1955 Havana, Cuba
Carlos Eire
Born 1950
Havana, Cuba
Interviewed on 2/6/24
by Varun Kumar
What’s the first movie you remember seeing?
Eire: First movie I remember seeing…was possibly Walt Disney’s Pinocchio. Or Snow White. This was anywhere between 1953 and 1956… I was either 3, 4, or 5 years old.
And you remember seeing the movie at that young of an age?
Eire: Oh, yes. I remember all the Disney movies I saw then. Disney had me.
Who was with you?
Eire: My father, my mother, and my brother. See, my father got into movie theaters for free. He was a judge and did people favors. We couldn’t go into any theater for free but we had six or seven that we got into for free.
How did you get to the theater? Was it close?
Eire: They were all very close by. We went by car. The theater I remember in particular was the Miramar Theater, which means “Seaview.”
What was the theater like? Were there ushers and concessions stands? What food did you enjoy?
Eire: Ushers and concession stand, yes. I liked popcorn. It was actually the only place I ever had popcorn…until I asked my mother to make popcorn at home, which was a monumental task. So popcorn always in the movie theater. We didn’t have microwave ovens [at home] back then. It was served in a cardboard box.
What did you think about the movie? The characters? The story?
Eire: It had very very scary things in it. That’s the classic Disney movie, full of frightening things for children. In Snow White, in the first scene the huntsman is about to kill her…and there are witches and poison throughout the movie. In Pinnochio, for heavens sake, the scariest thing was he almost turned into a donkey! He’s a bad boy so by being a bad boy, he starts to turn into a donkey. And then he loses his father! He gets swallowed up by the whale… I forget what the order of tragedy is there. His father ends up in a whale? Well, he goes into the ocean and he’s walking on the sea bottom, he ties a rock to his ankle so that he stays at the bottom, and he’s crying out “father! father!” Oh, you know that was terrifying to me. The transformation to a donkey ruined some aspect of my childhood… Just traumatized me. Because the other boys actually turned into donkeys and they’re sold into slavery by this really mean looking guy. All for being bad boys.
This was in Havana, right? Were there other theaters around?
Eire: Yes, a suburb of Havana. The name of the suburb was Miramar! This theater wasn’t a big one; it was close by, not that far, but we went by car. And Havana, you can look it up, had more movie theaters per-capita than any other place in the world. And they’re all dead now. All gone. Cuba had these weird things going on…Havana had a huge middle class and in that respect was very American. But television caught on a bit more slowly than in the US so for entertainment there was the movie theater and there was some huge ones that I remember going to.
How often would you go to the movie theater?
Eire: Very often. Especially after first grade, age six. We went almost every weekend…our dad would take us to the movies. And it was often a double feature. The way I saw it as a child: one of them was good but the other was really boring because it was for adults. We went very often, though. And we’d bring our friends with us… my dad would pack the car full of kids and we’d all get in for free.
What was the atmosphere like in the theater? Did people cheer during or after the movie?
Eire: Well, for these [Disney] movies no. Very little interaction. But for other movies, Cuban audiences were very interactive. They would say things and make noises… when men and women were kissing on the screen, they’d make all sorts of lewd sounds like really loud. They’d say things like “suck harder on his lips!”
Eire: My favorite movie in childhood, though, was called The Vikings. 1959. That’s why I’m a historian—that movie turned me into a historian. I realized that the past was a lot more interesting than the present! With Kirk Douglas and Ernest Brag[?] It’s a beautiful movie and I highly recommend it. Very violent—the most violent movie I’d ever seen. For 1959, it was dangerous.
Did you have any favorite actors you’d go see? Or would you just watch whatever was showing?
Eire: Yeah, basically what was on at the Miramar this Saturday. I remember other movie house names too… La Arenal, Roxy. Roxy was the worst of them all—it didn’t have air conditioning! It had ceiling fans and that theater was the first theater ever where I ran into totalitarianism. I went there to see Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and they wouldn’t let the children in. For some weird reason, it was forbidden for children. That was after Castro took over…I still don’t know why it was prohibited for children.
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Professor Eire is a Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale. He is a historian of late medieval and early modern Europe. He fled Cuba for the United States with his brother at the age of 11 in 1962 as a part of Operation Peter Pan. Professor Eire is my advisor for my history senior thesis.
