1955 New York, New York and Hazleton, Pennsylvania

Dennis Skoff
Born in 1950
New York, New York ~1955
Interviewed on January 27th, 2019
by Katie Skoff

The first movies I remember seeing were the movies that played on the “Million Dollar Movie” program on the television. The program played one movie on repeat throughout the week and I would watch the same over and over throughout the week. I usually watched with my brother, Barry, but I watched some of the films so frequently that I’d imagine a lot of the time I was by myself.

The first ones I remember watching and that I enjoyed the most were the monster movies. I watched King Kong over and over throughout the week, as well as Godzilla. I didn’t really focus on the story in the films; I mostly liked the destruction and I liked dinosaurs, so Godzilla was a favorite of mine. That’s part of why I was able to rewatch the films so many times; I didn’t care that I already knew what happened because I was in it for the action.

Godzilla’s story is now known by everyone [except his interviewer!], but back then it was new and exciting. It was an edgy story and I remember being glued to the screen on the weeks that it was played on “Million Dollar Movie.”

Another film I remember watching on repeat was the Hunchback of Notre Dame with Charles Laughton. As a kid I didn’t grasp the message of the movie at all; I just thought he was a deformed guy. I only recognized the seriousness of the story when I watched it when I was older.
In New York we didn’t go out to the theaters; I don’t remember why. But my family stayed in Weston, Pennsylvania with my extended family over the summers and I remember going to the movie theater there. We all loaded up in a car and went into Hazleton, which we considered “the big city,” at least relative to Weston.

We would never check the movie times; we just showed up to the theater and if it was in the middle of a film we would just start it in the middle. Then at the end of the movie, it would start over and we would watch until the point we had come in on and then leave. It seems crazy now, but it was normal then!

The theater we went to was called the Capitol Theater and I remember eating lots of raisinets and bonbons. I remember being so excited to get a good seat, but if anyone sat in front of me, I had to watch the whole movie leaning to the side because the seats weren’t stadium, so anyone in front of me would block the screen.

But the theaters back then were a lot larger then than they are now. There weren’t multiplexes, so there was only one big theater with a gigantic screen- unless of course, someone was blocking your view. The chairs are a lot more comfortable now and you’re guaranteed a view, but theaters then were true monuments to film; they were grand, even if they weren’t as comfortable.