1954 Milford, Connecticut

Douglas Juul (my grandfather)

Born in 1944

Milford and New Haven, Connecticut

Interviewed on September 24, 2019

by Ryan Parkey

I was born in 1944 in Goldsboro, North Carolina while my dad was in the Army Air Corps. I think we left there when I was like two-months old, and then when I was a little kid I mostly lived in Milford, Connecticut, but sometimes in other places in and around New Haven, because that’s where the rest of our family was. 

The first movie I remember seeing was this horror movie about ants. I think it was called Them!. That must have been when I was just a little kid, like the early fifties. 1952, somewhere around there? A long time ago. Maybe fifty-five? [It was actually 1954.] I don’t remember much about the movie, just that it was scary because there were these big huge ants that the people had to fight, which is probably why it stands out to me. Every once in awhile you actually still see it playing on TV, but I don’t think I’ve ever watched it again for some reason. There was a small theater in downtown Milford we would go to. I can’t think of the name of it, but that’s probably where I saw that movie. My favorite snack at the movies was always licorice nibs, and I still sometimes get those today when I go to see a movie. I think a ticket cost a dime at the time.

Even though we lived in Milford, I actually used to go to the movies in New Haven a lot because my grandfather was a projectionist at a theater downtown. My grandfather immigrated there in 1901 from Norway and at one time I think he actually owned his own theater, but that was before I was alive. Then, you know, the Great Depression hit and he lost everything and ended up being a projectionist at this theater in New Haven. I don’t exactly remember where it was or even what the name of it was, but I do remember that sometimes on a Saturday he would take us up there and we would get into the movies for free while he worked. The theater in New Haven was bigger and nicer than the one in Milford. The first movie I remember seeing there with my grandfather was The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). It’s about the circus and I remember there being lots of animals and people in these elaborate circus acts. 

I think I saw it with my older brother, because that’s who I would usually go do things with when I was a little kid. We didn’t get to go to the movies that often, but one thing I remember about the movies in those days was that you would go to see a main feature, but then there would always be a cartoon and a short subject shown with it. Something like the Three Stooges or Buck Rogers or Tom Corbett and the Space Cadets or something else like that. It would always be kind of short movies, like serials, so you’d see a different part of the story each time you went. The other thing we used to see was that they always had a newsreel. Like I remember as a kid the Korean War was going on, and they would have the news of the war along with the movies. So really you would be at the theater for a lot longer than you would today, because there were all these other things to watch at the same time.