caesar. Those changed my life, but From Here to Eternity really stuck with me. The movie had everybody in it: Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, all of them. They even threw in Frank Sinatra, and he took away an Academy Award for it. But Burt Lancaster was the hero back then. The movie was set in Hawaii and it takes place at Pearl Harbor. It was shot at Schofield Barracks, which still exist. There are still bullet holes there. That was Hawaii in the 40’s and the 50’s. I remember, because the war against the Japanese absolutely destroyed my life. And the writer who wrote it was a good writer. He became famous off of it, which wasn’t too popular. But writers were always the most important. The story was provocative and it gave you the truths about what Hawaii was like at the time. Good art has basis in truth and reality and it had that. It had the sensuality, the cheating, and the drama. It was current, it was well done, and it was a truth.
