1954 Lewiston, Maine

Interview with John Michael
Born in 1950
Movie seen in Lewiston Maine
Interviewed January 25, 2019
by Sarah Brakebill-Hacke

It was a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movie.

It was a comedy movie because…do you know who those people are? Jerry Lewis just died this past year. He used to run the ‘Jerry’s kids’ telethon, where you raised money for muscular sclerosis or muscular dystrophy, I forget which one. That was his shtick for the last 30 years of his life. Dean Martin was a famous crooner, you’ve heard his music: Everybody loves somebody somehow…da da-da da.

Jerry was like the stupid clown, and Dean was this cool guy and I think eventually Dean got sick of him and split, he went his own way and Jerry did a few movies still. But when they were together they did some funny stuff because Dean was the straight guy and Jerry made big foolish situations out of everything. And by the way, Jerry Lewis was fabulously popular and people just loved his style of humor.

It was The Three Ring Circus, 1954. That was Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and I just remembered Jerry Lewis being a clown or something in the movie, and had one of those little round red noses. I just remember that from the movie and to me Jerry Lewis was God because he was foolish and did all sorts of stupid things, you know he’d fall off the high wire, stuff like that. He was always screwing up, doing something that was fairly serious and he’d make a joke out of it because he played the fool like….Peter Sellers did in some ways…

I was incredulous and mesmerized by Jerry Lewis! I think I’ve always enjoyed comedies as a result.

It was in the Strand Theater. It was part of a chain of movie theaters across the country, and we had one here. It was a big, beautiful, ornamental theater, very difficult to find nowadays days, anywhere. And, of course, they tore it down to build a bus station or something. There were three stories to it, a ground floor, a second floor, and a third floor balcony, which was much smaller.

They had a big, beautiful marquee going in, it was the most beautiful I’d seen anywhere with the little tiny bulbs, with chrome, hundreds of those blinking off and on, and you’d have the names of the movies and such on there.

And it was a big deal and people piled into the place and filled it up. 1954 was about the same year that we got the TV set as well, it was a big box and the screen was about half as big as my laptop computer screen. It was the tail end of a history, where people would pile into theaters and go to vaudeville and what-not. The seats were red, and they were comfy and foam-filled. It was majestic on the sides and dark going in.
In many ways it was an anchor of the town. It was a very big theater, I’m guessing it seated close to a thousand.

We didn’t dress up, but you wouldn’t go all floppy-looking like we do today.

I was four years old. I was with my parents. Drove to the movie theater. I don’t remember the trip there but I remember it was special because both my parents were there, and both my sisters were there. It was a big deal. Dad didn’t watch the movies too much.

We used to wind up eating Good ‘n’ Plenty. Mom got them. I don’t know why we bought them they had licorice on the inside and hard candy shell on the outside. And all I wanted was the hard candy on the outside, I didn’t like licorice. Sometimes I’d eat off the hard candy and throw the licorice under the seat. To this day, I see the Good ‘n’ Plenty and I want to buy them even though I hate them. So, the Good ‘n’ Plenty was there, and you had your popcorn and a soda.

They also had an intermission. I don’t know if the Jerry Lewis movie was a double feature, but they often had double features. They would definitely have intermissions then. That’s when you had an opportunity to hit your parents up for more candy because you already stuffed your face with what you already bought. Intermission, that’s when you were supposed to buy more candy.

It was a common experience, but it was always special. You were always tickled that you got to go to the movies. The screen was big, much larger than the dinky TVs at home. The screen would bring you in so you could be right there with Jerry Lewis watching his every move, laughing and screaming at all the shenanigans that would go on. It’s important to understand it was a ritual. The people would come in, part of the ritual is you would buy candy on the way in, buy popcorn. If you were lucky you would get a drink out of your Mom and Dad. And everyone was there, people you knew and you would say “Hi”.

The movie started and everyone would sit and watch it quietly and politely. You’d laugh when funny things would happen, but you wouldn’t talk, you’d whisper, much more than nowadays. It was an important ritual, everyone went through the same motions. You had the opportunity to be placed in a different environment in make-believe land, as you would be inserted into the illusion, and you could escape to somewhere else, and have an adventure. You might just as well have gone on a trip to Africa or something, it was such a perfectly designed escape in the day.